Chapter 3
CHAPTER THREE
Matteo
She thinks I work in maintenance.
That’s a first.
Rio would die laughing.
Enzo would find it highly amusing.
I’m going to play along with it. I can see she’s scared, even if she’s trying to pretend otherwise.
The lights flicker again before going out completely and now we’re in pitch darkness. She must be terrified. I whip out my cell phone, fumble around with the buttons until I manage to turn on the flashlight, then point it at the control panel. I hit the intercom. “Hey! The lights have gone out.”
The usual crackle, then silence. A few seconds later, “We’re on it.”
“You said that fifteen minutes ago.”
“Almost there, sir.”
There’s nothing I can do, and I need to let them get on with it.
Thankfully, a few seconds later the lights flicker back on again.
I turn around to see the woman on the floor.
Her eyes are closed. She’s also taken off her shoes and her belongings are lying beside her.
She has her knees bunched up and her arms folded tightly around them.
She’s more scared than I first thought. I crouch down in front of her. “Hey.” I touch her arm lightly. “It’s going to be okay. You’re not alone. We’ll be out of here before you know it.”
She lifts her head and her eyes flicker open.
She lets out another deep breath, and I reckon the lights going out again just now freaked her out even more.
She doesn’t look like the suits I usually see around here.
There’s polish, sure. Shoulder length hair that’s dark and glossy, smooth as silk, but the ends look dry.
Is that a touch of lilac? I’m starting to think that she’s not who she’s trying to be. This chick looks like she’s trying to blend but she stands out like a sore thumb, only to someone like me. I notice the smallest of details.
“Tell me about your interview.” If I keep her talking and distracted, she’ll be fine.
“I’ve got …” She clears her throat. “I’ve got to do a presentation.” Her eyes flutter closed and she’s doing that deep breathing thing again.
“Oh, yeah?” I sit down, knees bunched up, mirroring her pose, my arms circled loosely around my knees. I feel an unexpected sense of empathy for her. “Take a deep breath and just look at me.”
Her eyes open again and being so near I see they’re hazel with tiny starbursts of gold. Lashes so long and thin, and so natural looking. Not caked in mascara.
“So you can say I’m checking you out again?” she retorts.
I chuckle. “No, because I don’t want you to be so terrified.” Peering closer I notice a small scar just above her right eyebrow.
How? When? Where?
I have so many questions.
“Is it so obvious?” she murmurs.
“That we’re stuck?”
This gets me a little laugh. That’s good. Better to have her laughing than being shit scared.
“That I’m so anxious. I’m not usually like this.”
“What are you usually like?” Because, I’d quite like to know.
“Um …” Her eyes narrow at me. I bet she can’t work out if I’m coming onto her or not.
I’m not. I’m not that type of guy. I’d never take advantage of a woman under any situation.
This woman? She intrigues me. And because she seems to be struggling, I try to distract her by running my fingers around the ends of her silky hair.
I notice a few streaks that are lighter. “Lilac?”
“I—uh—I didn’t get all of it. I had lilac streaks in it before.” She touches it self-consciously and I let my hand slip away.
“Cool.” I can see her with those streaks. I bet they looked really good.
“I should have dyed it again but …”
I shake my head. “It’s not very noticeable.”
“You noticed.”
“I notice a lot of things.” I dart a glance at her nose ring. It looks painful, but it can’t be. Just like an ear or belly piercing. I once dated a girl who had her tongue pierced. It was … most exciting for me … “I dig the nose ring.”
She touches it briefly. “Thanks.” Another little smile from her. “I forgot to take it off.”
“I wanted to warn you. Corporate won’t like it.”
“You would know. I’ll take it off. I would have, but I was late and I rushed to get here.”
“Nerves?”
“I stayed up most of the night prepping.”
“Ouch.” I wince. I also stayed up most of the night, but for other reasons.
“I love this.” Her fingers trace gently over the phoenix inked on my lower arm and sparks tingle along my skin. She suddenly sits up and kneels back on her heels. “Do you mind?”
I’m not sure what she’s thinking, but do I mind? Hell, no. “Go ahead.”
She gently unwraps my arms so that they straighten, and then she starts to examine them carefully, closely. The feel of her soft, warm skin feels so good. Heat crawls along the back of my neck. Goosebumps sprinkle along my back. I start to feel hot and bothered.
“This is so cool.” Her fingers dance along my heated skin, tracing over the four single phoenix feathers on my forearm. “There’s a story behind this.” Her eyes widen as she searches my face for answers.
I don’t give them.
She goes back to her examination. At least it’s working. She’s not freaking out about being trapped. She’s gushing over my tats. Things could be worse.
“Veritas?” Her fingers slide over the Latin wording etched on the inside of my wrist.
“Truth.”
She looks up at me, waiting for me to elaborate, but I don’t. So she goes back, and this time her warm and soft fingers trace over my left forearm and over the cracked compass.
She looks up again. “What does this signify?” Her questioning eyes meet mine, but the fear has been replaced by something else. Something softer. Curiosity and a desire to find out more.
I stare back, silent. I’m not ready to tell her, but I like her boldness. I also like the way her fingers feel so tender and soft against my skin. I wonder what it would be like to have her hands around my neck. To have her look at me, like really look at me.
I want to tell her, but ... I can’t. I won’t. These tattoos have meanings. They define my life and my values.
“You’re analyzing me,” is all I say.
“You leave me guessing.” Her hands on my arms, her fingers gently stroking … does she have any idea what she’s doing to me?
She’s only admiring your tattoos, not indulging in foreplay.
Besides, we’re strangers, and I don’t open up to strangers.
“These are so cool,” she says, finally. “You don’t have any color.”
“I like them like that.” My tats are inked in black or dark gray.
“Familia,” she says, suddenly, as if she’s just seen the inscription in my inner left wrist.
“Family.”
Her head snaps up at me. “Family?” she whispers. I detect a hint of sadness, a tremble in her cadence.
“Family,” I echo. “What?” Because she’s staring at me as if I’m saying something she doesn’t understand. “We all have family, even if they’re a pain in the butt sometimes. What’s yours like?”
Her brows push together, like she’s confused. I can tell she doesn’t want to talk about it. I can relate to that, because while I understand the importance and preciousness of family, mine is still pretty fucked, to some extent.
“I’ve been in the foster care system since I was nine.”
I feel a punch to my chest, and it sucks the air right out of my lungs.
“Since you were nine?” I manage to croak out, while wondering what to say without sounding pitying.
I’m overcome with sadness and awe because I can’t begin to imagine what being in foster care must have been like.
I’ve had my own share of childhood trauma but I’ve led a pretty privileged life in comparison.
I have Mama, and my brothers. The others, too.
I have them more now than before. And then there’s him.
This woman? She’s been in foster care since nine.
Mention of foster care brings up images of neglect, cruelty, of not being wanted, of struggle and strife.
What I experienced is nothing compared to what she probably has.
My hand reaches for hers and clasps it gently.
She doesn’t wrench hers away. She doesn’t jolt in shock. So I keep my hand in hers.
“You have any more?”
“More what?”
“Tattoos.”
She doesn’t want to talk about her childhood. “I have plenty. My body’s inked all over.”
“All over?” Her eyes widen, before she masks her surprise quickly.
“I’d show you, but we don’t have that kind of relationship. Not yet.”
“Oh, puh-lease. Don’t kid yourself.” She rolls her eyes, but there’s a faint smile on her lips.
“Because I’m just a janitor?” I cry in fake outrage. “You really are judgy.”
“I am not!”
“Just because I’m a janitor.” I huff in exaggeration.
“I’ve worked in all sorts of places. I’ve cleaned toilets, and cleaned vomit up from floors and tables. Nothing wrong with being a janitor.”
The thought of going on a date hangs in my mind, suspended between possibility and craziness. I’m not the kind of guy who indulges in flings, or is spontaneous. I don’t do quick fucks like Dex used to, before he met the love of his life.
I’m more of an introvert, more of the analyzing type.
I’m always careful when it comes to my heart because I saw Mama’s broken one.
I’m not the type to daydream or chase wild thoughts.
Usually, I see things for what they are.
But she makes me wonder about things I don’t normally wonder about.
About what kind of life hides behind those careful eyes.
About what she’d sound like if she really laughed, unguarded.
About why she seems both restless and entirely still, like she’s waiting for something she doesn’t believe will come.
It’s strange, the way curiosity tugs at me, soft and insistent. She’s just a stranger in an elevator, but for some reason, she’s managed to take up space in my mind as if she belongs there.
The corners of her lips lift. That’s good. She either likes the idea, or is playing along and being friendly. But I’ve succeeded in turning her attention elsewhere, and that was my goal.
“When did you get that?” I jerk my chin at her nose-ring.
There’s a pause, like she’s contemplating whether to tell me. Then, “The day I aged out of the system, on the day I turned eighteen.”
“Cool.” Despite her trauma, I’m surprised that she’s opening up like this, to a stranger, in a way I couldn’t.
“I found a place that did it and with the money I’d saved up, doing odd jobs, I got it. It was something just for me.”
“Rebellion?”
She pauses to consider. “No. Not that. It was a promise to myself that I’d make my own choices from now on. That my life would be mine to steer from this point on.”
“That’s deep.” She’s deep. She’s someone I want to get to know better.
“I had no control over my life and I was sent from one home to the next.” She picks at a piece of fluff on her skirt and I marvel that she seems so well grounded.
That even talking about her past doesn’t paralyze her into silence.
“Every time I see it, it reminds me that I survived. That I made it out.”
It sounds like prison. Or a death camp.
“I meant to take it out.” She touches it absent-mindedly.
I nod. “Yeah. Corporate won’t like that.”
“You keep reminding me.” She pauses for a beat. “Family and trust,” she says, looking at my wrists again and this time her words feel weighted because I know the seeds of her story while she knows nothing about mine.
“It’s not … it’s not all fairytales and happiness,” I tell her. But then I think of her fear of confined spaces, something gnaws in my gut. She can talk about her childhood without any fear.
This phobia of confined spaces, if it’s not to do with her early life trauma, what the hell is it to do with?
* * *
LIZ
This guy, this stranger who feels like anything but a stranger is now holding my hand. It doesn’t feel wrong. If anything, it feels just right.
His eyes are filled with tenderness. Amidst the sound of the whirring, and sitting on the floor, trapped, the world outside fades into the background and I suddenly don’t feel so anxious.
He brushes my wrist with his thumb and I feel my stomach flip. My insides turn all light and giddy.
We stare at one another for a moment that is suspended in time.
Almost from the second I stepped into this elevator it felt like we were meant to meet.
He calms me, and he shouldn’t, because I barely know him and I never trust strangers, but this guy seems to be the exception.
He calms me in a way that is so much better than the deep belly breathing I’ve relied on for so long.
I’ve opened to him about my childhood, and that’s something I don’t do. “I’m going to be so late,” I groan.
“It’ll be okay.” He sounds so Zen he might as well be a monk. “Whoever’s waiting for you will know that there’s been a problem with the elevator. Don’t worry.”
“Are you always so sure that things are going to be okay?” He has this assuredness about him.
It’s something I’m working on. I’m brilliant at what I do, that’s why I’m here today, but I still don’t have the absolute confidence, the solid belief that things are going to be okay, because for me, things weren’t okay.
Not for a long time. Now I have a chance to finally put my life on a better footing.
It’s a chance I don’t want to blow and I hope this guy is right.
“If you don’t expect things to be okay, they never will be,” he continues.
“Things always work out for you?”
“No, but I always try to find the positive in everything.”
My stomach flips. That’s profound. I like his world view. His tattoos hint at a story of pain, and I wish he’d told me. Something. Anything. He’s a closed book and I’m scared I won’t have much time to try to dig deep. “You think we’ll be out of here soon?”
“You heard the man.”
“How long have you worked here?” I ask.
“Seems like forever.”
He’s still rubbing my wrist and it feels so good.
Too good.
“Hello? How are you folks doing inside?” A thick, gravelly voice from the intercom interrupts our conversation.
“Good,” the guy says, raising his voice in the direction of the control panel. “How much longer is this going to take?”
“We’re almost there, sir.”
Almost there. My insides weigh with disappointment because I no longer mind being stuck in here.