“Give the phone to the sane one. Alec. I’ll take care of it. I’ll convince him I’m a vivacious airhead and he has to follow along with my schemes.”
“Don’t get too far out of your comfort zone.”
“Ha.”
“And listen,” I said. “You can’t let on to Grayson that you know what he’s making me do. He is dead serious about this shit. I respect his ability to screw me over.”
“Roger that.”
“Hold on.” I hopped out of the cockpit and followed Grayson across the strip of white sunlight, into the shadowy hangar. I couldn’t see, but I heard water running. The farther I walked into the hangar, the more clearly I saw Alec bent over the industrial sink, pouring water over his head with a hose. “Alec?”
“Hey.” He felt around for a nearby towel until I handed it to him, and he straightened while scrubbing his hair dry. “What’s up?”
“This is hard to explain, but my friend Molly is on the phone and she wants to talk to you. I mean, everything about my friend Molly is hard to explain. Here.”
He’d been smiling already. His eyes smiled too as he held out his hand for the phone and put it to his ear. “Hello, Leah’s friend Molly.”
I wanted to hear what he said, but it seemed awkward to stand there and listen in. As I wandered away across the hangar, I looked down and saw I’d been holding something in my other hand the whole time. While I’d been sitting in my airplane talking with Molly, Grayson had come out to give me a check for my first day’s pay.
He was in Mr. Hall’s office again, the overhead light spilling into the darker hangar. I didn’t want to follow him in there and have this conversation with him, but I had to. I shuffled to the doorway and knocked gingerly on the doorframe.
He looked up from his computer but didn’t gesture for me to come in. I walked in anyway and sat in the empty chair. “Thanks for the check. Could you cash it for me?”
“Cash it for you,” he said, not even a question, just a restatement of my statement, which he found ridiculous.
“The airport cashes my checks for me,” I said in my defense. “I can’t get to the bank very often.” Even when my mom spent time at the trailer with a boyfriend who had a car and we could run errands, I didn’t ask them to take me by the bank. I didn’t like to remind my mom I earned money. Then my paycheck would never make it into my account.
Without another word, he took a pen out of a cup on the desk and handed it to me. I endorsed the check and gave it back to him. He opened the desk drawer with the cash box. While he counted out the amount of my check, he asked, “What do you do with your money in between trips to the bank? Stash it in your mattress?”
“I have a better hiding place than that,” I said, “but I can’t tell you what it is. You might tell Mark, since the two of you are so chummy.”
One of his eyebrows went up. Now that he wasn’t wearing his shades, I saw the full meaning of that expression in his face. Disdain for trash. “You’re afraid he’ll steal your money, but you dated him?”
“I’ve dated for less,” I said pointedly. “Or at least tried to get a guy to ask me out. I don’t understand why it’s not enough for you to blackmail me. You keep insulting me too. I do have a limit, Grayson, and you’re trying hard to find it.”
He held the stack of bills out to me, complete with a few coins on top. “I saw you talking to Mark this morning.”
I pocketed the cash before Grayson could take it away. “I’m not allowed to talk to Mark now? He hadn’t grounded his airplane when he was pumping gas. He was about to blow the whole airport up.”
“That sounds about right.” Grayson stared at me from behind the computer like he was waiting for me to leave.
Looking for Alec, I glanced through the dark hangar to the bright sunlight shining on the planes outside. “Your brother’s on the phone with my friend Molly. We’re going to a touristy dance club in downtown Heaven Beach tonight.”
Grayson frowned at me like he was fifty-two years old. “Do they serve alcohol at this club?”
“Yes, it’s eighteen to get in, twenty-one to drink.”
“Do you have a fake ID? You and Alec can’t drink,” he said quickly.
“So you’ve said.”
“You can’t be hungover and fly,” he went on as if I hadn’t spoken. “And you can’t stay out late. We start work at seven again tomorrow morning.”
“Molly knows that already.”
He bit his lip, looked longingly at his computer like he would rather spend the night with it than go out. Then he said, “I’m going with you.”
“We already figured you were going with us like a double date from hell. Molly thinks we’re two girls going out with two hot guys. She has no idea we all hate each other.”
Grayson sucked in his breath, watching me, like he was going to say something.
He let out his breath in a huff. “Come help me get the airplanes in.”
Alec was just hanging up with Molly on a long laugh. The three of us pushed the Pipers back into the hangar, fitting them around each other. The hangar seemed huge with only the Cessna in it, but very cramped when filled with four airplanes.
After calling good-bye to Alec (but not Grayson), I stopped in at the airport office to give the phone back to Leon, then hiked back to my trailer. Took another shower and stood on the toilet again, leaning way over to glimpse the only clubbing dress I owned in the mirror. I wanted Grayson to know I was trying to look cute for Alec.
As I examined my smoky makeup and cheap dress, jealousy of Molly came creeping back. She would be wearing a sexy clubbing dress her mother had bought her at a boutique on a shopping trip to Atlanta. It would not be the worst thing in the world if Grayson fell for her. I loved Molly, and although I was very angry with Grayson all over again for the way he’d treated me about cashing the check, something about him made me watch him, keep track of his whereabouts, wish the best for him. Maybe I should wish for him to be with Molly.
But my stomach reminded me I hadn’t eaten since lunch and twisted in knots at the thought of Grayson unexpectedly falling for Molly tonight. No matter how well I wished them, I didn’t want them together.
My gaze drifted from my makeup to my hair hanging in wet ringlets. Drying it curly with a diffuser, as usual, would take ten minutes. Blowing it out and straightening it with my thrift store flat-iron would take forty-five—which is why I never did this, though straight was the style at school.
But I had forty-five minutes before the boys picked me up. Picturing Grayson’s first glance at Molly with her long, sleek auburn hair shining in the sun, I fished underneath the sink for my fat round brush.
Arms aching from holding the brush and the dryer over my head, I was sitting in one of the plastic chairs outside the trailer when Alec pulled up in his car. I hadn’t wanted to get all dusty, or to sit listening to the pit bull while I waited. But waiting outside was better than having him climb the cement blocks and knock on the door. I crossed my legs and let my skirt ride way up my thighs, hoping this would prove a distraction from the lichen-covered trailer. Then I hopped up and skipped across the gravel before he could turn the car off.
Grayson, looking down and thumbing his phone, climbed out of the passenger side. He glanced up at me—and squared his shoulders, taking a longer look at me than he’d intended.
Though I’d obviously gotten his attention, he didn’t comment on my hair. He said nothing at all. He left the car door open for me and slid into the backseat.
Fine. I eased onto the front seat he’d vacated and told Alec, “Hi!”
“Hey!” Alec exclaimed with a brilliant smile. “Wow, your hair is so different! You look beautiful.”
“Thank you!” I didn’t want him to look too closely at his surroundings as he turned the car around, but I couldn’t think of anything else to say. After spending all day at the same risky job, we still didn’t seem to have much in common. I settled for tugging my skirt down—just a little—drawing attention
to my thighs. Then I pulled my strangely smooth hair over one shoulder so it wouldn’t hide my cleavage. I flipped down the sunshade and checked my perfect makeup in the mirror, like an idiot. I watched myself grin, and I glanced over at him.
He was staring at my cleavage. Score! Then, pulling to a stop at the highway and waiting for traffic to pass, he looked around us and made the only comment he could think of. “Hey, a real washateria! I didn’t know those still existed. Maybe I’ll walk over from the airport and wash clothes sometime.”
You lame-ass. I interrupted his pitiful attempt to make conversation with the trailer park girl before he embarrassed himself further. “It’s broken. All the dryers have been broken for a while. The last washer broke last week.”
“Why don’t you ask the owner to fix it?” he asked in the logical tone of someone who’d never had a landlord.
“The owner doesn’t care,” I explained patiently. “I’m the only one still doing laundry here. Everybody else goes to the washateria closer to town, by the library.”
“Why don’t you go there too?”
“Because I don’t have a car.”
He tilted his head back, half of a nod, considering. He lowered his chin again as he asked, “But why do they go there, when this one is so much closer?”
“Because all of the washers and dryers are broken.” I wasn’t sure why I found this discussion so annoying. I had discussions like this with guidance counselors sometimes, and with Molly more frequently, and my explanation of why I did things a certain way always came out bitter. Rich people didn’t want to hear bitter.
Alec pulled onto the highway. I looked out the window at Heaven Beach passing by. I saw it so rarely that I never got tired of looking, even on the flophouse side of town. The hour was late for beachgoers and early for partygoers. But it was spring break, so the sidewalks were crowded with sunburned, tattooed, half-naked people sipping frozen cocktails from huge plastic cups. The scent of frying food drifted through the windows, and the smell of coconut tanning oil that only people who’d never heard of cancer would use.
Grayson’s phone made a sound directly behind me. He probably had a message from a girl he wasn’t blackmailing.
Alec made a comment occasionally. Unlike Grayson, he knew how not to be rude. But when we were halfway to Molly’s, even he was running out of words. He reached forward and turned up the volume on the car radio, which was tuned to a country station.
Soon we reached the nice end of the beach. I’d been here before, mostly eating at the café with Molly or crashing at her house for a few hours. I hadn’t gotten used to it. It looked like beach towns on TV, not real life. If I hadn’t just ridden in the car for twenty minutes, I would have thought we’d arrived in a different country. The palms were the same species, but spaced out, aligned, planted on purpose. The buildings weren’t made of corrugated metal. They were rock and stucco with thick foundations, built to withstand hurricanes. There was grass and it was green. The sprinklers were on at several condo complexes we passed. The sprinkler streams weren’t always directed correctly. Water sprayed across the wide sidewalks and into the street.
The sound of water beating on the hood startled Grayson. A thunk sounded behind Alec’s seat. Grayson bent over, his T-shirt riding up his tanned back, feeling around for his phone.
“Is that your friend?” Alec asked me as he pulled into the parking lot of Molly’s café. Her long, sleek hair was not as long and sleek as mine. But her dress was low-cut and obviously expensive. It’s hard to explain the look of expensive, but there was something about the way the fabric fell exactly right. She wasn’t model pretty, but she looked like a model in her glam dress, standing outside the expensive new café built to resemble an old beach shack. At least, she looked like a model while she wore a pensive expression, shading her eyes to gaze down the road for us. Then she recognized me in the car, and she waved frantically, like I might not see her standing there. Her boobs jiggled.
I didn’t dare glance behind me to see whether Grayson was a witness to this.
“In the flesh,” I told Alec dryly.
He got the joke, I guessed, and he laughed.
She skittered over to the driver’s side in her high heels and knocked on Alec’s window until he opened it. “Hi! I’m Molly!” She shook his hand.
“I’m Alec,” I heard him say. I couldn’t see his face, but he sounded like he was grinning, and she certainly was grinning back at him.
Then she opened the back door and bounced onto the seat. “Hi! I’m Molly!” She held out her hand to Grayson.
I didn’t want to see this, so I faced forward as Alec pulled back onto the road. But I listened as Grayson said, “Nice to meet you, Molly. I’m Grayson.” He sounded like he was smiling too.
“The boss man!” she exclaimed.
Grayson chuckled. It was the first time I’d heard that sound in months.
“Hi! I’m Molly!” she said again. Something punched me in the shoulder. I realized she was talking to me.
“So I heard,” I said, shaking her hand over the seat. But I smiled at her and tried to telegraph to her, I’m glad you’re here.
“You must be Rapunzel. My God, girl, your hair is longer than Francie’s!”
I took my hand back. She’d inadvertently insulted me, linking me with her rich friend who hated me most. I wasn’t so proud of my hair achievement anymore.
Oblivious, Molly turned to Grayson again. “You know this club has a dress code. No unwashed pilots.”
Grayson and Alec both burst into laughter. It was amazing how alike they sounded when they laughed.
“Do I smell that bad?” Grayson asked.
“You don’t smell,” Molly said, “but you look like you’ve spent the past week outdoors.”
“Do I look like I just hosed off my head?” Alec asked, watching her in the rearview mirror. I wanted to tell him to keep his eyes on the road, but I just grinned along with their good times.
“Mebbe,” Molly said in a funny voice that was an imitation of something.
“We’re headed to shower and change, if that makes you feel better,” Alec called.
“You’re showering for me,” Molly said, “but you weren’t going to shower for Leah? I guess everybody knows what a dirty girl she is.”
Behind me, Grayson cleared his throat.
Alec looked over at me and smiled. “Really?”
I shook my head and opened and closed my hand like Molly’s yapping mouth. In truth, I was so happy to have her yapping, comparing me to her friend Francie, even making jokes at my expense. It beat country radio and silence.
“And here we are.” Alec parked the car at a beautiful condo, white stucco and Mexican tile surrounded by bright green grass and palm trees. “It’ll only take me a sec to shower and change.” He asked me, “Do you want to come up?”
“Is this…” I faltered.
“Where my dad lived,” Alec said, confirming what I was thinking.
And where he’d died. I couldn’t go in there. But I didn’t want to be rude to Alec, or make Grayson think I wasn’t following instructions. “I’ll just wait for you,” I said with a big smile.
Alec frowned, but all he said was, “I’ll be right back.” He left the engine and the air conditioner running as he hopped out of the car and jogged up to the building.
“What’s up with that?” Grayson asked me from the backseat. “Don’t tell me you’ve never been here before.”
nine
I looked over my shoulder at him and had absolutely nothing to say to that.
Molly peeked at me from behind Alec’s seat. “God, Grayson, what’s that supposed to mean? She hasn’t looked at me that way since she and I first met two years ago. And when we first met it was not good.”
I almost laughed, but I couldn’t. Grayson’s words weighed my face down, my whole brain.
Finally he said, “While we’re waiting, I guess I might as well go ahead and change too. I’m just across the street.” H
e opened his door.
“What do you mean, you’re across the street?” Molly asked. “There’s nothing over there but beach and shacks.”
He grinned at her. “I’m in a shack.”
“You are?” Molly yelled. “I want to see!”
“Okay, come on.”
He and Molly both got out of the car. I wasn’t sure whether I was supposed to go with them or wait for Alec. Grayson might get mad at me if I didn’t wait. He might lob another insult at me. But I wanted to go. It seemed a little too easy right at that moment for Grayson and Molly to pair off and have private time at his shack of some kind. The thought of this made my stomach hurt worse than the thought of kissing Alec.
Molly peered through the windshield at me and motioned with her head for me to follow her.
At the same time, Grayson startled me by opening my door. “Come on, Leah. Alec will know where we are. Get the key.”
Carefully I turned off the ignition—I figured this worked the same in a car as in a plane—and slid out after them.
We started across the street, but Molly stopped dead on the center stripe and gaped up at the sky. “Wow, look at that sunset!”
It wasn’t a pretty sunset. The colors were as expected: violet clouds, bright orange and pink underneath, against the pale blue sky. But the clouds were high cirrus, wispy, and crossed with the contrails of F-16s, a colorful glowing mess. I said, “It looks like God barfed a rainbow.”
“So sentimental,” Grayson said under his breath.
Molly shrieked laughter. “Charming.” She swung her glam purse on its long strap and whacked me in the ass. “So, Grayson, why do you have a condo and a shack?”
“This property has been in my family a long time,” he said. “The highway follows the original Native American trail.” He pointed north, where the road disappeared under wide-branching water oaks. “Right here it runs so close to the ocean that you’re not allowed to build a house on the beach side, but you can build a shack. My grandparents moved here from Pennsylvania when beachfront property was a lot cheaper. They owned a shack plus a house. Later they sold the house, which was demolished to build condos. They kept one condo unit, and they kept the shack.”