Alec taxied the yellow Piper past me, waving to me from the cockpit. I waved back. Then I veered toward Molly, who stood in the grass between the runway and the taxiway, struggling to fold the huge red banner letters into the fabric sleeve that held them in place during flight. The morning breeze carried her scents of sunscreen and bug repellent. Walking nearer, I noticed that, though she might be chemically prepared for this job, she hadn’t dressed for it. She wore her blinged-out sunglasses, a stylish straw hat, diamond hoop earrings—the diamonds might have been real—and cute beach clothes. The heavy-duty work gloves Grayson must have given her made her hands look like robot claws.
She didn’t approve of what I’d worn, either. With one mechanical hand, she gestured to my slouchy T-shirt layered over my bikini top. “I see you dress up for work.”
“How’s the labor going?” I joked.
“Laboriously.” She wiped her brow with her wrist and put both hands on her hips like she was winded already. She didn’t laugh like she should have. I wondered whether I’d offended her last night with my comment about her laboring. That didn’t make sense, because Molly didn’t get offended.
I couldn’t apologize to her, though. We didn’t operate that way. So I simply asked, “Why’d you want this job?”
“To watch over you and protect you from these animals, of course.”
That didn’t make sense, either. She should have been jumping up and down and squealing right now and telling me how hot these boys were and I was crazy not to do both of them at once right there in the hangar.
“Did you have to kiss Alec last night?” she asked.
“Yes.” I tried not to sound suspicious as I asked, “Did he tell you that?” I doubted he’d dished to her at the hangar this morning about taking me home last night.
“I just figured,” she said. “I’ve got something planned for tonight that may be more of a distraction so we can keep him off you. I okayed it with the boys already. We’ll eat dinner at my café. If we start there, my parents will be less likely to inquire in too much detail about the drunken orgy we’ll be attending later. Francie Mahoney’s parents have taken her little brother to Disney World. Alec and Grayson used to live here in town, so they’ll know a lot of people at her party. Maybe Alec will hook up with his old flame from third grade, and that will get him off your case.”
“Oh God, no.” My words were drowned out by an engine. Alec raced past us on the runway, the yellow Piper sailing into the air.
When the roar had faded, I said, “Anything but that.” Most people in my high school hated me only in passing. A few rich girls would walk all the way across the hall just to make a nasty remark about my curly hair, if they thought of a good one and could get a friend to go with them as a witness and bodyguard. Francie was one of those girls. I’d tried to tell Molly this about her friends repeatedly, but she didn’t believe me. They were on their best behavior while she was around. They called me a sack of shit the instant Molly left the room. And Molly didn’t have PE with us.
“You don’t want Alec off your case?” Molly asked sharply.
“Of course I do,” I said, “as long as Grayson doesn’t mind.”
She shifted her weight and blew her bangs out of her eyes with a big sigh. “I’m trying my best to help you, but it’s not always about you. It’s my spring break of my senior year too, and maybe I want to go to this party.”
And maybe I didn’t have to go just because she was going. I almost told her this. But she’d already convinced the boys this should be our outing of the night. I couldn’t back out now, stand Alec up, anger Grayson. I would have to go.
She knew why I didn’t want to. She knew I had to go anyway. Her understanding of my situation and sympathy for my plight lasted right up until she got tired of it and turned her back on me.
Which wasn’t a fair assessment. We’d been friends for a couple of years, and I couldn’t recall that she’d done anything like this to me before. Of course, there hadn’t been boys involved before, not since the beginning and Ryan. I hadn’t been blackmailed into dating someone before. We were in new territory and all bets were off.
“Look, we’ll talk about it later, okay?” she said. By which she meant that we would not talk about it and we were going to the party that night. “Alec’s already in the air. I have to get this banner hooked up. You go get your breakfast. My dad made a strawberry Danish for you, the kind with the Hawaiian raw sugar on top.”
That got me headed for the hangar again, and it wasn’t until I was halfway there that I realized she’d pointed me in that direction by baiting me with food, like I was a puppy. I didn’t know what to think about this girl I’d assumed I knew so well, suddenly set down in this place I knew so well, and acting like it was hers instead of mine, and these boys were hers.
But Grayson wasn’t hers. He’d made that clear last night. And he was standing outside the hangar, alternately glancing at his phone and gazing into the southwest corner of the clear blue sky. When he turned in my direction and saw me coming, he stared at me, or let me think he was staring at me behind his shades. Though the morning was cool, I felt sweat break out across my skin, whether his gaze was real or not.
But as I finally reached him, he was business as usual. “Watch out for the weather today.”
I tried to shake off the shivers he’d given me and act like a pilot. “You mean the storm system coming up from the Gulf?” I’d noticed it on the weather app when I used the airport office phone to talk to Molly the day before. The storm was angry, and its tornadoes had already torn up some towns in Mississippi. “It’s nowhere near us yet. It probably won’t get here until tonight.” It hadn’t even reached my mother, at a casino over in the mountains.
“Last Christmas, Dad had been watching that storm all day,” Grayson said, “and suddenly there was a wind advisory way before we thought. I don’t want anybody to get caught. Radio me if you run into turbulence you weren’t expecting. And if you see dark clouds, don’t wait for me to radio you. Come on in.”
I shrugged. I was all for caution, but he was being a little ridiculous. Shell-shocked from his own crash, I thought.
“Your breakfast is inside,” he said, nodding back toward the hangar. “When you’re through eating, before you check your plane and go up, could you take my truck and drive a banner out to Molly? That will save her some time. She can spell, but she’s going to have trouble keeping up with us at first.” He held out his keys to me.