Such a Rush

by Jennifer Echols

  Oh no. I’d wanted this with Grayson so badly for so long, way before I knew I wanted it.

  But that was selfish of me. I swallowed and nodded, trying to understand. “Because of the condoms?”

  “Hey.” He gave me a long, chaste kiss on the lips, then one on the forehead. “No. They’re really okay.”

  Now I knew. “Is it that girl you were dating?”

  His brows arched in surprise. “What? No!”

  I huffed out a little sigh of relief that he wasn’t pining for his lost girlfriend. But now I was confused. “Why, then?”

  “Because I’m your boss. And I’m taking advantage of you by coming over here when I know your mom has split.”

  “Is that all? You’re realizing this a little late.” I cupped his face in my hand and stroked my fingers down the blond stubble on his cheek. “We’re both eighteen. What’s really bothering you?”

  His soulful gray eyes looked deep into my eyes as he said, “My dad would kill me.”

  He likely was right about that. But his dad wasn’t here. And we were.

  Slowly I slid off the counter, down his body. When I reached the floor, I looked way up into his eyes. I took his hand and led him down the hall to my bedroom.

  eighteen

  Afterward he lay on top of me. His cheek pressed against my neck, but I didn’t want him to move. With all of him pinning me, I felt oddly comfortable. I only tried to slow my panting, quiet my breathing, to the point that I could hear he was breathing hard too.

  He propped himself up on his elbows, blinking at me, his long, blond eyelashes and the edges of his blond hair lit only by the streetlight through the tiny window. “God, I’m sorry, Leah,” he whispered. “I was crushing you.”

  “Maybe a little,” I said.

  He smiled at me then, not an embarrassed smile, and that put me at ease. He had a look in his eyes I recognized from times when he’d pulled a prank on Mr. Hall, or he’d landed after a series of touch-and-go’s when he was first learning to fly. Unlike a lot of people, he wasn’t drained by a rush of adrenaline. His expression said, I want to go again.

  I laughed. After that adrenaline rush of a flight, I’d come back to Earth now. But just like with flying, I was already looking forward to the next time too.

  He couldn’t, at least not yet. Boys had to recover first. I knew that much from TV and dirty talk on the school bus. He reached to my bedside table and fumbled with the alarm clock. The radio shut off for the first time since he brought me back from the airport basement two nights before. Normally silence would have descended on the room like a shroud. With Grayson here, the quiet was bearable. Even nice. I didn’t mind the idea of a long, empty space.

  He rolled to his side and settled on one elbow with his chin in his hand, watching me. “This is going to be kind of a downer after that, but I want you to know something. When we were at Molly’s café the night of the party, you said something that got me thinking. You said sometimes people have problems, and they get stuck.” He raised his eyebrows, asking if I remembered.

  I nodded. I’d been talking about my mom.

  “That’s exactly how I’ve felt for the past two months,” he said, “since my dad died. No, for the past three months, since Jake died. There have been moments—actually, a lot of moments—when I’ve thought I’ll never be happy again. But I’m happy right now. You make me happy.”

  “Good,” I said, smoothing a hand across his bare chest and trying to act natural. It was Grayson, I kept telling myself, Grayson whom I’d loved from afar for so long. But he was different in the flesh. This man’s body would take a lot of getting used to.

  “And whenever you and I are talking—” he went on.

  “—or doin’ it,” I broke in, because this was getting so heavy.

  He laughed. “Or doin’ it,” he agreed, but then his smile faded. “I’m serious.”

  “I know,” I said, feeling like the worst friend, the worst person. I’d thought making a joke would help him out of this, but he wasn’t ready to go yet.

  “When I’m with you,” he began again, “it’s like… I still don’t feel normal. But I can see normal at twelve o’clock on the horizon.” He pointed past me, through the windshield of an imaginary airplane. “At least I know normal is still out there. I’ve spent the last three months not sure of that at all.”

  On a sigh he brought up his hand and used one long finger to brush a dark curl away from my face. With the saddest look in his eyes, he said, “A girl needs to be held right now, and comforted, and told that everything is going to be okay. I’m sorry I can’t do that for you. I don’t have any of that left.”

  “I have a little,” I said, “and I’ll lend it to you.”

  He kissed my lips twice more, wrapped his arms around me, and nestled his head under my chin. I worked my fingers through his blond curls. They sprang up and tickled my cheek.

  He said low, “One down, one to go.”

  I laughed.

  “I didn’t want you to bed down for the night and get comfortable and think we were done.”

  “Thanks for warning me. That is so sexy.” There really was nothing about the sex we’d just had that was sexy at all, except Grayson himself. The air conditioner was running, but the pit bull was faintly audible over the roar. My mom had bought the comforter on my bed at a thrift store when I was seven. It depicted a cartoon girl who hadn’t been on TV in two decades.

  And on the wall opposite from my pink bed, where I could see it first thing every morning, was a poster of US Airways flight 5149. Captain Sullenberger had taken off from LaGuardia Airport in New York City one January afternoon, his Airbus headed for Charlotte, North Carolina. A flock of geese hanging around the runway flew into his plane and took out both engines. He managed to land perfectly in the Hudson River that ran along Manhattan Island. The poster was an iconic photo of the plane floating in the river, with the skyline of Manhattan behind it. All 155 passengers and crew stood precariously on wings, in business shirts rather than overcoats on the frigid winter afternoon, surrounded by icy water, waiting for boats to take them back to the wharf for hot chocolate. Afterward, Captain Sullenberger was acclaimed as a hero. He wrote a book and did the talk show circuit. And then it all became a joke. Movies made fun of the crash and said people in New York were so protective of this captain’s heroic status, but modern automation meant those planes flew themselves.

  We pilots knew Captain Sullenberger was a bad-ass. He could have crash-landed that plane and taken out half of Manhattan. But he kept calm, and the outcome was perfect.

  Grayson’s eyes had fallen on the poster too. “Hey, where’d you get that?” He nodded toward the poster. “My dad—”

  “—had a poster like that,” I interrupted him. “I know. It’s his. After he died, I used the key the airport office had for your hangar and I took it, but that’s all I took, ever. I’d gotten used to seeing it every day and I just wanted that one thing to remember him.”

  I must have sounded really strange, because he propped himself up on both elbows to look at me. “Leah, it’s okay.” He sank down with his chin on his crossed arms, watching me. “He’s a good hero to have.”

  I wondered whether he meant Captain Sullenberger or his dad. As my heart raced, dragging my mind with it, I decided it was best to come clean before I got caught again. “The poster is the only thing I took, but I already had this.”

  I rolled away from him and felt around on my bedside table for The Right Stuff. The paperback had been well worn, with a cracked white spine and missing corners, when Mr. Hall loaned it to me years ago. I’d read it a million times. When the cover had come off, I’d secured it to the book with a rubber band from the airport office. I handed the frayed bundle over to Grayson.

  “Oh!” he said through a laugh, recognizing the book. He removed the rubber band and opened the front cover, setting it next to the book.

  At the top of the inside cover, Mr. Hall had written Brian Hall. His name was cro
ssed out, and underneath it, in a different handwriting, was Jake Hall. This too was crossed out. A third handwriting proclaimed, Alec Hall. A fourth, by far the messiest, claimed the book for Grayson Hall. Then Alec Hall again. The last Grayson Hall was the only name in the column that didn’t have a line through it.

  Grayson touched the cover in the space between Brian Hall and Jake Hall, then swept his fingertip down the page. “Dad tried so hard to get us to read it. When Jake finally did and told Alec and me how good it was, we fought over it. I guess buying your own copy of a book doesn’t occur to you when you’re twelve.” He bit his lip.

  And then, without moving his head, he brought his eyes up to meet mine. His look was hard to read. I’d known him for years, yet I’d had so little face time with him that his expressions were practically a stranger’s. The basic look of chagrin I recognized. The subtleties were lost on me. I couldn’t tell whether he was embarrassed that he’d accidentally accused me of freeloading, or he was accusing me on purpose.

  And asking for his book back.

  “You should have it,” I said quickly.

  Now his lips parted in surprise. “No! Of course not. You should have it. You were the last one to…”

  He took a breath, and so did I. Neither of us wanted to delve into Mr. Hall’s death right now. That much I understood about Grayson. We’d shared something that had to do with him and me, not Mr. Hall, not Alec, not Jake, just the two of us. We wanted to enjoy the afterglow and we were trying our best to bond, but it was difficult with so many people between us, even though most of them were ghosts.

  He exhaled, and I did too.

  “We’re very tense,” he said.

  “Yeah.”

  He chuckled and touched my lips. “We weren’t tense a few minutes ago.”

  I smiled. His finger followed the curve of my mouth. I watched him watching me. We’d shared tender moments like this in the past few days, but I had difficulty shaking the image of the distant Grayson I was used to. His fingertip on my cheek was warm and welcome but strange, because I knew his mood wouldn’t last.

  But if I hadn’t understood his background, I would have thought he was a carefree eighteen-year-old with tender feelings for his girlfriend, experienced enough with sex to know what he was doing, inexperienced enough to act thrilled. His hand moved into my hair. Stroking my curls, he smiled as he said, “It’s cool that I’ve scored a pilot.”

  I laughed, relieved at the joke. “I think so too.”

  He wound a curl around his finger, then unwound it, watching my hair rather than looking into my eyes. And sure enough, his chuckle faded into a frown. His blond brows knitted. He seemed to be concentrating on the puzzle of my hair. I knew he was sliding away from me already. Now the unexpected sweetness that made him Grayson was fading, and he seemed like any other guy out there. Like Mark.

  “If we hadn’t done it tonight, would you want another girl on the side?” I asked.

  I had his attention again. He untangled his finger from my hair and looked me in the eyes. “Like, if you and I were dating but weren’t having sex, would I want a second girlfriend to have sex with?”

  “Yes,” I said, relieved that he got it.

  “No,” he said angrily. “Would you do that to me?”

  “Of course not,” I said self-righteously. I’d never really thought about it before, but I was way more loyal than was good for me.

  “Then why did you think it was okay for Mark to do that to you?”

  I gaped at him for a moment, speechless with astonishment. When I found my voice, I asked, “How’d you know I was talking about Mark?”

  “I understand Mark pretty well,” he grumbled. “I was headed down that path, only thinking about myself, when I wrecked the Piper. Something like that makes you rethink what you value and what you want. I wish it had happened to me a few years sooner, when I had more than a few weeks left with my brother and my dad.”

  He tapped my lips with his fingertip. “I know Mark. I know what he would do just to get a rise out of you. I want you to promise me that if you and I ever break up, you won’t go back to him.”

  I sucked in a long breath around his finger, trying not to show how surprised and overwhelmed I was at the idea that Grayson and I were a couple now. If we decided not to be anymore, we would have to go through the formality of breaking up.

  Like any normal girlfriend and boyfriend.

  My arms and face tingled with the rush.

  Then I had to say on a sigh, “I can’t make you that promise, Grayson. It’s not that I’m planning to run back to Mark. But I determine what’s best for me. I’m not making promises to other people about that. I’ve done that only once.”

  His eyes searched mine. “Even if it’s for your own good?”

  “Your dad earned the right to tell me that.”

  Grayson nodded, understanding. “You’re right. I haven’t. I just… worry about you.” His fingertip moved down my cheek to trace the line of my jaw. He seemed so serious, heavy with responsibility, utterly unlike the crazy boy I’d crushed on years ago. I knew the old Grayson was in there—I’d seen him when he kissed me, when we made love—and I hoped he didn’t count me as one more weighty responsibility that killed his spirit.

  “Are you sorry that we were together?” I whispered.

  His whole face changed like an idea was slowly dawning on him. He cradled my cheek in his palm. “Leah, of course not.”

  “You seem sorry,” I said, feeling small again. I’d thought I didn’t need his comfort. I’d thought I could comfort him. But out of nowhere, here was that waiflike girl he’d said would want to be held, a girl who’d taken what we’d done too seriously and needed him to pretend it had meant something.

  “Hey. I told you. Lately my brain isn’t working right. I feel one thing, but I act a different way and it surprises me. I don’t know where my words are coming from half the time. But you…” He kissed my cheek. “Gosh…” He kissed my lips, then backed away to look at me again. “You know what? Let me show you how I feel.”

  I gasped as he trailed kisses down my cheek, down my neck, across my breast and farther down, and then he showed me.

  He crawled across the bed until he hung off the side. Dragging his shorts from the floor, he found his phone in the pocket. “I’m starving. Pizza?”

  “Great. My treat.”

  He looked around at me and opened his mouth. And I took a breath to explain my situation. My refrigerator was empty and I always ate like it was my last meal because I had no phone and no car to get food, not because I had no money.

  He closed his mouth and swallowed his protest, already flipping through search screens on his phone.

  I rolled closer and watched over his shoulder. “Not that one. They don’t deliver to this trailer park because they’ve had so many problems out here.”

  He gaped at me again. “What do you mean, they—”

  I chopped my hand across my throat.

  He closed his mouth and showed me the screen for a different pizza place.

  “Perfect,” I said.

  An hour later, we were full of pizza, and I loved him a little more. I’d figured things would get awkward when we sat down on the pitted couch to eat with no TV in front of us. What were we supposed to do for entertainment, stare at my second-grade photo?

  But we talked airplanes. He told me about his dad taking him and Alec and Jake to Sun and Fun in central Florida, to which everybody flew their planes instead of driving, and the biggest fly-in in all of Oshkosh, Wisconsin, where he’d seen his first Harrier. He said the noise of a Harrier put the Chinook to shame. I’d never heard a Harrier.

  We put away the pizza, he stepped into the bathroom, and I snuggled back into bed. I felt comfortable with him here. The only person who’d ever been in my bedroom, besides me and my mom, was Mark—and only that first night, when I thought we were going to do it and he fell asleep instead.

  My mom had issued the invitation for him to live
here, and when he passed out drunk, it was like she’d invited her life to become my life and lie useless beside me in my bed, the most private of spaces, and I wasn’t allowed to get rid of it. Most nights after that when he’d stayed here, he’d gone out with his friends to get plastered, and I’d locked myself in my room. I knew from experience with the trailer that he could easily have kicked the door in if he’d wanted to badly enough, but he’d been too drunk to care that deeply. He’d only knocked on the door, then yelled threats at me, then passed out on the couch in the den. I’d stretched to take up both sides of my bed, relieved.

  Funny how my feelings about Mark and Grayson were night and day. I’d thought I liked Mark at first. I’d tried hard to like him, but I just couldn’t. I’d never wanted to like Grayson. I just did. And whereas I would have cringed at seeing the silhouette of Mark reentering my bedroom in the moonlight, my heart sped up when I saw Grayson coming back. To say good night, maybe. That was better than nothing. Or just to slip on his clothes. The promise of making love again seemed too good to be true.

  He slid through the sheets next to me and nuzzled my neck until I giggled. He reached out. With one gentle hand, he turned my face to his so he could kiss me long on the lips. No urgency this time, just a lazy exploration of my mouth with his tongue.

  After a few minutes, he said, “The floor in the bathroom is spongy.”

  He paused, allowing me to explain.

  When I didn’t say anything, he went on, “Like the pipes have had a slow leak for decades, and the water has disintegrated the floorboards. That thin layer of linoleum on top is all that’s preventing you from falling through.”

  He paused again.

  When I just glared at him, he instructed me, “You should call the landlord. He’s required to fix stuff like that, even if you’ll only be here a few more weeks.”

  This time when he stopped running his trap, he realized from the look on my face that he’d said something wrong. He bit his lip. “What.”

  “My mom did call the landlord,” I said self-righteously. “Years ago, right after we moved in. He said the floor had been like that for twenty years, it had been like that when my mother signed the lease, and if she hadn’t been too good for the trailer when she signed the lease, she wasn’t too good for it now.”