“Maybe a little,” I said.
He smiled at me then, not an embarrassed smile, and that put me at ease. He had a look in his eyes I recognized from times when he’d pulled a prank on Mr. Hall, or he’d landed after a series of touch-and-go’s when he was first learning to fly. Unlike a lot of people, he wasn’t drained by a rush of adrenaline. His expression said, I want to go again.
I laughed. After that adrenaline rush of a flight, I’d come back to Earth now. But just like with flying, I was already looking forward to the next time too.
He couldn’t, at least not yet. Boys had to recover first. I knew that much from TV and dirty talk on the school bus. He reached to my bedside table and fumbled with the alarm clock. The radio shut off for the first time since he brought me back from the airport basement two nights before. Normally silence would have descended on the room like a shroud. With Grayson here, the quiet was bearable. Even nice. I didn’t mind the idea of a long, empty space.
He rolled to his side and settled on one elbow with his chin in his hand, watching me. “This is going to be kind of a downer after that, but I want you to know something. When we were at Molly’s café the night of the party, you said something that got me thinking. You said sometimes people have problems, and they get stuck.” He raised his eyebrows, asking if I remembered.
I nodded. I’d been talking about my mom.
“That’s exactly how I’ve felt for the past two months,” he said, “since my dad died. No, for the past three months, since Jake died. There have been moments—actually, a lot of moments—when I’ve thought I’ll never be happy again. But I’m happy right now. You make me happy.”
“Good,” I said, smoothing a hand across his bare chest and trying to act natural. It was Grayson, I kept telling myself, Grayson whom I’d loved from afar for so long. But he was different in the flesh. This man’s body would take a lot of getting used to.
“And whenever you and I are talking—” he went on.
“—or doin’ it,” I broke in, because this was getting so heavy.
He laughed. “Or doin’ it,” he agreed, but then his smile faded. “I’m serious.”
“I know,” I said, feeling like the worst friend, the worst person. I’d thought making a joke would help him out of this, but he wasn’t ready to go yet.
“When I’m with you,” he began again, “it’s like… I still don’t feel normal. But I can see normal at twelve o’clock on the horizon.” He pointed past me, through the windshield of an imaginary airplane. “At least I know normal is still out there. I’ve spent the last three months not sure of that at all.”
On a sigh he brought up his hand and used one long finger to brush a dark curl away from my face. With the saddest look in his eyes, he said, “A girl needs to be held right now, and comforted, and told that everything is going to be okay. I’m sorry I can’t do that for you. I don’t have any of that left.”
“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 running, but the pit bull was faintly audible over the roar. My mom had bought the comforter on my bed at a thrift store when I was seven. It depicted a cartoon girl who hadn’t been on TV in two decades.
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.