As Seen On TV

21. Road Trippin'

"Okay, so, I got it this time, I swear. I got it. Don't help me."

"That's what you said last time."

"No, really! I got it," I took a deep breath and pointed to the small faces in the picture one by one, like I had been doing for the past couple minutes. 

"Junior. Andrew! Sam. Carter, Cooper. Angel, Hendrix, and Oliver. And the Mr. and Mrs, of course," I finished pointing and turned to Andrew with a hopeful smile.

He flashed a proud smirk back at me, taking one hand momentarily off the steering wheel to give me a high five. 

"Except they'll want you to call them Teddy and Ada Mae. They don't take kindly to Mr. and Mrs, both because they're not as close as they used to be and don't want to be associated with each other, and because it reminds them of how old they are."

I winced.

"Okay. Fair enough, so, Teddy and Ada Mae," I agreed. "How much longer did you say it was?"

"Lyraaaaa," he moaned, taking his eyes off the dry, russet-orange, mountainous Utah landscape and looking over at me in the passenger seat. "What did I tell you a million times? We'll get there when we get there. Besides, you literally have a smartphone in your hand and I would assume that you are capable of using it. Use your damn maps if you really need to know that badly, woman."

I gave him a look.

"Jeez, alright, okay, sorry for existing. At least I'm not the one who's making us stop and go to bathroom every twenty seven minutes. I mean, really, women are supposed to be the ones with smaller bladders. It's pathetic, Hastings."

I could see him wanting to laugh, but instead, he kept his composure. "Women are only supposed to have to pee more once they've had their first child because the babies keep squishing their bladder smaller and smaller."

I laughed then. "I'm not sure if that's accurate."

He nodded and looked out at the road, wide-eyed and serious. "No, seriously! I read it somewhere."

I maintained an unimpressed façade. "Can't believe everything you read," I said dismissively.

He smiled. "Can't you? That actually makes sense, though, because the other day I was reading this tabloid magazine and they had a featured article about-" here he changed the pitch of his voice in a way that implied he was making air quotes without taking his hands off the wheel- "us, and they were saying how you were this cute, sweet, charming, hilarious girl that and that you deserved better than me, and the whole time I was reading it, I was just thinking, wow, the Lyra I know only has, like, one of those qualities, if any-"

"Hey!" I interjected. "Since when did you get so sarcastic? I think I'm rubbing off on you, and I don't necessarily like it."

"Yeah, I think you are, too," he said. "I dunno, maybe I started getting meaner when I started to worry that the whole 'nice guys finish last' cliché was true."

I blanched at his sudden change in demeanor. He was a lot more serious now, no longer bantering playfully like we were a couple seconds ago.

Oh no. I had barely been able to go this whole car ride without thinking back to the big breaku- fight, that Pat and I had had last week on our "date," and the only thing getting me through the long trip to Colorado and my impending meeting with Andrew's (rather large and intimidating) family was the fact that me and him seemed to be getting along really well. If we started fighting, too, I might lose it entirely. 

"Hey," I said quietly, after some awkward silence had passed. "That's not true."

He looked towards me. "Isn't it, though?"