“Girl fight!” Alec exclaimed.
I giggled, because Alec was funny. Patrick anticipating the same thing outside my trailer last night hadn’t been funny at all, probably because it had been a lot closer to the truth.
Grayson watched me without laughing. “What did Leah do when you confronted her?” he asked Molly.
“She was funny,” Molly said. “Can you believe that? Everything I tried to serve her, she dished right back to me. I realized that I wanted to be friends with her more than I wanted to go out with that hunk of burning love.”
That’s not what had happened with Ryan. But I let her go on thinking so, since she liked viewing me as a tough girl from the hood. She might not want to be my friend otherwise.
However, I didn’t appreciate the way she characterized the argument, like she’d decided we would be friends, and therefore we were. Like she’d chosen me over Ryan. Like she’d adopted a kitten from the pound. I certainly felt that way when she picked me up and took me to her parents’ café for dinner, but I hated the way it sounded now that these boys were listening.
“So you’ve always been a heartbreaker,” Alec said at my shoulder, low enough that Grayson and Molly couldn’t hear, and close enough that I felt his breath across my skin. I turned to him. He watched me with that half-smile on his lips, looking into my eyes.
For the first time that night, I got the feeling that we were more than friends. Grayson might have put a halt on being paired with Molly, but Alec wasn’t putting a halt on him and me. I held his gaze, gave him my sexiest smile, and tried my best not to panic.
By order of Grayson for everyone to get a good night’s sleep, we left not long after. First we drove through gates draped with flowering tropical vines and dropped Molly off at her parents’ beachside villa. If there’d been any question remaining about whether Grayson wanted to be more than friends with her, it was answered here. Alec waited until she went in the front door to drive away, but Grayson stayed in the car.
Next they drove me home. Alec explained that Grayson was still in tow because he had some work left to do at the hangar. Alec would drop him off. Grayson would drive his truck back to his beach shack later. I wondered whether this was really why, or whether Grayson had engineered this excuse to watch Alec and me from the backseat and make sure I held up my end of our dark bargain.
Alec was handsome and so sweet, a super-nice guy. I kept reminding myself of this as he drove closer to the trailer park. The pain in my stomach grew worse, even though I had a belly full of bar food and wasn’t hungry for once. There was no way out of what was coming, but I gave it a try anyway. As he turned onto the gravel road and dust billowed into the headlight beams, I said, “You don’t have to walk me to the door.”
He didn’t answer. The silence stretched into awkwardness, without even a noise from Grayson’s phone in the backseat to break it.
Finally Alec asked, “Why not?”
I didn’t have an answer for that. I made up one. “It’s not much of a door.”
“Of course it’s a door, and I’m walking you to it.” He parked the car, cut the engine and the lights, and got out.
He was walking around the car to open my door for me. I didn’t have much time. I turned around, looking past the seat’s headrest, and said, “Good night, Grayson.”
He was already looking straight at me when I turned around. “Good night,” he said with absolutely no expression on his shadowed face or in his voice.
I didn’t know exactly what I’d wanted from him. Jealousy? Maybe a declaration of No, Leah, don’t do it! I’m calling the whole thing off! Whatever I’d wanted, this wasn’t it.
“I like your hair better curly,” he said in the same flat tone.
Before I could ask him what he meant—he liked my curly hair, or he thought Alec liked it better?—Alec opened the door.
Heart racing, I got out of the car and stepped into a thick cloud of barking from the pit bull. Alec followed me across the yard and up the cement-block stairs. I didn’t want to kiss him, but there didn’t seem to be any way around this now. I met his gaze and tried to telegraph to him that, sure, I did want to kiss him, but his brother was watching us, and moreover, hello, was he horny with that pit bull barking his head off?
Alec didn’t seem to get my meaning, though. I was afraid I’d screwed things up by accidentally implying that I didn’t want to kiss him at all. I almost explained the whole thing to him: I don’t want to kiss you outside my trailer with a pit bull barking in my ear. It’s too much like my nightmares about my marriage someday.
But he did understand. He half-smiled down at me. “Tomorrow night I’ll make sure we’re alone.”
There would be a tomorrow night? This was good—Grayson couldn’t complain that I wasn’t holding up my end of the deal—yet my face burned with the possibilities. I was frightened that Alec would want to do more than I was willing to do.
He bent toward me. I went rigid, anticipating his kiss, and tried to relax. Maybe he felt me go stiff, or maybe he didn’t really want to kiss me either. For whatever reason, he hesitated, and swallowed.
Then he came in the rest of the way, pushing both his hands back into my hair. His lips met mine.
He was kissing me. But not very dynamically. The kiss was awfully chaste for a couple of legal adults on spring break. I didn’t want him to think I was a prude, but I didn’t want to encourage him, either. Or, I did, but just enough for Grayson to see I was encouraging him.
And for Grayson to eat his heart out.
So I slid my hand into Alec’s hair and pulled him closer.
He broke the kiss and started again. I felt his tongue against my lips, but he didn’t press inside. It was like kissing a middle school boy who’d heard about kissing but had never done it himself.
I didn’t correct him.
He pulled back and slid his hands out of my hair, or tried. One finger got caught in a layer underneath that had kinked in the night humidity, defying the flat-iron.
“Ow!” I squeaked.
We both laughed.
“Sorry. Hold on just a sec.” He squinted at my hair in the moonlight and used his other hand to extricate the finger that had gotten caught. As he released me, I glimpsed the hand that had been snagged and saw he was wearing Mr. Hall’s Air Force ring.
“Good night,” I said too quickly. “Thanks. I had fun.” I turned my key in the lock, escaped through the door, and closed it behind me before we could get into another scrape. And before I could gaze into the yard, checking to see how closely Grayson had been watching.
The odor of mildew hit me in the face and made me breathe shallowly. I never noticed it unless I’d been away for a while. The trailer was rotting underneath, where I couldn’t reach it, and there was nothing I could do.
Standing there with my back to the door, listening to the pit bull barking and Alec’s car starting through the thin aluminum, I was overcome with fatigue. I wasn’t sure I could negotiate another night of Alec kissing me and Grayson looking on.
But Molly would be at the airport tomorrow. Molly made things easier for me, just by talking out her ass.
And I would get to fly again. Whenever this farce didn’t seem worth it over the next few days, I had to remember I was doing it to keep my wings and fly.
ten
As I walked over to the airport in the morning, I kept an eye on Mr. Simon’s hangar. I didn’t want to resolve anything with Mark. If I could just avoid him for the rest of my life, that would be perfect. I was in luck for once. His plane wasn’t visible through the tall open doors of the hangar. He’d arrived a lot earlier today than he had yesterday—possibly because he’d gotten in trouble with his uncle the day before—and he was already up.
Alec taxied the yellow Piper past me, waving to me from the cockpit. I waved back. Then I veered toward Molly, who stood in the grass between the runway and the taxiway, struggling to fold the huge red banner letters into the fabric sleeve that held them in place duri
ng flight. The morning breeze carried her scents of sunscreen and bug repellent. Walking nearer, I noticed that, though she might be chemically prepared for this job, she hadn’t dressed for it. She wore her blinged-out sunglasses, a stylish straw hat, diamond hoop earrings—the diamonds might have been real—and cute beach clothes. The heavy-duty work gloves Grayson must have given her made her hands look like robot claws.
She didn’t approve of what I’d worn, either. With one mechanical hand, she gestured to my slouchy T-shirt layered over my bikini top. “I see you dress up for work.”
“How’s the labor going?” I joked.
“Laboriously.” She wiped her brow with her wrist and put both hands on her hips like she was winded already. She didn’t laugh like she should have. I wondered whether I’d offended her last night with my comment about her laboring. That didn’t make sense, because Molly didn’t get offended.
I couldn’t apologize to her, though. We didn’t operate that way. So I simply asked, “Why’d you want this job?”
“To watch over you and protect you from these animals, of course.”
That didn’t make sense, either. She should have been jumping up and down and squealing right now and telling me how hot these boys were and I was crazy not to do both of them at once right there in the hangar.
“Did you have to kiss Alec last night?” she asked.
“Yes.” I tried not to sound suspicious as I asked, “Did he tell you that?” I doubted he’d dished to her at the hangar this morning about taking me home last night.
“I just figured,” she said. “I’ve got something planned for tonight that may be more of a distraction so we can keep him off you. I okayed it with the boys already. We’ll eat dinner at my café. If we start there, my parents will be less likely to inquire in too much detail about the drunken orgy we’ll be attending later. Francie Mahoney’s parents have taken her little brother to Disney World. Alec and Grayson used to live here in town, so they’ll know a lot of people at her party. Maybe Alec will hook up with his old flame from third grade, and that will get him off your case.”
“Oh God, no.” My words were drowned out by an engine. Alec raced past us on the runway, the yellow Piper sailing into the air.
When the roar had faded, I said, “Anything but that.” Most people in my high school hated me only in passing. A few rich girls would walk all the way across the hall just to make a nasty remark about my curly hair, if they thought of a good one and could get a friend to go with them as a witness and bodyguard. Francie was one of those girls. I’d tried to tell Molly this about her friends repeatedly, but she didn’t believe me. They were on their best behavior while she was around. They called me a sack of shit the instant Molly left the room. And Molly didn’t have PE with us.
“You don’t want Alec off your case?” Molly asked sharply.
“Of course I do,” I said, “as long as Grayson doesn’t mind.”
She shifted her weight and blew her bangs out of her eyes with a big sigh. “I’m trying my best to help you, but it’s not always about you. It’s my spring break of my senior year too, and maybe I want to go to this party.”
And maybe I didn’t have to go just because she was going. I almost told her this. But she’d already convinced the boys this should be our outing of the night. I couldn’t back out now, stand Alec up, anger Grayson. I would have to go.
She knew why I didn’t want to. She knew I had to go anyway. Her understanding of my situation and sympathy for my plight lasted right up until she got tired of it and turned her back on me.
Which wasn’t a fair assessment. We’d been friends for a couple of years, and I couldn’t recall that she’d done anything like this to me before. Of course, there hadn’t been boys involved before, not since the beginning and Ryan. I hadn’t been blackmailed into dating someone before. We were in new territory and all bets were off.
“Look, we’ll talk about it later, okay?” she said. By which she meant that we would not talk about it and we were going to the party that night. “Alec’s already in the air. I have to get this banner hooked up. You go get your breakfast. My dad made a strawberry Danish for you, the kind with the Hawaiian raw sugar on top.”
That got me headed for the hangar again, and it wasn’t until I was halfway there that I realized she’d pointed me in that direction by baiting me with food, like I was a puppy. I didn’t know what to think about this girl I’d assumed I knew so well, suddenly set down in this place I knew so well, and acting like it was hers instead of mine, and these boys were hers.
But Grayson wasn’t hers. He’d made that clear last night. And he was standing outside the hangar, alternately glancing at his phone and gazing into the southwest corner of the clear blue sky. When he turned in my direction and saw me coming, he stared at me, or let me think he was staring at me behind his shades. Though the morning was cool, I felt sweat break out across my skin, whether his gaze was real or not.
But as I finally reached him, he was business as usual. “Watch out for the weather today.”
I tried to shake off the shivers he’d given me and act like a pilot. “You mean the storm system coming up from the Gulf?” I’d noticed it on the weather app when I used the airport office phone to talk to Molly the day before. The storm was angry, and its tornadoes had already torn up some towns in Mississippi. “It’s nowhere near us yet. It probably won’t get here until tonight.” It hadn’t even reached my mother, at a casino over in the mountains.
“Last Christmas, Dad had been watching that storm all day,” Grayson said, “and suddenly there was a wind advisory way before we thought. I don’t want anybody to get caught. Radio me if you run into turbulence you weren’t expecting. And if you see dark clouds, don’t wait for me to radio you. Come on in.”
I shrugged. I was all for caution, but he was being a little ridiculous. Shell-shocked from his own crash, I thought.
“Your breakfast is inside,” he said, nodding back toward the hangar. “When you’re through eating, before you check your plane and go up, could you take my truck and drive a banner out to Molly? That will save her some time. She can spell, but she’s going to have trouble keeping up with us at first.” He held out his keys to me.
“I can’t do that,” I said.
“I’m telling you,” he said, “just do it before you go up. I’m keeping track of your hours and I’ll pay you overtime if you run over. No problem.”
“I can’t drive,” I said.
He pulled his hand back in surprise, keys jingling. “What do you mean, you can’t drive?”
I meant that nobody had ever taught me to drive, and it didn’t matter anyway because I didn’t have a car. But I wasn’t going down that road again. I was still pissed about trying to explain the washateria to Alec last night.
“You mean you can fly a plane but you can’t drive a car?” Grayson asked. “That’s crazy.”
I chopped my hand across my throat. This had been Mr. Hall’s way of telling us to kill the engine. I meant for Grayson to stop quizzing me on my home life. I’d had enough.
He balled his fist and squeezed until his hand turned white.
“Okay,” he said on a sigh. “Sorry. Go have something to eat.” He rounded the corner of the hangar and started his truck himself.
I walked into the darkness and feasted on strawberry Danish and eggs and ham, stuffing food into my mouth like a starving dog now that nobody was watching. The day continued to get better from there. I never missed a banner pickup, and I took three long flights up and down the sunny beach. By the third flight, the wind had picked up, but the storms were still a long way off, nothing to worry about yet.
Mr. Hall would have thought it was beautiful. In a Grayson-like outburst, he would have exclaimed, “Man, what a pretty day to fly!” and then settled with me in the cockpit for the ride. This time I hardly teared up, thinking of him. His memory made me happy.
My morning break didn’t coincide with Molly’s because she took a break while
I flew, and she spelled out my new banner while I took a break. But she ate lunch with the boys and me. Things didn’t seem weird between us like they had when I’d talked to her alone that morning. Like the night before, she carried the conversation and took a lot of pressure off me. I decided there was nothing wrong with her after all. Early that morning she’d just been overwhelmed with work, maybe, or disoriented at waking up before ten on a school holiday.
I didn’t take my afternoon break with her. When I taxied to the hangar, Alec was sitting outside with his back to the corrugated metal wall of the building, smoking a cigarette and watching Molly struggle with the banner Grayson had just dropped, tiny across the field. I didn’t want to sit outside and be tempted to smoke, but I thought I should be sociable since apparently Alec and I had another date that night.
“Welcome,” he said as I walked up. He patted the asphalt beside him like it was a plush seat. Giggling, I sank down. He offered me a cigarette and I shook my head.
He exhaled smoke away from me. “Beautiful day for flying,” he said, squinting into the sky. “Grayson’s already freaking out about the weather.”
“I think he’s nervous about the wind since his wreck last December,” I said.
“Is that what you think it is?” Alec asked. “I thought he was just being an overbearing ass.”
Weirdly, I wanted to jump to Grayson’s defense. He was being an overbearing ass, and not just about the weather. But somehow, while it was okay for me to think this, it wasn’t okay for Alec to say it.
Before I could open my mouth, Alec’s phone rang. He slipped it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and grinned. “My mom.”
I put my hands behind me on the hot asphalt to push myself up. “Do you want me to—”
“Oh, gosh, no, sit down.” He pressed a button on the phone. “This is your favorite son speaking. How may I help you?”