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I stepped through the side door, on high alert. But the boys both sat in lawn chairs in front of the red Piper and had their heads bent to breakfast in boxes on their laps. I felt a pang of jealousy mixed with hunger, all one and the same for me when I hadn’t eaten breakfast. With the prospect of Alec asking me out on a date that night but no iron-clad plans for dinner or a ride into town, I’d carefully hoarded the Chinese leftovers. I dared not waste them by gorging myself on them for breakfast.
“Heeeeeeey!” I called in a parody of some girl who was not being blackmailed and was naturally sweet and gave a shit about other people. I walked toward Alec and put my arms out.
Startled, he set his breakfast aside on a nearby tool bench and stood to hug me. He was just as handsome as I remembered him, his hair bright blond, his face round and friendly. He didn’t beam at me, exactly, but the default setting on his face was a half-smile, and he managed that for me. “Hey, Leah!” he exclaimed, wrapping both arms around me and squeezing briefly. “Long time no see.”
Then I turned to Grayson, who wore his shades and straw cowboy hat in the gentle light of morning. I didn’t want to hug him or touch him. I was angry at him for manipulating me. But in that moment, it seemed strange to hug Alec and not him, especially when Alec must know Grayson and I had talked recently. How else would Grayson have hired me? I prompted Grayson, “Heeeeeeey!”
He looked up at me without moving his head. For a split second he glared at me over his sunglasses.
Then he set his breakfast aside too and stood. “Heeeeeeey!” he replied in an unenthusiastic imitation, more resigned than sarcastic. He came in for a hug and slid his hand very slowly across my bare waist where my T-shirt rode up.
His hand trailed heat and seemed to take forever, though its passage across my skin was one motion with his body coming closer, moving in for the hug. His other arm curved around my back, and he brought me in tight within his arms for a fraction of a second before letting me go. He backed into his chair again and picked up his breakfast.
As an afterthought, he slid another takeout box from a table, handed it to me, and gestured for me to take a seat on the empty sofa.
And I was still standing there, dazed, wondering what the difference had been between Grayson’s hug and Alec’s, and fighting my attraction for the boy who meant to sabotage me.
I eased down very carefully onto the sofa. I’d always been wary of it because dust rose when anyone touched it. The boys and Mr. Hall had never seemed to give it much thought, probably because fifteen years ago, way before the divorce, when they all lived here in Heaven Beach together, it was in their den. Only after I’d sat down did I notice the logo on the takeout box in my hands. “Oh! This is from my friend Molly’s parents’ café. Do you guys know Molly?”
Grayson shook his head without looking at me.
“Tall? Auburn hair? Probably some inappropriate glitter on her face at seven in the morning?”
Alec shook his head without looking at me.
Giving up, I opened the box, and oh, a ham-and-egg biscuit waited inside with a cup of cold fruit and a warm chocolate croissant. To have been so hungry and so bereft while walking across the tarmac, and now to be presented with Molly’s dad’s warm chocolate croissant, not as warm as the one in Molly’s car last night but still flaky and gooey enough… it was so good that I knew something bad was about to happen.
I gazed at Grayson in his lawn chair and tried to catch his eye to thank him for the food, but he was absorbed in his own croissant.
I dug into my breakfast before my reverence got weird, like I was at church. “I’m so excited about flying!” I exclaimed between bites. “I haven’t flown in a while.”
Both boys stopped chewing and looked up at me. I hadn’t mentioned Mr. Hall’s death. I hadn’t needed to. For the past two months I’d gotten used to walking around in my own space, where I was the only person who had known Mr. Hall and missed him. But when I’d stepped into the hangar, I’d entered an alternate universe where other people were thinking exactly like me.
If Alec was going to be convinced to ask me out, I needed help out of this awkward situation. I thought Grayson would help me—interject a comment, something. But he just stood and wandered into Mr. Hall’s little office in the corner.
After chewing and swallowing, Alec finally said, “I hadn’t flown in a while, either. I took one of the Pipers up last night and flew some banner practice runs, just to make sure I could still do it.”
“I heard you,” I said. Then I wished I hadn’t said this, because I was reminding him that I lived in the trailer park.
This time Grayson did rescue me. He came back from the office, handed me a clipboard with forms attached, sank down into his lawn chair, and took a long sip from a large paper coffee cup with his eyes closed.
I looked down at the W-4. “You’re taking out taxes?” I couldn’t hide the dismay in my voice. As a pilot, I’d be making three times as much per hour as I’d made when I was the airport gofer. In my mind I was already socking that money away without giving up a fourth of it in taxes.
“Surprise. It’s the law,” Grayson said, picking up his takeout box again.
“I know,” I said. “I just—”
“Didn’t think I was smart enough to figure out how to withhold taxes?”
I couldn’t believe he was picking a fight with me when he’d said he wanted me to go out with Alec. But he was looking at me very intentionally with angry accusations in his gray eyes.
I muttered, “Didn’t think you’d bother.” I tore off a big hunk of my chocolate croissant and stuffed it into my mouth, half-afraid he would take my breakfast away.
Alec tried to ease the tension this time. “Grayson’s been studying the taxes. Reading a book on business tax law for idiots. They make a great pair.” He slapped Grayson on the back.
Grayson grimaced. At first I thought Alec had slapped him so hard it hurt—but even if he had, Grayson wouldn’t have shown pain. These boys didn’t play that way.
Then I realized Grayson was showing a sort of pain. It wasn’t the slap on the back but Alec’s words that had hurt him. Alec had implied that Grayson was an idiot and irresponsible. Grayson would have embraced this characterization five months ago if it had gotten him out of a chore for Mr. Hall. And now it hurt.
When Grayson didn’t laugh or slap Alec back, Alec leaned forward and looked up into Grayson’s face, trying to meet his eyes. Suddenly Alec gave up. “I’ll ask Zeke if he needs help with the banners and then get going.” He rose from his lawn chair with the default smile on his face. “I’ll see y’all at break.”
My mouth was stuffed full. I swallowed quickly. “Bye, Alec!” I called brightly, but by then he’d disappeared through the wide door facing the runway. I turned to Grayson. “That was not successful,” I said quietly. “You’re not helping.”
He glared at me. “What do you want me to do? Get you a room?”
I was on the edge of standing up, throwing my half-eaten breakfast in the garbage, and stomping out of the hangar. To hell with Grayson, and Alec, and my career as a pilot, and food. I could swallow a lot of insults, but not directly to my face. That was too much like a threat, and it called for an immediate reaction, like someone kicking in my trailer door.
Seeing the look on my face, he widened his gray eyes at me. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t get a lot of sleep last night.”
“Then you need to get more,” I said, “and stop insulting me for doing what you are making me do.”
“You’re right,” he grumbled. “I meant to say that I don’t expect him to jump you the first time you walk into the hangar. It might take a few days for him to ask you out. A few hours, at least. Possibly in a more romantic setting that doesn’t smell this strongly of avgas.” He took another bite, proving that the smell of fuel didn’t bother him any more than it bothered me, then nodded to my breakfast. “After you finish, you can take the orange Piper up. Fly for about two hours and then come in for a break.”
“I might not need one that soon,” I said. I wasn’t sucking down coffee like Grayson was, and I was used to spending hours in an airplane without a pee.
“Take one anyway.” Grayson’s voice rose like he was angry at me for talking back.
I swallowed my resentment along with my biscuit. Mr. Hall would have kept tight control over me when I came to work for him too. But Grayson was not Mr. Hall. Grayson didn’t know this job much better than I did.
“Remember,” he said, “in an emergency, drop the banner over an unpopulated area. What matters most is,” he touched his thumb, “other people,” he touched his pointer finger, “you.”
“Then the airplane, then the banner,” I finished for him. “I know, Grayson. You and I learned this at the same time. You don’t have to repeat it to me.”
He squeezed the armrest of his lawn chair so tightly that his knuckles turned white. “If I don’t repeat it, who’s going to?”
The hangar wasn’t empty. It contained the lawn chairs, the sofa, lots of filing cabinets and worktables and equipment, the red Piper, the orange Piper, and the white four-seater Cessna. But the hangar seemed huge and empty as Grayson’s voice rang against the metal walls. Any other time in the past three and a half years, I would have known he was imitating Mr. Hall. Now I knew he wasn’t. As my skin went cold, I wondered whether he heard how much he sounded like his dead father.
An engine started just outside the hangar, Alec in the yellow Piper, taxiing away. That loud rumble canceled out Grayson’s echoing voice. Grayson talked over the noise. “Nobody can crash this week, do you understand? If anybody crashes, all of this is for nothing. You can complain, Leah, but at some point—at this point—I am in charge, I am blackmailing you, and shut up.” His gray eyes were narrow and his jaw was set. He’d backed down and apologized to me after his comment about getting a room. He wasn’t backing down this time.
He stood. “Ready?”
He wasn’t asking me whether I was ready. He was telling me I was. I stuffed the last of the biscuit into my mouth, threw away my garbage, and followed him over to the orange Piper. Automatically I took my place at the wing, like I’d done a million times with Mr. Hall. When I saw Grayson had control of the guide on the back wheel, I pushed the strut. One good shove got the plane rolling out of the hangar, and it didn’t take much strength to guide it all the way out onto the tarmac.
In the distance, Alec was taking off. A lone figure in the grassy strip between the tarmac and the runway struggled with a hook on a rope between upright poles. A long banner stretched out behind him and rippled in the morning breeze. Zeke, Alec had said, but I didn’t know this person. I didn’t want to ask Grayson about him when we were both in this mood, but I had a right to know who would be setting up the banners I was risking my life to snag with an airplane. “Who’s Zeke?”
“Somebody the unemployment office sent,” Grayson called from behind the tail. His voice betrayed none of the emotion we’d let slip a few minutes before. “I don’t have high hopes for him.”
“That’s not reassuring,” I said. “But gosh, if you figured out how to hire a guy from the unemployment office? You are running this business.”
Grayson half-turned to me, a warning, not sure whether I was making fun of him. I wasn’t sure either.
“I just made a phone call,” he muttered. Then he patted the tail of the airplane fondly. “Check this one out really well before you go. We haven’t taken it up yet, so it hasn’t run since… my dad died.”
Only a slight hesitation let me know he felt a stab of pain as he said the words. I felt the stab too and wished he’d left the sentence hanging. But I was impressed that he’d gotten it out.
He slipped back into the shadows of the hangar.
With a sigh, I turned to my airplane. And immediately cheered up. I was about to fly again.
But first I had a lot of things to check. I walked all around the plane, running my hand along the fuselage, looking for anything broken. I checked the oil. I pulled the towbar on the back of the plane, checked the ropes and hooks for towing the banners, and brought the hooks into the cockpit so I could throw them out the window at just the right time. I went back into the hangar, my eyes straining in the dark after the bright sunlight, and felt blindly in a toolbox for a dipstick. Grayson was in a far corner of the hangar, rummaging around the red Piper, and didn’t say anything. I went back out and checked the gas. Then I hopped up into the seat and started the engine—my pulse raced with the roar—and taxied over to the gas pumps.
One of Mr. Simon’s Air Tractors was parked there already. I hoped Mark wasn’t in it. But of course he would be. That was my luck. As I drove closer, I saw I was right. Mark climbed out of the cockpit very slowly, like he was hungover. No surprise there either.
He glanced over at my plane. I faced the sun, and I hoped he hadn’t seen me behind the glare off the windshield. He might not know I was flying for Grayson. I could shrink behind the controls and let him pump his gas and taxi away before I got out, thus avoiding another shitstorm altogether.
Settling back to wait, I pulled off my shirt and opened one of the windows to circulate the air in the already hot cockpit. Even though it was only the middle of April, it was summer. The trees across the runway were in full leaf. The grass where Zeke wrestled with the banner was green and long, waving in the breeze like it was tapping its foot, waiting for somebody to wake up from a long winter’s nap and cut it. Really the summer lasted here from April until October, at least. It was strange that the town filled with spring breakers in March, when the weather was so fickle, warm one day and wintry the next. It was strange that the town cleared of tourists in the warm September and October, when the gray tide rolled onto the tan beach under a blue sky without giving it much thought, unimpeded by drunk college students and dangerously sunburned children and obese tattooed exhibitionists. Summer in Heaven Beach went on whether people noticed or not.
