by Laura Gray
“What, do you got a boyfriend or something?” the bespectacled man continued. Instant irritation shot through Ellie. She turned to give the man a look.
“Excuse me?” she asked him.
“You got a boyfriend?” the man pressed with an unpleasant grin. “Is that why you can’t get a drink?”
Ellie gave the man a sickly sweet smile. “I don't want to get a drink with you because you’re unattractive to me. Is that clearer now?”
The man’s face crumpled in anger. “Whatever, lady, you don't need to be a bitch about it!”
“Hey, dude? I can’t stroke your ego right now, I’m trying to avoid my ex.”
“You’re missing out on one hell of a night.”
“Just get the hell away from me!” Ellie snapped at him, turning back towards the pillar. I fucking hate clubs.
When her eyes landed on Edwin again, she froze. He’d turned around. He was looking directly at her.
Elizabeth? she saw him mouth over the deafening music.
Oh hell no.
Ellie didn’t stop to think about it—she turned on her heel and fled towards the staircase that was closest to her. Her heels clicked on the metallic stairs as she raced to the upper floor. When she spun around, she could see Edwin’s blonde head sprinting towards the staircase to chase after her.
Shit!
Ellie glanced around her surroundings. To her left, there was a glass smoking room where drunk Manhattaners lounged with their beers. To her right, there was another staircase.
Ellie raced towards the staircase, taking them two at a time to reach the floor above. This area was a larger, emptier one, with tables set down for people to sit and eat at. She would be all too visible if Edwin were to come upstairs.
Maybe I could sneak into the bathroom and hide in there. But the bathroom probably stinks of vomit and piss—do I really want to spend the whole night there?
Behind her, she felt as though she could hear the sound of steps rushing up the staircase. She pictured Edwin running up and catching up with her and felt her stomach churn.
There’s got to be somewhere I can go, she thought to herself.
Then, she saw it. Across the length of the room, in the far left corner, there was a small black door. Ellie had no idea where it went and she had no time to ask. She raced across the floor, trying to look as inconspicuous as she could and not like someone running away from a ghost. She was within arm’s reach of the black metal door when she heard his voice from across the room.
“Elizabeth!”
Nope. Ellie yanked the door open, ran in, and then shut it behind her. She turned the latch to lock it from inside.
“Ellie!” she heard Edwin call from beyond the door. “I know you’re in there! Can we please talk?”
She felt him knock on the door and squeezed her eyes shut in distaste. She turned around, breathing heavily. Before her was another staircase that led to a heavy, metallic door. That door was already open, the summer breeze of the New York evening drifting in from the terrace.
“Ellie, come on! We can be adults about this!”
Ellie ran up the stairs and onto the terrace, quickly turning around to slam the terrace door tightly shut. She didn’t want to hear any of Edwin’s sly, manipulative bullshit tonight.
Nope. Not happening.
“Excuse me, what the fuck?” someone said from behind her.
Ellie spun around to face the sound.
The first thing she noticed about him was his eyes—they were greener than she'd ever thought it was possible for human eyes to be. Their dark, emerald hue was arresting. For one moment Ellie forgot about what was going on.
“Yes?” she said softly.
The man cocked his head to the side, folding his slim but muscular arms across his chest. “You just locked us out on the terrace.”
“What?”
“You locked us out! On the terrace! We can’t open the door from the outside, that’s why I left it open,” the man said angrily. “Is that clear enough for you?”
Ellie turned to grab the door handle of the terrace. She pulled at it with all her might, her feet digging into the terrace floor.
It didn’t budge so much as a millimeter.
Slowly, she turned back to face the man with the startling green eyes.
Well, shit.
Chapter 2
Isabella’s Islay
The next morning, Ellie gingerly crept out of her bedroom, moving the door super slowly so that it would make no noise as it drew shut. She tiptoed on her carpet as she turned around to face her living room.
“Where the hell were you?” Connie demanded from her seat on their couch, making Ellie squeal in shock.
“Jesus Christ, you’re like a ghost!” Ellie clutched her chest.
“Where did you go off to last night?” Connie was dressed and ready for the morning and her voice was at a pitch that Ellie couldn't bear.
“Can you take it easy, I am super hung over.” Ellie yawned.
“You drank last night?” Connie was appalled. Her hands flew to her hips. “Without us? Where? You have to tell me!”
“Okay, you need to keep it down!” Ellie said. “There’s someone in my room!”
Connie’s eyes widened slowly.
“There’s someone in your room?” she asked in a conspiratorial whisper.
Ellie nodded.
“Is it a guy?”
Ellie nodded once more.
“Did you guys do it?”
Ellie sighed, and with a roll of her eyes said, “Yes.”
“Score!” Connie exclaimed with a grin, raising her palm to request a high five. Behind her, Arjun stepped out of his room in his baggy hoodie and pajamas. He made his way to the kitchen, grabbing a carton of milk from the fridge.
“Good morning Connie,” he said with a grin before turning to Ellie. “Hello, ditcher.”
“I’m sorry,” Ellie said good-naturedly.
“There’s a guy in Ellie’s room!” Connie hissed.
Arjun raised a strong, black brow. “There’s a dude in there?”
“Yup,” Ellie replied matter-of-factly, walking to the kitchen to join Arjun by the counter.
“You guys did it?” he asked her.
“Yup.”
“Cool!” he said, raising his hand for a high-five. “The drought is over!”
“You guys are exactly the same!” Ellie said to Arjun and Connie with narrowed eyes. Arjun refused to drop his hand so she reluctantly raised her palm and slapped his.
“There we go!” Arjun cried. “How long was that dry spell? Five, six months?”
“Eight.”
“Eight months, wow,” Connie said, sitting down at the kitchen counter with them. “I’d be losing my mind if I were you.”
“I think I was,” Ellie replied, grabbing the carton of cereal from Arjun’s hand to make herself some. She began to put the contents into a bowl and raised her eyes to search for a spoon, only to see Arjun and Connie staring at her with wide, expectant gazes.
“What?” Ellie asked them warily.
“Who’s the guy?” Connie demanded.
“Yeah, tell us about him!” Arjun added. “Especially since you ditched us for him.”
“I didn’t ditch you!” Ellie clarified. “I...well, after you guys went to get the beer I kind of ran into...Edwin.”
“No!” Connie gasped, pulling away from her in shock. “Tell me it’s not Edwin in there. Tell me you are not that dumb.”
“Of course not!” Ellie munched on a spoonful of cereal. “I ran away from Edwin when I saw him. But he just kept following me and running after me. I had to climb three freaking flights of stairs to get away from him! He could have turned around and left me alone—I clearly didn’t want to see him—but he just had to speak to me for some reason.”
“Anyway, I reached the third floor of that club and there were no more stairs, here was nowhere else to go. Except for the roof.”
“The roof?” Connie asked
with mild surprise.
“Yep, the roof,” Ellie said. “I went in there and I shut the door—hard—and then I realized that the terrace door only—”
“—opens from inside, yeah,” Arjun interjected. “Everyone knows that.”
“Yeah, I knew that too, but I just momentarily forgot about it!” Ellie said quickly.
“Wait, you got locked out on the roof last night?” Connie demanded, raising a palm. “Why didn’t you call me?”
“There was no cell service on there, none at all,” Ellie said. “And, I wasn’t stuck there alone.”
“Oooooh,” Connie and Arjun cooed together, making eyes at Ellie. She chuckled at their juvenile displays.
“Well, who was it?” Connie asked excitedly. “Was it the guy who’s in your room? Was he mad?”
“It was him,” Ellie confirmed, recalling the previous evening. “And he was a mad alright.”
“I can’t believe this!” The handsome man kicked the door in frustration. “Dammit!”
“I am so sorry!” Ellie cried. “I totally spaced out and shut the door—I was just running from my ex-boyfriend who cheated on me and I just ran in here. Well, it’s not really an excuse but we were together for almost eight years and—”
“Would you please shut up?”
Ellie stared at the man, affronted. “Excuse me?”
“Would you please shut up so I can think of a way to get out of here?” the man said harshly. His green eyes glinted darkly in the evening light. There was something rough about his gaze.
“That’s kind of rude,” Ellie replied.
“Well, I think it’s kind of rude that you locked me out on a terrace with no cell signal,” the man retorted, clutching and pulling at the door handle. It was kind of funny to see such a refined-looking person struggle unsuccessfully against the handle of a door.
Ellie pulled out her cellphone and glanced at the screen. He was right, there was no signal here.
Not even one fucking bar, Ellie thought to herself with mild annoyance.
“Great!” The man shouted, pulling away from the door. “This is just perfect! The perfect end to a perfect fucking day.”
He stood facing the door in sudden silence, his broad shoulders hunching slightly, as though he stood under an imaginary weight. Ellie frowned.
“We can get out of here easily, we just—” she began.
“Yeah, I don't need advice from someone who doesn’t even know that terrace doors lock from the inside,” the man interrupted.
“I knew that too! I just momentarily forgot about it!”
“And now we have a very un-momentary problem because of it. So, thank you!”
“Okay, you know what,” Ellie started, “I don't know why you feel the need to be so harsh to a total stranger, but if you put as much effort into thinking as you do into being a jerk , you would see that there’s a very obvious escape route out of here.”
“Oh really?” the man challenged her.
“Oh yeah,” she mocked him. “The fire escape?”
The man pulled back, his jaw slackening. “Crap, I didn’t even think about the fire escape! I just—”
“Momentarily forgot about it? ” Ellie flashed him a cocky grin before turning to walk to the edge of the terrace. She peered over the ledge to find the fire escape. She saw its green, iron slabs beside a window.
“This one only goes down one floor,” Ellie said.
“There’s no fire escape on this side,” the man said from the other side of the terrace. Ellie frowned, quickly pacing to the third side of the terrace. She turned once to see that the man was walking towards the fourth end. She bent down and peered at the wall near her.
Crap. Nothing.
She turned back to face the man. He too was walking back towards the centre of the terrace, near the door, with a hopeful expression.
“Well?” he asked. “Is there one that side?”
Slowly, Ellie shook her head no.
“Dammit,” the man muttered.
“Wait, so the fire escape only went down one floor?” Connie asked. “Isn’t that...illegal?”
“I know, right!” Ellie said. “But it was all that was there! So naturally, we tried to go to the third-floor window and see if we could get in through there. But the whole window was totally boarded shut.”
“Didn’t the fire escape have some kind of ladder you could push down?” Arjun asked.
“Nothing. It was totally useless and we’re never going back to that club again.”
“Go on with the story,” Connie prompted her.
“Well, we stayed on the roof for a while and he was kind of a jerk at first. But then he came around and after we left the terrace, we decided to hook up.”
Connie stared at her with a half-grimace. “Is that the whole story?”
“Yep, pretty much,” Ellie said, turning her eyes down to her cereal. She absentmindedly swirled her spoon in her bowl, her mind churning with cluttered memories from last night.
The man flipped his leg over the fire escape, the soles of his shiny leather shoes touching the terrace lithely.
“The third-floor window is boarded shut,” he grunted angrily as he straightened up to stand before Ellie. “Looks like there wasn’t any obvious escape route that I totally missed.”
“How could I have known there wouldn’t be a fire escape here? That’s basic legal building stuff!”
“Here’s some basic legal building stuff for you,” he raised a brow mockingly. His silky brown hair blew around his eyes in the windy evening. “Terrace doors lock from inside!”
“I already knew that!” Ellie growled.
“Well that didn’t do us much good, did it?”
Ellie’s eyes narrowed. “You are a really unpleasant person.”
“Unpleasant? We’re locked on the terrace of a seedy building downtown, no one saw us go inside, and you want me to be pleasant?”
“Wait,” Ellie said, raising her finger. “Someone saw me go in.”
“What?” the man’s eyes widened.
“Yeah, it was the guy I was running away from. My ex.” She turned to stare at the door. “He knows I'm here!”
“Well, he’s got to be coming to the door, right?” The man excitedly walked over to the terrace door and stood before it, as though he expected someone to come bursting through at any moment. Ellie stood motionless on the terrace, watching the man from afar.
“He knows you’re here, so it won’t be long before he figures out something is up,” the man began. “This is good.”
“I don't want to see him,” Ellie blurted out.
“Yeah, I don't care about that,” the man snapped, walking closer to the door. He raised his fist and pounded the heavy door.
“HELLO?” he yelled. Ellie jumped at his sudden volume. “IS ANYBODY THERE? OPEN THE DOOR!”
Ellie felt a spike of fear in her stomach—if Edwin heard them, he’d come open the door. There would be no escaping him this time.
Oh, come on! Ellie clenched her fist. We can’t stay here all night! Am I really so afraid to face him that I’d willingly stay stuck on a freezing terrace with a rude stranger?
“HELLOOO!” The man bellowed. “I NEED TO GET OUT OF HERE! OPEN THIS DAMN DOOR!”
Ellie trained her eyes on the floor, trying to mentally prepare what she would say when Edwin arrived.
I’ll be cold. Confident and cold, she thought to herself, drawing herself up to her full height. Hello Edwin, you garbage person. Thanks for opening the door. No, I don't want your apologies—I don't even want to hear it—my friends are waiting for me downstairs and I have to go—
“What are you doing?” The handsome man interrupted Ellie’s train of thought. “Do you want to help at all, or do you just want to stand there?”
“You mean come there and yell alongside you?” Ellie crossed her arms against her chest. “I think you’re yelling plenty for the both of us, buddy.”
The man rolled his eyes and turned back to th
e door. He raised his fist to pound the door again, but at the last second, a different knock emerged from the door. From the inside.
“Hello?” the handsome man said to the door with great hope in his voice.
“Elizabeth?”
Ellie froze. She knew that Edwin would most likely be the one who’d find them, but the sound of his voice still caught her by surprise.
“How did he get to the terrace door?” Ellie asked, marching forwards. “I locked the door at the end of the hall from the inside.”
“You what?” the green-eyed man cried with incredulity. “Do you want us to be stuck here forever?”
“No, I just didn’t want him to—”
“Elizabeth? Are you in there?” Edwin asked through the motionless door.
“Dude, I’m in here!” the green-eyed man shouted. “Open the door!”
“I’m here, Edwin,” Ellie said reluctantly, touching the door with her palm. “Can you please open the door?”
There was a pause. Then, Edwin spoke. “Can you please explain why you were running away from me, Ellie?”
“Are you kidding me?” The green-eyed man cried, his head swiveling between Ellie and the door. “Get him to open the door! I need to get out of here.”
“Edwin, why don't you open the door and we can talk about this face-to-face,” Ellie requested.
“You didn’t want to talk about it face-to-face not twenty minutes ago,” Edwin snapped through the door venomously. “I had to sprint three flights of stairs to even get a glimpse—”
“Edwin, please—”
“—and now, just because you need me, suddenly you can discuss it face-to-face?” Edwin snorted loudly. Ellie could picture his ugly expression right now. It was a face he’d worn often during their relationship. “Typical Ellie—pretending to give a shit exactly when she needs something from you.”
“Dude, quit your fucking crap and OPEN THIS FUCKING DOOR!” the green-eyed man yelled, nearly pushing Ellie aside to pound on the door.
“Who’s the guy, El? Someone new you’re fucking?” Edwin’s voice was poisonous. “Is that who you were running to so you wouldn’t have to talk to me?”
“I am not afraid to talk to you!” Ellie protested angrily. She felt the still-familiar flush of an incoming fight with Edmund rise up her neck. “You were the one who fucked that waitress! Your cheating was what ended our relationship! You should be the one afraid to see me!”