Such a Rush

by Jennifer Echols

  Spring break was for students like me, not unemployed waitresses like her. I wondered whether she still qualified as an unemployed waitress. She’d gone so long without working that at some point she’d stopped being an unemployed waitress and became just plain unemployed.

  I put my hands on my hips. “How far behind are you on rent?”

  “That’s not why we’re moving,” she snapped. “Roger’s cousin says—”

  “That’s why we moved from Golden to Equality,” I said. “That’s why we lived in every shithole in Equality at least twice. That’s why we moved from Equality to the Army base, and from the Army base to the Air Force base, and from there to Heaven Beach.”

  “That is not why we moved here,” my mother yelled back at me. “Billy told me he was going to get a job for me. He didn’t do it, but that’s what he told me.”

  Grayson was speaking soothingly in my ear. I didn’t care what he said. I wasn’t done.

  “That’s right,” I shouted. “At least half those times, your boyfriend’s brother’s boss’s cell mate thought he might be able to get your boyfriend on at the bullet factory. And y’all broke up fifteen minutes after we moved. But it took me longer than fifteen minutes to adjust, Mama. Moving doesn’t fix everything for me like it does for you. I’m graduating from high school in six weeks and I’m not moving again!”

  “—wouldn’t be moving at all if it wasn’t for you!” My mom was yelling back at me now. “We can’t pay the rent with what you make. If you would work more hours, we’d be fine.” She turned to Grayson. “Aren’t y’all back together? Isn’t she working for you now? Can’t you give her more hours?”

  Grayson and Alec and Molly all must have been doing the math in their heads. They knew I’d been lying to my mom, holding out on her. They knew I was working every hour I could at the airport office. But I needed so much money to keep flying. There was no way I would let that go now.

  And I was absolutely horrified that my mom was exposing herself as exactly the bad mother Molly had implied she was that night at her parents’ café, in front of Alec and Grayson. Molly had been right, and I was wrong.

  I shouted, “I’m in school, Mama. You want me to get a second job working third shift when I’m still in high school? That’s not fair when you’re not working at all!”

  “It’s not fair I pay the rent when I don’t even stay there!” She turned and headed for the hangar door, pushing Roger ahead of her. In the doorway she called back over her shoulder, “We’re leaving for Savannah in a minute, and you can come or not.” She slammed the door behind her. The noise echoed like a Chinook around the metal walls.

  Grayson’s arm slid from around my shoulders. That’s when I realized he’d had his arm around me the whole time—but not anymore. He was firing questions at me, and so were Molly and Alec, stupid shit that rich people would ask, and I kept saying, “I don’t know. I don’t know.” I was puzzling through what was about to happen. “I think in the next few days I’m going to get evicted.” I hadn’t gotten the telltale business-size envelope in the mail, but maybe my mom had been staving off the landlord by phone. Until now.

  “How is that possible?” Grayson demanded. “And why does she think I’m your boyfriend?”

  “And why did you want her to think he’s still your boyfriend?” Alec added.

  I looked to Molly for help, but she watched me with her eyes wide, just as curious as the boys were.

  “I’ve been telling her for a long time that Grayson was my boyfriend.” After I’d said this, I realized it didn’t explain anything, and in fact made the whole situation sound worse.

  I said, “So, I’m going to follow my mom and make sure she doesn’t take the refrigerator. Or the air conditioner.” I walked out the hangar door.

  I was thinking so hard that I didn’t realize I’d walked the entire length of the airport until the pit bull cussed me out. Through the trees and across the gravel road, Roger was sitting in the Trans-Am with the motor running. The door of the trailer was wide open like a crime scene.

  My mom had checked the mail for once. On the kitchen counter was a pile of junk mail and a business-size envelope. I unfolded the eviction notice and read it. Even after we moved out, we would owe all of the back rent, or we would be reported to a collection agency.

  I found my mom pawing through her closet, stuffing clothes in a garbage bag. “We have two weeks before we’re evicted,” I said dryly. “Why are y’all in such a hurry?”

  “His cousin in Savannah is having a party in a couple of hours.” Her head was inside the closet, her voice muffled by the clothes. “Sure you don’t want to come with us?”

  “No, I want to stay here and finish high school.”

  “You could just get your GED,” she said.

  “Mama!” I yelled at her. “That doesn’t make any sense!” She straightened then and put her hand on my shoulder. “Baby, if you want to stay here by yourself, that’s fine with me. You’re eighteen years old, and you’ll be fine. Grayson is such a hunk! You did good on that one, much better than Mark. I didn’t trust Mark.”

  The obvious question, Then why did you invite him to move in with me?, only tickled the edges of my brain. I might ask this if I could use logic to persuade my mom of something. I might be indignant or outraged if these emotions would have an effect on her. But I didn’t bother. For all she cared, she was standing in a trailer by herself.

  “Just ask Grayson to give you more hours,” she was saying. “Or move in with him if you need to. Come here, girl. I’ll miss you.” She set her garbage bag on the bed and pulled me into a hug.

  The Admiral’s Beechcraft swooped low overhead, engine growling, coming in for a landing. She pulled away from me and looked up at the stained ceiling of the trailer, like she could see through it to the little white plane grazing the treetops. “I won’t miss those fucking airplanes, though,” she shouted. “I don’t see how you and your boyfriend stand working over there.”

  I followed her to the doorway and watched her from the cement-block steps as she and Roger drove away. I blinked against the hot cloud of dust.

  And continued to stand there in the doorway. I couldn’t go out. Where would I go? I couldn’t go in. That would mean the trailer was mine. I stood there for a long time, listening to the pit bull, with the expensive air-conditioning seeping out around me, the life leaving me as well. I hadn’t felt like this since I heard through the grapevine at the airport that the Admiral had found Mr. Hall’s body.

  I stood there so long that the pit bull got tired and, with a final whine, lay down.

  The trailer park was so quiet that I could hear someone’s TV several trailers over, and cars swishing by out on the highway.

  Then the pit bull jumped up and barked ferociously again, and Grayson appeared through the palm trees.

  His shades glinted in the late-afternoon sun as he crossed the dirt yard without hesitation and climbed right up the cement-block steps. He stood in front of me on the top step, looking down at me, perspiration darkening the blond curls that peeked from underneath his cowboy hat. He said sternly, “We have to talk. Let me in.”

  “No.”

  He sighed impatiently, his hand making a fist and releasing. “Okay, Leah. Why won’t you let me in your house?”

  “Because it’s not a house,” I snapped. “It’s a trailer.”

  “It’s temporary.” His voice was soothing as he stepped closer to me. I looked way up at him, but all I saw was my reflection.

  “Eighteen years isn’t temporary.” I meant to say this sarcastically, but it came out hoarse, and I found myself backing through the open doorway as he leaned even closer.

  “It’s temporary from now on.” He took another step forward, forcing me to take another step inside. “Let me in, Leah.”

  “Why? So you can search for beer again? There isn’t any. If there had been, my mom would have taken it. That’s probably the first thing she checked.”

  “No,” he said.
“This is important.”

  “Let me guess.” I tried to sound cocky, but my heartbeat sped along and I sounded breathless as I said, “You’ve come to tell me that my fake relationship with you has screwed up my fake relationship with Alec, and I should keep my hands off you from now on. Well, sorry, but my mother is headed to Savannah and she’s not coming back to check on me, much less pitch a fit at the airport because I forged her name years ago. You can’t order me around anymore. I never would have helped you in the first place if I’d known you were trying to control Alec’s life. He told me about the Citadel and the military. What you’re doing is wrong. Our agreement is off.”

  “I don’t care what you think.” Grayson took another step toward me. We were both inside the trailer now. He kicked the door closed with a flimsy metal crash and kept walking toward me. I kept backing up until I felt the hard kitchen counter behind me.

  “I just want to know where Alec went,” Grayson said.

  “Now?”

  “Tonight. Are you two going out? I went in the office to write your check and cash it. When I came out, he and Molly were both gone, and he’s not answering his cell.”

  “He said he was going out with his recruiter.”

  “His recruiter!” Grayson ripped off his shades and his hat, tossed them both on the counter, and ran his fingers back through his damp curls. “Goddamn it, Leah. Why didn’t you stop him?”

  “Because I’m not your brother’s keeper!” I exclaimed. “He said he was going out with his recruiter, Grayson. He didn’t say he was signing up for a six-year stint tonight. And I did tell him what a bad idea I thought that would be.”

  Grayson shook his head at me, jaw set, nostrils flared, eyes hard, like this was all my fault. “There are two possibilities, and both of them are awful. The first is that he’s lying to you. He doesn’t want to spend time with you, and he’s made an excuse so he won’t have to go out with you again. Maybe he even has a date with somebody else, like a girl we went to middle school with that he ran into at that party.”

  “Why is that so awful? I don’t like him romantically either.”

  “It’s your job to make him like you, Leah. Have you completely forgotten about that?”

  “Not anymore,” I protested, “because I—”

  He put his hands on either side of me on the counter, leaning close and boxing me in. He interrupted, “The other possibility is that he wasn’t lying. He really is meeting his recruiter. On a Thursday night on spring break in Heaven Beach. Which means they’ve gotten to be buddies. The recruiter will pal around with him to draw him in, and the next thing you know, Alec has signed his life away. Alec can do that, you know, anytime he wants to!”

  “Yes, I know!” I was so exasperated with Grayson. I wished he could hear himself. “It’s his life and his decision, and it’s none of your business!”

  “How dare you say that,” Grayson said. It was such a funny-sounding, old-fashioned response. Maybe that’s why it rang so true and sent a shiver down my spine. “You have no idea,” he said. “None. How many brothers do you have?”

  I swallowed. “None.”

  “How many dead brothers do you have?”

  I squinted to keep from tearing up, then put my hands up on his shoulders, lightly, tentatively. “Grayson. Just because he joins the military doesn’t mean he’s going to die. The Admiral spent his entire career in the Navy, probably the first twenty years of that flying, and he never got wounded. Your dad never got wounded.”

  My words slowed to a halt as I heard how ridiculous they sounded. Grayson didn’t need multiple friends and family members to die to make him fear for Alec’s life. Jake was enough.

  I’d realized this and I didn’t need Grayson’s lecture, but he was so upset that I let him give it to me anyway. “Alec’s already a pilot, Leah.”

  “Okay.”

  “The second he graduates from college, they’re going to send him to flight school. Hell, if he signs up for the reserves and there’s a military emergency, they’ll pluck him out of college and send him to flight school. It could happen this summer, Leah. It could happen in June. He’ll be number one on that flight line. You’re thinking that maybe he’ll dodge a bullet, literally. I’m thinking that flying an airplane while people are shooting at you is never a good idea. In June he could be dead.”

  “I told him what I thought.” I patted Grayson’s shoulders once more and moved my hands together to his chest, placing my fingers gently on his neck. “You told him what you thought. I don’t know where he went, and that’s all we can do right now.”

  His hard gray eyes started to soften, and his body moved in, caging me more tightly against the countertop. “To answer your question, yeah, you screwed up your fake relationship with Alec today. Why did you tell your mom that you were dating me instead of him?”

  I knew what was coming. My heart beat faster in anticipation, as if a plane were rounding from the taxiway to the runway and revving its engines, readying for takeoff.

  “That started a long time ago,” I admitted. “I didn’t want to give her all my money. I told her that part of the time I was at the airport, I was actually spending time with my boyfriend, not working.”

  He put his hand up to my cheek. The broad pad of his thumb stroked across my lips. The engine revved so high that the roar filled my ears. “And why was I the boyfriend you picked?”

  “It’s easier to remember your lies if they’re close to the truth,” I whispered. “Wishful thinking.”

  He kissed me. So softly, gently, slowly.

  I heard my own gasp, felt myself warming, sensed the trailer going darker around him as he leaned in until his forehead touched mine. He had backed me against the counter. I had no way to escape him, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to anymore.

  His voice sent shivers up my arms and his lips brushed my cheek as he spoke. “If I remember right, last night when we were interrupted at the beach, you had this hand here.” He found my hand pushing weakly against his T-shirt and placed it on his hip. “And this hand here.” He pulled my other hand to his other hip and slid my fingers into his waistband. “Then I did this.” He moved one arm around my shoulders. “And I wanted to do this.” His other hand moved down to my hip, the warmth of his palm soaking through the thin material of my shorts.

  He pressed his lips to mine and paused. Maybe he was waiting to see whether I would push him away. Maybe, like me, he savored that precarious moment perched at the top of a climb. We could have fallen backward to Earth, pretending we’d been teasing each other and it was all a mean-spirited joke. Or we could have continued forward and pitched over into a weightless and euphoric free fall. In that moment of decision, his warm hands on my skin and the cold air around me confused my body. Electricity surged through my middle. The only sounds were the low hum of the refrigerator and Grayson sighing sexily.

  I shifted my hand in his waistband, shoving my fingers farther down and flattening my palm against his bare skin.

  That was it: we went over. He kissed me hard on the mouth, my stomach was gone, and we sped toward the ground. I stopped thinking. Nothing was left but the rush, the high, the sensations of his tongue in my mouth and his body underneath my hands.

  After we had kissed like this for a long time, he scooped me up and sat me on the counter. I didn’t protest, didn’t even consider resisting when he slid his hands between my legs.

  I wasn’t expecting much. I let him touch me there because he wanted to. The boy who’d taken my virginity had touched me there too. But he’d been satisfying his own curiosity. Grayson was satisfying me. He watched my eyes and kissed my neck as he explored. Long minutes later when we rested with our foreheads together, panting into each other’s mouths, he reached behind me and untied both strings of my bikini top.

  We were back to the place with each other where we’d been at the beach. I wanted him desperately, but nothing would make me go through with this if I couldn’t handle the consequences later. I nudged his
blond curls aside with my nose and whispered in his ear, “Do you have a condom?”

  “I do,” he whispered back, his voice a sexy grind. But the mood cooled now that we needed to think. He fished his wallet from his pocket, placed it beside my thigh on the counter, and peered into the various compartments. “I thought I did.” He removed a crumpled receipt. “Oh God, please.”

  I watched his long fingers search his wallet and slide inside to check for hidden condoms. Then I watched his face. He bit his lip, so concerned that he wouldn’t find this condom and we wouldn’t get this experience together after all. So eager and hot for me. I’d crushed on him for years and fallen in love with him over the past few days. But as he paused and frowned at me, then looked past me as if searching his mind for where else he might have left some of his things, I fell further.

  Scowling at his wallet again, he slid out his pilot’s license and his driver’s license and the Hall Aviation credit card. “Come on now. Ha!” He grinned at me and held up two packets. “Two.”

  “Impressive.”

  “Oh.” He laughed nervously, and a blush darkened his cheeks in the dim kitchen light. “Yeah, this all seems overly confident of me, doesn’t it? Like I go around with condoms all the time just in case.” He looked into my eyes and said, “I had a girlfriend. Before Jake died. Then I lost her because I was an asshole to her.”

  He sounded apologetic. I didn’t know what to say to this. Of course he’d had a girlfriend. Of course he’d been hard to get along with after Jake died. I felt sorry for him and for this girl. If she had any sense, she was brokenhearted that they hadn’t been able to hold on to each other until the worst passed.

  Though Mr. Hall had died then. Maybe this was the worst, right now.

  I could be this girl for him. I could be exactly what he needed. He was so full of life, but unsteady, and I would be steady for him and help him through.

  He was squinting at the condoms. “They might have expired. No, that one’s okay.” He put one packet down on the counter. “That one’s okay too.” He gazed at me again. “Maybe we shouldn’t do this.”