Page 40 of Anywhere with You
“Aren’t there supposed to be emergency lights?” Cara whispered. It was cave dark, blackout dark. I couldn’t remember any other time in my life when I had strained my eyes so hard and got nothing in return, not a flicker, not an outline, nothing.
“I’ll ask the firefighters when they get here. You’re not claustrophobic, are you?”
“No. You?”
“No. I’m hungry, though.”
Cara laughed quietly. “I’m so sorry that we got trapped in an elevator before breakfast.”
“Even before coffee,” I moaned. “Though I’m grateful for an empty bladder.”
“Oh no,” Cara said. “Don’t even saybladder. We should try to call someone.”
“Do cell phones work in elevators?” I asked, but I was already pulling mine out of my pocket.
The light of the display was startlingly bright, as it had been last night, and a second later, Cara’s joined mine.
We looked at each other in the eerie glow, then looked down and both started tapping.
“Nope,” she answered a few seconds later. “Cell phones don’t work in elevators.”
“Super,” I said. “But it’s a hotel. It’s not like they’re not going to notice that an elevator isn’t working.”
“On a Monday morning?”
I turned my phone toward the elevator buttons. “Emergency!” I said, pushing it excitedly. Nothing happened.
I pushed it seventy more times with the same effect.
That was the moment when it stopped being a funny mishap.
I pounded on the door and shouted for help until my fist hurt and my voice was hoarse. I had this image of someone opening the elevator doors to find me and Cara, dehydrated and wide-eyed, covered in cave dirt for some reason, reverting to grunts because we’d lost our ability to understand human language.
It was absurd. I knew that, even as my hands hit the door, but I didn’t want to paint a realistic picture. I didn’t want to think of the realities of being in here for five more minutes, let alone how many hours it would take before someone rescued us.
When I gave up, winded, heart pounding, I turned around and leaned against the closed doors, letting myself slide to the floor.
I had a sudden, vibrant memory of the night before my wedding, sliding down to the thick rug in the bedroom Bridget and I shared. It was our first apartment, an absolute shithole. The heater didn’t work. The dishwasher door had to be braced closed with a broomstick or it wouldn’t run. Every single windowpane had a crack.
But at twenty-five, it was the most we could afford and still get takeout once a week.
Bridget had a thick white rug that I always said looked like someone had skinned a yeti. That’s where I was standing, the night before our wedding, when she told me that she wasn’t sure she could go through with it.
I don’t think it was a sign or a premonition. I don’t even think the feeling stayed with her long. In any case, at ten the next morning, I was sliding a ring onto her finger, and she was laughing through tears as she fumbled to find my ring in the pocket of her voluminous tulle dress.
But that moment in our room—with her confessing her doubts and worries about what married life would be for us, whether we were too young to make a commitment, whether we would resent each other or feel trapped after a few years, whether having an official, legally wedded wife would impede her career in an industry dominated by middle-aged straight men in Texas—that moment I slid to the floor and put my hands in the yeti fur rug and wanted nothing in the world more than to share that shitty apartment with Bridget for the rest of my life.
My life. My life now would’ve been unimaginable to twenty-five-year-old Honey. Even aside from being trapped in an elevator, it would’ve been a nightmare to me then.
Maybe what was really unimaginable is how much I would change in the next fourteen years.
Cara sat beside me, getting herself situated and untangled from her bags before turning her phone display off. I did the same. It made sense, conserving the battery, though I couldn’t have said what we were conserving it for.
I listened, my eyes closed in the dark, but I couldn’t hear anything except my breathing and an occasional shifting movement from Cara.
She found my hand and held it. It was starting to be a daily thing with us, enough that it was beginning to feel natural. I gripped her hand hard and didn’t let go.
Neither of us wore our wedding rings. I’d taken mine off almost as soon as Bridget walked out the door, even though it was my favorite ridiculous tradition. I didn’t care that we’d spent five years paying them off. It was a row of sapphires in white gold, and it was the most beautiful thing I’d ever owned.
