It's not the end of the world

 "What did she say?" Justin was busy cutting veg for a stir-fry when Carmen got home, while Jared and Randy were watching old episodes of EMERGENCY.

"Oh, you don't want to know," she shrugged. He could see she was tired. He told her to wash up and put on her pajamas. He could handle dinner. The rice was already on.

Of course, she didn't look any happier when she got back to the kitchen so he had a cup of caffeine-free mint tea waiting.

"I don't have an engagement ring," she said, her voice sounding dead tired. And he knew who had tired her out.

"A ring?" This baffled him. He then sighed, and of course, Jared got word of it, and he had to come in and give his brother a shoulder pinch, which was no help. It only made Justin tense.

"Yes, you need a ring!" Jared made Justin feel like the most unromantic guy in the world.

"Oh."

He returned to the sizzling meat in the skillet and added the vegetables, then scraped the skillet with the spatula. 

"Well..well, we'd better get one." He looked back and pointed the spatula at Carmen, who was sitting at the kitchen table sipping her tea.

"We can't afford that," she winced. "We'll be doing good if we can get those rubber couple bands."

"Yeah, I think you can get those at Dollar General. Or is that General Dollar?" Jared shrugged and took a seat across from Carmen.

Justin shook his head, no. He didn't want to be that cheap. "I'm sure we could-"

"Go thrifting," Carmen looked at him seriously. "Thriftworld. We need to go to Thriftworld."

"I don't know, she--she isn't even your mother." Justin fumed, but he got back to the stirfry. It wasn't long until they were all at the table eating.

He took her hand. "I just want it to be special, you know."

"Let's not worry about it. We'll look around, and if we don't find anything. It's OK." She gently squeezed his hand back. Her smile made him smile.