CHAPTER 13 #2
When she frees my fingers, I go right back to fashioning the elastic into a longer braid.
A sigh of frustration draws my gaze to John, his eyebrows stuck together in a cute furrow as he grazes a finger across the pin pad of the door.
He steps back from the wall, his fingers combing through his hair, making it stick up in every direction.
The sight makes me smile as I twist the rubber bands into another knot.
Laurie follows my gaze. “He’s nice, too.”
He is, and it makes my heart swell in my chest. I wonder if there’s a study about affection—rather than attraction—under aversive conditions.
“More my type?” I ask, even though I already know the answer. I’ve introduced a couple of “Johns” to Laurie in the past. All of them nice and cute and thoughtful. But I wouldn’t be here tonight if any of them had worked out.
“I don’t know if I invest much in types.” She pauses. “Stu is my type.”
“Stu is a douche bag,” I retort.
“Exactly.”
Laurie sighs, drawing my attention to where she’s picked up her own rubber band. Her gaze is hard on the back of the room as she mindlessly threads her fingers over and under each other until the elastic cuts into her skin. “So, if we get out of here—”
“Hey. No.” It’s one thing for me to think it as some involuntary, intrusive thought, but it’s another for her to say it out loud.
“Jamie—”
“Laurie.” I grab her hand, pull the elastic from her fingers, and watch as the blood flows back under the skin. When our eyes meet I can see the fear clearly behind the brown irises that stare back at me.
“We are going to get out of here. If I need to smash every bottle in this fucking place or break every one of those rules from our poster or ruin my chances of having sex with any number of attractive men tonight, we are getting out of this place, we’re going to be okay, and you are going to live a long life making boring-as-shit documentaries. ”
It’s a terrible, unfocused, slightly offensive declaration, but it pulls her away from that dark place. And even though her tone is sarcastic, I can tell she means it when she shakes her head and says, “That was beautiful.”
“I’m the dramatic one, remember?”
Maybe that’s why I’m finding this a little easier to navigate. Laurie likes certainty. She lives her life in reason and pragmatism, and none of what has happened so far tonight falls into those categories.
Laurie suddenly shifts away from the desk, and that’s my indication that Wes is moving back to the counter. She stays within earshot at the doorframe, though, because voyeurism is inherently linked to liking documentaries.
The chair leg slides into view on top of the counter while I’m twisting two braids together—so does the map—but Wes waits until I look up, until I meet his eye, before he says, “We’ll be as quick as we can.
Maybe Dani and Colette have found a phone by now.
There might be a flashlight, or an evacuation map. Something that can help us.”
I hadn’t thought of any of that, and it’s the kind of problem-solving you don’t see in most of the slashers I watch. What is “logical” doesn’t play a main role in the escapism I gravitate toward.
Maybe that’s why I relent a little. “Good point.”
He looks like he wants to say more, but then he grabs the broken chair leg and gets ready to go. I look down at the length of plaited elastic in my hand so I don’t have to watch him leave, and then it hits me. What I’ve been making this whole time.
“Hold on.”
He pauses readily, and I try not to read too much into it when I grab hold of the piece of wood in his hand and pull him back to the counter.
I never thought my friendship bracelet skills would come in handy outside of elementary school or to prepare for a concert, but all that nervous knotting and twisting has resulted in a braid of rubber bands that could make a too-big bracelet, or—
“Here.” I tie one end around the handle of Wes’s handmade weapon, working in a cradle knot to make sure it doesn’t slip out, and then hold my hand out for his.
Trying not to be distracted by the warmth of his skin against the pads of my fingers, I make a loop on the other end, then fasten it around his wrist.
“Wh—”
“Cabin in the Woods, The Strangers—” I stop with the examples when I remember he prefers Bullock-fronted films. “They all drop the weapon. This way you won’t drop your… stick. Stake? Shaft?”
“Please don’t call it a shaft.”
“You can adjust it.” I start tightening the bracelet, only looking up to take stock of the leftover materials on the desk.
There’s not enough to make another. I probably should have kept it for myself.
Self-preservation and all that. But I’m not one to take a gift back.
Not to mention he’s going down into the depths of the club while I’m going up to an open, easily accessible (and potentially escapable) level.
Even though Wes volunteered for the basement run, I feel like he drew the short straw.
When the bracelet is finally tight enough to reassure me it won’t slip, I look up to see Wes’s mouth splitting into a grin. “How… How do you know how to do that?”
I shrug. “I went through a macramé phase, and a friendship bracelet phase, and a—”
“Jamie…”
His voice is soft, low, warm. So warm my mouth goes dry.
“Yeah?”
He pauses a moment, scanning my face.
“Don’t listen to Billie. Laurie’s right. Everything you’ve done tonight… I don’t know how you do it.” He points down to his weapon wristlet. “Do this.”
That makes me grin. Because having Wes gesture to a shitty friendship bracelet like it’s an Academy Award is incredibly gratifying.
“I could ask you the same thing,” I say with a smile. “How do you do it? How do you know how to look out for everyone and keep your cool?”
He stares at me. Hard. More than I would’ve thought the question would warrant, then he seems to find the words.
“It’s just part of who I am.”
And that’s why I’m drawn to him so much.
“Same for me. But we need to test this thing. Drop your weapon.” He lets go of the stake, and it bounces right back up into his palm. I have to stop myself from doing a little clap since there was a very high chance that wouldn’t have worked.
The grin is back on his face. “You’re pretty incredible.”
Okay, that was far more gratifying than his reaction to the bracelet. Why do I feel like I’m the one winning the Oscar now?
“Thank you.” Heat spreads out underneath my collarbone, and I raise a palm to cover it, but it just increases when his eyes drop to watch my movement.
“You’re pretty incredible, too.” I should leave it at that, but the next part is out before I can stop myself. “It’d be incredible if you didn’t die.”
“I’m determined not to.” He grants me that grin again, but then it’s gone just as quick. His expression turns serious, the same look as the one before when it seemed like he wanted to get something off his chest. This time he decides to say it.
“Look, I’m… I’m sorry for how our date ended—”
“It’s okay,” I say—too quickly. Partly because I don’t want to relive the mortification of the final minutes of our date when things—ironically enough given our circumstances—seem to have gotten back to more promising ground.
But also because if this is his way of having no regrets in case something does happen downstairs, I don’t want to hear it.
I continue. “I kind of screwed it up at the en—”
“No.” The force of the word makes me start, but it also makes my heart beat fast and furiously beneath my ribs, especially when he follows up the outburst with a soft “You didn’t screw anything up, Jamie. I just… I’m—”
“Wes?”
Billie is waiting a few steps behind him, one fist propped on her hip, the other grasping the handle of the first aid kit.
John must have given it to her, and I try not to think of what she and Wes are about to walk into.
She grants me one more narrow-eyed look before tilting her head in the direction of the stairs.
“Yeah… Yeah, I’m coming.” Wes nods. We share one more second of eye contact before he clears his throat and pushes off the counter.
I can’t tear my eyes away from him. I don’t know if this is the last image I’m going to have of him, and that’s why I say, “Wait.”
He does. Instantly. Again. And now I need to scramble for a reason why I stopped him. Fortunately, I find it right in front of me.
“You guys should take this.” I pick up the map on the counter and fold it into thirds. “Since Laurie and I are staying with the others.”
When I hold it out it looks like he’s going to fight me on it. The map is one of the very few advantages we have at the moment, but then he takes it, and I don’t miss the way his fingers linger when they brush against mine as he pulls the paper out of my hands.
My fingertips are still tingling from the contact when he lifts his gaze back to mine and points his baton at me. “I’m not going to say that thing you told me not to say.”
I try not to smile and fail. “I appreciate that.”
He slides the map into his back pocket as he joins Billie and—making sure not to disturb the corpse at my feet—I exit out of the coat check to watch them walk toward the stairs.
Wes moves slowly, purposefully, each step taken with care until they pause at the top of the stairs.
I stop breathing when I realize he waits for three beats—I know what that means—but then he descends the staircase with those same slow, purposeful steps, Billie one step behind him.
It’s only when I can’t see them anymore, when their departure isn’t immediately followed by a horrifying sound of metal puncturing flesh or a pained yell, that I let out the breath I’m holding.
“Jamie?”
I turn back to John, fashioning a smile on my face. “Yeah?”
Over his shoulder, I glimpse Laurie pointing above her head, tracing invisible paths on the ceiling, as Jennifer nods.
“Look, before we go upstairs, I just wanted to say…” John rolls his bottle between his palms—a nervous tick I’m starting to recognize—before he meets my eye.
“I know I should’ve insisted that our group not split up.
Maybe if I fought more, Dani and Colette would’ve agreed.
” He swallows, regret etched into the furrow of his brow, and I’m shocked that he thinks this is his fault.
“I’m not like Wes or Stu. I’m not really the kind of guy who—”
“I like the kind of guy I’ve seen so far,” I say, and the way his blue eyes lock on mine, the way his spine straightens after my words, I’m glad I did. I don’t need my complex to be catching. I don’t want John thinking it’s a character flaw that he’s not like Stu, of all people.
“What I mean is,” he starts again, “I don’t think I’m a particularly fearless person. I don’t take a lot of risks. I’ve never needed to, you know? I plan things out. I stay in my lane.”
I had the feeling he was more reserved in comparison to some of the more extroverted suitors of the night, but it was his quiet composure that made me like him in the first place.
“But… I promise,” he says. “I’m gonna try to be a little more fearless. I’m gonna do whatever I can so we make it out of this.”
I nod, but still, I can’t help but look over my shoulder at the empty staircase.
The silky, ebony sheen of Laurie’s jumpsuit shimmers in my periphery as she and Jennifer move closer to the counter, a nonverbal indication that they’re as ready as they’ll ever be for us to move up to the next level of the club. The one that’s even more mazelike than the last two we’ve been on.
“We’re going to be okay, Jamie.”
The certainty of John’s words draws my eyes back to him, and the warmth of his stare dissolves some of the uneasiness.
I said the same thing to Laurie, but John makes me believe it.
I want to believe there’s another side to this, one where we get to have that drink and talk about this night in the past tense.
I just don’t know if this is that kind of movie.