I didn’t want to get in his business. The more I did, the more he was likely to get in mine, which was how I’d gotten in this mess in the first place. But I was so alarmed at how he looked that I watched him unabashedly now, waiting for a different angle so I could glean some information about what had gone so horribly wrong that he curled into a tight ball.
He glanced up at me, and I thought I was busted.
But he couldn’t see me very well, out in the dusky hangar. Almost as soon as he looked up, he looked down again, reabsorbed into the conversation, as if I weren’t there. “I’m doing everything I can. I’m doing some other things you don’t know about.”
To keep Grayson from blackmailing me, I’d been hoping for a way to blackmail him right back. Here it was. Whatever Grayson was trying to get Alec to do, their mom was in on it. I felt sure I was the part of the plan Grayson hadn’t told her about. She was a middle-class mom, after all. She’d been married to Mr. Hall once upon a time. I couldn’t imagine that she would approve of Grayson forcing me to date Alec, no matter what the reason was. All I had to do was threaten Grayson that I would tell her, just like he’d threatened to tell my mom about me.
But as I thought this through in my head, I realized there were big holes in my plan. I had no way to get to Wilmington to talk to this lady. I could steal Grayson’s phone, punch the speed-dial marked Mom, and call her. Then a strange girl would be calling her to say her middle-class son had blackmailed me to date her other middle-class son, months after the deaths of their father and brother. She would call the police. When the cops cruised to my address and saw where I lived, they would arrest me for extortion. I lived in a trailer and people assumed the worst about me.
“Love you too. Bye.” He clicked off the phone and stared at it in his hand for a few moments. Glanced at his watch. Scooted back the chair with a rattle of ancient casters and walked out of the office. Stopped short when he saw me standing there.
While he was on the phone, he had forgotten again that I was there. He’d even forgotten about insulting me down to my very bones.
He realized I’d overheard him on the phone with his mom.
He was afraid he’d given away why he wanted me to go out with Alec.
He went back over his words, calculating whether or not he was safe.
I saw it all in his face, surprisingly easy to read when he wasn’t wearing his shades—which was probably why he wore them so much, like his whole life was a poker game and he was trying to prevent himself from telling his hand. I just wished I really had overheard something that gave away his secret. I still didn’t have a clue.
I spun on my flip-flop and headed farther into the hangar to refill my water bottle from the fountain, hoping the whole time that he wouldn’t hurl another stone at me. I wasn’t sure I could take it. Then I escaped back outside to my airplane.
eight
Grayson had lunch delivered to the hangar. My empty refrigerator must have given him a shock, and he wanted to make sure I didn’t faint in flight and crash his plane. We’re not crashing any planes this week.
While we ate, I made another attempt to flirt with Alec where Grayson could see. Alec was friendly as always but hard to flirt with. I tried to talk to him about the alt-rock music I loved so much blasting from a speaker in the corner. He said it was Grayson’s. Alec tried to explain to me that he preferred country music but his player didn’t dock with the contraption they used in the hangar. Soon I would have to admit I’d never owned a contraption, a player, or a computer, and I had no idea how to download music. Grayson spent most of the hour in Mr. Hall’s office, poring over ledger books.
Late in the afternoon, I let Grayson and Alec land first, hoping they’d want to pack up for the day and get out of there, and they would hardly notice me. As I came in for my own landing, scanning the runway, I did a double take as a figure crossed the tarmac. Mr. Hall was my first thought—the same disorienting shock I’d received that morning. Then Zeke. But Grayson had sent him home for the day after we snagged our last banners. Because I’d been thinking about Grayson and Alec, they passed through my mind. As I came closer, though, I saw it was Leon, who was manning the airport office for the week while I was flying. He held up the airport’s cell phone.
I didn’t get phone calls. My mind spun to the only possibility: my mother was in trouble. She’d gotten in trouble before. But when she did, she didn’t call me at the airport, because I couldn’t help her. She only let me know through a friend of the moment or a begrudging ex-boyfriend who stopped by the trailer that she wouldn’t be home for a few more days.
I taxied my plane to the hangar and cut the engine. I didn’t want to answer the phone. But sitting in the cockpit and hiding from the phone would be weird. I opened the door and took it. “Thanks. I’ll bring it back over,” I told Leon, who was already retreating.
“Good riddance,” he called over his shoulder, like the conversation he’d had with the person on the other end of the line had been difficult.
I glanced at the screen. A local number. “Hello?”
“What did he have to do, FedEx the phone to you?” Molly demanded. “I’ve been waiting for five hours. Jesus! Did Alec ask you out yet?”
“No,” I said, relieved the call was from Molly and nobody was in jail. “All’s well that ends well.”
“Nah, I’ve got an idea. Why don’t you and Alec bring the one with a rudder up his ass, what’s his name?”
I giggled. “Grayson.”
“Right. Bring Mr. Happy and we’ll all go to the club tonight. That way, you and I will get some spring break. Grayson will see you’re dutifully trying to screw his brother. I’ll be there to chaperone and make sure nothing happens and you stay safe from these perverts.”
“Um.” It sounded good in theory. I actually felt better just thinking about leaning on Molly throughout the night. Nothing these boys threw at me could be so bad if Molly was around.
Grayson came out of the hangar then. His final flight must have been broiling. Like Alec, he’d stripped off his T-shirt. His muscles were tanned and hardened—not from working hard, but maybe from playing hard, as Mr. Hall had told me. Mountain climbing with his friends whenever he could get away. Playing basketball for his school whenever he wasn’t benched for mouthing off to the coach. His wavy blond hair blazed almost white in the bright sunlight, darker around his ears where it was wet with sweat and kinking into tighter curls.