He gave Barbara another sunshine smile, and it was not until then that she realized a double meaning could be read into her reply.
Is my subconscious thinking for me? She was in love, she knew. With flying. But how about her handsome, blond instructor who had bathed the dark hangar in sunshine when she first laid eyes on him, and still seemed to project that aura?
That night in Gail's room, she told her best friend all about her fantastic first flying lesson, and the instructor who gave it to her.
"I know him," Gail said with a wistful smile. "Paul Riordan's one of a kind."
Barbara thought her friend meant that in the best possible way. Paul was a good guy. A nice guy. A very special young man. And she agreed.
She wondered how well her best friend knew him. But since Gail didn't say anything more about him, Barbara didn't think they were especially close. Certainly Paul and Gail were not lovers. She hoped to heaven they weren't.
Paul Riordan sure is 'one of a kind,' Barbara thought, at home in bed that night. She was unable to fall asleep because of remembering the exciting ride in the Piper Cub, and how nice her flight instructor had been to her.
She decided she had never met a young man as genuinely nice, or as exiting, in his own sweet, casual, uncomplicated, unthreatening, 'sunshine' way. He didn't seem to have boy-girl thoughts on his mind at all; just flying. She even wished he had.
A sudden feeling of hunger overcame Barbara. She leaped out of bed and raided the kitchen ice box, then sat at the table devouring a leg of cold chicken and some cheese. She couldn't understand it, wolfing down the leftovers and looking for more, because she had never before felt hungry before bedtime.
It was an autumn night and cool in her room when Barbara finished eating and was back in bed. She fell asleep in the warmth of remembering the aura of sunlight that had emanated from Paul Riordan, and that had put such a glow inside her.