The plane slowed to a crawl on the runway. I turned it and taxied toward the hangar, looking out all the while for Grayson landing behind me, or Mark landing. Wrecks happened on the taxiway as well as in the air. But the runway was clear. Zeke had moved to the grass, where he wrestled with the banner I’d dropped. I parked the plane outside the hangar, next to Alec’s yellow Piper, and cut the engine. The propeller in front of me transformed from a circular blur back into a propeller. Silence flooded the cockpit.
I winced at the sudden rush of emotion now that the adrenaline was leaving me, and I squinted to keep from crying. I couldn’t cry in an airplane out here on the tarmac. Pulling the headphones off my ears and over my thick hair, I opened the cockpit door and stepped way down onto the asphalt.
As I hurried through the dark hangar, Alec called “How was it?” from a corner. I couldn’t see after the bright sunlight outside, and with tears crowding my eyes. “Good,” I called back, still headed for the restroom in the back. With Alec in the hangar and Zeke on the runway and Grayson still up in the air, the bathroom should be empty, but with my luck, it would be occupied. In that case, I didn’t know where I would put these tears.
I could hardly see the doorknob in the shadows. I turned it and stepped into the pitch-black room and flicked on the light and closed and locked the door behind me and collapsed against the door. I could not make a noise. I shoved my fists into my eyes and screamed silently about everything I had lost.
Why couldn’t Mr. Hall be here this week, running this business like always? His life had been small—coffee, corned beef sandwiches because he had grown up in Pennsylvania and still had a taste for Yankee delis, flying—but his life had been nice, and I had enjoyed sharing it with him. It wasn’t fair that he’d had his son taken away and then died alone in his condo and waited half a day for a friend to find him.
That thought choked a noise out of me. I wrapped both arms around my waist and squeezed the air out of my chest so I wouldn’t have any noise left in me to scream. I wished Mr. Hall were here. I wished I’d never felt I needed to let Mark into my life. I wished Grayson weren’t forcing me to fake feelings for Alec. I wished I could fly without relying on anyone. Or relying only on Mr. Hall would be okay, if I could just have that back. I missed his gruff voice, his kind words, his powdery-smelling old-man cologne closed up in the cockpit with me. Dizzy with despair, I set my forehead against the door.
Someone knocked. I felt like I’d been shot in the head. I jumped even higher than I had when the delivery guy had knocked on the door of my trailer the night before.
“Leah,” Alec called. “Open up.”
“Just a sec.” Glancing in the mirror above the sink, I saw there was no way to disguise that I’d been bawling my eyes out. I ran water into my cupped hands anyway and splashed it over my face.
“Come on, Leah,” Alec called. “I feel the same way.”
I paused with a paper towel halfway to my face and considered my red-rimmed eyes in the mirror. I wouldn’t convince him to ask me on a date while I looked this way, but I had a hard time caring when I felt like death. I unlocked and opened the door and walked into his arms.
“Shhh,” he said, stroking my hair as I sobbed into his T-shirt. “I cried yesterday, the first time I went up. Grayson had gone to talk to you about working for him. I was alone so it was okay.” He squeezed me gently. “You can hear my dad yelling at you, can’t you?”
I nodded against his shirt. “Sorry. I’m getting you all wet.” He felt shitty enough about his dad. I didn’t mean to make things worse for him. The last thing he needed was to comfort somebody else. I put both hands on his chest and pushed away.
“Nah, I probably got my sweat all over you. Too hot for this.” He stepped away from me and pulled his T-shirt off over his head.
The back of the hangar was dim after the bright sunlight and the bright bathroom, and my eyes seemed to jump around in the dimness, unable to focus completely on his smooth skin, his muscled chest and arms, his compact body.
“I’m going out for a smoke,” he said. “Want one?”
I did. It would be a great way to bond with him and take another step toward him asking me out, but I couldn’t. I’d promised his dad that I would stop smoking. I had stopped, and I didn’t want to be tempted now, when I felt weak. “No thanks,” I croaked. “I’d better stay in here and cool down.”
He reached out and rubbed his hand up and down my bare arm a few times, soothing. In the dim light, he was monochromatic, his skin and blond hair the same color.
I followed him into the main part of the hangar. While he kept going out the wide door to the tarmac, I stopped in front of an electric fan and let it blow on my bare stomach. The sweat underneath my bikini top turned cold.
“Good job, Leah,” Grayson called over the noise. “Nice acting.”
I was too stunned and hurt and angry to speak, but not too angry to look for him. He was in Mr. Hall’s tiny office, typing on a computer keyboard, gazing at the screen. He didn’t even care what horrified expression passed across my face.
The words I quit formed on my lips. Also, You are cruel. I took a breath to say them.
An alt-rock song, strange and tinny sounding, sang in his office. He picked up his phone and watched the screen for several seconds as if he thought it might change.
“What’s wrong?” I asked. I didn’t want to care, but his face had gone white, like someone else had died.
He looked up at me in surprise. He’d forgotten I was standing there, though he’d lobbed an ugly insult at me ten seconds before. Whoever was calling owned all his attention. He shook his head almost imperceptibly—at me, maybe, but I wasn’t sure. He finally put the phone to his ear and managed a “Hi, Mom!” that sounded a lot more cheerful than he looked.
I turned my body so the fan cooled my back. My ears were out of the wind, though, so I could hear him as he said, “No, everything is good. The plan is good. He’s not making things any easier, but he’s doing what I told you he’d do.”
Nonchalantly I turned my head in the darkness so I could see Grayson in the bright office. Normally he acted comfortable with his tall body. He took up a lot of space when standing. Sitting, he spread himself out over a chair and the surrounding area. But as he sat in the chair behind the desk in the office, he looked half his size, knees drawn close, ankles crossed on the floor, one arm hugging himself, head down and cradled in the palm that held the phone. “Alec told you that?” he asked.