Such a Rush(55)
Author: Jennifer Echols

We both sat in lawn chairs. I’d just started lunch, Alec was finishing his, and Molly was outside, getting his next banner ready. I’d thought Molly would make my job flying for Grayson more fun and less awkward. She’d said she was here to protect me. Yet because of the way our meals and breaks fell, I hardly saw her. When we did speak, she acted funny, like there was something wrong between us.

Or maybe that was me, still miffed about Francie’s party last night.

Grayson lay on the couch in front of Alec and me, obviously unconcerned about its dust issues. He’d been talking to us about the turbulence we’d all felt that morning now that the days were getting warmer and pockets of hot air rose from the beach. He’d closed his eyes, but he kept responding to everything Alec and I said… more and more slowly… and now he looked like he had in the basement last night, his face at peace, his long body strangely relaxed.

Alec nodded. “He spent the whole night here last night, watching over the airplanes. In the one-in-a-million event that a tornado did touch down here, what was he going do? Hold on to one wing of each Piper to keep them from blowing away?”

Afraid to admit I’d asked Grayson the same thing last night, I shrugged. Grayson’s vigil had nothing to do with the airplanes themselves. It had to do with worry, responsibility, helplessness, and the need to do something, I thought. And it had a little bit to do with me.

Alec stood and threw his trash in the can. “I’ll see if Molly needs help, and then I’m flying. Don’t wake Grayson up, even if it’s time for you to fly, okay? Just let him sleep. And if he jumps down your throat later, tell him I told you so.” He crossed behind me and squeezed my shoulder.

I nodded, still watching Grayson. Alec disappeared into the hot afternoon. Out on the runway, Mr. Simon’s Stearman biplane passed in front of the opening of the hangar. One of his employees was taking a tourist for a ride instead of Mark taking me. The distant roar echoed around the metal walls and mixed with the drone of the fans, hum upon hum. Grayson didn’t stir. I took another bite of my sandwich as I examined him.

One long leg extended off the edge of the couch, past the armrest. The other leg was folded under him. His arms were folded across his chest too, hugging himself. His face settled to one side, toward me, his features softened by sleep, his blond lashes long against his cheeks. His shaggy curls peeked from behind his head on the sofa cushions. In that moment I saw him differently: not as an American boy with a tenuous grip on the family business and his own sanity, but as a British teenager crashing after a night on the town in London, listening to some strange pop music, wearing the straw cowboy hat for offbeat fashion rather than to keep the glare of the sun out of his eyes. Tall as he was, with a long nose and elegant hands despite the engine grease that usually streaked them, he would make a good Brit.

I felt like a voyeur, watching him sleep as I ate my sandwich, as if he were a movie for my entertainment while I munched popcorn. He’d watched me sleep the night before, I reasoned, so I didn’t owe him this sort of privacy.

I finished my lunch and dumped my own trash in the can. Instead of walking outside to my plane, though, I sat back down in my chair, a few feet from Grayson. I didn’t think he needed protecting, exactly. Nobody would come into this hangar to attack him, not even Mark, while his uncle kept him busy. And Alec was right: I shouldn’t wake Grayson. He would be angry that we hadn’t woken him. Alec and I would argue that if he was tired enough to need a nap in the middle of the day, he was too tired to fly until he caught up on sleep.

I should have left him sleeping and gone back to work. Something stopped me. His chest rose and fell more rapidly underneath his protective arms and his red T-shirt. His smooth brow wrinkled ever so slightly, like he’d had the briefest glimpse into something horrible.

A plane started not far outside the hangar, Alec’s Piper. The engine was quieter because he was only taxiing toward the end of the runway, not taking off. But he was so close that the noise vibrated the hangar, growling underneath the drone of the fans.

Grayson sat up in a rush, one hand gripping the sofa cushion and the other white-knuckling the back of the couch. He looked straight at me, mouth open, gray eyes wide. His sudden movement had stirred the dust in the couch. A cloud of it twinkled around him in a shaft of sunlight streaming through the hangar door.

He asked, “My dad, and Jake. Are they dead?”

My fingers turned icy in the warm hangar. I could only imagine what cruelty his subconscious had dealt him. A family lunch, with his dad and Jake gathered around the dusty couch instead of Alec and me. A family argument that he’d hated every second of but wished he could have back again now that he understood it had been their last.

I nodded.

He closed his eyes. “Where is Alec?” he asked quietly. The noise from Alec’s plane had faded as he taxied away on the tarmac, but Grayson’s voice was still barely audible above the fans.

I waved toward the runway. “Flying.”

Grayson winced. Swinging his legs off the couch to set his feet on the floor, he leaned over and cradled his face in his hands. “It’s not fair,” he murmured through his fingers.

I wanted to reach out to him. I didn’t think it was fair, either, and I wanted to put my arm around him and tell him so. He’d been cruel to me in the past three days, though. He’d made it clear what he thought of me. He didn’t want comfort from me.

He sobbed into his hands. Silently. I recognized the sob by the way his shoulders moved.

Just once.

In two steps I crossed the empty cement floor between us, sat next to him on the couch, and slid my arm around his back. I wasn’t tall enough to put it around his shoulders. As I sat, I stirred up more dust. The air around us filled with golden sparks.

Now that I was touching him, I could tell how fast he was breathing. He tried to control it, though, refusing to let go of more than that one sob. He breathed long and deep, then wiped both hands down his face. He turned to me, eyes red and wet. “Do not tell Alec.”

“I won’t,” I said.

He growled, “I will make your life hell.”

I heard my own gasp of surprise. I removed my arm from around him and shifted back to my original chair. “You don’t have to threaten me, Grayson. I said I wouldn’t tell him, and I won’t.”

He ran one hand across yesterday’s blond stubble that he hadn’t gotten a chance to shave. “I’m sorry. You’re right.” He sniffed. “I don’t think I’m getting enough sleep at night.”