Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

My love life is a big bah humbug. Seated in the lecture hall for my final class of the semester before the start of Christmas break, my pencil slides across the notebook margin, sketching a cold and calculating man with a scowl and gold coins reflected in his eyes.

A therapist would have fun analyzing the meaning of this and the cross-section of my scholastic life and love life.

Footnote: It doesn’t exist.

Do I have Daddy issues? Nope.

Might I have an itty bitty problem with control? Perhaps I should see a shrink.

Do guys want to date a perpetual student? I ought to take a poll.

Is something off balance in my life? I inwardly groan.

Only a woman who has been in school since she was three would think to survey guys rather than, well, I don’t know what a person with more dating experience would do.

“When you return after the holiday break, I expect you to have some solid material that we’ll critique as a class.” Professor Fujiyama gives us the hairy eyeball. “I’ve been doing this long enough to know whether you actually went on location to sketch your subjects or if you slacked off and watched videos to work from.”

Not only am I a lifelong student, but I’m also an overachiever and would never even think of slacking off. It’s not like I want to spend half my winter break in an icy arena, but Professor Fujiyama has a point.

He says there are three kinds of drawing:

1. From the creative well of one’s own mind.

2. From a still, which could be a photo, a video (even though technically it’s not still), a bowl of fruit, or even a model.

3. Live action, which is the most dynamic and difficult, if you ask me. Because movement is involved, you more or less have to rely on the other two types to fill in the gaps when the action passes, shifts, or changes shape. It’s also the most interesting because it’s a combination of what the artist sees in real-time and the lapse that they fill in from memory and creativity.

The professor continues, “To achieve excellence and become a master, you have to do the hard things. Otherwise, everyone would succeed. Art would be boring. Don’t be boring. But do have a splendid holiday. Happy drawing.”

The zipping of bags, sliding of chairs, and muted chatter indicate the class is over and vacation has started.

Even though this is an upper-level program, the younger twenty-somethings take this as a cue to celebrate. The classrooms that empty into the hallways of the austere sandstone building are a cacophony that would make me think I’d traveled back in time to freshman year of high school. The mood is like a riotous hockey game as everyone makes their escape.

Although I love Christmas, I’ve been . . . at this for a while. I’m not the oldest person in the classroom. No, that would be Professor Fujiyama. But I’m not that far behind .

“Heading home, Cara?” he asks.

“Yep. Cobbiton, Nebraska.”

“Never been.”

“It’s a suburb of Omaha. Usually, people say they’ve never heard of it.”

He taps the air. “I remember now from when you submitted your project proposal. Your father is the hockey coach.”

I nod. My father is also the one footing the bill for my ongoing studies, even though there has been a change in my enrollment status—one he isn’t aware of.

Should this be a topic of conversation when I’m home? Yes.

Will it be? Pray for me.

“Are you traveling or staying here?” I ask, shouldering my bag.

He lets out a long breath, like serenity will be found as soon as the door closes behind me. “I have to pick up my sister from LAX in an hour. We have plans to visit three botanical gardens,” he lowers his voice, “and the one at CSU Long Beach.”

My eyebrows shoot up because they’re a rival school.

He lifts his finger in the universal symbol for quiet. “Shh. Don’t tell anyone.”

Grinning, I reply, “Your secret is safe with me.”

I wave goodbye. Once in the hallway, worry creeps through me. I’m not sure how much longer my secret will be safe. If you’re wondering which one, it’s not the never-been-kissed secret. My sisters know, so I don’t think that counts. That also means they probably have a Christmas wish list of guys to fix me up with. They had one last summer when we met at the lake and sent me Valentine’s Day prospects before that.

Can’t say I’m looking forward to their meddling .

The secret that makes me need to reapply deodorant is that I transferred programs without telling my family.

I’m a full-fledged adult, so it shouldn’t be a big deal, but I’ve always been the brains of the bunch. As a triplet, out of the three of us, I’m the academic one, starting with our nursery school teacher telling our parents that I was “gifted.” How could they know that about a three-year-old who still put Weebles in her mouth? I have no idea.

To this day, I’m guilty of gnawing on pen caps, which is why I mostly use pencils now. Graphite is almost as bad as licking an ashtray. Not that I’d know.

Even though I’m the nerdy one, that doesn’t mean I know what I want to do with my life.

After four years, I graduated from Oxford with my bachelor’s, having changed my major the same number of times. I started with anatomy and physiology, thinking I wanted to go into a branch of medicine. Then I shifted gears and focused on pharmacology. Third year in, I took a sharp right turn and went into archeology, where I spent a lot of time, um, sketching artifacts before spending a summer in Greece and graduating with a degree in classics and history.

Suffice it to say, I was all over the place, and that didn’t stop when I received my master’s degree in business. Then, I got into USC Law. They also happened to have a fantastic graphic arts program . . . and I somehow doodled my way out of becoming an attorney and into possibly working as a video game designer.

But no one knows that.

Given the expectations associated with my smarts, I’m afraid they’ll be disappointed. And deep down, if I’m honest, I do feel like a failure even though I was voted most likely to succeed.

For instance, Anna married her high school sweetheart Calvin Bannanna—yes, that’s his real last name—she claims the fact that her first name and his last rhymed is why they became best friends in third grade. It was meant to be. She’s a park ranger at the Lewis and Clark National Historic Trail Headquarters.

Ilsa is a pianist and travels with a worship band all over the world. She’s the spicy firecracker of the family and got hitched last summer to an Australian we call KJ, short for Kangaroo Jack. His real name is Jack McMann and he’s an impermeable wall of, well, man.

Then there’s me.

I’m on track to become a video game concept artist. I think. As a kid, I spent a lot of time daydreaming but got pushed to use my extra active brain for something useful.

While Anna was, and still is, the classic adventurous tomboy and Ilsa was somehow self-compelled to spend hours playing piano (along with the flute, violin, and guitar), resulting in becoming a virtuoso, I read a lot . . . and doodled. I guess I was kind of in my head.

It’s noisy and crowded in here, if you can’t tell.

I race from the campus to the airport. While looping the labyrinthine streets surrounding LAX, trying to find the turnoff for long-term parking, I kind of feel like a headcase. At the same time, my mind gets lost in the whole school-romance-future maze.

Peering through the windshield, I mutter, “Why isn’t there a clearly marked sign?”

I pass a gated area blocked by orange cones for the third time. When I get to an intersection, I spot the detour arrow and follow it again. But I still can’t find the entrance. I see cars parked on the other side of the fence but no way in.

Then I spot the kiosk and gate for the lot, but it’s on the other side of the road. If I drove over the median, I’d be there already. After I get through security, I anticipate having to run to my gate. “This is what I get for following the rules.”

Los Angeles is a city known for its traffic, so I’m surprised that there isn’t much at the moment. I look around, making sure it’s safe, before flipping a U-turn. Chances are a traffic cam caught it and I’ll get a ticket in the mail, but judging by the skid marks on the asphalt, I’m not the first person who, in a fit of desperation, took their life and the law into their own hands.

After parking, riding the bus to the airport, making it through security, and arriving at my gate, thankfully, everyone still waits in line to board. Right now, I could use a gust of that stiff Nebraska wind that I was all too happy to escape when I left home over seven years ago.

When I told my small-town friends that I was moving to England to attend Oxford, they were full of interest and curiosity. When I transferred to Los Angeles post-graduate, they were wary. They didn’t think a girl like me would make it. They were afraid the city would eat me alive.

With a smile and a proud little jiggle of my head with my jingle bell earrings, I’ve survived. I’ve also won over more hearts than not. Well, as the last triplet standing in her singlehood, that doesn’t include love life hearts. And I wouldn’t mind if that changed STAT.

Anna says I’m looking for love in all the wrong places (books). Ilsa tells me to broaden my horizons (leave the library every once in a while).

They also took it upon themselves to find me a guy. But I have criteria. He has to like books and libraries. Seems simple enough. It’s not. I’ve looked. All the dates they set me up on resulted in me filing the experience away in the #Fail folder.

I don’t want to obsess over this, but I have to prepare myself because my sisters might feel slightly guilty that they’re married and I'm single, meaning they’ll go to extremes to change my status.

When I board the plane, I struggle to stuff my carry-on into the overhead bin. I’m also the shortest sister by three-quarters of an inch. An attractive guy around my age helps hoist my bag. At the same time, I catch a whiff of body odor and a woman behind me plows into my ankles with her rolling bag.

“Ow.” My yelp is nasal as I hold my breath because someone seriously needs to bathe.

She doesn’t apologize, nor does she make eye contact.

When I turn back around, the guy who helped with my hardshell suitcase taps it and says, “Pink. Cute.”

My tummy does a little flip-flop. What’s cute is the wrong question. It’s who is cute . The answer: he’s cah-yute.

“Thanks. I’m a triplet. Our mom designated us each with a color to simplify things. I got pink, and my two sisters got purple and red.”

“There are three of you?” He flashes a slightly less than pearly white grin.

I bite my lip because, if I’m not mistaken, he’s being kind of flirty. Short-circuiting, I stutter a dumb reply.

The woman behind me pokes me in the kidney with her umbrella.

“Sheesh,” I mutter. It’s not like I can move since we’re packed in like sardines.

Checking my boarding pass, I climb over a man wrapped in a trench coat who is seated in the aisle. I catch another waft of BO and am glad there’s a seat between us, but I feel bad for whoever has to sit there.

Except it’s the cah-yute guy. No sooner does he also manage to wedge past the immovable man in the trench coat—no shade, there’s nowhere for him to go unless a crane appeared from the hatch in the ceiling and temporarily lifted him—I catch the rank scent of body odor again. I discreetly do a sniff test. I’m daisy fresh even though the plane is stifling, causing a rash of prickly sweat along my spine.

After preparing my reading material for the flight, the cute guy next to me stretches his arms overhead and yawns. I realize the source of the stench. It’s my seat neighbor. The cah-yute guy. More like pee-yew guy. I knew it was too good to be true.

Dreams of an inflight start to my happily ever after dashed, I do my best to breathe through my mouth to avoid the offending smell.

“Hey, by the way, I’m Richy,” he says.

Not wanting to be rude, I offer an apologetic smile. “Oh, um, I’m reading.”

He tilts his head. “That’s your name? Hmm. Are you a library book?”

Flustered because I’m not used to flirting, not even with a stinky guy, I point to my tablet. “I meant?—”

He taps his fingers in the air at me. “If you’re a library book, I’d like to check you out.”

My cheeks instantly match my suitcase. “Oh, um, do you have a library card?” Maybe I’ll just crawl under the seat now.

This is not what I meant when I mentioned I have criteria.

He chortles. “I can’t say I’ve done much reading lately, but I’d love to do something about that.”

He makes some more flirty small talk that could land him in the penalty box when, thankfully, my phone rings. Ducking my head in an excuse-me gesture, I pop in my earbuds and answer, telling my dad I’m on my way.

It’s sweet that he still checks in every time I fly. He’s not overprotective. He is hyper-protective.

When we lost Mom over a decade ago, he dedicated his life to our safety. The rest of his energy goes to the Nebraska Knights, his hockey team, who received the tough side of a single dad raising three girls because there’s nothing soft or cushy about the fiercest players on the ice.

I happen to know that some hockey players are also skilled at deception. But that’s not a Christmas story anyone wants to hear. It doesn’t have a happy ending and might be part of the reason I’m still single . . . and will remain so for the duration of this flight.

When my father and I get off the phone, I leave my earbuds in and search for a podcast, hoping to avoid another cheesy, bookish pick up line even though I’m a self-professed reading junkie. However, I cannot ignore Richy’s odor, which is a combination of old cheese and pizza onions.

But before I tune out to a long-form podcast about storm chasers, the text thread with my sisters beeps repeatedly.

Kangaroo Ilsa: Christmas is coming and I have a surprise for our Cara-Lou-Who.

Anna Bannanna: Me too, and Santa’s sack is full of one of Cal’s college roommates coming to town.

Me: That just sounds wrong. I appreciate you trying to find me a Mr. Wonderful, but . . .

I’m not sure what to say. It’s not that I don’t want to find someone special and get married like Ilsa and Anna, but there are a few hurdles to cross, namely that I’ve never been kissed.

Anna is the oldest of our trio, makes friends wherever she goes, is extremely thoughtful, and is happily married to her childhood best friend, who became her high school sweetheart, aka Calvin Bannanna.

Ilsa is independent and gorgeous, a talented musician, and had an instant love connection with Jack McMann that she then spread out over a year before they took things to the next level.

Then there’s me, who is flirtatiously challenged, introverted, does not make friends wherever I go, whose childhood best friends were books, and is not overly independent even though I try to be.

The truth is, after nearly eight years of post-secondary schooling, I miss home. I miss the rest of my family, who are all based in or around Omaha.

I’m plain, brainy, awkward, and have never been kissed.

Unless I can send Santa a letter with that last wish on it, I don’t expect to find a handsome guy who wants to be my first under the Christmas tree this year.

As well-meaning as my sisters are, their suggestions so far have been misses. Not one hit—as in, we hit it off and want to meet again for a second date.

For example, there was Bruce, who had a wardrobe malfunction. Claude had a distracting amount of sleep crust in his eyes. Then there was Chuck, who repeatedly called me bro and dude .

The pee-yew guy need not apply. A girl has to have some standards, which also means I won’t be “checking out” any hockey players either. This is no small feat when my hometown is also known as Hockey Town.