Such a Rush(74)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“Grayson!” Alec’s voice was strained. “A little help!”

Grayson pointed at the ground and told me, “Sit down.” He put his weight on my shoulders.

I didn’t have a choice. I sat where he put me, flattening the tall grass under me.

“Don’t move.” He ducked under a half-broken branch hanging onto a tree by a few splinters. He took his place beside the others to help pull Mark free.

Way off in the distance behind me, sirens wailed. Above them I could hear the rope clanging against the flagpole.

The paramedics kept me in the back of the ambulance for a long time, like they couldn’t believe there was nothing wrong with me. When the police wanted to question me, the paramedics left to help with Mark. The police left and the paramedics came back. Finally they helped me down from the ambulance, into the arms of Grayson, who had stood at the bumper the entire time, watching me.

When Alec saw I’d been set free, he walked over and hugged me under the trees. “Remember how my dad said ‘You have to be better than me’? You are.” He let me go.

Then Molly hugged me for a long time, squeezed me, and kissed me on the cheek. Below the lenses of her blinged-out sunglasses, her face was streaked with mascara and tears. “You scared the f**k out of me.”

Her hand stayed on my back until Grayson led me away, through the grass to the tarmac. Behind us, a tractor was already towing the wreckage of the beautiful Stearman out of the trees. The runway needed to be cleared quickly so the rest of the businesses at the airport could fly.

Grayson didn’t say a word until we reached my trailer. Neither did I. For some reason my mind was stuck on that last moment before the left wheel should have touched the runway, when I realized I’d been in denial. He held out his hand for my key, unlocked the door, and led me through the trailer, back to my bedroom. He sat me down on the edge of the bed and settled close to me, leaning over me, knee to knee with me.

He kissed my lips. “Are you really okay?”

“I will be.”

He kissed my cheek, moving along my cheekbone until he was whispering in my ear. “We forgot that whatever kind of drama we’ve got going on when we’re on the ground, we can’t let it affect what happens in the sky.” He kissed my earlobe, then backed away to look me in the eye. “I love you.”

I took a long breath, meeting his intense gaze. “I love you too.”

“I wanted to tell you on the radio,” he said. “But we don’t do that.”

“Your dad would kick your ass.”

Laughing, he pulled his phone from his pocket. “I’m leaving this here for you. Call Molly if you need anything.”

“O… kay,” I said. Crashing an airplane didn’t fix the fact that Molly had called me a liar. Or that I was one.

“She’s expecting you to call,” Grayson said. “You rest. I’ll be back to check on you.” Watching my eyes, he kissed my hands, and then he was gone. I could trace his path through the trees by the pitch of the pit bull’s bark.

I lay there for a while, but that moment in the airplane played over and over in my head. Thinking that the flight seemed normal, despite the fact that Grayson had told me the left wheel was gone. Setting the aircraft down on one wheel, feeling only by degrees that the other wheel was really missing.

Finally I got up, took a shower, and walked back to the airport. As I passed the office, Mr. Simon was coming out the door in his usual baseball cap and overalls, despite the heat. He waved me over. He hadn’t been around that morning for the crash. Now I suspected that’s why Mark had been willing to take me up: he really hadn’t been allowed, but his uncle hadn’t been there to say no.

I didn’t want Mr. Simon to yell at me, but I figured I owed him the opportunity since I had crashed his airplane. I walked into the shade of the porch.

He said, “I want to shake your hand, little lady.”

I didn’t have a lot of experience shaking hands. I probably hadn’t done it since I met Sofie, but I extended my hand to Mr. Simon. His grip was too strong at first, and suddenly so weak that I could hardly feel his hand at all, like he’d remembered he was shaking the hand of a girl. Little lady, he’d called me, so disrespectful even as he showed me respect by shaking my hand. Being a pilot had always been like this for me, and it always would.

He let me go and gestured to a rocking chair. I sat down. He eased into the rocking chair on the other side of the door, where Grayson had sat last Sunday when he tried to convince me to work for him in the first place.

“That was some fancy flying you did,” Mr. Simon said. “Saved my nephew.” He turned to gaze at the tree line, a few trunks showing bright scars where the crash had stripped them of bark. “Saved what’s left of my airplane.”

Saved myself, I thought.

“I’ve got contracts to fill,” he said. “Mark’s grounded. Permanently, as far as I’m concerned. I need a pilot.”

Mr. Simon hadn’t actually asked me to be his pilot. I knew that’s what he wanted. I also knew assuming too much and voicing this first would give him the advantage in the negotiation. I’d learned a lot by listening to men on this porch.

And I didn’t really care anymore, because I had my own agenda. “Mark told me a couple of weeks ago that you were willing to hire me even while he was still flying for you. Was that true?”

Mr. Simon’s eyebrows went up. He shook his head. “No. First I’ve heard of it. He told you that?”

I nodded, stomach twisting.

I didn’t show surprise.

And I waited him out, rocking slowly in my chair like I could sit here in the shade all day.

Finally he said, “I am sorry for it. His mama didn’t teach him right.”

My mama didn’t teach me right, either, I thought, and I don’t act that way. I kept rocking.

“But now I’ve got that opening,” Mr. Simon said. “And I’d like you to fill it. You’d need training, but it’s clear you’ve got the stuff.”

“Would you train me for free?” I asked.

He kept rocking too. “If that’s what it took, yeah.”

Now I should ask about the pay. Otherwise he might lower my salary to make up for the cost of crop-duster lessons. I’d learned a lot from Grayson this week too.

But there was no reason to keep playing this game. “I’ve got a job for the summer,” I said. “I’m going to keep flying for Hall.”