Free Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols

initial shock of Grayson knowing more about me than I wanted him to know, I realized I didn’t need to ask. Of course Mark had phrased it this way, because Mark was turning out to be kind of an asshole.
    I only hoped that’s all Grayson knew, because there was more to the story. For years I’d stuck to my policy of avoidingMark and boys like him. That became easier when Mark turned sixteen and stopped riding the bus, and easier still when he graduated from high school last December, a semester late. He worked at the airport every day, but mostly in the mornings and early afternoons when I was still at school. I might hear him announce himself over the airport frequency and watch him land an ugly Air Tractor, but our paths rarely crossed.
    Last week, he’d come into the office, hunting up some records for his uncle. I’d mentioned I was out of a job with Mr. Hall and wondered whether Mark’s uncle was hiring crop dusters. I didn’t want to deal with Mark at work every day, but I would suffer through it for a flying job. To my surprise, he’d said yes. I’d been so happy and never more relieved.
    Then he’d asked me on a date. I’d hesitated at first, but after a few minutes of flirting, I’d said yes to that too. I’d had a boyfriend when I was fourteen, but I’d never been on a date. Though my relationship with Mr. Hall hadn’t been romantic at all, his absence left a hole in my heart that I was hungry to fill. And a somewhat greasy fifteen-year-old Mark had grown into a decidedly sexy nineteen-year-old with a nervous edge.
    My mom had been home when he’d brought me back from dinner that night. Usually I was so happy to see her, right up until she took the TV or some food or a pile of clothes away with her, like she was using the trailer only for storage. This time I was terrified he would mention to her that I was a pilot, or that I was working the whole time I was at the airport, not hanging out with my fake boyfriend Grayson Hall. And I didn’t trust Mark enough to ask him to keep quiet.
    So I was almost relieved at the turn the conversation took. Mark told my mom that his mother had kicked him out of the house. He hadn’t mentioned this to me before. My momoffered to let him stay with us—by which she meant he could stay with me —for a few days until he found another place to live, if he would help her with rent. I was already helping her with rent on top of paying the utilities. Basically she was arranging for us to take over the lease from her. He might not have agreed to this if he’d known she was leaving that night with the TV. She told me she was pawning it for cash to take to the Indian casino in North Carolina. That was the last I’d heard from her.
    Technically, Mark and I were shacking up. But that implied we were doing it, when we weren’t. True, I had ached for him at first. I’d been staying away from boys for so many years, and the shift in how I saw him was new and exciting. But that night when my mom had left and Mark brought his stuff inside the trailer, he’d also brought beer. He’d drunk too much to go through with it. Each night after that he’d been too drunk or stayed out too late with his friends. And now that he’d lived with me for a week, the thought of him was vaguely nauseating.
    But this was way none of Grayson’s business.
    I still couldn’t read Grayson’s expression with his eyes hidden. He hadn’t taken off his shades when he came into the office. But when I asked him how Mark had phrased our living arrangement, Grayson arched one eyebrow again.
    “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” I said. “No, I haven’t talked to Mr. Simon about the job, because Mark is the one who’s taking me flying in the Stearman every day this week. He’s showing me the ropes and giving me a taste of what I’ll be doing by myself in the summer. I asked off work from the airport and everything.”
    “In the Stearman?” Grayson’s eyebrow stayed up.
    “Yes,” I