Such a Rush by Jennifer Echols

the airport would get dragged into it—everybody still alive who could have written you recommendations for jobs and flight schools and college in the next few months. You were planning to go to college at some point, right? You’d have to, if you want a job as an airline pilot.”
    He had me there. College was not an option for me right now. Every dime I hadn’t given over to my mom, I’d blown on flying. I’d been counting on flying for Mr. Simon and saving up money for junior college tuition. After a few semesters, I would use my stellar new GPA and glowing recommendations from Mr. Simon and the Admiral and everyone else I knew at the airport to get a scholarship to a decent college that offered an aviation degree. But if Grayson ruined those recommendations for me—
    “You know what else you need to get that airline pilot job?” Grayson asked. “Good moral character.”
    He’d done his homework to blackmail me. He was quoting the FAA rules for an airline pilot’s license. I’d never known what “good moral character” meant, but I was pretty sure it ruled out forging my mother’s name to take flying lessons.
    “All right,” I said through my hand, which I’d clapped over my mouth at some point while he was talking.
    “All right, what?” he prompted me.
    “All right, I’ll work for you.”
    “Great,” he said calmly, like he didn’t think it was great at all. He just folded my entire future, sticky note and all, and shoved it back into his pocket.
    “For how long?” I asked weakly.
    He shrugged like he hadn’t thought about it. But his words betrayed him. He’d thought about this a lot. “Definitely this whole week of spring break. Most weekends after that, because Alec and I will be coming over from Wilmington to fly too. Not the next weekend after spring break is over, though. That’s our high school’s prom. My dad didn’t schedule any banners then, like he expected Alec and me to want to go.”
    He turned his head toward the road as if listening for something, but the pit bull had stopped barking.
    Grayson went on, “And after school lets out for the summer, we’ll reevaluate.”
    I took a swig of beer, considering. Grayson would drive the business into the ground way before school let out. So I would fly for him this week. He would go back to Wilmington. The following weekend, his dad had given him the excuse of the prom to skip flying. There would be more excuses after that. Grayson and Alec would not come to Heaven Beach again, at least not to fly. They’d stay in Wilmington and forget all about me, and it would be like none of this had ever happened.
    In the meantime, I could start looking for another job flying. I hadn’t expected the crop-dusting job to drop in my lap. The imaginary crop-dusting job. Maybe an actual job would come up too. My prospects looked brighter than they had an hour before, when I’d buried my head under the pillows. Honestly, I didn’t want to fly for Grayson, but my spirits were lifted at the thought that I would finally fly a plane again. Or maybe it was the beer. I took another long pull and set the can down on the stump.
    “I want you to pay me at the end of every workday,” I said.
    Grayson’s brows went down behind his shades. “Why?”
    “This is a day-by-day operation. I don’t want to walk over there one morning and find out you’ve packed up and run back to Wilmington without paying me.”
    “That’s not going to happen,” Grayson said so firmly that I almost believed him. “But sure, if that’s what you want, I’ll pay you every day. And there’s one more thing.” His fist gripped and relaxed. “I need you to date Alec this week.”
    I laughed shortly. The alcohol rushed to my head and heated my skin in the warm evening. I couldn’t make sense of what Grayson was saying. “You want me to what?”
    “Date Alec.”
    Date Alec? All day I’d fought my long-standing crush on Grayson. The idea of dating Alec, who was so