I was in a mood to break my no-drinking rule again because of the stress I’d been under that day and the situation I was in with these boys. But Grayson took up residence at a graffiti-covered pillar, watching all of us for bad behavior. So Molly and I danced to the throbbing beat under the spinning colored lights instead. Alec played along with us, doing an unembarrassed white boy dance. Molly asked Grayson to dance three times. He refused. She tried to send me over to ask him. I wouldn’t go. I was having a lot of fun dancing with Molly and dancing with Alec, who was acting like a not-too-interested boy/friend, something I’d never had before. I didn’t want to ruin it by dragging Grayson over—or having him turn me down.
Finally we took a break. Grayson had ordered food for everybody. When I opened my billfold to give him money for it, Alec frowned at me and shook his head. We found an empty table a group had just vacated on the crowded deck outside, overlooking the ocean. Molly went back inside to grab a strawberry daiquiri using her cousin’s old ID. Alec whispered that he’d get me a soda.
Which left Grayson and me snacking alone at the table, if you could call it alone when we were surrounded by four hundred and fifty people. I expected him to insult me over the noise. But he watched the crowd with a half-smile on his face, a lot like the half-smile Alec wore most of the time. On Alec it was the default setting. On Grayson it meant he was happy.
I leaned across the table and said, “You’re back.”
“What?” He jerked his head toward me, surprised that I’d spoken, losing part of the smile.
“You seem like yourself again,” I explained. “The way you’ve been acting, I thought the old Grayson was gone forever.”
He nodded. “I think he might be,” he said slowly. “I mean, if I were the type of person who talked about himself in the third person. I think he might be.”
“You think he might be gone forever?” I asked. “Or you think he might be back?”
“Gone.”
That one word sank deep into me like a hot rock disappearing into a snowbank somewhere up north. I noticed again how tired he was, how he sat low on his stool, broad shoulders hunched, with dark smudges of fatigue under his gray eyes. I felt lost on his behalf. I felt lost myself. As we shared a look of understanding across the table, the drunk spring-breakers and colored lights faded on one side of us. I was more aware of the blackness off the railing on our other side, a black sky and a black ocean we knew were there but couldn’t even see.
“I’m sorry about Jake,” I blurted.
Grayson didn’t take his eyes off me. His only reaction was a little tic of his jaw.
“I talked to your dad every day about what happened to Jake, but I never told you. I guess I never saw you again until your dad’s funeral. And…” I could feel my cheeks burning, but now that I’d started, I couldn’t stop until I’d blabbed everything. “… I’m sorry about you and Alec. I wish you’d tell me what exactly is going on between you and why I have to date him. You spill this whole story to Molly when you’ve just met her, but I’ve been right here the whole time and you treat me like the stranger. Less than a stranger. Like the enemy. What did you mean when you acted incredulous that I’d never been to your dad’s condo?”
Grayson’s lips parted. He watched me for a moment before he found words. As he spoke, his voice was so quiet that I could barely hear him over the music. “I was talking to you about Alec and Jake.”
“You were looking at Molly,” I accused him.
“I was talking to you.” He looked down at his half-eaten food. “Sometimes it’s hard for me to look at you. Just like it’s hard for me to be here. At the shack, at the condo, at the hangar.”
I understood now. He associated me with the tragedy of his family. He would take what he thought he needed from me in order to save Alec. That’s all I was good for.
Molly cackled somewhere in the crowd. I couldn’t make out what she was saying. As she and Alec emerged from the throng, the first word I understood was, “Cocktalls!”
“I was telling Molly about Zeke losing the spelling bee today,” Alec explained, sliding me a soda and slipping onto the stool beside me.
I grinned at him. If I concentrated hard enough on joining his light-hearted conversation with Molly, maybe the tension between Grayson and me would ease, and I would be able to breathe again.
“I can just see the tourists on the beach,” Molly said, “squinting up at the sign. ‘Cock… talls.’ They probably thought it was for real. Some new drink invented by the tourist-trap bars on the boardwalk. They would be bubble gum flavored! They would come with a piece of bubble gum on a toothpick as a garnish instead of a lemon!”
“Spoken like the daughter of restaurateurs,” I said, trying to get back into the swing of her banter.
“Those misspelled banners cost us a lot of time in the air,” Grayson grumbled.
I could see why he wasn’t laughing. The contracts Mr. Hall had made with these businesses specified that we’d fly their banners for a certain number of hours a day. When Alec and I dropped our banners, we circled above the airport, waiting for Zeke to spell everything correctly. Then we picked them back up, but we had to tack that many minutes onto the ends of our flights. Grayson had paid me a little overtime in my check. I hadn’t minded, but Grayson had minded very much.
“Did you talk to Zeke about it?” I asked Grayson. I didn’t see what good that would do, though. A bad speller was a bad speller, and there was no spell-check for banners.
“I fired him,” Grayson said. “I can do it myself.”
“And not fly?” Alec stopped laughing for the first time since he’d sat down. “You have contracts for three planes in the air.”
I puzzled over Alec phrasing it that way: “You have contracts,” rather than “We have contracts.” The business belonged to both of them now.
Grayson didn’t seem to notice the way Alec had put it. “I’ll take some extra time between my flights to get the banners ready,” he said. “After you two are up in the air, I’ll go myself. I’ll have to fly longer to make up that time.” Fly longer, and work longer. He was talking about his eight-hour day stretching into ten, probably more since he was doing the paperwork.
Molly’s voice broke into my thoughts. “Who was in charge of the banners when your dad was still around?”