Such a Rush

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 gri

“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.”

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 pi

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.”