Such a Rush

“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 ru

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 crossed 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.