Her skin is smooth, just like butter. I can feel her pulse fluttering beneath my fingertips, so fragile and frantic. Her breathing is still rapid, far too fast for someone confined in a cramped, old elevator with questionable air circulation and poor ventilation. I really don’t want the firefighters to force open the doors and find her sprawled on the floor passed out with me towering over her.
‘Former marine found in compromising position with town’s beloved rockstar in broken elevator.’
I keep her hand over my heart, my big one engulfing her small, resisting stroking it with my fingers the way I want to and enjoying the softness of her skin against my palm. After a few more measured, deep breaths from her I can sense that she’s calm enough not to pass out in my arms.
“What the hell are we going to do?” she blurts out.
I chuckle in the darkness, removing my hand from where it covers hers even though I’d like to keep holding it. She keeps hers in place, still pressing firmly against my heart and I resist the urge to puff out my chest just so that she can feel how strong it is.
Show her how much I've grown up.
That's ridiculous. She doesn't even know who you are.
But I know. I know that it’smy Dovetrapped in here, terrified, seeking reassurance from me.
When did she begin to feel like mine? I’m not even sure, but now that I know she’s here, all I want to do is wrap her in my arms like a long-lost friend. Because that’s how she’s always felt to me. Someone I could confide in. Someone who made me laugh during some of my toughest days. Someone who encouraged me to keep going, trying new things. Part of the reason I joined the Marines. She was a presence I’d taken advantage of expecting to always have around.
“There’s no emergency call button but you should be able to call the Fire Department from your phone,” I suggest.
“I dropped it when the lights cut off and you coughed.”
I rub my temples firmly realizing now that we actually might be in trouble.
“Can you use the flashlight on your phone to help me find mine?” she asks.
“I don't have a phone.”
“You don’t have a phone...” her voice trails off as if she’s considering those words carefully, testing them in her mouth for how they feel. It’s a common reaction I get when I tell people that. “At all?” she finally asks, her voice filled with shock.
I chuckle, “No, I do. It's just not on me. It’s at home.”
She sighs, and I hear a faint thump that I assume is her dropping to her knees to search the floor. After a few minutes of looking, I carefully slide down to join her, making sure not to accidentally sit on wherever she’s perched. The elevator is small, barely five-by-five, and it quickly becomes clear to both of us that her phone has likely slipped into a crack and won’t be retrieved anytime soon.
“Shit," her voice becomes muffled, and I imagine her hands are now covering her face. "This is just what I didn’t need the daybefore Thanksgiving. It'll be impossible to get a new one for at least two more days.”
“Might be nice not to be so connected to it for a change,” I offer.
She scoffs, “That's easy for you to say. You’re someone who doesn’t carry a phone on them to go out in public. I need to have my phone at all times for work. It’s basically part of my job.”
"What were you looking at when you walked into the elevator? You seemed distracted? Was it something for your job?"
She sighs, "Nothing. Just a... rumor about me."
I stretch my long legs as far as they can reach in the tight space, thoroughly enjoying the intimacy of my first time talking to Dove without the pressure of her seeing and knowing that it’s me. At least, I assume it’s Dove that I’m trapped in the elevator with.
We’ve never met in person, but after finishing my last tour and returning to the States, I’d given in one lonely night after finding that box of letters from her under my childhood bed at my parent’s house and Googled ‘Paloma’ plus ‘Lonestar Junction, Texas.’
The results returned a single photo of her from when she was eighteen years old posing next to her other high school soccer teammates as part of the Lonestar Junction Highschool Varsity team championship. Although I knew that she’d look different now, having matured into a woman over the past eight years, it was clear she was stunning even then.
A smatter of darker brown freckles across her nose.
Thick, deep brown with auburn hair full of curls that she’d smoothed into waves, just like she’d described in her first letter to her birth mom.
Long legs that were toned from years of playing soccer.
A wide smile with straight teeth that indicated years of painful orthodontics.
And bright, round brown eyes so perfectly shaped they reminded me of a gentle doe.
