"I can feel a cooler draft coming from below us. Just try to focus on your breathing again.”
“Ok…” her voice trails off as I hear her struggle through a few more labored breaths that begin worrying me. She’s at an even higher risk of passing out if she struggles with anxiety.
“Do you want to place your hand over my heart again.”
“Please,” her warm hand slides up my body, landing over my heart where it rests as I hear her breathing slow to a gentler cadence. I can feel our bodies start to sync as we sit there, resting quietly in the heavy silence.
“Have you watched any of the‘Final Destination’movies?”
I laugh because I know where she’s going with this. “A few.”
“Well, I used to think my greatest fear was death via a bunch of old logs rolling off of the back of a tractor trailer but now I’m realizing it’s actually plummeting in an elevator to the basement of a shitty office building.”
“That’s not going to happen today.”
“How can you be so sure?”
I shrug, “I just am.”
Because there’s no way I’m dying the same day that I finally meet her. We’ve got too much history and I’m starting to think, a future, too.
She’s silent for a few moments. “Do you want to play the game twenty questions? I think I need a distraction from our impending fall.”
I chuckle, “Sure. You go first.”
Perhaps this was a dangerous game to play with her, I know this situation could spiral out of control quickly based on the questions she decides to ask and I didn’t want to lie to Dove, but I also didn’t want to send her into a panic by revealing that she’s trapped in an elevator with her old pen pal—someone she mightnot want to see given the nature of the last letter that she'd sent me.
Goodbye for forever…
I’ll just keep things… vague.
She’s silent for a few minutes as she thinks, and I imagine her biting down on one of those plump lips I noticed in her high school photo that I'd stared at for way too long.
Stop thinking about her like that...
But I can’t help it. I want to see her in the daylight and confirm if it’s her but beyond that, I’m dying to know if she’s the same light-hearted, carefree woman I’d been friends with. Had becoming a rock star changed her? Did she still have that same quick wit and humor she’d possessed in her teen years?
“Ok. Let's start with an easy one. What are you doing at the Lonestar Junction government offices the day before Thanksgiving?” she asks.
“I recently moved into town and haven’t updated my driver's license with my new address. I was headed to the 4th floor DMV to do that.”
“You’re new to town?”
“Yep, moved here a few months ago.”
“Ok, and you chose to update your driver’s license the day before Thanksgiving? That’s a random day to pick.”
“Does this count towards one of your questions?”
She laughs, “No, it’s a continuation of the original one.”
I hum as I think “Ok. Fine. I’ll allow it. Yes, I chose today because I didn’t have anything else going on and needed distraction. I figured the offices would be slow since most people are with their families today.”
That's the truth.
“You aren’t spending the holidays with your family?” she asks.
I realize this has turned into more than just a single question, but I decide to play along. Her breathing has slowed and steadied, so the distraction of this game seems to have worked on that front.
