“I can’t do that,” I said.
“I’m telling you,” he said, “just do it before you go up. I’m keeping track of your hours and I’ll pay you overtime if you run over. No problem.”
“I can’t drive,” I said.
He pulled his hand back in surprise, keys jingling. “What do you mean, you can’t drive?”
I meant that nobody had ever taught me to drive, and it didn’t matter anyway because I didn’t have a car. But I wasn’t going down that road again. I was still pissed about trying to explain the washateria to Alec last night.
“You mean you can fly a plane but you can’t drive a car?” Grayson asked. “That’s crazy.”
I chopped my hand across my throat. This had been Mr. Hall’s way of telling us to kill the engine. I meant for Grayson to stop quizzing me on my home life. I’d had enough.
He balled his fist and squeezed until his hand turned white.
“Okay,” he said on a sigh. “Sorry. Go have something to eat.” He rounded the corner of the hangar and started his truck himself.
I walked into the darkness and feasted on strawberry Danish and eggs and ham, stuffing food into my mouth like a starving dog now that nobody was watching. The day continued to get better from there. I never missed a banner pickup, and I took three long flights up and down the sunny beach. By the third flight, the wind had picked up, but the storms were still a long way off, nothing to worry about yet.
Mr. Hall would have thought it was beautiful. In a Grayson-like outburst, he would have exclaimed, “Man, what a pretty day to fly!” and then settled with me in the cockpit for the ride. This time I hardly teared up, thinking of him. His memory made me happy.
My morning break didn’t coincide with Molly’s because she took a break while I flew, and she spelled out my new banner while I took a break. But she ate lunch with the boys and me. Things didn’t seem weird between us like they had when I’d talked to her alone that morning. Like the night before, she carried the conversation and took a lot of pressure off me. I decided there was nothing wrong with her after all. Early that morning she’d just been overwhelmed with work, maybe, or disoriented at waking up before ten on a school holiday.
I didn’t take my afternoon break with her. When I taxied to the hangar, Alec was sitting outside with his back to the corrugated metal wall of the building, smoking a cigarette and watching Molly struggle with the banner Grayson had just dropped, tiny across the field. I didn’t want to sit outside and be tempted to smoke, but I thought I should be sociable since apparently Alec and I had another date that night.
“Welcome,” he said as I walked up. He patted the asphalt beside him like it was a plush seat. Giggling, I sank down. He offered me a cigarette and I shook my head.
He exhaled smoke away from me. “Beautiful day for flying,” he said, squinting into the sky. “Grayson’s already freaking out about the weather.”
“I think he’s nervous about the wind since his wreck last December,” I said.
“Is that what you think it is?” Alec asked. “I thought he was just being an overbearing ass.”
Weirdly, I wanted to jump to Grayson’s defense. He was being an overbearing ass, and not just about the weather. But somehow, while it was okay for me to think this, it wasn’t okay for Alec to say it.
Before I could open my mouth, Alec’s phone rang. He slipped it from his pocket, glanced at the screen, and grinned. “My mom.”
I put my hands behind me on the hot asphalt to push myself up. “Do you want me to—”
“Oh, gosh, no, sit down.” He pressed a button on the phone. “This is your favorite son speaking. How may I help you?”
Even though he’d told me he didn’t need privacy, I felt uncomfortable listening to his end of the conversation with his mom. I knew he and Jake looked like her, but the photo I’d seen of her had been decades old. As I pictured her now, she was a pudgy woman with cotton clothes like sacks and the same haircut she’d had in high school because it was easy and there was no reason to bother anymore, now that her eldest son was gone, and her husband was gone, who had cheated on her, and whom she had always loved.
I was basing this assumption on nothing. She might be slender and stylish with a professional job, a lawyer, suffering the loss of her son and sorry about her ex but already moving on, because her own life was important too. Either way, she was none of my business. I would never meet her. I’d cheapened this lady’s mourning with my nosey musings. I tried to relax and shut her out, but when I sat back against the corrugated metal building, I was shocked at the heat and sat up straight.
Alec eyed me as he spoke. “No, it’s going great.” He pivoted the phone so he could still hear the speaker but the mouthpiece was away from his mouth, then took a drag from his cigarette. He moved the phone back and said, “Yes, really.” Smoke curled out of his mouth and around his lips. He moved the phone away again and exhaled in a quick huff that his mother wouldn’t hear. Then he said into the phone, “Mom. Mom. Mo-ther. Why don’t you believe me?”
Grayson was landing his plane. A gust inflated the wind sock on the tower and knocked Grayson a few feet off course, but he straightened up in time for the landing. Perfect.
Alec laughed into the phone. And even though he clearly had been bullshitting his mother about how things were going, his laugh sounded genuine. It started as a low manly rumble and ended in a higher cackle like a little boy, cracking up and not caring how he sounded because the joke was that funny.
While laughing, he’d moved his mouth away from the phone again so he didn’t hurt his mom’s ears on the other end of the line. He took the opportunity to suck in another quick drag from his cigarette before he told her more somberly, “That’s Grayson’s problem. You’ll have to ask him about that.”
They chatted for a few more minutes about the weather, it sounded like, and the temperature of the ocean, and whether the beach was crowded, while Grayson taxied his plane closer.
Finally Alec said, “I will. Love you too. Bye.” He pocketed his phone.
“Your mom called to check on you?” I asked. “That’s sweet.” I said it like I was teasing him, but I really did think it was sweet. My mom didn’t call to check on me.
Alec nodded toward the approaching red Piper. “Checking on Grayson. There’s something wrong with him.”