by Cassie Cross
After some rustling and a decisive click, Finn says, “Emergency phone’s still dead.”
Not exactly a surprise, but it’s disappointing to say the least.
“Thank you for your help with my panic attack earlier,” I tell him. “You knew exactly what to do to calm me down. I can usually get them under control on my own, but caffeine definitely doesn’t help, and I’m full of it today.”
“Based on what you said earlier, that’s understandable,” he replies with an amused lilt in his voice.
Heat rushes to my cheeks as I remember telling him all about my neighbor’s sexcapades and how Caroline wanted me to start off the year with a literal bang. I suppose if there’s one reason to be thankful for the darkness, it’s that he can’t see the blush that surely covers my cheeks right now.
Finn must sense my growing unease and awkwardness, because he continues with, “I know what to do because of my little sister. She’s had problems with anxiety for as long as I can remember. I do what I can to help her through an attack if she has one when I’m around.”
“You’re a good brother,” I reply. “And a good person to be stuck in an elevator with, apparently.”
“She carries a piece of burlap around in her pocket now,” he continues, totally avoiding my compliment. “When she feels herself spinning out of control, she rubs it between her fingers. She says it’s a good distraction, and helps her calm down.”
“Does it have to be burlap?” I ask, hoping to keep the conversation going. “That’s an oddly specific fabric.”
There’s a moment of silence. Then, “I don’t know. It has something to do with the texture, I think?”
“I never thought of that,” I reply, toying with the cuff of my coat sleeve. It’s certainly not burlap, but the texture is rough enough that I can understand how concentrating on the feeling would detour runaway thoughts. “I’ll make sure I stop by a fabric store and get some before I come back to this building, just in case. Although I’m pretty sure I won’t be stepping foot in this elevator again, even if it means climbing a mile’s worth of stairs otherwise.”
“I wouldn’t blame you. Do you come here often?”
I laugh, without really meaning to.
“What?” Finn asks. It sounds like he’s smiling.
“I was just laughing because that’s such a cliche pickup line. Not that you would hit on me, or that you were hitting on me…it caught me by surprise is all, because I wasn’t expecting it. Anyway, yeah, I do come here often. I do some freelance work for a studio here, print stuff mostly.”
“I suppose now wouldn’t be the best time to tell you I was here for a photo shoot then, would it?”
A little knot I didn’t even know was there tightens in my stomach. “Ah, so you’re a competitor then, huh?” I aim for teasing, but fall a little short. “Stealing from my already meager client base.”
It takes him so long to reply that I worry I’ve offended him.
“Not stealing, no. I’m…more into film than photography,” he says carefully.
Hmmmm. I want to ask him if he works in front of or behind the camera; with the way he looks, it could be either. But he seems evasive, and I don’t want to put him off this early in our confinement.
“You weren’t shooting a porn or something, were you?”
Finn lets out a surprised laugh. “No, I wasn’t.”
I’m about to engage him in a game of 20 Questions when his stomach lets out a loud rumble.
“Well,” he replies. “That’s embarrassing.”
“Nothing embarrassing about being hungry,” I tell him. “Besides, I have food.”
“You do?” he asks in a hope-filled voice.
“I do!” I fumble for the handles of my bag from Grand Central Market and place it on my thighs. “You’re welcome to whatever you’d like, although there’s definitely some stuff in here that you wouldn’t want to open in a confined space. Cheese? No. Tapenade? No. Anything else? Sure.”
Finn’s fingers brush mine as he takes the bag. “What about this champagne?
“Off limits,” I reply quickly. “That’s for tonight.”
“When you start off the new year with a literal bang?” I can practically see the smug smile on his handsome face.
Ugh, I wish I could crawl inside that bag and disappear. Instead I toss a balled-up napkin in his general direction and say, “Shut up and eat something.”
4
Chapter Four
“Malted milk ball?” I ask, holding the bag out somewhere in the dark, in the general direction of where Finn is sitting. We re-situated ourselves during our makeshift meal and are now sitting side-by-side. The change in position made it easier for us to share a now half-eaten bag of tortilla chips.
It also made it easier for us to share body heat. After being stuck for however long, the air in here is taking on a bit of a chill.
“We’re rationing the chips, but not the candy?” Finn teases as he enthusiastically dips his hand in the bag.
“I only bought one bag of chips,” I tell him. “I have a ton of candy.”
“You’re an excellent long-term planner.”
“Long-term planner, sugar junkie. Whichever.” I pull out a ball, and toss it in my mouth.
“So,” Finn says, shifting a little beside me. “You’re a photographer?”
“I’m trying to be. I succeed most of the time.”
With a huff of a laugh and the slight fumbling of his fingers against my wrist, he takes some more candy. “What do you consider success?”
“Hmmm,” I hum, buying some time to think up a good answer. “I guess success means something different to me at different times in my life. When I first graduated from college, success was someone paying me to do what I love. At twenty two? It doesn’t get much better than that. And even though those first paychecks were pretty meager, they meant that I didn’t have to bargain with my parents for rent money. Not having to bargain with them for rent money meant no lectures about picking a terrible career. It meant not having to move back home and take an office job.”
“I get not wanting to do that; I’d go crazy sitting behind a desk all day,” he says, before I hear a gentle crunch coming from his direction. “Where’s home?”
“Pittsburgh. I grew up there, but…” I take a deep breath and exhale with a dreamy sigh. “It’s not New York, you know?”
“I know,” he replies. “Maybe I’m a little biased because I grew up here, but there’s no place like it.”
I’m glad that’s something we can agree on.
“Obviously you never moved back to Pittsburgh,” Finn says.
“Thank god,” I tease with a grateful laugh. “After I started making some money, success was getting steady work, getting callbacks from previous clients, and building a portfolio. It was seeing my work in magazines and on billboards, then it was being able to afford my own apartment so I could have some studio space. And now? I don’t know. I haven’t set that next goal yet.”
“Maybe…finding an apartment with studio space that doesn’t have paper-thin walls?”
I can’t help but smile, because he remembers. I threw some information at him early on in this situation, that at the time were just the rantings of a stranger in a downward spiral. But he paid attention. He listened, and that has a weird but pleasant warmth blossoming in my chest.
“Yeah, that sounds like a good one.”
“It’s just a suggestion. You have another ten hours—give or take—to come up with a resolution for next year. That could be it.”
“Oh, no no no,” I say. “I don’t make resolutions.”
“Really?” He sounds surprised. “Why not?”
“Resolutions are just promises waiting to be broken. I don’t think you should break promises to anyone, but you definitely shouldn’t break promises to yourself. The whole resolution thing is just a setup for failure, so I don’t do it.”
Finn playfully bumps my shoulder with his. “I never thought of i
t that way.”
“Get stuck with me in an elevator, get my unsolicited dime-store wisdom.”
“And your candy,” he adds.
“That too! I almost always have candy on me, though. I’m kind of like a kid that way.”
With a soft laugh, Finn asks, “How old are you?”
“I’m legal,” I tell him, teasing.
“The kid mention had me wondering.”
“Haven’t you ever heard that a true gentleman never asks a lady her age?”
Finn’s arm brushes against mine as he leans in close. “I never said I was a gentleman.” There’s a wicked tone to his voice that makes my nerves buzz in the best possible way. “And you don’t look like you’re old enough that someone asking would bother you.”
“How do you know how old I look?” We’d barely had ten seconds in the elevator before the lights cut out and our little nightmare began.
After a beat of silence, he says, “I noticed you before you got in the elevator.”
My heart trips, and slams right against my ribcage. “You did not,” I reply, rolling the top of the bag of candy closed. I have other bags, but we might need all we can get later. “You’re just saying that so I’ll let you have more candy.”
“You’d let me have more candy anyway.” He sounds so cocky that I’m positive he has a smug smile plastered on his face, and I’m not sure whether I want to kiss it or smack it off. “I’m not lying, Zoey. I was standing in the lobby on a conference call, and got distracted when I saw you. I completely missed part of the conversation—and also missed that the doors had opened—and had to run and catch you.”
“You mean catch the elevator, right?”
He doesn’t answer, so I try a different tactic.
“Were you in a hurry because you had somewhere important to be?”
Finn’s sleeve rustles against mine as he shrugs. “I’m happy where I am now.”
My heart does that trippy, slammy thing again.
“Okay, you can have more candy,” I reply, trying to play it off.
“Hang on to that in case we need it later. There might be a crisis the closer we get to midnight.”
My thoughts exactly. Ugh, he’s rocketing right off of the perfect charts. I need to find a flaw, any flaw to get my heart back to its normal rhythm and my head out of the clouds. This is not the beginning of anything special. This is going to be over the second those doors finally open.
Isn’t it? I don’t want to hope, but there’s a tiny blossom of it growing inside of me anyway.
“You never answered my question, by the way,” he says, pulling me out of my thoughts. I wonder if I missed something while I was thinking about the future that we definitely won’t be having.
“What?”
With only a slightly exasperated huff, he repeats, “How old are you?”
“I’m twenty four. You?”
“Twenty six.”
“And you’re a filmmaker?”
Finn takes a deep breath that seems louder than it is because of the dead silence around us. “Not really, no. I’m…kind of between jobs at the moment.”
That’s double-speak for unemployed, which isn’t terrible for people our age, but I come down a little closer to earth with that admission.
“This is a good city to be unemployed in,” I offer. “Plenty of competition, but plenty of jobs if being creative is your thing.”
“Actually, I don’t live here. I’ve been living out in LA.”
“Oh,” I reply, hating the disappointment in my voice. With that admission, I’m full-on careening into reality. No matter how fun this is, no matter how much he flirts, there’s a life outside of this city that he has to get back to. It’s disheartening, but good to know.
“I’m thinking of moving back here,” Finn supplies quickly, probably noticing the change in my tone. “I’m just looking for a change of pace, and had some commitments to fulfill here, so I decided to take an open-ended trip, spend some time with my family for the holidays.”
There’s a noticeable shift in his demeanor when he mentions his family, I can’t help but pick up on it. “Sounds like you had a lot of fun with them,” I tease.
He lets out a clipped laugh. “You wouldn’t think that if you’d been around this past week.”
“You all don’t get along so well?”
“I get along great with my mom and my sister. But I’m a perennial disappointment to my father; he likes to remind me of it often.”
He’s a little too breezy about it, but I hear the undercurrent of regret there. Like he cares desperately about what his father thinks, but doesn’t want anyone to know it.
“What could you have done that could possibly be that bad?”
Finn shifts, and there’s a soft clunk against the elevator’s paneling. His head, maybe? “I didn’t get involved in the family business like he wanted me to and went into a field that he thinks is an embarrassment. I’m sure there’s a long list of other offenses, but those are the top two.”
My heart goes out to him. My chosen career path is a bone of contention with my parents, but not something they’re actively ashamed of. They don’t like the uncertainty that goes hand-in-hand with me being creative by nature and trying to make a living off of it, but they accept that it’s who I am and what I love, and don’t push me about it too hard.
Talking to Finn makes me realize just how lucky I am. How easily things could be different for me.
“So,” I begin, moving just a little closer to him, maybe offering him what little comfort I can. “What would you consider success?”
“Right now?”
“Right now,” I agree. “At this point in your life.”
“Right now, it would be…happiness.”
5
Chapter Five
“How long do you think we’ve been in here?” I ask, rubbing my hands together to generate some warmth. Even though it’s an unseasonably warm day outside, the inside of this elevator is starting to feel like a damn meat locker. Isn’t that the opposite of what should be happening? Seems like the longer Finn and I are in close quarters, our body heat and breathing should be warming the place up.
No such luck.
“I don’t know. A few hours, maybe? Are you cold?”
Yes, very. “A little, yeah.”
Finn moves, and I miss the warmth of his body immediately. There’s a little bit of shuffling and the rustle of fabric. “Here,” he says, draping what feels like his leather jacket across my chest. “Wear this.” It’s toasty from his body heat and smells like leather and spice.
“Aren’t you going to be cold?” I ask. I care about his general well-being, of course, but it’s just a courtesy question. I don’t plan on giving this thing up - with the smell and the warmth? It’s mine now…for the foreseeable future.
“I’m fine. Please, take it.”
“Thank you,” I reply, snuggling into it. This is the most comfortable I’ve been all day. All the caffeine I’ve ingested has worn off, and my lack of sleep over the past few nights is catching up with me. My breath catches on a long, deep yawn that I try my best to stifle.
My body slumps down a little, and my head lolls to the side, coming to rest against Finn’s shoulder.
“You can take a nap if you want to,” he says softly, his breath tickling my forehead. “I’ve heard I make a great pillow.”
I laugh, but my exhaustion makes it sound half-hearted. “It seems rude to sleep and leave you here all alone and lonely.”
“I’ll be all right. And I promise I won’t eat the rest of your candy while you’re out.”
“I’m going to hold you to that,” I say sleepily. “You don’t want to see my angry face.”
“I wouldn’t see anything. It’s dark.”
I nudge him. “Smartass.”
“Sleep, Zoey.”
It is an awfully tempting offer. As if he can feel my resolve crumbling, Finn scoots a little closer. Between the warmth of his body and th
e warmth of his coat? I don’t stand a chance.
I snuggle against the soft cotton of his shirt, and close my eyes.
I wake on the tail end of what I’m hoping is a very soft snore. My neck is a little ache-y, but I’m toasty warm thanks to Finn’s furnace-like body heat. I discover—with only fleeting embarrassment—that at some point in my sleep I’ve taken his right arm hostage, holding onto it like some kind of security blanket.
“How long was I out?” I ask, lifting my head from Finn’s shoulder, and doing my best to discreetly let go of him.
“Not that long,” he replies quietly. “Maybe an hour.”
An hour, and still no movement. That doesn’t do much for my hope that we’ll get out of here at any point in the near future.
“Sorry about the snoring. You were right, you do make a great pillow.”
“Good to know,” he says, and I can hear his smile in his voice. “And the snoring? I thought it was cute.”
My face heats, and I’m really glad he can’t see it. For whatever reason I feel the need to make sure the snoring was the worst of it, because I know that I have the unfortunate habit of talking in my sleep.
“I didn’t…say anything, did I?”
“No. Nothing at all.”
Thank god. I breathe an audible sigh of relief.
“How long has this thing with your neighbor been going on?” he asks.
“Just the past couple of nights,” I tell him, sliding my arms into his jacket so I can wear it properly. “I don’t know if she’s been staying over at her boyfriend’s place before now or what, but the proceedings are disruptively loud. And frequent. And long. I’d do anything for, like, a concrete barrier or something in between our apartments, but…that’s real estate in this city for you.”
Finn lets out a short breath of a laugh. “I’m glad I’ve never had that issue. Or any issue with loud neighbors, now that I think about it.”
