Thankfully, CiCi took the wine away from me before I ended up drooling drunk on Gertrude—and also before I could make lurid calls to any more famous actors.
I feel I owe her a dinner for being the reason I’m able to make it through my day here at E-Z Storage without a hangover. I debated taking the day off and waiting for my imminent arrest, but on the off chance CiCi is right and Caspian is too afraid of his own indiscretions being publicized, and I’m not bound for a chain gang, I have a job to finish.
I spent the morning wrapping up the unit from yesterday, which seems like weeks ago now. Around noon, I head down to the gas station and say my daily hello to Rufus, use the restroom, and pick up a coffee and a protein bar. The lunch of champions.
I wonder if Rufus would notice if I just stopped appearing one day to annoy the hell out of him with my mere presence. I get the feeling he wouldn’t be the least bit surprised or bothered if he saw me on the news for celebrity extortion.
If anything, I could see him being a witness for Caspian’s side. Rufus isn’t the warmest of fellows.
I add an extra big smile as I pay today. Rufus remains, as always, not particularly impressed.
I head back to the units and maneuver Brutus in front of the next one on my list. After a leisurely ten minutes of sipping bad coffee and eating my peanut butter–flavored cardboard, I sigh and dive back into the task at hand.
As I undo the padlock, I get a tiny sliver of metal stuck on the end of my finger. Some of these locks look scratched to hell and back, and this one has wounds that bite back, for some reason. I’m glad when I manage to dig the metal splinter out on my own. Somehow, I don’t imagine Rufus would leap with joy at seeing me come back on a quest for tweezers.
This unit seems less ancient than the others, and it makes me sad. Some of these you can tell were abandoned ages before they were taken back by Charlie, but this one looks like the remnants of someone’s actual life.
It mirrors the contents of my own unit more than I care to acknowledge. My stomach aches when I see a mattress propped up against the back wall.
Please, please don’t let my unit end up with this fate, I quietly beg whomever might be listening to such pleading.
There’s a flat-screen TV off to one side that I feel terrible about putting into Brutus, but maybe it will be a good find for the guys at the dump tonight. I stack up a few boxes with more than acceptable clothing and books to take by the shelter later, and fill the back of the truck with various containers of small electronics and assorted tchotchkes.
There’s a love seat that will have to wait until Charlie’s boys pop by at a later date, so I mark that down on my sheet to let him know before kneeling down to sort through a box of old paperwork.
“Find anything you can use to destroy someone else’s life today?” a disgustingly familiar British voice asks.
For a moment, I honestly wonder if I’ve become so paranoid about Caspian as a general entity that I’m now hallucinating. I turn around slowly and, unfortunately, he’s all too real, standing at the entrance of the unit.
“You have got to be kidding me,” I complain. “What, you don’t get enough thrills tormenting me on your own time, so you felt the need to come all the way down here?”
Caspian leans against the entrance, looking far too comfortable. Today he’s in black slacks and a burgundy button-up under his long black wool coat. He looks like an FBI agent who’s trying too hard not to look like an FBI agent.
“So,” he says calmly, “this is where the magic happens? It’s really the Lord’s work you do here.”
“Oh, shut up,” I snap, wishing I had a handy box of shoes to throw at him. “Was I unclear yesterday? Our time together has come to a merciful end, dude. Unless you’ve decided you need to be here in person to watch them drag me off in handcuffs. I can see where that would be your prime source of jollies in life.”
“You’re awfully glib for someone who spends her days sorting through trash to find extortion fodder.”
That’s it. I turn back to the boxes in front of me and start tearing open lids.
“Exactly what are you doing?” he asks.
“At the moment, I’m looking for things to fling at your pompous head,” I say with a growl. Every remaining box contains either papers or pillows or other, less aerodynamic items. “Seriously, what the hell could you possibly want from me at this point?”
“I came here to speak with you, but as you can’t contain yourself for even a minute without resorting to illegal activity or violence, I’ve obviously wasted my time, haven’t I?”
A growling noise tears out of me, and I open up a box full of dishes. Dishes will do.
Before I can even grab one of the plates sitting on top, a sound of shattering glass explodes behind Caspian. He leaps out of the way and looks back toward Brutus, and for a very ridiculous instant, I wonder if I blacked out with rage and actually threw something at him.
Another shattering explosion rings out, and I glance up to see a man with a crowbar standing beside the truck, broken glass at his feet. Caspian looks back at me for a second, either seeing if this is somehow my doing, or in general shock, and I stand up.
“Hey!” I call to the man with the crowbar. “I know you! You’re the creepy guy who was wandering around the other day.”
I try to resist smacking myself in the forehead for actually saying those words out loud.
He’s dressed almost identically to what I saw him in when he appeared at the door of the other unit I was working on. The same tattered puffy coat and jeans.
The crowbar, however—that’s a new accessory.
His response is to swing hard and shatter the back window of the truck. I yelp a little in response. Caspian backs away, joining me inside the unit.
“You think you can just steal someone’s shit?” the crowbar-wielding, angry man shouts. “Who the fuck do you think you are?” He turns around and swings again, this time taking off the driver’s side mirror on Brutus.
“Is this...is this your unit?” I ask foolishly. “Did you try to cut open the lock?”
His response is an eloquent one. He brings the crowbar down on Brutus’s windshield, and I yelp again, this time in terror.
“Gimme your phones,” the man yells. I’m deep enough in the unit that his voice echoes like the surround sound in a horror movie.
“I’m sorry?” Caspian asks, looking utterly stupefied.
“Gimme your fucking phones!” the guy shouts, taking another crack at the windshield.
Out of sheer reflex, my hand goes into my pocket, and I start walking forward with my phone outstretched. I only make it a few feet before Caspian yanks it away from me, bundles it with his own, and calmly hands both of them out the opening of the unit.
Crowbar Man stomps over and snatches our phones from Caspian. Without saying anything, he drops them to his feet and starts beating them to death with the crowbar. Over and over and over he hits them. It’s like the more he destroys them, the more it fuels his anger, and his face turns into an absolutely terrifying mask.
I’m not the only one noticing this. Without taking his eyes off the intruder for even a split second, Caspian reaches behind himself, grabs me by the arm, and starts pushing me back farther into the unit. Even when my shoulder bumps into the concrete wall, he doesn’t release his vise grip on my forearm.
By now, all that’s left of our phones are some case shards and dust in lieu of glass. With a guttural scream, the man suddenly kicks the fragments in our direction. I flinch hard and try to squish myself against the wall even tighter, but Caspian doesn’t move a muscle.
For a blood-chilling moment, the intruder just stares at us, panting with his teeth bared and clenched. Caspian’s grip gets even tighter, and I whimper.
The man wheels around, swings the crowbar again, and shatters one of Brutus’s taillights.
My speechless shock has long since worn off, replaced by a legitimate fear that I’m about to be murdered with a movie star in E-Z Storage unit 278.
Instead—and I’m not sure if this is much better—the man whips back to face us, reaches up, and pulls the unit door shut, slamming it into the ground with so much force, it bounces up a good two feet before crashing down again. It makes an impossibly loud blasting sound that reverberates off the concrete walls and makes my teeth shake.
It’s darker than black inside now, and my terror only grows as I hear Crowbar Man secure the padlock he’d previously attempted to chip away at, sealing Caspian and me inside.
The tiniest sliver of light peeks under the door, and I see the man’s shadow walking back and forth. A second later, I hear the sound of another vehicle, and I feel a sense of dread, thinking of some poor stranger coming by to visit their own unit and being greeted by a monster with a crowbar.
I start to run toward the entrance, prepared to scream a warning, but Caspian doesn’t release my arm. The blackness is beyond disorienting, and we both grab on to each other to keep from falling.
“We have to do something,” I say, not at all sure what that might be other than shouting until my lungs bleed. Since he still hasn’t let go, I drag him up near the door with me. “What if he hurts whoever that is!?”
“I don’t think that’s a random visitor,” Caspian says quietly. I look up and see the faintest outline of his face in the minimum light we’ve been allotted. He seems to be listening carefully. The sound of things being slammed into the back of a truck echoes into the unit, and I try to picture what’s happening on the other side of that door. “I think he came for his belongings,” he adds.
I hold my breath and try to picture what’s happening outside. Yeah, it definitely sounds like he’s moving things from the back of Brutus to another truck.
For a few minutes, that’s all we can make out. Then I hear the unmistakable sound of shattering glass again, peppered with the slamming of the crowbar against metal.
“Hey!” I shout, pounding on the door with my free hand. “You leave Brutus alone, asshole!”
Caspian yanks my arm so hard I stumble into him again.
“Are you mad?” he hisses at me.
“They’re beating up Charlie’s truck!” I yell.
“Better the truck than us!”
“He can’t get back in here, because the creepy fucker left the keys with me!” I continue banging on the door, and Caspian tries to shush me again. I angrily yank my arm from his hand and blindly push him away. After a few more sickening cracks, I hear vehicle doors shut and the squealing of tires. “Yeah, you’d better run!” I scream at the door.
“My god,” Caspian says from a few feet away. “You are truly unhinged.”
“Oh, shut up!” I shriek at him. “Just shut up! Not everything needs your pompous commentary!”
“Yes, screaming obscenities at the violent man who brought friends seems like a positively brilliant idea!”
“I told you, they can’t get back in here!” I say, taking the keys out of my pocket and jangling them in front of his face. “I have the goddamn keys!”
“Right,” he shouts back. “Because that seemed like a man who would be stopped by a missing set of keys!”
I stare at the keys in the outline of my hand, illuminated by the minuscule streak of light. “Oh my god.”
“What now?”
“We...we are locked in here.”
He scoffs. “Worked that out, have you?”
I walk up to the door and put my hands on it, feeling every ounce of my body starting to panic with claustrophobia.
“Oh Christ,” Caspian says as the same realization hits him, suddenly sounding detached. “We’re locked in here.”
I hear him walk up beside me and stand by the door as well. I strain to hear any sounds at all, but there’s nothing.
“I don’t suppose you have some burly driver outside who is proficient in picking locks?” I ask.
“I took a car from the theater and was dropped off,” he says, still sounding terribly far away, even though he’s less than two feet to my right. “I was going to call another one when I was ready.”
Whatever pocket of adrenaline that’s been fueling me through the bulk of this ordeal wears off, and my heart is pounding in a different way now. “Our phones. We can’t even call for help.” I push away from the door and feel the entire unit closing in around me in the darkness. I try to take a breath, but it stalls with only a fraction of the air I needed. “Oh god, what if we suffocate in here?” I gasp, either from shock or lack of oxygen, I’m not sure which. I lurch back to the door and fall into it with one hand outstretched. Dropping to my knees, the panic takes me, and I can’t breathe.
“You’re hyperventilating,” he says, and just as I pull in enough air to make a biting comment, I feel his hand on my shoulder. “Lean forward.”
I collapse down onto my elbows, curling up in a little ball, and wonder if I can suck enough air through the crack. “We won’t suffocate,” he tells me. “There’s plenty of air in here.”
“Oh, yeah?” I gasp. “Do you know that for sure? Do you somehow know the exact rate of oxygen usage for two people in a unit this size?”
“I mean, I’d look it up, but some lunatic broke my phone.”
My head jerks up, and I realize his hand is still on my shoulder. “Was that a joke? Is this what it takes for you to make jokes that aren’t at the expense of other people? Near-death experiences?”
Caspian chuckles. “Evidently.” He sighs and moves away to sit against the cement wall behind me. “So...in the absence of my burly, lock-picking driver, I don’t suppose you have anyone on standby outside, or set to check on you anytime soon?”
“Nope,” I say, letting my head drop back down to my arms.
“Is someone expecting you for anything? What time do you normally head back to your brother’s?”
I shrug before remembering he can’t see me. “It depends. Sometimes it’s early. Sometimes I go hang out with my friend and don’t get in until after Tom and Trina are asleep.”
“And they have no problem with you spending your days at an empty storage unit lot? Seems a bit sketchy at best to have you out here all by yourself.”
My head snaps up. “Excuse you, I can take care of myself. I don’t need permission from anyone to have a job.”
“Easy now,” he says, and I swear I can hear him rolling his eyes. “That wasn’t a woman-related jab. I have no doubt you can handle yourself. But I think the fact that we were just quite literally attacked makes my point for me.”
“I’ll give you that one.” Thinking about potential rescuers, I add, “My friend CiCi will probably come looking if she hasn’t heard from me by the time she gets off work.”
I realize a piece of broken phone is cutting into my knee, so I sit up and put my back against the door. Then a horrible thought pops into my head, and I choke on a second burst of hysterics.
“What?”
“It’s just...” I try and fail to regain a little composure. “She’s going to think you had me arrested. That’s what we spent all last night talking about. How I would just suddenly disappear when you finally dropped the hammer, and she’d be the only one who knew what happened.”
“You really do have a dramatic sense of imagination.”
“Says the actor,” I retort bitterly. “The actor who kept threatening to have me arrested, by the way, so it’s not like our theory was really that far-fetched.”
In the faint glow of light, I watch as he stretches his extraordinarily long legs out and crosses them at the ankle. “That’s fair.”
There’s a very restless silence for a few moments. Figuring I have nothing to lose while locked in a storage unit, hoping we don’t run out of air, I say, “We got interrupted by the dude with the crowbar and all, so you never got around to telling me exactly why you’re here. It’s slightly out of the way of the theater.”
“A bit.” He starts gently straightening his watch. “I meant what I said. I really did come with the intention of speaking with you.” I can see a hint of a smile on his face now. “But before the crowbar man appeared, technically we were interrupted by you preparing to throw things at me.”
“I’d like to think we were interrupted by you not knowing how to say hello to someone without it coming out as an insult,” I offer. “Makes it hard to feel particularly conversational.”
“Also a fair point.”
“Honestly, are you that rude to everyone?”
“God, I hope not.”
His admission startles a laugh out of me. “So you do hear how big of an ass you are when you talk to me? That’s nice to know. I’d hate for that kind of venom to go unnoticed.”
“If we’re being honest, you’re not exactly kind when we chat, either. Are you always that vicious?”
“Only to physically imposing celebrities who blackmail me.”
“I’m not physically imposing,” he says, and I almost laugh again, but he sounds so genuinely surprised, I reel myself in.
“Have you met you?” I ask. “You’re really, really tall, and you have this icy stare that makes regular humans cry. And oh my god, when you do that thing where you stand up really fast and start shouting? That shit is terrifying.”
He starts fidgeting with his watch again. “I was trying to be intimidating, not terrifying.”
“Intimidating is you on a regular Tuesday. You could dial it back by a mile and still get the point across.”
“I’m sorry about that,” he says.
I eye him suspiciously, even though I know he can’t see my expression. “I can’t tell if you’re being serious or not.”
“Of course I am.” I find myself actually believing him. “I guess I didn’t stop to think about how all that must have looked from your perspective. I never meant to scare you. Well, not that badly, anyway.”
“Thank you,” I say fervently. “For future reference, if you’re doing something you would do on-screen while playing a villain, it’s probably a hair too far in real life. Particularly if you’re a good foot taller than the person you’re trying to intimidate.”
“Duly noted.” A moment goes by, him still toying with his watch, and he adds, “You’ve had some solid moments of terrifying yourself.”
I sigh. “I wasn’t going to actually throw anything at you. I don’t think. If it helps, I’ve got horrible aim, anyway.”
“That’s not what I’m referring to.”
I try to think back to any time I might have let my talk of potential murder or open manhole cover comments slip into our conversations. “What, then?”
“You have no idea what it felt like to get that voice mail you left.”
I shrink down against the wall. “Oh. That.”
“It was the first thing I saw when I woke up,” he elaborates quietly. “I hadn’t even gotten out of bed. And there you were, laughing your way through the details of the most traumatic point of my life. I actually Googled myself for the first time that day. To see if you’d already sold the story. All I could think about was my mum seeing it before I had a chance to tell her.”
His voice sounds so uncharacteristically fragile, and the imagery is so horrific, I can’t help the tears that start to fall. “I am so, so sorry.” I try to clear my throat, but there are more tears than I can cough away. “I truly never meant to do that to you. I know that doesn’t magically make it not exist, but I swear, I would give anything to undo it. I really am so sorry for everything.” I pull my coat sleeves down over my hands. “I know you don’t have any reason to trust my word on it, but I promise you, I was never going to do anything with those papers. It probably doesn’t ease your mind any at this point, but it’s the truth.”
“Thank you,” he says, reaching out to put his hand on my shoulder again. “I believe that.”
I don’t know what else to do, so I pat his hand with my coat sleeve–covered palm. “Thanks.”
“For the record... I was never actually going to have you arrested,” he says, giving my shoulder a squeeze before pulling away. “Well, not after I met you, anyway.”
“Seriously?”
“Quite serious, yes. The whole ordeal in your brother’s apartment was so...unsettling. I believed you then, honestly.”
I gape at him for half a second, then reflexively slap him on the arm. “Dude.”
He laughs. “I’m sorry about that. But not really, I suppose, because there was always the chance that you could have tried to sell the story later on, and while I believed what you said, I wasn’t going to take any chances.”
“So I’ve been having daily panic attacks and picturing myself in orange this whole time, and you were never going to actually do it?”
“No,” he says, and I swear he sounds almost sheepish. “That’s actually what I came here to talk with you about. But, as our interactions tend to do, things got off on the wrong foot.”
“I’m waiting for you to accept responsibility for the bulk of those wrong feet.”
Another laugh. “All right, I accept. In my defense, I didn’t realize how—What was the phrase you used? How ‘physically imposing’ I was being along with my jabs. That sort of takes things to a level of cruel I wasn’t intending.”
Now I have to laugh, both from the absurdity of the situation and from relief. “You know,” I say, “when you’re not threatening me or growing to the size of an angry tree right before my eyes, you’re not quite the monster I had you pegged to be.”
“I do believe that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me,” he says, and I hear a smile in his voice. “And when you’re not calling me a prick or preparing to throw dishes at my head, you’re quite pleasant company.”
I blush and, in the moment, am glad he can’t see my face. “Well, now you’re just sucking up.” He laughs again, and I let loose a giggle of my own. “So, I’m curious. Is this what you’re normally like? With people who didn’t accidentally uproot your life, I mean.”
He moves a bit, and I take it as a shrug. “I think so? What about you?”
“I’m pretty sure it is, but I guess it’s hard to say, isn’t it?”
“I suppose it is.”
We’re silent for a moment, and I become painfully aware of how very cold it is. The lack of sunlight and the cement floor have turned this experience into what I imagine sitting on a block of ice feels like. I shudder so hard, the door vibrates behind me.
“What was that?” Caspian asks.
“My body rebelling against only a thin layer of denim between it and the frozen floor. It’s like being locked in a freezer. Why couldn’t Crowbar Guy have locked us in here in, say, July?”
“I imagine that would be rather like being locked in an oven.”
“Yes, but waaaaaaarmth.” I shiver again, making the door wiggle loudly.
“Why don’t you come sit beside me?” he offers.
I blink slowly, certain I didn’t hear him correctly. “Uh. Are you serious?”
“Yes? Why wouldn’t I be?”
“Because we hate each other?”
He moves slightly again, which I take to mean another shrug. “Not at the moment, I don’t hate you. And didn’t we just discuss our mutual hatred being dialed back?”
“I guess we did,” I say, only now realizing it.
“In the spirit of our honest discussion in captivity, I would even be prepared to say I’m discovering I may not actually hate you at all.”
“Aww, just what every girl wants to hear,” I tell him.
He chuckles. “How about this, then—I’ve got a long wool coat that’s probably better to sit on than nothing, and I’m guessing it’s safe to say it’s warmer for two people to be huddled together than spread apart when ensconced in frigid concrete.”
I consider all this for a moment. “You’re freezing your ass off, too, aren’t you?”
“So very much.”
I laugh so hard it echoes through the unit. “Okay, fine.”
I crawl over to where he’s sitting and have the damnedest time figuring out where all of him actually is. He reaches out and guides my shoulder until I’m curled up inside his coat with him, with one of his arms wrapped around me.
“Okay, full points for the sitting-on-the-coat advice.” I notice he’s shivering a little as well. I tuck my knees to my chest and lean in as much as I can. “Not to go fully morbid here, but aside from my lack of air concerns, should we be more worried that if no one finds us, we are definitely going to freeze to death in here?”
“I’m hoping your friend comes looking for you before that happens, but I’d say that might be a concern, yes.”
I shudder again, but this time not from the cold. “I am having the worst mental image of someone finding us days from now, all Popsicle-y like Jack Nicholson in The Shining.”
“That’s rarely a good look for anyone.”
I turn my head and give him an amused and incredulous look before remembering he still can’t freaking see me. “Ugh. I never realized exactly how much of my communication is through nonverbal facial expressions. This is really throwing me off my game.”
“Sticking your tongue out at me, are you?”
I snort. “Well, I am now.”
“See, it hasn’t slowed you down as much as you th—” He stops talking suddenly, and I hear the sound of a car pulling up outside.
I jump away from the wall as though it’s burned me, trying to move as far back from the door as I can, but my feet get tangled up in Caspian’s coat. “What if it’s Crowbar Guy again?”
“You said he can’t get back in here, right?” Caspian says, reaching out to steady me before I tumble backward. “Should we call out for help? Whoever it is probably has a phone.”
“I guess if it’s the creepy guy, at the very worst, he would just ignore us or beat up Brutus again.”
“Who is Brutus?”
“The truck,” I say, staring at the crack of light to see if I can make anything out. “I name inanimate objects. It’s a thing.”
A shadow appears at the base of the unit, and Caspian and I both scramble to stand. The sound of the padlock being fidgeted with causes my heart to stop.
“What if he went to get something to cut the lock?” I whisper, feeling panic rush through me again.
The door starts to roll open. Caspian pulls me behind him, and I hope he’s about to use some of that physically imposing stuff on whomever is on the other side. I clench his hand so hard it has to be painful.
The door opens all the way, and the afternoon light makes me squint. Caspian hangs on to me just as tight while using his other hand to shield his eyes.
I make out a familiar, bearded outline and cry out, “Charlie!” Caspian looks down at me for confirmation, because I’m assuming that to a person outside the know, Charlie isn’t any less scary-looking than the guy with the crowbar. “It’s okay,” I assure him. “He owns the units.” I have to stop myself from lunging at Charlie and tackling him with a grateful hug. “What are you doing here?”
“Security firm called and said they saw the tail end of some punk smashing my truck and played back the tape.” In the near-distance, I hear sirens. “Either of you hurt? They couldn’t see inside the unit, just that you never came out before he locked it up.”
“We’re fine,” I say, and deflate with relief. I realize freedom is ours, so I race out of the unit, still clutching Caspian’s hand, and take a moment to bask in the few glorious rays of sunlight that are gleaming through the November clouds. The sound of broken glass crunches under my boots. “Oh no, Brutus!”
I look at my poor vehicular friend, and it’s absolutely mangled. Every window is broken, and while I can tell the creepy man tried to beat the hell out of the body of the truck, other than a little chipped paint, there aren’t any real scars. “I’m so sorry, Charlie! He just appeared, and it all happened so fast. I feel horrible about Brutus.”
“Brutus?”
“The truck,” Caspian offers.
Charlie nods, as if that’s a perfectly reasonable answer. “Trust me,” he says as the flashing lights of police cars appear at the entrance of E-Z Storage. “It’s a lot gentler than what’s going to happen to the guy who did it.”
Caspian looks down at me to see whether or not he should be alarmed, and I give him a slightly wide-eyed look.
I guess that answers my question as to whether Charlie is the cement-shoes kind of guy.