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The silence is comfortable now. I inhale and exhale deeply again. I rest my head against the back of the elevator.
“How did you pick the violin?” I ask. “It doesn’t seem like the first choice a kid from the Dominican Republic would make.”
He smiles and looks down at the violin, now lying across his lap.
“It was a dare.”
His eyes meet mine and twinkle at the shock he must see there.
“There was a girl in the orchestra. She played the cello and my friends dared me to join the orchestra to get close to her.” He chuckles and I watch him. What did he look like as a kid? Certainly, he’s always been beautiful. “I took the dare, but not because of the girl.” He looks at me, waggles his eyebrows, and tips his head to the side. “There was a boy then.”
He already knew he was gay.
He reads my expression correctly and nods.
“The boy who dared me is the one I had the crush on, but there was also a boy who played the violin,” he smiles. “Turns out I also really liked playing the violin, and I was good at it.”
“And the boy who played?”
“We’re still friends.”
Are they more than friends? Were they then? I look at him. A brown kid from the Dominican Republic with rich white parents at a predominantly white school and he already knew he was gay. Was he out? That would be brave as hell. As I stare at his caramel skin and he turns those gold eyes on me, I notice my heart rate has calmed. My hands are no longer shaking.
Sweat has stopped running down my back.
“What about the girl?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I think she went to one of the formals with one of my friends, but I really don’t remember. Once I held the violin…that’s all I cared about.”
“Was hockey that way for you?” He asks.
The simple answer is yes, of course it was. Every kid who puts on skates dreams of playing in the NHL. Every kid but this one. This was my father’s dream. But I don’t tell him any of that. My pulse quickens at the mere thought of dear old dad.
I just nod. “Would you keep playing?”
He doesn’t hesitate to tuck the violin back under his chin. As he does, the elevator lurches, drops some and stops again. We both look at the ceiling and then each other. Down. The elevator shouldn’t be going down.
Fuck.
Another whirring sound comes from outside. The power is trying to return. But with each whir, the elevator drops. Nandy reaches for my thigh and digs his fingers in. I place my hand across his and hold it there. His smooth skin hot against my palm. Another dip. Another whir. Another dip.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
Finally, the whir settles into a rumble. The elevator stops again. The regular lights come on. The buttons relight. I stand and my fingers hover over the button for the penthouse. I look at Nandy. He stands. “Just push the one to the next floor.”
“What floor are we on?”
Nandy shrugs and reaches past me and pushes 27.
We wait, and in a split second, the elevator is moving…. moving up. Just a few seconds more and it stops, and the doors open on 27. We step out and let the elevator carry on.
Penthouse. Nandy lives on the top floor. I remember that. Over 30 floors above us. He looks down the hall toward the emergency exit. Then back at me.
“Your call…we hoof it up…or get back in the elevator.”
I take less than five seconds to walk toward the door to the stairs.
Chapter nine
