Unfortunately, the person benefiting was Asher. Crashing back into my life again like an annoying Twitter user who kept unfollowing and refollowing you.
He hurtled in just as I hit the door close button. Damn it.
“Oh, hey,” he said, noticing me, panting from his fifteen feet of running. Not that I should say anything about that. After all, sometimes pulling off a sports bra got me winded.
Up, up, up we went in silence. The quietness between us was excruciatingly painful, but on the flip side, it was also much better than him talking.
He shifted his feet and looked over at me. “I want to apologize for taking your lead title status. My dad had sway with the board, and he and Ian are college buddies. I didn’t earn any of it. It was just plain, dumb luck.”
I closed my eyes and calmed my breathing. This was an apology, but I didn’t want to accept it. Sure, I had my own fair share of lucky breaks, but the difference was that people like Asher didn’t get undermined, scrutinized, and second-guessed all the time. I’d proven my competence time and time again, but every day I lived with a nagging feeling that everyone was waiting for me to fail.
The elevator lurched to a stop and my eyes flew open. “Asher, what’d you do?!” I hissed.
He held up his hands like I was robbing him at gunpoint. “Nothing, I swear. I didn’t touch anything.”
A few seconds later, the elevator whirring sounds from the shaft above us slowed to a halt. The bright overhead lights flicked off and on a few times, before converting into a dimmer mode. That’s when it hit me. The building power was out. Or maybe the elevator malfunctioned. Either way, it resulted in the worst outcome imaginable: Asher and I were stuck on this elevator together for god-only-knew-how-long.
Then all these thoughts flooded my mind.
What if the building evacuated and no one was here to rescue us?
What if it was an earthquake and this danger goes way beyond this building?
What if this was a REAL bomb threat?
What if I die here, and Asher is the last guy I will ever see? Oh god, no. “Help!” I screamed at the top of my lungs. “We need help!”
Asher paced around the elevator, swishing his ripe bro smell throughout our seventy-square-foot space. Without power, there was no airflow. No oxygen. The walls closed in around me like a trash compactor.
Above us, we could hear some muffled shouts and murmurs. Asher yelled, “We can’t hear what you’re saying!” The responses back were garbled and muted. He pulled out his cell, but he didn’t have a signal. He tried the emergency dial on the elevator panel, but it just kept ringing. Like a caged animal, Asher yelled “Ahhhhh!” as he pounded on all four walls, forcing me to retreat and cower to the far back corner. Deranged and wild-eyed, he ran up to the sealed doors and used his meaty Hulk hands to pry them open.
“C’mon, c’mon, c’mon,” he chanted, willing the doors to move. Somehow, he was able to separate them, but just by a few inches. Through the opening, we could see a bunch of our coworkers’ legs and feet, as we were positioned a few feet down from our office floor. Asher tried to squeeze his body through the opening, but only his arm and leg could fit. Desperate now, I took a turn, only to find that my arm and leg were maybe the same size as Asher’s, which was especially depressing to think about given our entombed state.
Asher pressed his face in the opening and yelled, “Someone call for help! I need to breathe!” Fresh air from our office floor pushed in, but because Asher was standing in the way, all I got was slightly cooler Asher-tainted air to inhale.
A familiar voice outside the doors drew me to my feet. “Hey, is that Melody back there? I’ve been looking for her.” I had never been so happy to hear Nolan’s voice.
“The fire department is on the way, Ash. Can you step aside so I can talk to Mel?”
Asher shuffled over a few steps, and I walked up to the front.
Nolan smiled. “Fancy seeing you here.” He stretched out his arm to grab my hand. “Are you okay?”
I pressed my lips together and nodded, trying to fight my tears.
We held hands. “Is there anything I can help you do today? I’m a freelance intern