"Do you want me to talk to him about time off or cutting out the deliveries?"
He jerked around. "No!"
J.T. set down the jug on the Astroturf covering concrete. "Did he let you go and you don't want to tell me?"
"I'd just like to find something else."
The reasons made sense, but something didn't ring true in his tone. Bottom line, though, he couldn't make his son stay with the job. Chris could just screw up and get fired if he wanted out that much. "Fine. I can't argue with a kid who wants to study more. But I do expect you to find something else once school's out. You're not going to lie around here all summer while your mother and I are at work."
Chris dropped onto his back on the weight bench, feet to the side on the ground. "Is this about the stuff in the trash again?"
"Partly." J.T. stepped in place to spot for his son. "I understand you feel that you can't betray a friend's confidence. But be careful. If this girl's boyfriend starts gunning for you—"
"He won't."
"Are you sure, because—"
"He won't."
O-kay. He wasn't getting any more out of Chris on that one. Although he almost hoped the angry-boyfriend scenario was true, because then there wouldn't be unanswered questions. One angry teen was a helluva lot easier to deal with than original concerns about a gang. Or that something might have leaked about his surveillance flights.
J.T. stared down at his son on the bench. "You owe your mother an apology for what you said the other night. You hurt her."
So did you, his son's eyes accused silently. "I'll tell her I'm sorry."
Chris hefted the weight bar off and closed his eyes. Concentration or avoidance? Either way, the shutout was obvious.
Two sets of ten later, Chris replaced the bar, ducked around it and sat up. "No sweat about the summer job, Dad. I got a line on something at the squadron pool party. Spike told me he heard they were looking for lifeguards at the base pool. He said he thought I had a good shot at getting a slot."
"Ah, now I get it." J.T. sat beside his son. "Bathing suits."
A sheepish grin twitched across Chris's face, just like the time J.T. had caught him flushing Legos down the toilet.
He hadn't thought much about Chris and swimming, or that his son might have different sport preferences than his own interest in football and wrestling. But since Spike had once been a professional diver during his stint with the CIA, if the guy thought Chris could handle lifeguarding, then it must be so. "Not a bad way to spend the summer and earn money. Sure a helluva lot more fun than the way I spent my summers as a teenager. I'm lucky now to be doing something I enjoy."
Chris picked up his water bottle, rolled it between his palms. "Why did you go into the Air Force?"
"Where I grew up, it was either join the military or work in the steel mill. In my family, when we turned eighteen, we had to head out and earn a living. No hanging around to 'find yourself.' Six picked the mill. Three of us enlisted."
"But why did you enlist instead of doing what your other brothers did?"
"You're going to college."
"I know. But why did you decide to join up?"
"If you're thinking about the military, you need to know this isn't an easy job." J.T. scratched a hand up his tank top along his ribs where a phantom ache twitched. His eyes gravitated to his tome of Shakespeare's plays, currently tucked sideways between his ratchet set and buzz saw. "Be sure you're called."
"Were you called?"
"Not at first."
"Huh?" Chris's jaw slacked. "No way. I thought you lived for this stuff."
"I do. Now." Or God knows he would have never pulled his family through the moves and stress. "Back then, I just wanted out of that town. I joined for the GI Bill, planned to get a degree, thought after that I'd work in some office. Hell, I'd run the whole damn steel mill."
"So why aren't you?"
"Because once the airplane took off, I heard the call." He could still feel the rush of that first training flight, the lift, the sense of purpose, the chance to make things happen and not just have things happen to him. "After that, I decided I didn't want to get out for the four years it would have taken me to get a degree. Why should I anyway? I was doing exactly what. I wanted."