The Wall of Winnipeg and Me

by Mariana Zapata

It was just a little outage because of the storm; big buildings like this had backup generators that would kick in in no time.

  Didn’t they?

  I started patting the wall next to me to find the buttons on the panel, easing my touch around until I felt a small gap in the metal, feeling around the perimeter of it. It was rectangle-shaped, where I figured an emergency phone had to be. Elevators had emergency lines… I thought. The latch opened easily, and I grabbed the small phone from inside. I couldn’t see a single thing, and as I touched around, there wasn’t any pad of any sort to call out. There wasn’t even a dial tone. The elevator wasn’t moving. The lights weren’t coming back on.

  I held the phone against my ear, but there was no noise of any sort on the other end.

  The power was completely out. The power had to be out.

  My stomach seemed to drop to my knees.

  It was so dark I couldn’t see my fingers when I brought them up close to my face. I could hear my breathing getting louder by the second, feel my chest start to puff in quick, restless breaths that I hadn’t experienced in a long time.

  But the hum I was expecting, the one that signaled the power coming back on, didn’t make its appearance after another minute. It didn’t come back on after three or four minutes either, and the fear I’d been trying to ignore seized me in its rude, greedy grip even tighter.

  “Vanessa?”

  Oh shit, oh shit, oh shit.

  I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe. I couldn’t breathe.

  I couldn’t think.

  “Vanessa,” came Aiden’s voice again, whispered, strict and tight in the small space. “What the hell are you doing?”

  I squeezed my eyes closed tighter, fighting it, fighting it, fighting it. “Nothing,” I think I managed to wheeze out.

  Stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. Chill out. Everything is fine. Everything is fine. You’re just in an elevator. You’re okay.

  I wasn’t okay. I wasn’t anywhere near being okay.

  I had asthma. Since when did I have asthma?

  A hand touched my shoulder just as I blindly replaced the phone where it was and moved my hands down my stomach and thighs until I was hunched over, gripping my knees for dear life.

  Think, Vanessa. Think.

  “You’re Aiden Graves, aren’t you?” the male voice speaking sounded like a hum in the background.

  “Yes,” Aiden bit back in his familiar low grumble, his tone not inviting another remark. The hand on my shoulder tightened as I fought back a gasp for air. “Vanessa,” he repeated my name.

  Breathe, breathe, breathe.

  But I couldn’t. I was panicking. I squeezed my knees harder with my palms and somehow managed to suck in a rabid breath.

  Think.

  I was fine. The elevator wasn’t that small. The lights were going to come back on eventually. I gasped sharply through my mouth.

  “Sit down,” Aiden hissed, the one hand on my shoulder putting enough pressure that I didn’t bother picking a fight as I sank to my knees.

  My keys! I slapped my hands around the pocket of Aiden’s hoodie, and finally found the hard lump I was looking for in the right pocket. I yanked my keys out and latched on to the slick, metallic tube I’d had on my keychain forever. The small button on the back clicked into place… and nothing.

  It wasn’t working.

  My phone! I started patting around my pockets when I remembered watching Aiden set my phone into the cup holder in my car. Cold dread sucked me in.

  “Calm down,” Aiden demanded in the dark.

  You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re okay. You’re in an elevator. You’re okay, I reminded myself.

  “Vanessa.” I sensed the radiant heat of his body against my knees. “You’re fine,” he stated over my wild pants.

  I was too riled up to be embarrassed that I couldn’t seem to breathe. I definitely couldn’t open my mouth to talk either, much less get all bent out of shape for him bossing me around.

  Another hand joined the first and curled big and consuming over my shoulders. “You’re all right,” Aiden’s low, gravelly voice murmured in the dark elevator.

  “What’s wrong with her?” the unfamiliar male voice on the other side of the elevator asked. “Is she okay?”

  “Take a deep breath.” Thumbs kneaded my shoulders, ignoring the question from the stranger. “Breathe.”

  Breathe? I tried, but it came in and out as mostly a choke.

  “Through your nose… come on. In. Out through your mouth. Calm down.” Those big thumbs made small, almost angry circles over me. “Slow breath. Slow. In your nose, out of your mouth.” If this had been any other situation, I would have been surprised by how calm and cool his tone was. How gentle and unrushed. How very unlike the person who had just been snapping at me when he first realized something was wrong.

  “You’re fine,” Aiden commanded with a squeeze of the mitts he called hands. “Calm down. You got it,” he coached me through the next ragged breath. “I’m right here.” His breath washed over my cheek as his palms cupped my upper arms. “I’m not going anywhere without you.” He squeezed, his words ringing through my ears. “You’re not alone.”

  I was fine. I was fine.

  It took a few wild inhales to really get a good breath in that didn’t seem like I was struggling not to drown. As soon as I could, I shifted off my stinging knees to sit on my butt, dragging my legs up to my chest.

  “Breathe, breathe, breathe,” Aiden commanded.

  I couldn’t make myself open my eyes, but it was all right. I was still shaking, but I could live with that as long as I could get oxygen into my lungs. In my nose, out of my mouth like the big guy had said. My breaths were sharper than they should have been, but there they were.

  “You got it?” Aiden began moving around, his knee hitting my foot as I sensed him sit next to me.

  “Yes,” I puffed out, putting my forehead on my knees.

  I was okay. I was okay.

  My body gave a near violent shake that said otherwise.

  I was fine. I was fine. One breath in, one breath out. I clenched my eyes closed. I wasn’t alone. As if to make sure, my hand crept over my lap and down my thigh until I brushed the side of Aiden’s hip. My fingers touched the hem of his shirt, and I pinched the thin material between my fingertips.

  I wasn’t alone. I was fine. I shuddered out a breath as my biceps spasmed.

  “Better?”

  “Little bit,” I muttered, rubbing my fingertips over the sewn hem of his shirt. Stop being a baby. You’re not dying. You’re okay. I made myself open my eyes and raised my head until it dropped back to the wall behind me. I couldn’t see a single thing, but I was okay.

  I was all right.

  One deep exhale out, and I was breathing out of my mouth, calm, calm, calmer. By that point, the other couple in the elevator had resorted to whispering so low I couldn’t bother to understand what was being said. Aiden, on the other hand, was familiarly silent, his deep, even breathing telling me he wasn’t at all affected by whatever the hell was going on with the weather and the elevator.

  Then again, if I weren’t so terrified of the dark and small spaces, none of this crap would be a big deal either. It wasn’t like we’d be stuck inside forever, and it wasn’t like the elevator would suddenly plummet and we’d all die.

  I hoped.

  The elevator gave a sharp jerk and the woman screamed as the lights in the ceiling flashed bright for one precious second before going out once again.

  Fuck this.

  With skills I didn’t even know I possessed, I was up, sliding over Aiden’s knee, and in his lap so fast I had no idea I’d even done it, because if I’d thought about it, there was no way in hell I would have done it. No fucking way. But the fact was, I had.

  I was in Aiden’s lap. He was cross-legged on either side of me, each of his muscular thighs cocooning my hips, his chin just behind my ear. I shivered.

  Behind me, Aiden straightened; under my bu
tt, his thighs tightened and strained.

  It was then that I felt embarrassed. “I’m sorry,” I apologized, already lifting up to lunge off him.

  “Shut up,” he said as his hands landed on my bare knees, shoving me back down onto him; my back hit the solid wall of his chest and it was right then I realized his shirt was soggy from the rain. I didn’t care. Under me, his legs relaxed, my bottom settling on top of his feet.

  It was like sitting on a beanbag. A big, firm, slightly wet beanbag that breathed… and had two hands cupping my naked kneecaps. Immediately and pathetically, I let out a long, deep breath and relaxed in the cocoon of Aiden. One of his thumbs rubbed the sensitive skin on the inside of my knee, just a quick circle-shaped brush that had me letting out another sigh.

  The big guy hummed into the shell of my ear, his breath warm and way too comforting. “You want to tell me what that was about?” he asked in a whisper.

  “Not really,” I mumbled, clasping my hands in my lap.

  He made a tiny scoffing sound but didn’t say anything for a moment until… “You’re sitting on me. I think you owe me.”

  I tried to lunge up again, even though I really didn’t want to, but those huge hands clamped down even tighter, that time with his fingers spread wide, covering my kneecaps and part of my thighs.

  “Stop it. I’m teasing you,” he commented.

  Teasing me? Aiden? Letting my head droop forward, I kept my eyes closed and let a rattled sigh out. “I’m scared of the dark.” Like that wasn’t completely obvious.

  He didn’t even let out a single breath. “Yeah, I got that. I would have given you my phone to use as a flashlight but the battery went dead after I talked to you.”

  “Oh. Thanks anyway.” I made myself let out another deep breath. “I’m really scared of the dark, like the dark in here when I can’t see anything. I have been since I was a kid,” I explained tensely.

  “Why?” he cut in.

  “Why what?”

  He made that exasperated noise of his. “Why are you scared of the dark?”

  I wanted to ask if he really wanted to know, but of course he damn well did. I didn’t necessarily want to tell him—nor had I ever wanted to tell anyone—but he had a point. I was a twenty-six-year-old sitting on his lap after I’d been on the verge of having a panic attack because the lights had gone out. I guess I sort of owed him.

  “It’s stupid. I know it’s stupid. Okay? When I was five, my sisters” —though I’m pretty sure I would now blame Susie as being the main mastermind behind the incident— “locked me in a closet.”

  “That’s why you’re scared?” he had the nerve to scoff before I continued.

  “With the lights off for two days,” I finished up.

  Aiden’s voice didn’t just react, it seemed like his entire body did too. Inch by inch, what felt like from his toes and up, went rock solid. “Without food or water?”

  The fact that he thought about that small detail didn’t escape me. That was the shitty part. At least now, I thought that was the shitty part of the story. “They left me water and candy bars. Chips.” Those bitches, even at seven, eight, and nine, had already been vicious by then. They had planned it. Planned on locking me in there because they didn’t want to watch over me while our mom was gone. They hadn’t wanted to play with me, for God’s sake. They had taunted through the door before leaving me.

  I shivered even though I really would rather not have.

  “Where was your mother?” he asked in that creepy, calm tone.

  I wasn’t sure what it was about all these memories I’d shoved aside for so long suddenly coming back that made me feel like a raw, open wound. I couldn’t control the long breath I let out. “I think she was dating someone back then. It might have been my little brother’s dad. I don’t remember that well. He was in and out of our lives for a few years. All I know for sure was that she wasn’t at home then.” Sometimes she’d disappear for a few days at a time, but that was my burden to bear.

  “Who let you out?”

  “They did.” They unlocked the door and made fun of me for being a baby and peeing on myself. It had taken me an hour to get myself to crawl out of there.

  “What happened after that?” He was still talking in that effortless, patient voice that screamed ‘wrong’ at the top of its lungs.

  Shame and anger made me shake. “Nothing.”

  “Nothing?”

  “No.”

  “Did you tell your mom?”

  “Of course I told my mom. It was her closet they put me in. I’d peed in there. She had to get the carpet replaced because it smelled so bad.” I’d smelled so bad. My hands had been so messed up from banging on the door, and my voice so hoarse from screaming at them to let me out… or to at least turn on the closet light… or if they couldn’t turn on the closet light to turn on the bedroom light… to no avail. I never knew for sure what they’d done in those two days I was in there, and frankly, I didn’t care at all.

  I didn’t. Because kids that young shouldn’t have been left alone to begin with.

  His chest started puffing against my back as if his breathing was difficult. “She did nothing to your sisters?”

  I wanted to crawl into myself. The tone he was using raked at my nerves, pulling the sides of the stab wound called my childhood wide open for inspection. It made me feel small. “No. She yelled at them, but that was it. I mean, she stayed home for a month or two afterward” —that was one of the times I remembered her being mostly sober— “and I slept with her every night. After that, I moved my things and shared a room with my little brother.” I’d started locking the bedroom door after that as well.

  The fingertips on my knees kneaded for a second, but I bet my life it was a subconscious gesture, mostly because his labored breathing hadn’t gone anywhere.

  “I have to sleep with a light on,” I admitted to him, feeling his chest huff behind me. Dumb, dumb, dumb. “I don’t know why I just told you that. Don’t make fun of me.”

  There was a pause. A hesitation before, “I won’t,” he promised effortlessly. “I wondered why you had so many at your apartment and in your room.”

  I knew he’d noticed. “Please don’t tell Zac. I wouldn’t hold it passed him to hide under the bed when I’m sleeping to try and scare the crap out of me.”

  “I won’t.” His palms shaped my knees. The insides of his arms seemed to frame my shoulders and arms. His breathing was low but not so steady against my ear. “It isn’t stupid that you’re scared. You shouldn’t be embarrassed. It’s everyone else who should be ashamed of themselves.”

  The only way I managed to answer was with a nod that I wasn’t sure he knew of or not. Another rattling breath made its way out of my chest like a gust and I touched a patch of skin somewhere around his knee as I kept my eyes closed. “Thank you for helping me calm down, big guy. I haven’t lost it like that in forever.”

  “Don’t worry about it,” was all he muttered in return.

  I kept my hand on his leg, my fingertips against the coarse dark hairs that covered his legs. My breathing sounded too loud, my heart was still beating a little weird, while Aiden’s was soft and barely audible. I focused on the in and the out of my lungs.

  The other woman in the elevator mumbled, “This sucks.”

  It did. It really did.

  The silence ate up the minutes, and I let my back loosen, the top of it touching Aiden’s pectorals. The insides of his upper arms cradled me. His breathing was so even it made me sleepy.

  The elevator gave a jerk that had me opening my eyes in reaction as the lighting flickered twice and stayed on. The woman on the other side squealed, but I couldn’t even be remotely scared. I only cared about the lighting.

  And it was right then, not being plunged in the dark, that I finally witnessed with my own two eyes the sight of me sitting on Aiden. Two long, muscular legs circled me, so long that the knees jutted out way passed where mine ended. Two heavily muscled triceps popped on eit
her side of my arms, playing my bodyguards. But it was the big hands on me, the wrists propped up so effortlessly on my thighs, that made something in me react.

  He was hugging me. For all intents and purposes, Aiden was hugging me. Surrounding me.

  Tilting my head back, I swallowed that thing making its way from my stomach to my throat, and prepared a nervous, slightly shy smile over my shoulder. Except when my gaze landed on Aiden’s face, it was so serious… so damn serious. It wiped the expression right off my mouth.

  The elevator gave another jerk and almost immediately, the phone on the wall began ringing.

  With a light tap to my knee, Aiden picked me up and moved me off to the side, as if my weight was nothing to him—and it definitely wasn’t nothing. He got to his feet and reached toward the wall, picking the phone off the cradle. His gaze drifted over me in the process, those ultra-sober features making me feel like I’d done something wrong all of a sudden. “Yes… It’s about time… Yes.” Just like that, he hung up, probably in the middle of the conversation. “It’ll be about fifteen minutes.”

  Drawing my legs up to my chest, I wrapped my arms around them and nodded at his comment. He didn’t sit back down; instead, Aiden leaned against the wall and crossed his arms over his chest. One ankle went over the other.

  Not ten minutes later, a loud noise pierced through the elevator, and the next thing I knew, it began its ascent again. When the doors finally opened, two building employees were standing there, asking if we were fine, but Aiden walked right passed them as if they weren’t there.

  “Are you okay?” one of the employees asked.

  Was I okay? I hadn’t been, but I wasn’t going to say anything. Mostly, I was a little bit embarrassed I’d freaked out and uncertain what the hell the look on Aiden’s face had been about when the lights had come back on.

  “Are you coming?” the big guy asked from where he was waiting.

  There was the man I knew. “Hold your horses, sunshine. I’m coming.”

  His lips moved in a way that told me he wasn’t particularly fond of ‘sunshine,’ but most importantly, he knew I didn’t care that he hated it. “Let’s go. He’s paid by the hour and we’re already late.”