Getting Schooled (The Wright Brothers #1)(32)

“Really?” Reese asked, sounding genuinely shocked. “But you’re obviously sma—I mean, you don’t seem completely stupid. Why wouldn’t you want to go to school?”

“Did you almost give me a compliment just then?!”

She laughed, then pretended to wipe sweat from her brow. “Almost did. That was a close one, wasn’t it?”

“It really was,” I chuckled. “But yeah, as far as school, I just didn’t really know what I wanted to do. Seemed like a waste of time. If I’d stayed home, Dad would have put me to work at the dealership—”

“The dealership?”

“Yeah, J&P. My father is the owner.”

Her eyes nearly bugged out of her head before she quickly schooled her features into a neutral expression. “Interesting.”

“Interesting?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. “How so?”

“No reason.”

“Reese…”

“It’s nothing, really. Just… your father is a really nice, handsome, charming guy. Nothing like you, at all. I never would have thought you were related. Not even a little. At all.”

“Daaaamn,” I laughed. “For your information, I take after my mother. Do you wanna hear the story or not?”

“Sorry. Continue.”

“Thank you. I didn’t want to work at the dealership, so army it was. I learned a lot, saw a lot, saved up some money, sent some home to help my family. No regrets.”

“So you enjoyed it?”

I scoffed. “I loved it. Traveled places I never would have imagined, doing something I loved – working with machines. I can build, or fix, an engine for anything. Mechanics are vital in the military, especially in a war zone, limited resources. Definitely got my fill of danger.”

Reese’s eyes went wide. “I bet. So why’d you leave? Because of your leg?”

Her voice softened over that question. I didn’t get the impression that she felt bad for asking, but that she thought it may be a touchy subject for me. And in a way, it was, but her approach wasn’t bothersome at all to me.

“Yeah,” I nodded, relaxing back into my chair. “I had my dream assignment – helicopter repair. Bad-ass Apaches. So, I’m over there, me and my team have to do a retrieval of a broken bird, because if it’s still possibly functional, we can’t just leave it there to get used against us. We find it. Fix it. Get it up in the air to fly back, and suddenly we’re not alone anymore. Um… long story short, there was enemy fire, and then there was a crash. I’m blessed that half of a leg is all I lost. Everybody on the assignment wasn’t as lucky.”

“That’s terrifying,” she said quietly, shaking her head. “You still think about it a lot? Nightmares? Trouble sleeping?”

“What, like from the crash, and the combat?” – she nodded – “Nah, not really. I guess I got lucky with that too, because I don’t have nightmares, I’m not scared of loud noises… no triggers, nothing like that. I know that’s not the case for everybody that goes through something traumatic, but I’m just happy to be alive.”

Again, she nodded. “I get that. And, you found something you like, that can turn into a career. I saw that you’re pursuing mechanical engineering. And almost done.”

“So you’ve been scoping me out, huh?”

She wrinkled her nose. “No…yes.” She laughed. “I’m a big girl, I can admit my curiosity. Wondering how you can write so eloquently, and have these views that aren’t steeped in patriarchy, and yet be… you.”

We both laughed at that, and I shook my head. “Like I said earlier, I’m just speaking my mind. I’m supposed to give an opinion, so I did. But growing up, my mother wasn’t having all of that “a woman’s place” this, and “get you a white girl” that. Not to say that my father was on that, but my mother was the one who drilled it in us. The value of our blackness, the value of a black woman as a person, and a partner, not how much sex she does or doesn’t have, or if she can cook, all of that. Just stuff that oughta be common sense. And we stayed at Tones & Tomes. Every Saturday morning.”

“It was Sunday afternoons for me,” Reese said, smiling. “Me, my mother, my best friend, and her mother. Our weekly “girl’s day”.”

“See there? My worldview sparked from the same place yours did. A mama who didn’t take any shit.”

She nodded. “Indeed.”

There was silence for a few moments before I leaned forward again, and asked, “What about you?”

Reese lifted an eyebrow. “What about me?”

“What’s your story? I gave you my condensed autobiography, I want to hear yours too.”

She cringed. “Oh. Um… I don’t really have one.”

“Bullshit. Stop stalling.”

Shaking her head, she laughed, then leaned forward over the desk too, propping her elbows on the dark surface and resting her chin on her hands. “Um… Only child. Parents divorced when I was fourteen. My father was a jazz musician. “The Reggie Alston Band.” A big dreamer, and a creative, and he instilled that in me. Academics came from mama. But anyway… um, when I was twenty years old, he died. And it broke my heart, because I loved my daddy, I still needed my daddy.”