Recalling all the shit I’d been through in the past week with him, in a sex-for-flying exchange I hadn’t fully understood, I decided I couldn’t do this all over again with Grayson and Alec. Yet I kept walking, my flip-flops trailing dew across the asphalt embedded with white shells. I needed to lose these cold feet before I reached the Hall Aviation hangar. I didn’t want to flirt with Alec. He was crazy handsome, but I’d never been attracted to him like I had to Grayson, and the thought of flirting with him made my stomach hurt. I reminded myself I hadn’t flown in two months, and my whole future as a pilot was on the line.
As I passed the airport office, I picked up my pace. The yellow Piper already sat on the tarmac in front of Hall Aviation. The small side door and the wide front doors of the hangar were open to the morning, and the strange beat of alt-rock spilled out. I’d always kept my eyes and ears open when I went into the hangar and the boys were there. They played interesting music, wore T-shirts for bands I’d never heard of, and read books that were making the rounds at their high school but would never travel as far as Heaven Beach. I felt silly for looking up to the boys. They were from Wilmington, not New York City. I was from the armpit of the tourist industry, though, and it was all in your perspective. I kept my eyes and ears open around Molly for much the same reason. Her old friends in Atlanta were always clueing her in on the latest. She still was not as cool as these boys.
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.