Last week, he’d come into the office, hunting up some records for his uncle. I’d mentioned I was out of a job with Mr. Hall and wondered whether Mark’s uncle was hiring crop dusters. I didn’t want to deal with Mark at work every day, but I would suffer through it for a flying job. To my surprise, he’d said yes. I’d been so happy and never more relieved.
Then he’d asked me on a date. I’d hesitated at first, but after a few minutes of flirting, I’d said yes to that too. I’d had a boyfriend when I was fourteen, but I’d never been on a date. Though my relationship with Mr. Hall hadn’t been romantic at all, his absence left a hole in my heart that I was hungry to fill. And a somewhat greasy fifteen-year-old Mark had grown into a decidedly sexy nineteen-year-old with a nervous edge.
My mom had been home when he’d brought me back from dinner that night. Usually I was so happy to see her, right up until she took the TV or some food or a pile of clothes away with her, like she was using the trailer only for storage. This time I was terrified he would mention to her that I was a pilot, or that I was working the whole time I was at the airport, not hanging out with my fake boyfriend Grayson Hall. And I didn’t trust Mark enough to ask him to keep quiet.
So I was almost relieved at the turn the conversation took. Mark told my mom that his mother had kicked him out of the house. He hadn’t mentioned this to me before. My mom offered to let him stay with us—by which she meant he could stay with me—for a few days until he found another place to live, if he would help her with rent. I was already helping her with rent on top of paying the utilities. Basically she was arranging for us to take over the lease from her. He might not have agreed to this if he’d known she was leaving that night with the TV. She told me she was pawning it for cash to take to the Indian casino in North Carolina. That was the last I’d heard from her.
Technically, Mark and I were shacking up. But that implied we were doing it, when we weren’t. True, I had ached for him at first. I’d been staying away from boys for so many years, and the shift in how I saw him was new and exciting. But that night when my mom had left and Mark brought his stuff inside the trailer, he’d also brought beer. He’d drunk too much to go through with it. Each night after that he’d been too drunk or stayed out too late with his friends. And now that he’d lived with me for a week, the thought of him was vaguely nauseating.
But this was way none of Grayson’s business.
I still couldn’t read Grayson’s expression with his eyes hidden. He hadn’t taken off his shades when he came into the office. But when I asked him how Mark had phrased our living arrangement, Grayson arched one eyebrow again.
“I don’t know what you’re getting at,” I said. “No, I haven’t talked to Mr. Simon about the job, because Mark is the one who’s taking me flying in the Stearman every day this week. He’s showing me the ropes and giving me a taste of what I’ll be doing by myself in the summer. I asked off work from the airport and everything.”
“In the Stearman?” Grayson’s eyebrow stayed up.
“Yes,” I said. “We can’t go in one of the Air Tractors. They’re one-seaters.”
“I’ve personally heard Mr. Simon tell my dad that he would never let Mark take anybody for a ride in the Stearman.”
I didn’t doubt it, since Mark was a live wire. But I said carefully, “Did you overhear this on the office porch? A lot of bullshit flies around on the porch.” Mr. Hall had said many negative things about Grayson on the porch too.
Grayson got my meaning. His eyebrow went down. Then he asked pointedly, “Mark’s taking you flying every day this week? But not today?”
“No,” I said impatiently. “Starting tomorrow.”
“What time tomorrow?” he pressed me. “Have you set a time?”
We hadn’t set a time, and frankly, I’d begun to worry. Mark had promised me when we first talked about it that we’d start flying together on Monday morning, but here it was Sunday afternoon and he hadn’t mentioned it again. He was getting drunk at the beach. And I’d been afraid to bring it up—afraid that if I said the wrong thing to Mark, the job would disappear.
Which was pretty much what Grayson was telling me. Mark had told me a lie so he could move in with me.
I was frightened. But I couldn’t show Grayson this, so I tried to be furious instead. “Why can’t this be a transaction between pilots? In your mind, why does it have to be dirty?”
“You tell me,” Grayson said bitterly, removing his elbows from the counter and straightening to his full height. “That’s how you work. I used to envy the rare people you smiled at when you pumped their gas, like they’d done something special and earned a reward. But now I realize you were smiling at them because they’d given you something you wanted. A big tip. Flight time. You wouldn’t smile at someone without good reason.”
I hadn’t thought he noticed whether I smiled at him or not.
There was a possibility here. A spark. I’d always viewed him as Mr. Hall’s black sheep son, impossibly cool and way too good for me, passing through. Finally, here was a hint of reciprocation of the crush I’d pretended not to have on him since I was fourteen.
No. Mark might have fooled me. I wouldn’t let Grayson fool me too. Cheeks burning, I said sternly, “Grayson Hall. The second you feel cornered, you fly off the handle and say anything that pops into your head. You’ve always gotten away with it, and maybe you still will, but that’s not a good interview technique for potential employees. If there was ever a chance I would fly for you, you blew it the instant your mind fell into the gutter.”
My anger drained away. My fingers hurt from gripping the countertop. Grayson’s mirrored shades still stared me down like nothing was behind them.
Then he bit his lip. “I need you,” he said in his nicest tone so far.
“Tough.”
He put his fist down on the counter. Not hard. Just there. He balled it tightly and relaxed it.
He took a long, deep breath. His broad shoulders rose and fell with it.
And then, without another word, he turned and left the office. He crossed the porch and disappeared in the direction of the Hall Aviation hangar, where I couldn’t see him out the lobby windows.
All the tension whooshed out of the room behind him. Without it, there was nothing left to hold me up standing. I collapsed into my desk chair and took a few deep breaths. I felt like I was going to lose it, but Grayson might be hanging around outside. Alec might. Mr. Simon might. I couldn’t lose it here at the airport. I had to get home.