Friend refusing to pay for his mistake
I’m sorry as this is a bit lengthy, so I’ll get to it. My (20f) friend (19M) and I planned a week long vacation to California to visit our friend that moved out there last year. I booked our tickets on February 23rd for June 20th to the 27th and all was good. I paid for my ticket and his until he could pay me back which he did. A little over a month later (March 31st) he asked if we could switch the dates because he found out he couldn’t get time off of work. My friend in California and I already requested and got our time off approved by this point. We asked him if he could figure something else out and he said he would try. He tried asking again, switching to part time, seeing if someone could cover his shift, and my friend and I mentioned that he should quit. It took about three weeks for him to get information on what he could actually do, for us to see if we could change our time off, and find a time to call and discuss moving the tickets. We called on April 24th and he said he would pay the difference of what it cost to change the tickets if I moved them. I said okay bet so I moved them to dates that worked for him and bought them. It was an extra $258. I told him to send $318 because there was a $49 cancellation fee for both of us but that was taken out of the original amount that we paid and he asked for a receipt. We paid $703.96, the fee was $98, so the voucher I got back was $605.96. The tickets were an extra $258. I was confused about the actually price that he was supposed to owe me since I couldn’t get access to my receipt for a bit because the link to download it on the website wasn’t working. I had to contact a sub country rep and get all the details through them. I sent him the receipt and told him to pay me. He said he was only going to pay me half of the $258 + late fee. I told him that wasn’t the agreement, on the call he said he’d pay the difference and he said “I said I changed my mind because this took a month to settle and I didn’t say the difference I said the late fee, but something like this doesn’t take 3 weeks to figure out I mentioned it March 31st” (yk what else doesn’t take three weeks to figure out? That you can’t get pto off!) so I asked when he said he changed his mind and he said that he mentioned it in the call. I never heard him say that and I left the call a little early and he and my friend in California were still talking for a bit. I asked the other friend if he heard him say that and he said “When you were off call he did say he was gonna think about it tho because it was expensive but if he never told you that then that’s not fair” so now he’s refusing to pay the full $258 and we are at a stand by. The trip is only getting closer and we aren’t budging. This whole thing doesn’t make sense, why would I pay for someone else’s mistakes, someone else’s improper planning? And when I asked him to send me the money before I sent him the detailed receipt (I sent him a screenshot of the voucher amount and the charge on my card from the confirmation email I got from the airline, $258) he never claimed he wasn’t going to pay it. I genuinely don’t know what to do. Am I in the wrong here for not wanting to split the payment in half? Keep in mind I paid for his ticket until he could pay me for it, I booked everything twice, I planned almost everything we are going to do in California out, and we are going to be staying with my family for a few days while we go up to San Francisco to save everyone money on a hotel or Airbnb. I am also working part time, am in school, pay rent, car insurance, gas, and extras while he has a full time job and isn’t in school. I don’t know if he has any bills to pay but his job is relatively easy. Please help.