Loathe to Love You (The STEMinist Novellas #1-3)(38)

“No need,” I say, shaking my head a little too eagerly. “Are you sure we should just wait?” I ask. “Just—do nothing and wait?”

He nods calmly, clearly broadcasting that it’s not hard for him to be a good sport about this situation, that the idea of being stuck with me doesn’t bother him one bit, and that, unlike some of us, he’s not tempted to bury his face in his hands and cry. Show-off.

“What if we scream?” I ask.

“Scream?”

“Yes—what if we scream? This is a giant building. Someone is bound to hear us, right?”

“At eleven on a Friday night?” His reply is much kinder than my idiotic question deserves. “While the elevator is stuck between floors? This elevator?”

I look away because he’s right. Frustratingly right. This cursed elevator we’re on is in the deepest part of the building, next to a hallway no one would walk by at night. A true tragedy, overshadowed only by the fact that it also has the narrowest car I’ve ever seen. Guests and clients rarely use it, which is why it has the advantage of being quicker—and the disadvantage of being small.

As in: minuscule. I knew it was tiny, but there’s nothing like realizing that this might be the place where I die to register how tiny. If I stretch my arms, I’ll bump into Erik. If I stretch my legs, I’ll bump into Erik. If I thrash around on the floor like I so desperately want to, I’ll also bump into Erik. What a quandary.

“Are you okay?” he asks softly. His eyes look soft, too. A ball of something I cannot quite define knots in my chest.

“Yeah.”

“Here.” He rummages in his bag for a moment. Then holds something out to me. “Have some water.”

I don’t know why I accept his 2019 NYC Amateur Soccer League water bottle. I don’t know why my fingers brush against his for the briefest of moments. And I don’t know why, as I drink small sips, he studies me with something that resembles concern.

He’s not really concerned, because Erik Nowak is just not that kind of guy. The kind of guy he actually is? A backstabber. A liar. A sentient human McMansion who values only his own professional success. An F.C. Copenhagen supporter—which, it pleases me to say, is a mediocre soccer team at best. Yes, I said what I said.

“Better?”

“I told you, I’m fine. I’m totally great.”

“You look pale.” His head tilts, as if to observe me better. “Are you claustrophobic?”

“No. I don’t think so.” Am I, though? It would explain a lot. The walls closing in. This greasy, barfy feeling in my stomach. The way I’d love to claw at this place because it’s so small and Erik takes up so much room inside my head and I can smell his soap and I just want to forget everything about him and maybe I thought I had but now he’s here and it’s all coming back and I—

“Sadie.” Erik is looking at me like he knows exactly what kind of spiral is currently unfolding in my brain. “Take a deep breath.”

“I know. I am. Taking deep breaths, that is.” Or maybe I wasn’t. Because now, with some air in my lungs, my brain is getting a tad quieter.

“Is it your first time?”

I blink at him. “Breathing?”

He smiles faintly. Like he doesn’t mind that we’re going to die in here. “Being stuck in an elevator.”

“Oh. Yes.” I think about it for a moment. “Wait, is it not yours?”

“Third.”

“Third?”

He nods.

“Are you . . . cursed or something?”

“I see your superstitions are going strong,” he says, clearly teasing, and the idea that he thinks he knows me, the fact that after everything that happened he’d feel allowed to joke with me . . .

I stiffen.

And judging by his expression, Erik notices. “Sadie—”

“I’m fine,” I interrupt him. “I promise. But could we please just be quiet? For a little bit?” I hate how weak my voice sounds.

I set down the water bottle and hide my face back in my knees. I listen to his sharp exhale, to the tense, uncomfortable silence that falls between us, and try not to think about the last time I was with him.

When I never wanted to stop talking, not even for a second.





Four


Three weeks ago

I have my pitch meeting in one hour, a little mountain of gigabytes of files to review, and I’m pretty sure that my interns are currently eighteen floors above, trying to decide whether I abandoned them to join a cult or have been abducted by an urban Sasquatch. But I cannot help staring at Corporate Thor’s mouth as he tells me, matter-of-factly:

“Money laundering front.”

“No way!”

He shrugs. We are sitting right next to each other on a bench in a pocket park that, as it turns out, is just behind my building. The sun is shining, the birds are chirping, I’ve spotted at least three butterflies, and yet I remain vaguely intimidated by his size. And his cheekbones. “It’s the only possible explanation.”

I bite my lip, trying to think it through. “Couldn’t Faye just be, you know . . . a really bad baker?”

“She certainly is. Her coffee is also questionable.”

“It is very reminiscent of brake fluid,” I concede.