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According to my best friend Maddy, I have aslighttendency to jump to the worst-case, most dramatic scenario where men are concerned.
He probably just works here, I tell myself as I jab the elevator button. The doors open and I step inside.
It’s not like he’s chasing me onto the elevator, I think as the doors begin to close. It’s a comforting thought.
Right up until the moment he catches the elevator door with one hand, growls “Oh no you don’t,” and slips into the enclosed space with me.
It’s a gleaming elevator, all shining mirrors and polished metals. That should probably make the space feel more important, but instead it feels like the Suit and his growling is surrounding me from all sides.
It makes me feel small. And as someone who’s been gawkily tall since I was fourteen, I’m not used to feeling small.
I punch the button for the sixteenth floor and wait for him to punch another one. But the Suit doesn’t touch any of the elevator buttons. Instead, he looks at the glowing16button, then back at me, then back at the button, then back at me. He scowls, and there’s something happening in the back of his throat that sounds positively feral. He’s looking even more wolf-like than usual.
It’s distressing that I’ve spent enough time with this man to have a “usual.”
My mind flashes to all the stories my parents told me about New York murderers to try to keep me from moving all the way out here after college.
They pick a random woman off the street, then follow her, and by the time she realizes there’s something wrong, it’s too late.Granted, most of mom’s horror stories were from the 80s.
Except therewasthat one true-crime podcast last year about the elevator murderer.
They never caught him.
“You forgot to hit the button for your floor,” I say, my voice coming out squeakily.
“Unfortunately for one of us,” he says, “I didn’t.”
Jesus fucking Christ. I angered a serial killer by stealing his coffee and now I’m going to die in an office elevator on my first day of work.
Is that danger in his eyes? It looks like danger. He definitely looks like he wants to do violence tosomeone.
And I’m the onlysomeonehere.
Heart pounding, I discreetly slip my hand into my purse, fumbling for something I could defend myself with.
My hand closes on a travel can of hairspray as I step off the elevator, the Suit’s heat ominous at my back. He follows me out of the elevator.
I whirl and point the hair spray at him. “Stay back or I’ll mace you.”
“What the hell? Put that down,” he barks. “Now.”
He reaches his giant arm toward me.
I dodge, spraying as I go but he moves too and fluidly dodges the spray.
Instead, I end up spraying an older man in the face.
A tall older man with a designer suit, and blue eyes, and a face that looks disquietingly familiar.
The man coughs and bats at his face.
The Suit uses my moment of distraction to snatch the can from my hand. “Hairspray?” he reads, judgment leaking from his voice. “You sprayed my dad in the face with hairspray?”
I can’t tell if he disapproves of my vanity or my wimpy choice of weapon.
Wait. “Your dad?”
A brisk looking middle-aged woman I recognize as Linda Chen from HR steps into the lobby. “Ah, Amelia, I heard you’d arrived.” She turns to the Suit and his father. “Howard, Cole, may I introduce you to our new graphic design associate?”
