Free Easier to Run by Silver Rain Page A

He smiled and offered a hand to pull me up. “Then, you can show me some of your pictures later.”
    “They're n-not that impressive,” I said.
    “I doubt that.” His arm rested on my shoulders, as we walked back to the lot where his truck was waiting.
    My shoulder bumped into his side before he opened up the door, and even the slight touch of his hand to my back as I climbed up to take my seat sent contradictory messages through my body.
    Thrills and comfort.
    Excitement and relaxation.
    He joined me in the cab, and while I broke my camera down and stuffed it into the case and back in my bag, he finished all of his “pre-flight checks” as I started calling them as a teenager. I didn’t care to understand all of the details—the log book, switches, buttons. It all seemed far too complicated for driving along the interstate, but then again, I was used to four wheels and an automatic transmission rather than eighteen wheels and God knows how many gears.
    As I sat and watched him, he always reminded me more of a pilot than a truck driver. Not that I'd ever in my life been in the cockpit of a plane. Maybe I'd add that to a bucket list if I got up the nerve to make one.
    My list of things to do before I died would be sufficiently boring, and probably not worth listing. Be normal. Find a normal place in a normal life where people don't notice. Where I don't have to worry about people sitting behind my back and whispering about what happened or about my inability to speak like an intelligent adult.
    I wanted personal problems that no one else knew about.
    Before I knew it, we were back on the open road. “A few hours and I'll be at my limit, maybe we can find somewhere to eat. I'm sure back lots and roads aren't your idea of fun road trip.”
    “I'm not complaining,” I said. I wouldn't dream of it. “Don't worry about me, I just came along for the ride.”
    He chuckled but kept his attention on the streets and traffic as we headed away from the warehouse. “I never really understood your fascination with it,” he said. “I mean driving and doing the job is one thing, tagging along—”
    I snorted. “Really? You d-don't have a clue as to why I wanted to spend long hours in a truck with you?”
    His lips pressed tightly together and he shook his head.
    Riding with Ben was my freedom. Kind of like a mobile fort where I could relax and not worry about the rest of the world. “You already admitted to knowing about my crush. I can't imagine you wouldn't figure out the rest.”
    “So that's the only reason, huh?”
    “That and you were the only person to treat me like,”—I sighed, I didn't quite know how to put it—“like an equal. It was the only time I could just be. You were my escape. I didn't have to worry about slipping up, or letting anyone down, or—” Tears burned at my eyes.
    “Cas,” he whispered.
    “I wanted to be like Rachel.” Like me, my sister was tall and blonde, but while I was simply a stick for most of my life, she had a lean and toned dancer’s body. As a kid, she was a competitive dancer, and then moved on to cheerleading, volleyball, and tennis. She made it seem easy to stand up in front of a group of people and do just about anything. In so many ways, she seemed like Ben’s perfect counterpart. And for a while, they were one of the most talked about couples in school—much to my dismay. “I wanted just once for things to be easy.”
    “Rachel didn't have everything easy,” Ben said. “Half the time she had to study her ass off just to get average marks. And when you started—” He snapped his mouth shut.
    “When I started?” My stomach clenched like I hadn't eaten in days.
    Ben sighed and shook his head. “Things definitely weren't always easy for her when you skipped two grades and still breezed through high school classes.”
    “She never said anything.”
    Ben chewed on the inside of his lip, watching his mirrors as he tried to change lanes. “That's because most of