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As hard as it was going to be, Cora would have to figure it out. She wasn’t going to put up with friends who treated her like less than she deserved. She had other friends. Admittedly, none of them sparked the same kind of connection that Agnes did, but it wasn’t like her social life would completely fall apart without Agnes.
Surely, she could do this. How hard could it be?
Staying away from Agnes wasfucking hard.
It would be hard enough anyway if Agnes was cooperating, and Agnes was most definitely not doing that. She made every attempt to speak to Cora alone, and Cora had needed to go to some rather extreme evasion efforts to ensure it wasn’t possible.
She was worried that faced with Agnes’ apologies and quite possibly genuine remorse, she would forgive her and agree to be friends again. Cora wasn’t stupid, and she didn’t need to learn the same lesson twice. Agnes had hurt her once, and until she worked through her issues about losing Jackie, she would hurt Cora again and again.
Agnes clearly needed grief counseling, but Lillian told her that Agnes had vehemently refused any such suggestions, saying that it would be too hard to think and talk about Jackie.
Cora didn’t know how she was ever going to get over it if she didn’t think and talk about it, but she supposed that wasn’t her problem anymore.
It was three weeks since they’d stopped talking when they were hit by the most unfortunate coincidence. Cora was taking the elevator up to the fifth floor. There were usually at least three other people in the elevator at a time, but today, for some reason, everyone had decided to take the stairs. It was just Cora here.
Agnes slipped in just as the door was closing. Cora tried to move past her to get out, but Agnes was fiddling with something in her bag and was standing right in Cora’s way. Cora ground her teeth in frustration as she punched the button for the next floor. She’d get out on the next floor and take the stairs.
The elevator started rising and then shuddered to a halt.
Fuck.
Cora slammed her fist against the help button. Shesodid not need this. She was doing her best to avoid Agnes, but the universe seemed intent on punishing her for trying to avoid unnecessary pain.
The radio crackled to life. “Hello, technical services.”
“We’re stuck in the elevator. It just stopped moving and—”
“Unit number?” The technician sounded positively bored, which did nothing to help curb Cora’s frustration. She glanced around, looking for a number.
“Sixteen. How long can we expect to—?”
“I’ll send someone down to take a look.”
Click.The technician hung up on her.
Cora clenched her hands into fists, turning to face Agnes, who had already slid down to sit on the floor. “Can you believe that? I’ve never heard someone sound less interested in their job, especially when their job is literally saving people from metal death machines!”
“That’s a bit dramatic, don’t you think? I mean, this is inconvenient, but I don’t think we’re in any immediate danger.”
Cora knew she was being overly dramatic, but it was because she waspissed. She did not want to be stuck in an elevator with Agnes, of all people.
“How are you so calm about this?”
Agnes shrugged. “Is getting worked up going to help get us out of here any faster?”
“I guess not,” Cora muttered, sinking to the floor in the furthest corner of the elevator from Agnes and taking deep breaths, trying to calm her simmering emotions.
She tried to suppress a sneaking suspicion that Agnes had somehow arranged this. Agnes had been trying to get Cora alone for weeks now. Would she go so far as causing a technical fault with the elevator to achieve that? Not to mention the suspicious lack of any other people.
Cora told herself that she was just being paranoid. And even if this had been on purpose, that didn’t change much. She and Agnes were still stuck together, potentially for several hours, if the technicians were as slow as Cora feared they would be.
“I need to talk to you.”
“Can you not take a hint?” Cora bit out. “I don’t want to talk to you about personal stuff, Agnes!”
“Why not?”
That question brought her up short. “You know why.”
