15. Jason
15
JASON
“ W hat did she tell you?” I clipped as soon as Bridget miraculously reappeared from her not-so-subtle excuse of a trip to the back.
My sister smirked. It was the I know something you don’t know look she always used when we were kids.
“Enough.”
I groaned. “Fuck.”
She snorted. “Yeah, I heard it was something along those lines. Mel was pretty shy on the details, though. I am A-okay with that because, you know—” she looked at me in absolute disgust. “It’s you.”
I picked up Mel’s discarded straw wrapper and threw it at Bridget. “I’m not dicking around, Bumble Bee. I think I fucked up.”
“I’ll say,” she snickered. “You hurt her feelings.”
“How?” I asked with barely restrained frustration. “I’m the one who turned her night around. She went out with some shithead obsessed with his own jizz. I was the one who came in clutch with a good time when she got home. ”
Bridget braced her hands against the bar and leaned forward. “I’m definitely going to regret asking this,” she mumbled before blowing a loose strand of hair out of her face and steeling herself. “Did you or did you not get, uh, intimate with each other last night?”
“Kinda?”
She raised an eyebrow. “It’s a yes or no question.”
I relented. “Fine. Yes. Things, uh… Progressed . We were both a little tipsy.”
Having handed over the information she wanted, Bridget returned my generosity with a downright lethal glare. “And while you were doing whatever it was y’all were doing, did she ask you to kiss her, and you said no?”
Guilt clogged my throat. “Yeah.”
She smacked her hands on the bar. “Why on God’s green earth would you do that? She thinks you’re repulsed by her or something!”
“You’re overreacting.”
Bridget growled. “She called it a pity orgasm after she asked you to kiss her, and you said no.”
I dropped my head into my hands. “It wasn’t like that.”
“To her, it was!”
Slamming my hands down, I looked up at my sister. “I didn’t want to kiss her when we were both drunk off our asses.”
“But you were sober enough to give her the—quote— best orgasm she’s ever had ?”
I paused. “She said that?”
“Verbatim.”
I smirked.
Bridget sighed. “Jase—what the hell? Why would you mess with her like that? There is literally no way for her to take that, other than poorly. ”
“I didn’t want to kiss her while we were drunk because she’d just had a bad date.” I wrapped my hands around the Gatorade bottle, taking my frustration out by strangling the plastic. “Christ. I wanna fucking remember it. I want her to remember it. I want it to mean something.”
Bridget's face softened. “You’re serious about her, aren’t you?”
I blew out a breath. “Her couch is hard as a rock. I feel like I’m ninety-fucking-seven years old every time I wake up on it. I’m bored as hell most of the day because she’s working or sleeping, and y’all all have lives. I turned down a job offer in Miami, and I told my realtor to get lost.”
Her eyebrows raised. “Shit.”
“I don’t want to scare her off, but I need to know if I have a chance,” I sputtered in frustration. “If she’s not interested, I need to move on.”
“You’ve waited a long time for her,” Bee said. “Don’t cut your losses just yet.” She bent down and pulled a crate of beer glasses out of the under-counter dishwasher. “But a word of advice?”
I was all ears.
“Mel isn’t the greatest at picking up hints. It’s best just to come right out and tell her what you want.”
I shook my head and pushed my hair out of my face. It was getting long—longer than I’d had been it in a while. But Mel had mentioned liking my floppy hair from back in the day, so I put off the trip to the barber.
“She’s perceptive.”
“Perceptive, yes.” Bridget sighed and gave me a slightly condescending pat on the hand. Like I was the one too dense to understand. “But she has it in her head that a happily ever after is just not in the cards for her.”
The fuck? I grabbed my Gatorade. “We’ll see about that.”
My truck bumped along cracked asphalt and gravel as I pulled through the gates of the airfield. For it being midsummer, I was surprised that it looked like a ghost town. Growing up, this place had been a second home to me. Hell, I spent more time here and at school than at my own home. It was for the best.
I pulled up next to the metal-sided hangar that housed the main office. A few of the smaller hangars had their doors rolled back as owners tinkered and toyed with their prop planes.
I was halfway to the office door when a voice, warbling with age, called out, “Can I help ya?”
I peeled off my sunglasses and stood frozen in awe.
Pops cocked his head and gave me a quizzical assessment. “Jase? That you, kid?” He was standing there with a wrench in hand. His grease-stained overalls covered a white undershirt that had seen better days. I’d put money on his Vietnam veteran hat being the same one he had worn twenty years ago.
His smile of disbelief matched my own. “Shoulda’ warned me there was an officer on the deck.” With a wrench still in his grasp, Pops raised his hand and saluted me.
I laughed and pulled the old man into a hug. “At ease, sailor.”
“What the hell are you doin’ here, kid?” He groaned as he slapped me on the back then steered me in the direction of one of the open hangars. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky. Waves of heat rippled off the black runway in a mirage. I was grateful for the shade.
“I, uh, I’m back. Resigned my commission.”
His jovial mood turned sour. “You hung up your wings?”
“Hell no.”
Pops smirked and plodded back to where a Cessna was being torn apart. “Good. You’re more at home in the sky than the birds are. I’ve never seen someone who loves flying more than you.”
“I figured it was time I stopped flying for God and Country and started flying for myself.”
“Well,” he huffed, pulling a blue handkerchief out of his back pocket and dabbing the beads of sweat on his forehead. “That’s good. That’s real good, Jase. I’m proud of you. And little Bumble Bee’s gettin’ married to that Kingsley fellow.” He shook his head and muttered something unintelligible. “You kids are all grown up.” He pointed a gnarled finger at the belly of the plane. “Wanna give me a hand with her annual?”
“Can’t believe you’re still out here doing this stuff,” I said as I knelt beneath the plane and popped off the jack covers. “I figured you would have learned to delegate by now.”
I knew that would never be the case. Pops lived and breathed this place. When I was a kid, he used to point to the patch of grass at the end of the runway and tell me that was where he was going to be buried.
Pops assisted me in getting the plane up on the jacks for the gear swing. The gear horn pounded my eardrums. I had gotten so used to flying state-of-the-art fighter jets in full gear that the deafening sound startled me when Pops started the landing gear tests.
He snickered like he knew just what he’d done. We went through the required checks on the wheels and brakes. Occasionally Pops would pull out a wrinkled notepad and scrawl down parts that needed to be ordered. The plane was in pretty good condition. Nothing too crazy, just some parts for the ailerons and a new air filter.
“Wanna take the ol’ biplane out for an engine run-up?”
“You serious?”
“As a heart attack.” He waved, beckoning me to follow him to the next hangar .
I peeled my t-shirt off my sweaty stomach and bent down to use the hem to wipe my brow. “Mel told me you still had that bucket of bolts, but I didn’t know she meant it was operational.”
Pops stopped dead in his tracks and looked over his shoulder. “Melissa Jacobsen.” He drew out each syllable like he was considering the weight of it. “Little Melly—I ran into her at the hospital a while back. Had a little health scare.” He shrugged. “Gettin’ old ain’t fun. But Melly—she’s grown into a pretty little thing, hasn’t she?”
I tried to hide my sheepish smile at the mention of her, but it was useless.
“Uh-huh,” Pops wagged a finger at me. “You’re still sweet on her, aren’t you?” He craned his head to the side. “No wedding band.”
“Never quite found the right one.”
“Or you found her a long time ago.”
I didn’t argue with him.
Pops started for the hangar door, but I beat him to it and rolled it back. The man had to be in his mid-eighties now. Most guys his age were spending their golden years relaxing, not running a twenty-four-hour a day airstrip. A job that required a lot of manual labor.
The doors rolled back, and Pops lumbered in to flip on the lights. The biplane sat there, majestic. She was a sexy yellow with red stripes down each side of the double wings. The paint gleamed like it was brand spanking new.
The biplane was Pops’ pride and joy. Back in the day, he would take her up as often as Mother Nature allowed.
Pops had been a Navy pilot back in his glory days. After Vietnam, he’d had enough of flying Broncos and settled in Beaufort. He was content filling his days with managing the airstrip, doing instructional flights, and showing off in the biplane doing aerobatics any chance he got.
“I remember going to the air shows at Cherry Point with you,” I said as I helped him hook the front of the plane to the hitch on his tractor. “You were cooler than the Blue Angels in this thing.”
He snickered as he climbed onto the seat of the tractor and towed the plane out of the hangar. I unlatched the hitch, and he pulled the tractor off to the side.
“If I’d known you were in town, I would’a gotten you on the docket for the air show.” He patted the side of the plane. “You could’a taken her up for me. Shown them whippersnappers how it’s done.”
He tossed me the keys. “What’d you retire at?”
“O-4.”
Pops laughed and shook his head. “Shoulda known you’d outrank me someday.” He ordered me to get up into the plane with a flourish of his hand. “She’s all yours, Cake Eater. Run her up for me. You can use the runway. No one’s coming in for a while.”
I climbed into the cockpit and slid the key into the ignition, flipping the controls and listening for the smooth build of the engine.
There was something about flying planes that didn’t have fly-by-wire and avionics. Just man and machine, working in tandem, defying the laws of gravity.
Part of me wanted to gun it down the runway instead of just running through the engine checks for the throttles. The itch I felt before takeoff danced through my fingers as I gripped the yolk then moved to push the throttle.
The engine whirred like a fucking wet dream.
Pops gave me the all-clear. The plane was good to go, and I could head back to the hangar.
But I didn’t want to get out .
I wanted to soar with the birds, cutting through the clouds. Limitless.
I looked over my shoulder at the empty seat behind me. Mel would fucking love it up there. She’d be laughing the whole time—that deep throaty laugh that always turned my stomach inside out. Her smile would be as wide as her eyes as we soared. For a few seconds, I could make her fly and feel the way I felt about her.
“You’ve got that look in your eye,” Pops said when I climbed out of the plane and headed back into the hangar.
“I didn’t realize how much I missed it,” I admitted as I handed the keys over. “It hasn’t been that long.”
I followed him over to the corner where metal John Deere posters hung on the wall. There was a mini-fridge tucked in the corner beside fold-out chairs that had seen better days.
We settled down into the seats, and he reached in the fridge, handing me a glass bottle of Coke. I grabbed the bottle opener off the top of the fridge and popped the top.
I was thankful for something cold to drink. The heat was insane. My stitches had healed, and it made me think that a drive out to the beach was on the itinerary for the day. Especially since Mel was probably going to do her best to avoid me.
“So, what’s next in the life of Lieutenant Commander Jason McGrath?” Pops asked as he pulled his Vietnam hat off his head and rested it on his knee. He took a long pull from his Coke. “Don’t tell me you’re gonna be a skirt-chasin’ commercial sell-out.”
“Nah,” I chuckled. “Flying commercial isn’t my style.”
“That’s what I like about you, kid,” he grunted. “It wasn’t about the glory for you. It was for the love of flying.”
“I had a job offer flying private out of Miami, but I turned it down. I still have another offer on the table, but I think I’m gonna stick around for a bit. ”
The radio squawked, static blasting through. “MRH, this is G550 requesting permission to land. Northbound approach.”
Pops mashed the button. “Yeah, yeah. Quit your yabbering and come on in. Runway’s clear.”
Yeah, that was definitely appropriate radio communication.
The pilot came back on. “Two-one Charlie.”
Pops shook his head. “That Lawson fellow keeps me in business. I woulda’ shut this place down if it wasn’t for him housing his plane here.”
“Lawson, like Isaac Lawson?”
He nodded. “Yeah, that was his pilot calling in to land just now. You know him?”
“Isaac Lawson is engaged to Hannah Jane Hayes. She’s friends with Mel, Bee, and Maddie Dorsey. Er… DeRossi.”
“He’s a fancy one in all them suits. Not my style.”
“Not mine either.”
We sat there for a while in companionable silence. Isaac’s Gulfstream touched down with a buttery soft landing. Not a minute later, a shiny black car rolled through the airstrip gates. Pops and I watched as Hannah Jane got out of the car and met Isaac as he descended the clamshell stairs. The two of them climbed into the car and headed out.
I drained the last of my Coke and set the bottle in the recycling bin. “I appreciate you letting me bother you for a bit,” I said as I rose to my feet. “Felt good to touch an aircraft again.”
He laughed, but it turned into a harrumphing cough. “Don’t be a stranger. I, uh, I could use a hand or two around this place.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Oh yeah?”
“Nothin’ too big. Just makin’ sure things don’t fall to pieces. I do a little maintenance here and there. Don’t do instruction no more.” He looked glum. “My hands won’t let me fly.” He held one out to show me. His palm shook back and forth. “Now, if a youngin’ like you wanted to start teaching, I’ve got a plane or two for you to take up.”
Youngin’. I shook my head and laughed. “I’m almost forty.”
“Eh,” he sneered and waved it off. “Forty ain’t old, and you ain’t even there yet. Eighty-eight—now that’s old.” He blew his nose into his handkerchief and stuffed it in his pocket. “You got a place around here?”
“No, sir. I’m crashing on Mel’s couch for now.”
He pointed around the corner to the office. I knew there was an apartment above it. I’d been up there a few times. Nothing fancy. Just a one bed, bath, and kitchen. “The loft is open. I won’t even charge ya rent.” He gave me a knowing wink. “It’s big enough for two.”