I peeked at the numbers and saw sixty-five, sixty-four, sixty-three, sixty-two, and then it happened: a massive jolt as the elevator came to an abrupt halt.

The rush of panic that swept through me in that second was the most overpowering I had ever experienced, and my body burned up like a fire had started inside.

I screamed.

“Jake! Jake? We’re stuck! What’s happening? What’s happening?”

“Shh.” He was hushing me to calm me down, and it took me a few seconds to notice his relaxed expression…and that his hand was on the stop button.

“Please tell me…you…did not just stop this elevator?”

“Calm down, Nina. Calm dow—”

I smacked him in the chest with all of my might.

“The fuck, Nina. Stop!” he yelled as he grabbed my hands and locked them together in his palms. He was strong, and I stood no chance of freeing them. He blocked access to the buttons as he held my hands together.

I was panting. “You told me you wouldn’t force me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable with. I am begging you…to move this elevator…now!”

He squeezed my hands, securing them even more firmly in his grasp. “Nina, calm down. It’s okay. Don’t you see you have to stick this out? You have to pass through the moment of panic. If you can get past that and see that nothing happens, you can do anything.”

“I don’t want to. It’s not worth it!”

“What’s not worth it?”

“Experiencing this…these horrible feelings!” I felt like I was starting to hyperventilate as my breath became impossible to catch.

“Nothing is actually happening to you right now. It’s you and me standing here. That’s it. It’s all in your mind.” He let go of my hands and cupped my face. “Look at me.” He looked into my eyes and I could only imagine the freak he saw looking back at him. He inched closer and despite my nerves, my legs tingled when I felt his breath on my mouth as he said, “If you make me push that button, the deal’s off.”

“Fine…deal’s off…do it. Now!”

He released his hands from my face then stood in front of the buttons, crossing his arms. He shook his head vehemently. “No.”

“Jake…push the button.”

“No. You’d be back at square one. You have to get over this, and the only way is to experience it. I’m not letting you give up that easily.”

I began screaming for help and tried to nudge him away from the panel, but he was too strong, so I punched the back wall in frustration.

I was shaking, felt defeated and said under my breath, “Fuck me! I can’t believe this.”

“Well, that’s one way we could pass the time, but I don’t make a habit of doing that with women in the midst of a hyperventilation episode. It’s too confusing…hard to tell what’s actually causing the heavy breathing.”

I stifled a laugh but tried not to let him see it. “Very funny,” I said.

“I was kidding, of course. Just trying to make you laugh, but apparently it’s not working,” he said as he continued to stand against the panel, his criss-crossed, tattooed arms not budging.

I walked over to the other side of the elevator and slid down to the floor. I hugged myself, rocking back and forth in an effort to calm my panic. With my eyes closed, I could hear the sound of Jake opening the zipper of his backpack and tried to imagine I was somewhere else, anywhere but stuck in this death trap.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

Several minutes passed in silence, as I kept my head down in a fetal position. I was beginning to calm down a tiny bit when it happened: what sounded like an explosion.

Sheer terror ensued as I jumped and screamed simultaneously. When I looked over at Jake, he was on the ground laughing hysterically, covered in foam, holding…a bottle of champagne.

Son of a bitch.

“Jake! What the hell? What THE hell?”

Champagne dripped down the bottle that he held above our heads. “We’re celebrating!”

“You are sick!”

“We are celebrating your survival, Nina! It’s been twelve minutes and thirty-three seconds since this elevator stopped, and you are still alive.”

His antics only got worse when he produced two champagne flutes from the backpack, followed by a small blanket, which he fluffed dramatically before placing it down onto the middle of the floor.

“What are you doing?”

“What does it look like we’re doing? We’re having a picnic.”

He then took out an iPod, speaker and a bunch of food from Trader Joe’s: crackers, hummus and chocolate covered cherries.

“You are not serious!”

“Dead serious. We need to change your negative connotation of elevators. The last time you were in this situation, you associated it with darkness and misery. Now, the next time you get stuck in one, you’ll think of the amazeballs picnic we’re gonna have.”

Jake poured the champagne into the two glasses and handed me one. I didn’t extend my hand. “You’re being a jackass.”

He glared at me. “You can take it, or I can drink it all. Then, you’ll just be stuck in this elevator with a drunk jackass.”

I let out a sigh and reluctantly took the glass. He began opening the packages of food he brought and popped a chocolate covered cherry into his mouth. “These are awesome. Try one,” he said as he handed me the container. I had no appetite but took one and ate it. He was right. It was delicious.

I shook my head as I realized that, for a few seconds, he had really distracted me, and I had stopped focusing on the potential for disaster. I had been living in the moment without even realizing it. While not gone entirely, the fear had somewhat subsided in the midst of this absurd setup.

I stayed quiet in my corner of the elevator and rolled my eyes as Jake spread some hummus onto a cracker and ate it. Just when I thought things couldn’t get any more bizarre, he started fiddling with his iPod, connecting it to a speaker. It took me a few seconds to realize what song he had played: Free Fallin’ by Tom Petty.

That jerk! I started to laugh and covered my mouth.

Jake, who had been serious for the most part, aside from the champagne popping, also started to crack up when he saw he had broken through my bitterness.

“Nina Kennedy. Is that a laugh I hear? Are you seriously making light of this dangerous and life threatening situation we are in? Shame on you!”

I began to laugh even harder, and he threw a cherry at me as he flashed a wicked grin.

“Jake, you are nuts, you know that?”

“Oh! Speaking of nuts…” He lifted his finger and reached into his backpack. “You need to sample my nuts, Nina. Try these.” He snickered knowing he had succeeded in embarrassing me. “Why are you blushing?”

Laughing, I said, “I don’t want to taste your nuts, thanks.” When he handed me the container anyway, I looked at it and said, “Chocolate covered brazil nuts? I have never had these.” I took one and ate it. “Mmm. They are good.”

His smile shone through the glass as he sipped more champagne. “See?”

Several minutes passed as we joked around while listening to the music, picking at the food and finishing off the champagne. My fear level had gone down even more significantly.

I shook my head again as I realized that the next song on Jake’s “terrorize Nina” playlist was Stuck in the Middle with You by Stealer’s Wheel.

“You like that, huh?” he laughed.

I shook my head, just staring at him in awe. “You’re crazy…but you know what? I am not panicking anymore, so there is something to this.”

He winked. “Good girl.”

Something about the way he said that made me shiver. I knew I must be calming down because my body suddenly became hyperaware of him.

Lust was winning again.

More carefully selected songs played one after the other as we continued to eat, and since my nerves were desensitizing, I had begun taking notice of all the other things I had been missing, like, how incredible he smelled. This time, it was just the cologne without the cigarettes. His hair was perfectly styled and gelled. The fitted tee he wore under the plaid shirt hugged his chest. The sleeves were rolled up, showing off his strong forearms. I looked closely at the colored tats on his right arm, unable to decipher what they all meant. He was wearing black jeans and black Converse sneakers. His feet were laid out next to me, and they were large, maybe size eleven. That reminded me of his hand and how big and warm it felt when he held my hand on the subway trip.

He smelled good enough to eat.

Jake interrupted my thoughts. “Earth to Nina!”

I blinked. “Hi.”

“Have you had your fill?

I shook my head. “Excuse me?”

“Should I put this stuff away?”

“Oh…yeah…um…yes.”

I laid my head back on the elevator wall, exhausted from my earlier self-induced panic episode. I was not completely calm by any means but was surprised to know that sticking it out actually did work. I had been sure that if I couldn’t escape a terrifying situation, I would faint or even die from the panic. The feelings really do subside eventually. And if you can reach that point, it’s actually exhilarating. What goes up must come down, I guess.

Jake had just about finished putting the items back into his backpack when the music changed. He joined me in leaning his head against the back wall and closed his eyes. He was sitting far away from me and I ached for him to move closer. The tone of this new song was completely different from the other ones. It was mellow with very little instruments. The female singer had a soothing, folksy voice. It was unfamiliar, but the words were breathtaking. The song was about a woman who gets stuck in an elevator with a stranger she was wary of initially, but he really grows on her, and she starts to fall for him, realizing eventually that their getting stuck together was meant to be and magical.

I opened my eyes to look over at Jake, who still had his eyes closed. “Who sings this?” I asked.

“It’s a song I found online called Stuck in the Elevator by Edie Brickell. You like it?”

“Yeah. I do.”

“Good.”

“You’re still insane, though.”

He opened his eyes, turned to me and smiled. His dimples completely did me in at that point. Then he closed his eyes again listening to the song, and once again, I got to look at his handsome face in peace, without his knowing. His nose was perfect, not too big and not too small. His lips were crimson and the lower one with the lip ring was slightly more prominent. I noticed that his dark lashes were much longer than mine.

I thought about how my father would react if he knew I was stuck in an elevator with a guy as “dangerous” looking as Jake. Dad likely wouldn’t get the irony: that Jake had done more for me than all the other straight-laced guys I had ever known put together. My as**ole ex only laughed at my phobias instead of helping me through them. He was too busy cheating on me.

I didn’t really know much about Jake’s life at all. What I did know for sure was that he was complex and closed off. For someone who had done so much for me in a short amount of time, he offered very little about himself. But he didn’t have to say anything for me to know that what you saw was not what you got. His choosing this emotional song confirmed it.

There was so much I wanted to ask him, so much I wanted to know, but I was afraid to find out. I didn’t really want to hear what I suspected…that he had a girlfriend in Boston. Was it his girlfriend that I overheard him with that first day I moved in? There hadn’t been any girls in the house since. Truthfully, I also didn’t really want to hear that I wasn’t his type.

I wondered if he really understood how much what he had done for me today meant. I also wondered if he knew that I felt exactly like the woman singing this song. That if I had to be stuck in an elevator with anyone, I was glad it was with him.

I turned away when he abruptly opened his eyes and asked, “You want to get going?”

“You mean you are going to put me out of my misery?”

“Yeah, that was the deal. When you finally relaxed…oh, I would say somewhere in the middle of It’s A Small World After All…the mission had been accomplished. You know, when you’re not hyperventilating, you’re actually kind of fun to be around.” He smiled. “Ready to get moving?”

I thought about it. “In a minute. Let this song finish.”

Jake winked at me again, and suddenly, I wasn’t sure if I ever wanted to leave.

CHAPTER 8

The next morning I woke up to another paper bat by my bedside that said:

You didn’t run…you saw it through.

Mr. Bat is proud of you.

I wondered when he had put it there and if I was asleep and drooling when he did it. I clutched the bat to my chest closing my eyes, grinning from ear to ear. I had felt such a sense of accomplishment after yesterday. The subway ride home was a piece of cake, too, after surviving the elevator.

It was Friday, so Jake had already left the house. He usually took the Amtrak train to Boston for the weekend straight from work. I wouldn’t see him until Sunday night or Monday, depending on how late he returned to Brooklyn.

The house was basically boring on weekends without him around. Tarah and Ryan would ask me to tag along with them to the city or to a movie, but I usually declined and opted to stay home and study or catch up on laundry.

***

Early Sunday evening, I had finished most of my homework and errands and found myself alone in the house again. The door to Jake’s room was left cracked open, so I went inside, plopping down on top of his bed. His signature scent was all over the comforter. I buried my nose in it, imagining that it was him.