We rode in silence for several minutes, except for the country music on the radio, and Molly hiccupping.
“I don’t know what you girls have going on with each other,” Grayson said quietly. “I think it would help if we all were more honest with each other.”
Molly snorted.
I glared at her, terrified all over again that Grayson would guess I’d told her about seducing Alec. Grayson glared at her too, and Alec continued to stare hard at her in the rearview mirror.
“Pardon me,” she grumbled.
The closer we got to her house, the more I worried. I still believed I was her charity case. But whatever her motivation for calling me a friend, I called her a friend because I was more myself around her. I relaxed more, laughed more. I wasn’t willing to throw that away over one party. Our relationship was a delicate balance. I shouldn’t have tipped the scales by telling her how I really felt.
At her house, she got out and slammed the car door without a word. I got out too and reached for her hand. She didn’t swing it playfully as we walked to her front door, but she didn’t pull away, either. On the porch, I closed the distance between us and hugged her. “I’m sorry.”
“No, I’m sorry,” she said so somberly that I believed her. “I honestly didn’t think Francie would do that. And even if she did, I had no idea you cared.”
Fair enough. Molly was so popular that girls never told her to leave their parties. She probably hadn’t been trying to be mean to me. She simply had no clue what my life felt like, and she never would.
“I’m drunk,” she said. “I’m sorry.” She backed up and put her hand on the doorknob. “I will have regained some of my IQ points by tomorrow, and we’ll talk.”
“Deal.” I laughed, so relieved that the Molly I loved was coming back. But as I gently closed the door behind her and walked to Alec’s idling car, I knew everything was all wrong. We’d never had an argument like this before, not since we became friends in the first place. Something had come between us. It had to do with the boys. And we’d broken the most important unspoken rule of our bond. We shouldn’t have told each other we were sorry.
Back at the car, Alec covered my hand with his on the seat between us, not like flirting with me but like comforting a friend, and I gave him a small smile.
Grayson immersed himself in his phone all the way to the airport. We dropped him off at the hangar. He didn’t climb into his truck immediately. He unlocked the side door of the hangar.
“Is he really staying here that late to finish paperwork?” I asked Alec.
“He did last night,” Alec said. “Tonight he’s worried about the airplanes in the storms.”
On the short drive from the airport to the trailer park, I tried and failed to think of something to say. The night had been full and there was plenty to discuss, but every subject seemed touchy between Alec and me.
And I was so bone-tired. Maybe flying all day had fatigued me. Spilling my guts about my lack of a family. Unsuccessfully skirting Francie. Fighting with Mark. Nearly losing Molly. Pining after Grayson and hating myself for doing it.
“May I walk you to your door that is too an actual door?” Alec asked.
I laughed, trying not to sound nervous. I didn’t want to kiss Alec anywhere, but especially not at my door. “Can we stay in the car for a minute instead? The dog will calm down eventually. If we’re standing outside, he won’t.”
“Okay.” Alec parked in the dirt clearing and turned off the engine. Into that silence, the noise of the trailer park flowed: the pit bull having a fit at the end of his chain, the wind tossing the trees and making the joints of the metal trailers screech, a couple standing in the road and cursing at each other. Staying in the car parked in the dirt yard was awkward. I should have told Alec to come inside the trailer. But I wasn’t going to do that.
He cleared his throat. “I wanted to ask you something.”
Uh-oh. Every time Alec had asked me something tonight, I’d wished he hadn’t.
But I said, “Okay,” and grinned at him, like if I grinned hard enough, the hard ball of dread in my stomach would dissolve. I hoped he didn’t ask to get serious with me, physically or emotionally, because I didn’t know what I would do if that happened.
“It seems like you have two modes,” he said. “One is a giggly, flirty mode. The other is a no-nonsense pilot mode. They never mix or cross. You’re like two different people. Did you know you do that?”
My heart raced. I tried to talk myself down from panic. Alec hadn’t figured out I was putting on an act with him. He’d known me for a long time and had observed me acting different ways over the course of years.
I shook my head no. “I’ve been told that I do that, though.” I glanced slyly over at him. “Which one am I doing now?”
“Flirty mode.”
“Which one do you like better?”
“Definitely flirty mode.” He grinned at me. “Come here.”
The lead-up was so sweet and sexy. If I’d liked him romantically at all, I would have enjoyed his kiss. But as it was, the only thing good I could say about it was that it was fifty percent shorter than his kiss the night before.
He gave me one more peck on the lips and backed away. “Anyway, here’s the reason I asked about your modes.”
If I’d known he wanted to have an actual conversation, I would have drawn the kiss out longer.
“I have trouble reading you sometimes,” he said. “You have these two personalities. I never know which one I’ll be talking to. They get offended at different things. Then, at the café, you told us why you want to fly, and that was so…”
He looked out the windshield at the palm trees swaying violently in the wind.
“Honest. Finally. Maybe for the first time ever.” He looked straight at me.
I shrank back.
“I jumped on that and asked you about your dad,” he said. “And then, when you got mad… I’m really sorry about that. I thought about it later and realized that wasn’t a question I should ever have asked anyone. It’s just that you fooled me, because flirty Leah wouldn’t have minded. Anyone can ask her anything. No-nonsense Leah minded. A lot.”
I laughed. “She did.”
“Forgive me.”
“I forgive you.”
I hoped all this forgiveness would equal a good-bye, but he still walked me to the door and gave me another kiss. A short one, and then I was inside my trailer that smelled like a basement. I removed my slutty makeup and clothes and cuddled in bed to read myself to sleep, listening to the clock-radio yammer about a tornado one county south.