Dalton
Langley AFB
It’s a little surreal seeing my dad in uniform on an Air Force base.
Langley’s all gray concrete, jet fuel, and edge-of-your-seat adrenaline.
It’s sharp salutes, call signs, and competition disguised as camaraderie.
He’s Army fatigue and thirty-plus years of grit.
But he walks beside me like he belongs, hands behind his back, soaking it all in with a sharp eye and the calm of someone who’s seen a hell of a lot more than just the inside of a TOC.
“I’m proud of you,” he says, nodding to a pair of Raptors glinting on the tarmac in the late afternoon sun. “But I still think you guys look like you’re riding bottle rockets.”
“They handle better than they look,” I say, grinning.
He huffs. “You looked good up there.”
I can’t help but smile. My dad got here in time to see our practice flight.
I lead him through the flight line, past the hangars and over to the squadron building. A few guys are out front tossing a football. It’s a typical day—high tempo, but relaxed enough after hours.
“Your crew in there?” he asks.
“They are, come meet them.”
I nod at a few of the guys as we pass through the double doors. “Ghost,” one of the crew chiefs says as we head down the hallway.
“Hey, Sarge,” I say, then knock twice on the door to our ready room before pushing it open. It’s not huge, four desks, a couch that should’ve been thrown out years ago, a rack of lockers in the back, and the steady scent of coffee. But it’s ours.
Inside, the rest of my flight is mid conversation. Porter’s perched on the desk, hands flying as he reenacts a dogfight. Owen’s half listening while he flips a pen in his hand, feet up on the desk in front of him. Cassidy is sitting backward in a chair, looking at something on his phone.
They all pause when I walk in.
“Hey,” I say, stepping aside. “This is my dad. Command Sergeant Major Carson Everett. Dad, meet Midas, Titan, and Riot.”
There’s a beat, then they’re all on their feet.
Owen stands and gives a sheepish nod. “Sir.”
“Don’t call me sir,” Dad says. “I work for a living.”
They laugh.
Major Cassidy crosses the room, hand extended. “Hell of a grip there,” he says after they shake. “You train this guy to fly, too?”
“Nah,” Dad says. “He figured that part out on his own. I just made sure he didn’t fall apart before he got the chance.” There’s something in his tone, pride, maybe. I feel it more than I hear it.
“He’s solid,” Porter says. “Fast hands. Good instincts. Quiet in the cockpit, which is how you know he’s in the zone.”
“Too quiet,” Owen mutters. “Creeps me out sometimes.”
Dad chuckles. “He’s always been like that. Used to build model jets in the garage in dead silence. You’d think he was plotting the next war.”
I roll my eyes. “I was six.”
“Exactly.”
The guys relax fast after that. There’s something about Dad, they can tell he’s been around.
That he’s not impressed by swagger but respects competence.
He takes a seat on the beat-up couch while we bullshit for a few minutes, the way all pilots do when there’s downtime and adrenaline still bleeding out of our systems.
“You’ve got a good team,” he says, looking between all of us.
“We do. Different backgrounds, different strengths. But when we fly together, it clicks.” Cassidy says.
He nods. “Trust comes fast when you don’t have a choice.”
We sit in that truth for a moment. He knows what it’s like better than most. Cassidy stands and we all follow suit.
When we get to the door, my dad tips his chin at me, smirk fully in place. “So. You boys met Noa yet?”
“No,” Owen says, already grinning. “He’s been hiding her from us. Probably thinks we’ll embarrass him or some shit.”
“Or she’s made-up,” Cassidy adds with mock seriousness.
“She’s real,” I mutter, shaking my head.
“Sure she is,” Porter says, grinning. “That why we’ve never met her?”
“She doesn’t love this life,” I say.
Dad raises a brow. “Then she picked the wrong guy.”
I ignore that. Mostly because it’s true.
We make it to the stairwell, and as the guys break off toward the locker rooms, Dad hangs back with me. The hangar door is open, wind sweeping in. A maintenance crew is buttoning up a jet on the ramp. The canopy glints once, like a wink.
“What’s going on with Noa? Last you told me things were good,” Dad asks.
I grab the back of my neck and look up at the ceiling before making eye contact with him again. “She doesn’t love what I do for a living.”
“Doesn’t love flying?”
“Doesn’t love what comes with it. The risk. The not-knowing. The silence when I’m deployed. The jets overhead that remind her I might not come back.”
He hums low, like he’s heard that tune before. “Sounds like Mom,” he says after a beat. “She used to flinch every time the phone rang past midnight. Never said anything, but I knew.”
I glance at him. “How’d you handle that?”
He gives me a look that says I should already know the answer. “I didn’t. Not well, anyway. She left.”
That lands between us like a weight.
“Noa’s not unsupportive,” I say quietly. “Just...scared.”
“She’s allowed to be scared,” he says. “But you can’t build a life with someone who wants to put a lid on the parts of you that don’t fit their picture. You start folding yourself down to make it easier for them, eventually you disappear.”
I nod, not trusting myself to answer.
“Has she been out to visit?”
I shake my head. “She doesn’t want to see my life here.”
He exhales hard through his nose. “Then she doesn’t really see you. Not the whole you.”
I don’t say anything. Because I’ve thought the same thing.
“She just wasn’t built for this life,” I say after a while. “She grew up in the same town her whole life. Her dad’s a pastor. They still eat dinner together every Sunday. The Air Force doesn’t fit in that world.”
“No,” he agrees. “But maybe her world doesn’t fit you anymore either.”
We stand in silence for a minute, watching the crew finish their work. The sun catches the tail flash of the jet and turns it gold.
He claps a hand on my shoulder. “Come on. Let’s get out of here. Buy me a shitty burger and lie about how you’re the best pilot in your flight.”
I smirk. “I don’t have to lie about that.”
“Oh hell. You really are Air Force.”