Time After Time (Book 3)

Road Trips and Reunions

Lingering at the edge of the crowd surrounding the arrivals gate, Betty glanced at her phone, again, looking at the picture of the person she was meeting, before scanning the faces of the people that had just started to emerge through the doorway. She'd have made a sign, but she wanted to draw as little attention to herself as possible. Was that...? No, not him. She pulled her cap down lower over her face and continued her search. Wait...there? She double-checked her phone. It looked like, him, for sure. He was bouncing from foot to foot, surveying the crowd with a nervous excitement, clutching the handle of his wheeled hand luggage so hard his knuckles were white. Here goes nothing, Betty thought as she painted a huge grin on her face, stepped forward a couple of paces and squealed.

"Scotty!!!"

Betty breathed a sigh of relief as the guy's head popped up like a meerkat and stared straight at her as she ran towards him and threw her arms around him.

"I've missed you so much!" She said, a little too loudly.

"I, erm, missed you too?" the stranger stammered, instinctively returning her hug. "Are you Betty?" he whispered in her ear.

"Come on, let's get out of here," she replied, nodding and winking, as she tucked herself under his arm and wound hers across his back, leading him away from the gate.

"Oh my God I feel like a spy. James Bond ain't got nothing on me. The name's Lang, Scott Lang. I'll take a pina colada, whipped not poured. Hold on, do we need a code phrase? The eagle flies over the mountain?"

"Lang, you can let go now," Betty chuckled, extricating herself from under his arm. They were far enough away from the concentration of people. "And we don't need a code phrase."

"Can we have one anyway? 'Cause I feel like that should be part of the whole experience."

"I mean, you can have one, but I won't use it, and no-one will know what you're talkin' about," Betty scoffed.

"They usually don't. So, Betty, what actually is the plan? Can I know the plan? Do I have the clearance level for that? Do I have clearance at all? I mean, I'm good with just tagging along but it'd be nice to know what's happening."

Betty dragged Scott over behind a large pillar and positioned herself so that his height was shielding her from view.

"Look, Scott, I'll let you know what's happenin' in a second, but I just need you to stand there as if we're talkin' and don't move, no matter what."

"We are talking. What's going to happe...hey! Where'd you go?" Scott's mouth dropped open as Betty vanished from sight. "Hey," he whispered, "are you tiny, or just gone?"

Betty reappeared in the locked bathroom stall where she'd stashed her own bag. She unlocked the cubicle and flashed back to Scott, who jumped as she reappeared.

"What did you ask me?"

"I said, were you tiny or just gone?" he repeated.

"Just gone," she smiled.

"Damn, and you don't even need a suit? That's all you?"

"All me," she confirmed with a smile. "Let's walk, we've not got that long before our next flight."

Betty steered them in the right direction, and they passed back through security with no issues, Betty used her teleportation to get her weapons through, and into departures again. As they walked, Lang talked. A lot.

"So, I get this call from The Falcon and I gotta say, I was really not expecting him to call, like ever, 'cause we kinda had to fight and I didn't really think I made a good impression but then he called me and was all like hey Lang, I need you buddy, and sent me the ticket for this flight and said that you were meeting me but I only know your first name and now here we are and we're getting another flight and I don't even know where to." He had to stop speaking for a second to breathe.