“Shoot. Alright. I’m not sure what the problem is.” I pulled another card from my wallet. “Use this one.”
The cashier swiped and then sighed. “This one’s not working either.”
“What do you mean it’s not working?”
She pointed to the screen. “It just says declined.”
“But that’s impossible. Your machine must be broken.” I looked around and noticed the woman next to me paying. Her card seemed to go through without a hitch. I pointed. “Can you try that register?”
The teenage cashier barely stopped herself from rolling her eyes. “Sure.”
But the same thing happened at the other register. And now a line was forming since I was preventing two rows of people from paying.
“Ummm… I’m sorry. I’m not sure what’s going on. Can you hold my order aside, and I’ll call my credit card company? There must be some sort of mix up.”
Since the store was loud, I stepped out front. After way too many prompts and pushing zero angrily five times, I finally got a human on the phone.
“Hi. My credit card was just declined, but it shouldn’t have been. I have plenty of available credit.”
“Account number?”
After I read the number to her and went through a few verification questions, the woman put me on hold for a moment. When she came back, I was hungry and frustrated.
“Hi, Ms. Vaughn?”
“Yes.”
“It seems your card has been closed.”
“What do you mean it’s been closed? I didn’t close it.”
“It’s a joint account. The joint account holder closed it.”
“What joint account…” Oh my God. I felt my face turn redder than the delicious hot dog I should’ve been eating. Christian. I’d forgotten that we’d applied for this card together. They’d offered it to us when we opened our joint bank account, even though I’d been the only one to ever use it.
I shut my eyes. The joint bank account that I now used as my personal account. I guess that explained why my ATM card wasn’t working either. I was seriously going to kill that man.
I took a deep breath. “Can I reopen it under my own name?”
“Of course. I can take the application over the phone for you, if you’d like. And if everything gets approved, we can have your new cards shipped to you in three to five business days.”
No Gray’s Papaya. So no point to this call right now.
“I’ll call back tomorrow and do that.”
“Okay. Is there anything else I can help you with this evening?”
“Can you buy me a hot dog?”
“Excuse me?”
I shook my head. “Never mind.” I just wanted to go home and crawl in a ball. Except I didn’t have a home. I lived at my sister’s.
So with shoulders slumped and my stomach growling, I started toward her place. But that route took me back past the wine shop again, and as I approached the store, I realized I could at least borrow ten dollars to get something to eat from her register and leave her a note. So that’s what I did. I unlocked the door, rang in a one-cent sale so the drawer would open, and took out a ten, replacing it with a note in case I forgot by the time I got home.
When I shut the drawer, I tossed the ten in my purse and headed out. But not before grabbing another bottle of wine from the display Greer had looted earlier.
CHAPTER 5