“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.