Tapping the corner of my phone to the elevator call button, I watched a woman emerge from the other unit. I stared at her, all summery and happy in her long yellow skirt and sleeveless magenta top, with a face like sunshine and a jingling ankle bracelet announcing her approach.
No one was allowed to look that pleased with life when it was too hot to exist.
"Hi," she said with a smile, her thumb beating a rhythm against the call button. Dark, shoulder-length hair fell across her face as she leaned forward. "This thing being slow again? It was slow last week, too. I guess that's part of the deal with old buildings, right?"
She was too much and too loud, and I dug in my pocket for some hand sanitizer. I'd come in contact with enough germs for one afternoon. I glanced up from her ankle and stopped attempting to extrapolate a good reason why any civilized person would wear a noisemaker, and shrugged.
She laughed, and said, "Okay then."
She started humming, and then shaking her ankle with the tune, and I looked for the stairwell. I couldn't stand in this hall with a chattering music box much longer, and sharing an elevator with her would require a sedative.
Despite my penchant for the high-end bar scene, I preferred quiet. Growing up with five siblings who made Attila the Hun's crew look like a chill group of guys who enjoyed churning their own butter meant I had to find that quiet for myself. Noise-canceling headphones, soundproofed insulation in my office, and enough space so that Riley and I could go weeks without seeing each other in the firehouse we shared.
Noticing a doorway at the far end of the hall, I gestured for her to step aside. A humid stairwell was a reasonable price to pay for serenity.
"Hey," she said, her hand grabbing my elbow. "It's here."
I met her eyes for the first time since she jangled into my personal space, and as much as I wanted to scowl at her invasion, her smile was too warm, her hazel eyes too bright. She was pretty in a way I couldn't comprehend—maybe it was her shortage of rail-thin, blue eyed blondeness, or the fact she wasn't made up, blown out, or put together, or that she wasn't simply looking at me but she was seeing me—and her smile transformed her whole face. Soon, I was smiling too.
Like a fucking lunatic.
Then I felt the first spasms of panic stirring my stomach, squeezing my lungs, making my skin too tight.
My instincts told me to walk away from Miss Music Box, pop some pills to cage the ugly green anxiety monster, and hike down eleven flights of stairs.
I always listened to my instincts. Beyond my siblings, they were the only things I could trust in this world.
But I stepped into that elevator anyway, gazing at her light eyes, and within ten seconds of the door closing, I was hurtling to my death.
2
Tiel
"What the fuck was that?"
I was hitting an octave above shrill, well inside screechy territory, but free falling in a blacked-out elevator didn't require perfect pitch.
"Hey. Are you okay?" I asked.
No response.
I wasn't on this roller coaster alone, right? That sweet, beautiful boy who gave me all kinds of lost puppy dog eyes couldn't have been a heat-wave-induced mirage.
The fall had tossed me against the side wall, and I was on my hands and knees, my shoulder throbbing. I knew I was going to feel that every time I lifted my bow or picked up my guitar for a week or two. Reaching out, I blindly patted the ground around me until my hand connected with a leg.
"All right, you better be alive," I said, my hand anchored on his thigh as I crawled closer. As far as thighs went, it was nice. Solid and strong, yet lean. "The only way this could get worse is if I'm trapped in here with a dead guy."
Dim lights flickered on overhead, and that had to be a good sign. We weren't slamming into the ground floor if there were emergency lights, and I was sticking with that logic.
"Oh, you are adorable. I should be concerned about whether you're seriously injured, but you are too freaking adorable for that right now." I laid my hand on his cheek. His eyelashes were long, longer than should be allowable for men, and thick and dark. His hair was the same way, but shot through with a touch of auburn, and it wasn't even close to fair.
Hell, this boy wasn't beautiful. He was gorgeous. The kind of gorgeous that modeled underwear in Times Square ads.
And he probably knew it, too.
They always did.
"Hey there, gumdrop, tell me you're alive," I said.
His eyes flickered open then narrowed, and he scrubbed a hand over his forehead. "Oh my fucking… What the…What the actual fuck just happened?"
His voice was surprisingly deep, a smooth strum of low bass chords.
It was lethal.
"Well," I sang, glancing around. "I think we're stuck in an elevator. And it's going to be fine. Look, emergency lights. Yay for emergency lights!"
He shifted to a sitting position, effectively knocking my hand from his thigh, and rubbed his eyes.
He'd been thrown clear across the elevator car yet he looked as though he just walked out of a J. Crew catalog photo shoot. He was tastefully rumpled in his preppy gingham check shirt and fancy loafers, and I half expected him to announce it was time for a yachting competition or polo tournament or something.
But that shit did it for me. I wanted to eat him with a spoon while he gave me a couple more smoldery, scowly glares.
That's right, honey. Tell me all about your purebred golden retrievers.
Static crackled from the intercom. "Hello? Anyone in there?"
"Hi, yeah, there are two of us—"
"Is this electrical or mechanical?" he asked, his palms pressed to his eyes.
"Power went out to the whole Back Bay," the voice from the intercom replied. "Must've been the heat wave. Rescue team is on its way, and we'll have you out of there in a jiff. Just, um, sit tight."
The good news: we weren't dead, and with any luck a firefighter would have to throw me over his shoulder and carry me to safety. Presuming this beautiful boy wasn't interested in the task.
The bad news: I was sweating like a beast. Not dewy, glistening girl sweat, either. I was starting to look like a defensive tackle at training camp. It wasn't until recently that I understood why my mother always had a handkerchief in her pocket; a lady had to keep herself tidy.
As much as I discarded my mother's—and grandmothers' and aunts'—commentary around all things lady-like, I couldn't disagree with them on a few points. To start, perspiration management was critical.
The other point was hair. I came from a long line of women who started sprouting dark upper lip peach fuzz right around the time they turned thirty, and I was no exception to that curse.
If anything, I was an overachieving early sprouter.
It wasn't even two weeks after my twenty-eighth birthday that I realized the shadow above my lip was a girlstache, and I'd been stemming the tide for the past year. As soon as I could afford laser hair removal, I was ditching the crème bleach and being done with that shit.
But the rest of it? The marrying a nice boy from the neighborhood, the house no more than three blocks from my parents' place in Jersey, the job at my family's restaurant? I was done with that shit, too.
I'd been done for a long time.
"Oh fuck," he murmured, and his head fell back against the wall. He pressed his hand to his breastbone and I heard him counting under his breath.
"Yeah, I know. But this building is really good, I'm sure they're—"
"No," he grunted. He didn't look so hot anymore—still yummy, unwaveringly yummy—but more and more wrecked. He lifted a shaking hand in the direction of his leather messenger bag. "Can you reach in the front pocket and grab the case? Please."
I handed him the small kit, and when his fingers struggled to grip the zipper, I opened it for him. Syringes and vials of insulin sat in neatly ordered rows, and I glanced at him. Perhaps my excessive sweating wasn't the only bad news. "This is for a pump, right?"
"It's fin
e, just give it to me," he snapped. His eyes fell shut and his chest heaved as his breath came in short, shallow pants.
I crawled closer, climbing astride his lap while patting each of his pockets. Even with his face flushed and the muscles under his rolled up shirtsleeves twitching in distress, he was gorgeous. So perfect and so vulnerable.
"Really, don't touch it," he gasped. "Please don't. I can do it."
That was nowhere near accurate. His words were broken, at once slurred and frantic, and he couldn't align his fingers to snag the pump from my hand. My knowledge was limited, but the screen on his Walkman-sized device indicated his blood sugar was arcing high into dangerous territory, and we didn't have time for this debate.
"Twelve years as a band camp counselor and I know everything there is to know about operating one of these," I said. "Insulin pumps, inhalers, and EpiPens. I know them all. Can't start a fire in the woods, at least not on purpose, but I can work these."
"That's comforting," he muttered.
"Just breathe, pumpkin," I said.
His device was newer than the ones I encountered at camp, sleeker. Humming while I inserted a new cartridge, I then watched the fluid move through the thin tubing that connected to his infusion site. The quarter-sized disc, I learned during last summer's mandatory health trainings, delivered insulin through a fine cannula that was placed under the skin. Another small disc, a wireless sensor, constantly measured tiny amounts of blood glucose and pinged readings back to the device.
The diabetic camper in my bunk had to rotate her sites around her abdomen every few days. She said it didn't hurt to insert them; if anything, it was less painful than frequent injections and the continuous glucose monitoring meant she didn't have to prick her fingers as much. I knew from the camp nurse that they could also be positioned on the thigh or upper arm, but the angry grimace on the underwear model's face told me he wasn't interested in questions about his regimen.
"What is that song?"
"Hmm? Oh, that. It's 'Anna Sun.' By Walk The Moon," I said. I snagged some tissues from my bag and mopped the sweat from his forehead and throat. "What else do you need?"
He shook his head, his hand flattened against his chest as he closed his eyes. "Just get off my leg and be quiet."
Shuffling to the side, I bit my lip and stared at his belt. It was navy with embroidered white whales, and it wasn't long before "Yellow Submarine" was buzzing through my head.
Here's the problem: I didn't know how to be quiet. Asking me for silence was like putting a giant cookie on the countertop, telling me not to eat it, and then leaving me alone with it.
I ate the goddamn cookie every time and I just couldn't help it.
Everything about me was noise and fidget and rhythm, and I couldn't function without.
So I tapped the chords on my wrist and stared at him. He was too pretty to be trapped in an elevator. I, on the other hand, attracted this brand of nonsense. This was par for my course, and wasn't it always the poor, lonely grad students in these situations? Never men who looked like they should be sending hounds off for a fox hunt—did people still do that sort of thing?—or debating the appropriate amount of time to age a cabernet.
"You didn't have to stop," he said. "With the song. Just talk less. For a few minutes."
With my iPhone in hand, I toggled to the right playlist and gave us each an earbud. He accepted it without question, and I figured averting a diabetic coma warranted this form of kinship.
For four and a half blissful minutes, I wasn't worried about elevator disasters. "More? Feeling better? Need anything else?" I asked. He nodded, his eyes still shut. "You want more, you're feeling better, and you need something, or—"
"It's fine," he snapped. "I'm fine. Play something else."
I shifted off my knees and settled beside him. We sat there, shoulder to shoulder, listening to LCD Soundsystem, Weezer, Taylor Swift, The Who, AFI, Van Morrison, Seven Mary Three, OneRepublic, The Smiths, Lupe Fiasco, and a handful of new bands for almost two hours.
So much for getting us out in a jiff.
The air was thick enough to chew, and I was way too close to experiencing one of my worst nightmares: smelling like a two-day-old Italian sub sandwich while in the company of other humans. As far as worst nightmares went, this wasn't on par with death by killer bees or finding a severed finger in a tub of hummus, but it was a real concern.
The underwear model wasn't faring much better in this heat. However, it was working out beautifully for me since he had ditched the gingham shirt, leaving him in just a gray tank and khakis. That, a ring on his thumb, a spendy-looking watch, two medical alert bracelets, a copper cuff, freckles, and the dark outline of tattoos on his shoulders.
Those freckles were just too fucking sweet. I wanted to touch everything and ask a dozen questions.
When the Neil Young song ended, I turned down the volume and said, "I'm Tiel, by the way."
He kept his eyes closed but the corners of his mouth tipped up. "Teal? Like the color?"
I got the 'isn't that a color?' routine a lot. Trust me, I gave my parents plenty of shit for that choice, and spent several adolescent years calling myself Renee. My mother could still produce homemade birthday cards I signed with my adopted name. I found it odd she bothered to keep them. In her book, I ranked just above the people who routinely let their dog poop in her front yard.
It wasn't until I was out of the house and fully myself that I stopped wanting to be a Hannah or Rachel or Emma. Or Renee.
My older sister, on the other hand, couldn't get enough of her name. She loved explaining that Agapi was the Greek word for divine love—at least that was her preferred translation. She liked it so much she tattooed her name on her own ass.
It was easy for her to embrace every ounce of her Greekness; she was my mother's clone. She had the wavy mocha hair, the perfect olive skin, the dark eyes, and the tall, slender figure.
In every way imaginable, I was Agapi's opposite. I was such an odd blend of both gene pools that I resembled neither of my parents. At first glance, I looked like the kid they adopted. Aside from inheriting my father's thick black hair and a slightly lighter shade of my mother's skin, my features were distinctly mine. Sometimes I wondered whether I'd feel differently about my family, my religions, my cultures if I'd ever felt like I belonged in any of them. To this day, I wasn't sure where I belonged, but at least now I knew who I was.
"No, not the color. T-I-E-L."
My name came with no cute translation.
"That's rather distinctive," he said, his eyes still closed and his smile spreading.
I shrugged and studied his short beard scruff. It was cute, and it softened the line of his jaw in a way that made fuzziness seem wholly sophisticated.
"Yeah," I said. "But I like that I can Google myself and not find anyone else out there with my exact, full name."
If I had to guess, this boy could grow one hell of a lumberjack beard in no time at all. It wouldn't go with the preppy look, but I got the impression he could pull off anything. Underwear models were gifted like that.
And wouldn't that be a sight? Skivvies, scruff, and smile.
"Okay, I'll bite. What's your full name?"
"Tiel Kalogeropoulos-Desai. But I dropped the Kalogeropoulos bit a long time ago. No one has time for all those vowels."
"That's amazing," he laughed. His breathing was a bit more regular, the pulse in his throat jumping a little less. Glancing at his device, I saw his glucose readings leveling off into safer ranges. "It's like the entire United Nations was crammed into one person."
"You know, muffin, instead of busting my balls, you could tell me your name. It seems like we're hanging together for a bit."
"Or dying together," he said, and then he laughed. "Sorry. I'm Sam. Samuel Aidan Walsh, if that's what we're doing."
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Sam, despite these," I glanced around the elevator, "circumstances."
He opened his eyes, all slate blue and serious, and
he nodded toward the insulin pump and iPhone in my hands. "Thanks for sorting me out." I smiled, and he gave me a lopsided grin. "I'm sorry you had to see all that, Tiel."
And somehow, that was all it took. I was full-tilt smitten with this beautiful boy, from the inside out. I felt like a cartoon character with my heart swelling to ten times its normal size and thumping right out of my chest for all to see.
But before I allowed myself to think about that, the elevator shook, and metal-on-metal shrieked around us.
Everything went dark, and then we were falling.
3
Sam
Deep breath in, deep breath out. Deep breath in, deep breath out.
Breathing means we're alive. Deep breath in, deep breath out. Just keep breathing.
"Hey there, folks," a voice boomed from the intercom. "Captain MacNamara here, Boston Fire Department. Is everyone still with me?"
At first, I didn't understand the words over Tiel's screams.
We were huddled together in the corner where we'd landed, Tiel's arms around my waist, our legs tangled, my hand holding her head to my chest. It was an involuntary reaction to the jolt, my personal space compulsions temporarily suspended, and neither of us were ready to let go yet.
"Shh. It's okay," I murmured against her hair, then spoke toward the intercom. "This situation appears to be getting worse, Captain."
"I know you've had one hell of a fall, and we're workin' on getting you out, but I'm going to need you to be patient with me."
"How much more patient?" I asked.
This building, despite all its Brutalistic splendor, was off my short-term investment list.
"We've got a lady trapped in the other car, and she's in labor. As long as everyone's all right in there, we're going to work on getting to her first."
Tiel looked up at me in the hazy darkness, giving me and my device a purposeful glance, but I shook my head. I had enough insulin to last me two days, and enough glucose tablets for the month. I was more concerned about sitting on the goddamn floor in a malfunctioning elevator. If anything, going into a diabetic coma would be preferable to picking up the flesh-eating bacteria that was certain to be crawling all over this death trap.
The Walsh Brothers Page 56
