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There was nowhere else you wanted to spend New Years Eve than with your family, so when your brother invited you to his home in Boston to celebrate you jumped at the opportunity. But you didn’t realize what exactly you were getting yourself into.
You arrived at his Boston apartment, dressed in a silver mini dress that rivaled a disco ball, a pair of new-years themed sunglasses on your face and a wine bottle in each hand. You had every intention of getting wine drunk and taking drunken pictures with your soon to be sister-in-law. But when you walked in the door to a crowded apartment filled with your brother teammates among their family and friends, you hid your frown behind a forced smile. You would have to be on your best behavior, or at the very least, try to be.
But you could only tolerate the crowds, the watered down drinks and the fake smile you wore on your lips for so long. You wanted nothing more to be yourself, but you couldn’t. Not with the entire team there. As a promise to your brother, you needed to keep up appearances as his sweet baby sister. But the longer you kept up the facade, the more it felt like the air in the room grew heavy and was suffocating around you. You needed some time alone - you needed to go somewhere you couldn’t hear the laughter, the chatter, or the clinking of champagne glasses. So you grabbed your coat and found yourself outside, alone.
Compared to the party inside, the streets were quiet. The occasional car would rush through the slush on the streets before disappearing into the city and leaving nothing but the swirl of snowfall in the air. You pulled your coat tightly around your dress, your hands resting at the collar to protect your bare neck from the icy wind. You stood there under the amber glow of the street light, the snowflakes dancing softly around you like you were trapped in the scene of a snow globe. You smiled at the lakes hitting your cheeks, their chill melting away when met by the heat of your skin. Looking up at the sky, you admired how the moon hung high and bright in the skies, waiting for the kiss of fireworks to grace it. At that moment, the world felt calm, like holiday magic was in the air before it was lost at the dawn of the new year.
A single hand left your neck to dip into the warmth of your pocket. Frigid fingers wrapped around your phone, bringing the screen to life with fingerprint doesn’t match dancing at the bottom of the screen. Normally you would have been annoyed by the message, but you only needed to see the time – it would be midnight soon.
Your heels slipped on the icy Boston sidewalks as you shuffled back into the apartment lobby. The door was cold against your shoulder as you leaned into it to push it open, not wanting to remove your hand from the warmth of the pocket, and you stomped your feet on the wet mat on the floor. Each impact made a squish of dirty water with each step that was almost more slippery than the ice outside. And it was proven just as slippery to walk on in your heels as you noticed the elevator doors closing. You were not going to wait for the elevator to come back down if you didn’t have you, so you rushed to it with quick steps, your hand shooting out of your pocket and between the closing doors. For a moment, you thought the door might crush your hand, but when they parted instead and you saw who was already inside, you were left wishing they had.
Standing there, still draped in his coat, and large flakes of snow in his hair was one of your brother’s teammates looking like the male lead right out of a Hallmark holiday movie. Jeremy. Fucking. Swayman.
“I’m just going to take the stairs,” you muttered, taking a step away from the elevator. Your hand slipped away, but Jeremy’s hand quickly took its place to keep the doors from closing.
“It’s a quick ride up,” Jeremy spoe, his voice warm yet teasing as he looked at you with a soft smile, “you’ll only have to tolerate me for 15 floors.”
For a moment you stood dead in your tracks, looking at him through your lashes in what you were sure was a glare. It was no secret that you and Jeremy hadn’t exactly hit it off the first time you had met and it was to no fault of his own. It was very much the opposite, Jeremy was practically perfect. Handsome. Successful. Impossibly nice. He was the kind of guy your parents wished you would bring home, and that was the very reason you couldn’t tolerate breathing the same air as him.
It was no secret that you were stuck in a phase where you were drawn to all of the wrong things – bad boys, late nights and relationships that went nowhere because the fuckboys ghosted you before you could catch feeling. Men like that paired so perfectly with your desire for loud music and taste for expensive wine. Jeremy was the very opposite of all that, and because of that deep down,in a place you kept hidden away in the subconscious of your mind that only just the right of alcohol could unlock, you knew that if you let yourself you could easily fall in love with Jeremy Swayman. But falling for someone like him felt too risky – like too much potential for heartache.
Sighing, surely loud enough for Jeremy to hear, you stepped into the elevator with nothing more than a nod of acknowledgment. Then you stood there straight and stiff, your hands coming together to wring at one another as you stared straight ahead at the elevator doors. You watch your distorted reflection as the elevator traveled up, only to look away when you felt the elevator lurch. It sent your stomach into your through, your heart skipping a beat as you looked up to the numbers at the top elevator. If the dim light was any indication, the two of you were stuck somewhere between the 9th and 10th floors.
Narrowing your gaze, you looked to Jeremy, who was looking right back at you, but he was no longer smiling. He wore the same concerned expression as you.
“You’re not fucking with me, are you?” you asked, trying to keep your voice from cracking.
“Afraid not,” he replied, his tone serious.
A wave of panic blossomed through your chest in a wave of heat that left your sweating. The air around you felt thick, hard to breathe, as you shrugged off your coat and let it fall to the ground. Without its weight on your shoulders, you reached a hand out and began to press at each button. When the first didn’t get it moving, your movements became more frantic. Each but was left alight like a holiday tree, but not a single one of them got the elevator moving again. Stumbling back, your back hit the wall of the elevator that suddenly felt smaller.
You had completely forgotten Jeremy was there, stuck with you, until you felt each of his hands as they cupped your cheeks. His sudden touch was warm, comforting even, as you heard his soft words in the deafening quiet of the elevator. Jeremey’s words were soft as he walked you through your breathing, anxious gasps for air quickly calming into steady breaths with his guidance. It left your eyes shutting, your hands coming up to grasp at his wrists to ground yourself with him for a moment. You leaned into his touch, focused on the warmth of his hands and welcomed the calmness of his voice.
Only with his help did your panic subside.
“Thank you,” you offered quietly, “does your phone have any signal in here?”
A single hand dropped away from your cheek. You didn’t have to open your eyes to know he had looked at his phone. You could hear his sigh leave his lips. He had no signal. Dropping to your knees, you let your eyes fall on your coat. Digging into your coat pocket you found your phone only to find the same.
“Well, that’s about as useless as a brick,” you groaned, your hand wrapping around it tightly until your knuckles were white. You wanted to throw it. Let it bound off the elevator walls and leave its screen broken as it lay on the ground – but it would solve nothing, so you just let yourself slip to the ground fully, sitting there on your jacket to keep your ass from getting wet, and sat there defeated.
You watched as Jeremy pressed the emergency button, waiting for the elevator to come to life with its ring but there was no call. No connection. Just a droning ring that left your heart racing with panic once more.
“Let’s hope someone hears that,” he says, his tone becoming heavy with the realization that help might not be coming any time soon.
“If it stops, we will keep ringing it,” you suggest, your voice uneven and shaky, “someone will notice we’re missing eventually, right?”
“Yeah, right,” Jeremy nodded, offering you another soft smile as he took off his coat and laid it out on the floor next to you.
Jeremy’s body slid against the back wall until the two of you were sitting side by side in silence. You waited for the ringing to fade before you reached out and pressed the button again. You took turns pressing it every few minutes until. It didn’t take long for the efforts to feel useless and the silence to grow heavy between you. It was then the small talk began.
“Are you having a good season?” You asked him slowly, your head lulling to the side to look at him.
Jeremy smiled, and you noticed his shoulders rock as he let out a soft chuckle, “yeah, it’s good, but you knew that.”
You did, there was no denying that. Not that you watched every game, you had a life outside your brother’s hockey career. Nodding slowly, you let your hand slip down to your phone, the screen illuminating the space between you with its light and the time was blatantly on the screen. Midnight was minutes away, and that fact sent your heart sinking a little. So much for ringing in the new year with family and friends.
“Hot date waiting for you?” Jeremy asked, his tone teasing but gentle.
“Nope,” you sighed, your head shaking slowly, “just me and a bottle of champagne. You?”
He grinned, a twinkle of mischief that resembled the one you had so often gleaming in his eyes. “It’s just you and me in here, isn’t it?”
Smiling, you looked from side to side playfully as if someone was somehow hiding in the small elevator, “Looks like it’s just you and me, Swayman.”
“Call me Jeremy,” he insisted, and suddenly your stomach was fluttering with butterflies.
Your skin flushed with heat, this time for all different reasons that panic. Biting down at the inside of your cheeks, trying to distract your mind from the feelings that began to creep up on you, you averted your eyes down to your phone screen. 11:59. The seconds were ticking down to midnight now, and you could feel Jeremy’s eyes on you. You told yourself not to look up, feeling in the very air what would happen if you did. But the moment the clock on your phone struck midnight, your eyes had found him and the air between you shifted. There was no fear or panic of being stuck in the elevator for a moment, there was only the fixation of Jeremy’s lips as he leaned in and pressed his lips to your. The kiss was soft at first, tentative, but when your hands raised to grip at the collar of his shirt, his hand came up to cup your cheek. The kiss deepened, and you lost yourself in the warmth of his lips and how he tasted as you parted your lips and welcomed his tongue. It had been enough to make you shudder, the kiss striking electricity to you like a bolt of lightning that sent you recoiling at the realization of what you were doing.
But as you pulled back, it wasn’t regret you were feeling nor was it shame. There was a lingering excitement that confirmed all your worries to be true. As desperately as you tried not to let it happen, you were falling for Jeremy Swayman. Choking back your pride, you pressed up onto your knees, ready to lean in for another kiss–
Sudden movement from the elevator sent you lurching back from Jeremy and your neck snapping back to look up at the lights as they illuminated the number ten. Then, with a loud ding, the elevator doors parted, flooding the dimly lit space with light. Squinting your eyes you welcome the sight of a group of firefighters, your brother and several party guests staring at the two of you. You should have been relieved to see them, but all you could feel was embarrassment, as on Jeremy’s lips was very clearly your own lipstick.