“What would she do if she knew you’d forged her signature so you could start taking flying lessons at such a tender age?” Grayson asked.
She would kick me out of the trailer for forging her name and—more important to her—for lying to her about where my money was going. The trailer wasn’t much, but I had a month and a half of high school left, and nowhere else to go. Molly would offer to let me stay at her house. Her parents wouldn’t understand. Rich parents didn’t kick their children out. Molly’s folks would assume I’d done something truly awful and that I was a bad influence on her. They would make sure Molly stayed away from me. That would be the end of our friendship. And then—
“Would your mother pitch a fit at the airport office?” Grayson prodded me. “My dad’s dead. There’s nobody for her to sue. Does she understand that? I’ll bet she would try to lay the blame somewhere. Everybody at the airport would get dragged into it—everybody still alive who could have written you recommendations for jobs and flight schools and college in the next few months. You were planning to go to college at some point, right? You’d have to, if you want a job as an airline pilot.”
He had me there. College was not an option for me right now. Every dime I hadn’t given over to my mom, I’d blown on flying. I’d been counting on flying for Mr. Simon and saving up money for junior college tuition. After a few semesters, I would use my stellar new GPA and glowing recommendations from Mr. Simon and the Admiral and everyone else I knew at the airport to get a scholarship to a decent college that offered an aviation degree. But if Grayson ruined those recommendations for me—
“You know what else you need to get that airline pilot job?” Grayson asked. “Good moral character.”
He’d done his homework to blackmail me. He was quoting the FAA rules for an airline pilot’s license. I’d never known what “good moral character” meant, but I was pretty sure it ruled out forging my mother’s name to take flying lessons.
“All right,” I said through my hand, which I’d clapped over my mouth at some point while he was talking.
“All right, what?” he prompted me.
“All right, I’ll work for you.”
“Great,” he said calmly, like he didn’t think it was great at all. He just folded my entire future, sticky note and all, and shoved it back into his pocket.
“For how long?” I asked weakly.
He shrugged like he hadn’t thought about it. But his words betrayed him. He’d thought about this a lot. “Definitely this whole week of spring break. Most weekends after that, because Alec and I will be coming over from Wilmington to fly too. Not the next weekend after spring break is over, though. That’s our high school’s prom. My dad didn’t schedule any banners then, like he expected Alec and me to want to go.”
He turned his head toward the road as if listening for something, but the pit bull had stopped barking.
Grayson went on, “And after school lets out for the summer, we’ll reevaluate.”
I took a swig of beer, considering. Grayson would drive the business into the ground way before school let out. So I would fly for him this week. He would go back to Wilmington. The following weekend, his dad had given him the excuse of the prom to skip flying. There would be more excuses after that. Grayson and Alec would not come to Heaven Beach again, at least not to fly. They’d stay in Wilmington and forget all about me, and it would be like none of this had ever happened.
In the meantime, I could start looking for another job flying. I hadn’t expected the crop-dusting job to drop in my lap. The imaginary crop-dusting job. Maybe an actual job would come up too. My prospects looked brighter than they had an hour before, when I’d buried my head under the pillows. Honestly, I didn’t want to fly for Grayson, but my spirits were lifted at the thought that I would finally fly a plane again. Or maybe it was the beer. I took another long pull and set the can down on the stump.
“I want you to pay me at the end of every workday,” I said.
Grayson’s brows went down behind his shades. “Why?”
“This is a day-by-day operation. I don’t want to walk over there one morning and find out you’ve packed up and run back to Wilmington without paying me.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Grayson said so firmly that I almost believed him. “But sure, if that’s what you want, I’ll pay you every day. And there’s one more thing.” His fist gripped and relaxed. “I need you to date Alec this week.”
I laughed shortly. The alcohol rushed to my head and heated my skin in the warm evening. I couldn’t make sense of what Grayson was saying. “You want me to what?”
“Date Alec.”
Date Alec? All day I’d fought my long-standing crush on Grayson. The idea of dating Alec, who was so different from Grayson, was a one-eighty, and I felt dizzy with the turn. “I haven’t even seen Alec since the fune—” Even drunk, I was able to stop myself, almost.
“Come to work tomorrow morning,” Grayson said as if I hadn’t spoken. “Flirt with Alec. He’ll ask you out. You’re local and it’s spring break, so it should be easy for you to show him a good time.”
“Grayson, that’s nuts!” I was yelling now, and the pit bull barked viciously in response. I lowered my voice. “Why in the world would you want me to date your brother?”
“I can’t tell you,” Grayson said simply.
“Then I’m not doing it,” I told him just as glibly.
“Then I’ll hire someone to deliver this forgery to your mother when you’re not around to stop it.” He leaned forward to stand up.
“No!” I exclaimed. “Sit down.”
He seemed to be watching me as he eased back into his chair.
“I’ll do it,” I said, “but you have to tell me why.”
“No.”
“Grayson!” His name set the pit bull off again. I whispered, “Is it for something illegal?”
“No.”
“Or something else that will screw up my commercial license?”
“Nothing like that,” he assured me. “It will get you out of trouble, because I’ll give you back this form and all the copies I made.”
And I would burn them. “Why do you think Alec’s going to ask me out just because I flirt with him? He hardly knows me.”