I still couldn’t figure out why my parents had let her move back in. No one had said anything about why Angie and Greg had ‘taken a break.’ More importantly, it was a mystery to me why Greg stayed in their apartment and still had the kids. My mind went places it probably shouldn’t in that regard.
“Don’t you even care why I’m upset?” Angie asked when I ignored her.
I filled Duke’s water bowl and put it down for him. The idiot sloshed out about half of its contents when he dove in. I grabbed a towel and began cleaning up as he lapped up the bowl’s contents.
“Greg …” Angie started.
“Zip it. I don’t want to know.”
She glared at me as I walked out the back door, tossing the towel on the washing machine. I was content to leave that drama to others and go take a nice, cleansing shower in my apartment.
◊◊◊
I came out of the bathroom to find Cassidy sitting on my bed.
“Your dad said you had to take me to breakfast,” she said to explain her presence.
It sounded like Angie was acting up, and my parents wanted me out of the house while they dealt with it.
“And you couldn’t have waited in the living room?” I asked.
“Please. I’ve seen it before.”
I just dropped my towel. If Cassidy was going to perv on me, I might as well give her the full show.
“Oops,” I said as I pulled my underwear out of the drawer and somehow dropped them next to my towel.
I didn’t bend my knees to pick them up. I glanced back, and Cassidy’s eyes appeared glued to my butt. She was being a naughty girl. I took my time getting dressed.
“Happy?” I asked.
She smiled and nodded and then frowned at me.
“When were you going to tell me that we’re flying to visit Brook?” Cassidy asked.
“I’m not going to see Brook. I’m taking Darius and his mom to meet Grace and talk about his drones.”
Then Cassidy brightened.
“You didn’t say anything because you wanted to surprise Brook and were afraid I would tell her,” she correctly guessed. Then she scowled again. “You can trust me with secrets.”
“I was thinking about you, not Brook.”
“This will be good,” Cassidy predicted.
“I didn’t want to put you in a situation where you had to keep a secret from your best friend. Friends shouldn’t have to do that.”
“Wolf is right; you’ve been reading too many women’s magazines.”
Wolf just earned himself a nut shot when I went to baseball today.
“It’s still true.”
“I didn’t say it wasn’t true; I said you’re a wuss,” Cassidy clarified.
Her misspent youth hanging out with Marines was coming through this morning.
“I’m trying not to prove you right by saying that you would have shared with Brook that I was coming.”
“Ah, ha! I knew it! You’re going to spy on Brook and her new boyfriend,” Cassidy said, proud of her powers of deduction, and then she scowled once again.
“Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you keep saying ‘I’ and not ‘we.’ You can forget about not taking me because I want to see what this douchebag looks like, too.”
I hadn’t expected that. I would have bet that Cassidy was on Team Brook. It was good to know she really was on Team David on this one.
“Okay, then. Let’s go eat.”
◊◊◊
Our trip to Cincinnati had another hiccup. Scarlet had arranged for our rental plane, and I thought we were all set. That was until I got a call from Roy Tyro.
“David, I understand you’re flying a group down to Cincinnati. How many people are going?”
“Five, including me.”
“I’m told this is an overnight trip, so I guess you’re taking bags.”
“That’s right.”
“Your PA arranged to rent a Beech Bonanza V35B, the V-tail model. Do you know what pilots call that airplane?”
“Uh, no.”
“The ‘forked-tail doctor-killer.’ The Bonanza is slick, fast, and relatively inexpensive for its performance. So doctors, who tend to have more money than flying experience, like to fly them, but they don’t have the skills to match the performance.”
I began to see where he was going with this.
“Don’t get me wrong, the Bonanza’s a great little airplane, and I really encourage you to get acquainted with it. But it’s probably not the best idea for you to make that acquaintance with a full load of passengers and bags. It’s an entirely different animal from the flying club’s trainers with their fixed landing gear and fixed-pitch propellers. The Bonanza has retractable landing gear and a variable-pitch propeller.
“And I don’t believe you’ve flown with a full load. Flying with a full load is like loading up your Dodge Demon with all the seats filled and a trunk full of sandbags. On ice. You won’t build speed or altitude as fast as you’re used to, your takeoff and landing rolls will be much longer, and you’ll feel like you’re wallowing in turns.”
“Okay, Roy, you’ve convinced me. What are my options?”
“For this trip, I suggest you take a more forgiving and less complex aircraft, like the Piper Saratoga. It’s more like the planes you’ve been flying. Well, to be honest, it’s more like a flying minivan. Do you remember how to calculate weight and balance?”
“I think I do. Do you mind if I send you my calculations to check over?”
