Chapter 1: : Chapter 1

I’ve always been good at telling lies.

But you know what they say: the truth always has ways of escaping the shadows.

My parents are currently downstairs in the lobby. I don’t know what to do. I regret giving them my address in the first place. What was I thinking? I thought they might show even an ounce of pride if they knew I now live in an apartment building that sits snugly in the part of Manhattan where celebrities walk the sidewalks, old cobblestone roads still exist, and people who wear expensive designer stroll carelessly around—a location worth gloating to their sorry faces about.

I have it all planned out for them—the perfect job, the perfect apartment, and their favorite one, the perfect boyfriend. One of the three is the lie that might very well put me six feet underground alongside my dignity.

They’ve been hounding me daily about meeting my boyfriend.

You see, I would have no problem showing him to them.

If he were real.

My phone almost drops front-first onto my floor seconds after answering my mom’s call, but I catch it, letting out a long sigh. I may live in a wealthy area, but I sure as hell don’t have new iPhone money. I wedge it between my shoulder and cheek as I slip my socks on.

‘Oh honey, I can’t wait to meet you and that boyfriend. I can’t believe it! Ugh,’ Mom laughs. ‘You’re so grown up and finally settling down after all the stuff I had to go through with you in high school. Do you remember the boys and the arguments—’

‘Mom,’ I blurt out, cutting her off before she begins taking yet another stroll down memory lane.

I made up my non-existent boyfriend around a year ago. If someone asked me how I got so far buried under my lie, I wouldn’t be able to answer them.

‘Haven’t we taught you that interrupting people is rude, Raelynn? Have manners, you haven’t seen me in a year, and you’re already disrespectful.’

I grind my teeth, closing my eyes as I shuffle on my shoes. ‘Sorry, Mom. It’s just that I have to tell you something when I get downstairs.’

She sighs, an unsurprising hint of disappointment dripping from it, and speaks to my father in a hushed voice, not knowing I can still hear every word she says. ‘I knew this was coming. They broke up, I bet you.’ It’s barely audible, but I still hear it, and it makes my skin burn with anxiety.

I always let them down, her more than dad. Mme getting a new apartment and moving in with my new ‘boyfriend’ was something they were finally praising me for.

Sometimes, I wish I had it as easy as my sister, Gia. She’s getting married, and it’s all everyone in this family ever talks about. Especially my mom. Gia this, and Gia that, “Raelynn, when are you going to settle and get married like Gia?’ And ‘Raelynn, don’t get pregnant with some dead-beat again; abortions aren’t free, y’know, we never had this problem with Gia”.

She’s the definition of an angel child. While I got put down for living my life the way I wanted to.

‘I’ll see you downstairs, Mom. Bye.’ I hung up before she could get another word of disappointment out.

I grab my keys from the bowl beside the door and look in the mirror on the wall beside me. I cringe at the sight of my hair. It’s curly, wild, and a damn mess. I pull off the purple scrunchie from my wrist and collect the ringlets that brush my boobs into a high ponytail.

That’ll have to do. I’m bound to get at least one comment from Mom about how my hair is a disaster, but I couldn’t care less now.

I open my front door and slip my phone into the pocket of my overalls, still covered with dirt. One of the straps stays on my shoulder while the other hangs unbuttoned, showing the white crop tank top underneath. The half-visible print on it states, Fuck off.

Hopefully, my mom gets the hint.

Walking towards the elevator, I click the button, calling it down—my hand fiddles with the rings on my hands. I always hate meeting with my parents, but I hate taking elevators much more. I didn’t consider how many stairs I’d have to take when I signed the lease for an apartment on the twenty-third floor. Now, I’m stuck taking the elevator, hoping that I don’t fall into one of my claustrophobic panic attacks every day. My arm hairs stand on end. I can’t be the only one who hates these suffocating steel cubes.

The dunning of the elevator’s arrival yanks me from my thoughts, and the doors open, allowing me to walk in. I press the L for the lobby, and the doors close.

Twenty-three floors and around a minute till I have to face my parents. I can do this; I can tell Mom I’m boyfriend-less, and in the past year, I didn’t do all the romantic things I told her I did.

The elevator stops at floor twenty-two, the one right below mine. The steel doors open, but I’m too busy looking at the ground and stressing over what I will say to Mom to care about the person who entered. My head hurts from the stress. I need a fucking ice bath after this visit.

My attention returns when the man beside me sighs as if he’s also stressed. I’m glad I’m not the only one.

We both stand facing the elevator doors as they close shut. Out of sheer curiosity, I look at him with my best-undetected side-eye.

He’s wearing a nice icy white ribbed sweatshirt and creamy khakis that match it, his hands buried in their pockets. His clothes fit him perfectly. I can only make out his side profile, but from the looks of it, this guy is from the fucking deepest parts of Heaven. This is a guy I expect to be walking the streets of a neighborhood like this one, but I never exactly realized I’d be sharing elevators with them. I take his sharp jawline and force my mouth not to fall open at the sight of it. Geez-Louise. The temptation to go back up and grab a knife to compare it to his jaw itches at the back of my head, but I don’t. The elevator starts moving down again.

He shuffles his feet a little and leans his shoulder against the wall at his side. He’s pretty tall, considering his chin could easily touch the top of my head, and I’ve always been considered tall for a woman.

As if my eyes controlled themselves, they lowered towards his groin, noticing the unavoidable print of his crotch between his legs.

My eyes widen. Jesus… is that him on soft—

His eyes dart sideways to meet mine. ‘Are you checking me out?’ He says cockily, an accent I immediately recognize as British lace his words.

My cheeks immediately burst into flames as I dart my eyes up to look at his face and then away at the elevator door. The tick of the elevator traveling down floors sounds.

‘What? No?’ I blurt out with an awful, uneven laugh.

I fiddle with my rings again, clearing my throat. Meeting my parents isn’t the worst thing at the moment.

‘Hm,’ he hums. ‘Really? Because it looked like you were staring at my dick to me.’

My heart stops as fast as my breath does. I snap my eyes towards him, widened and shocked by his words. ‘No, no, I was—I was looking at—’

Cutting me off, the elevator floor between our feet shakes, and I stifle, losing my balance. I yelp, flailing my arms to balance myself as the eerie sound of metal screeching scratches my ear drums. This cannot be happening right now. My heart races more than it was seconds ago. One last long, irritable screech makes my eyes shut tight, and I nearly fall to the floor but am humiliatingly caught by the man beside me.

A whimper of fear leaves me.

He grips my arm as I breathe like an Olympic runner out my mouth. What the hell is going on? If this guy weren’t here, I’d for sure be screaming my ass off.

‘You’re okay. This happens sometimes,’ he says loudly, just as the elevator comes to a stop. Yet, the doors don’t open. Why haven’t the doors opened? Don’t tell me we’re fucking stuck. We’re stuck. No, we’re not—Yes, we are. We’re trapped together in a box the size of a New York apartment bathroom.

I gasp in a sharp breath, gripping my shirt over my heart, and find the will to breathe again.

Is there even oxygen in here?

‘It’s stuck,’ the guy states the obvious. I turn to him as he lets go of my arm. ‘Give it about fifteen minutes before whomever the hell comes to fix it.’ He presses the emergency help button, and it glows red.

My brows curl up as I feel myself begin to cry. I shake my head, swallowing. ‘No, I can’t.’

His head tilts, and his brows furrow at seeing me, but I can’t find the energy to explain this to him. I’m already starting to feel it. It sores through me like electricity, clogging my veins and arteries: the feeling of being locked in this small space, the four walls surrounding me—a gray room from hell. Everything’s getting smaller, or maybe I’m getting bigger—too big for this space. I shut my eyes, and my back finds a wall to slide down. My legs will collapse from under me if I don’t sit.

I was okay with the two minutes in an elevator daily, but getting stuck in them is entirely different.

‘Hey, hey?’ The man consults. I don’t open my eyes. ‘What’s the matter? I said it won’t last much longer. You don’t have to go all crying mode on me; I get enough of that daily.’

His voice gets closer as if he’s just crouched beside me.

‘Talk to me,’ I blurt out, my mouth running dry with how many breaths I’m taking a second.

‘I hate to ask, but I’m bad at noticing these things. Are you flirt—’

‘Please, just… Talk!’

‘Okay! Geez, I’ll talk.’ He laughs, but I can’t seem to find the punchline.

It’s bad enough that I’m trapped in an elevator, it’s downright torture that I’m trapped in it with a man.

He sits beside me as I dig my forehead into my knees. From the side, I see his feet planted down, and his arm brushes mine as he rests his arms on his knees, sitting in the same position. I sniffle my running nose.

‘Well,’ he starts. ‘I just got a message from one of my student’s parents telling me their kid is sick and can’t come to school this week.’ A rush of hair leaves his nose, and I’m utterly confused. ‘It’s a normal thing, of course, and probably just a cold, but I really hate it when my students are ill.’ The British accent dripping from his words massages my ears. It’s now that I bring my undivided attention to it. I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone with an accent that wasn’t American before. Each word comes out of his mouth like melted butter.

I don’t speak for a moment, then turn my head so one eye peeks at him. I see him blurry through my tears. I blink a few times so his image clears up. An extremely light stubble dresses his chin and top lip like he shaved a day or two ago. He looks young, nothing like what my teachers back in college or high school looked like. They were all old and wrinkly. He, however, looks like a man that could still be in college.

‘You’re a teacher?’

He nods, his deep brown hair falling over his forehead. He lets it sit there, making my gaze wander to the gray of his eyes. Oh, wow.

‘Yeah, a first-grade teacher. Kids make me go fucking insane.’ His voice goes raspy as he chuckles, and it vibrates a little something in me.

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty-six,’ he answers. ‘You?’

‘Twenty-five.’

‘Hm, so old, yet still scared of… elevators. Interesting.’

I squint at him. ‘I’m claustrophobic, not that I need to explain anything to you. If I weren’t, I’d be perfectly fine with waiting here.’

‘If you weren’t, you’d also still be staring at my dick. Not complaining, though.’

My body stiffens again, the heat returning to my face, boiling at the rounds of my cheeks. For fucks sake, can he just drop that already?

‘I wasn’t staring at your dick.’

‘No, definitely not. You were just observing it.’

I press my lips together, ‘That’s the same thing.’

He nods and smirks. ‘My point exactly.’

He’s repulsive. I shake my head, closing my eyes and letting my head deadfall onto my arms once again. ‘Don’t talk anymore. I change my mind.’

I don’t truly want him to stop talking. Whatever it is that that voice is laced with is getting me high, distracting me from the situation we’re in. I don’t know how long it’s been, but he’s good at chatting. Does it have anything to do with his job with children? Most likely.

I should ask him to do ASMR videos with his voice—No, Raelynn.

‘Fine, go.’ He shifts his butt on the floor to face me and crosses his legs, and for some reason, I’m worried about the filthy elevator floor dirtying his expensive-looking clothing.

My eyes dart to his. ‘Go?’

‘Talk.’

‘Okay…’ I say slowly, leaning against the elevator as I stare up into what I would like to imagine as space and not the corner of a metal box. I’d much rather be looking at clouds and the blue sky. ‘I have an imaginary boyfriend.’

He snorts, looking at me through his lashes. ‘Imaginary? Like from your head imaginary?’

‘Well, are there other types of imaginary boyfriends that aren’t in heads? If so, please tell me. I’d love to know.’

He shakes his head. ‘Nope. Maybe a therapist can help you with that one.’

I squint as he grins. My gaze shifts to his mouth, inspecting his pearly whites. They’re surrounded by lips, obviously. Just lips. Not pink, perfect, and plump, or shaped really nice—

I shake the thoughts out of my head. ‘I don’t imagine him for my enjoyment. I’m not insane. He’s a lie.’

‘A lie,’ he repeats as if struggling to follow along. That shows how irrational this story is, considering he doesn’t even know a quarter of it yet.

I nod, glancing at the floor momentarily, playing with the loose strap on my overalls. ‘Yeah, a lie to my family.’

One of his eyebrows rises when I look back at him. ‘I don’t… Why would you have to…’

‘Lie?’ I finish his question, ‘Because I’m twenty-five and single with no boyfriend and have a… history that runs through my family. They’re religious, and I’m not exactly the Virgin Mary. I wanted to show them I could keep a relationship when in reality, I couldn’t keep a relationship for shit. I still can’t. They only leave me heartbroken or breaking hearts,’ I say bitterly. ‘So, I made up this lie and said I had one. And guess what?’

‘You don’t,’ he answers correctly. Now he’s following along, it seems.

I drop my eyebrows, miserable with the past circling my head. ‘Bingo,’ I whisper. ‘The funny thing is my mom and dad are going to be waiting just outside the elevator door when it goes back down, and they’re expecting this imaginary amazing boyfriend that I don’t have.’

I turn to him, and he’s staring at me intently, listening as if genuinely fascinated. Another teacher plus, I guess—a great listener.

‘What does this imaginary boyfriend look like to them?’

I shrug. ‘Never described him, obviously didn’t show any pictures over the past year—’

‘Love, a year? You’ve got to be some kind of a pathological liar.

“Hey.”

He smiles. “Kind of hot.’ Then leans back on the wall, mirroring my position beside me. Our shoulders touch, and I roll my eyes, feeling goosebumps on my arms rise from his complement. If that even was one? He’s only trying to distract me with his obscured comments.

‘Stop with the flirting. You’ve met me only minutes ago.’

‘Yeah, and you knew me for zero minutes when you stared at my—’

I shuffle to stand on my knees, aggravated, and point a finger at his chest. ‘Say it again, I swear I’ll… I’ll…’ My words are lost in translation as I follow his rain-cloud-like eyes to my finger, now pressing against his chest. He looks down at it for a long time, then takes a drawn-out look up at my chest that sits my cleavage. His eyes bounce from one boob to another for a moment, then he views my face with that stupid smirk on his.

‘Sorry, I got distracted. What were you saying, love?’