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“Hi.”
Max’s eyes shot up towards the buttons on the elevator. Is his mind playing tricks on him again? Is he hearing voices? It certainly wouldn’t be the first time. But it’s never been here, not in this elevator.
Maybe he was finally losing his mind.
“Max.” He turned around and there she was. In the flesh, with her grey suitcase and red handbag. Albeit he noticed she only had one carry-on with her. She’s not staying.
Helen was waiting for him to respond, but he just kept staring at her. He was memorizing every hair out of place, nail polish color, and every detail he could outline over and over as if she would disappear if he looked away even for a second. He was at a loss for what to say.
Did this elevator always take this long?
Max nodded and turned back around. “Helen.” There was a pause, and then he blurted out, “I didn’t expect you to co—”
The elevator made a hideous grinding noise, and shuddered to a stop between floors, trapping them inside. The lights flickered and died a second later, the darkness mitigated only by the red battery-powered emergency lights that came on reluctantly.
“Are you serious?” Max punched various numbered buttons on the panel but they were unresponsive. He found the emergency one and held it down so at least the fire department would be alerted to the situation. “Guess I need a deputy to remind me to get these things checked out, huh?” He waited for a jibe but it didn’t come. All he could hear was rapid breathing. “Helen?”
She was busy concentrating on not passing out from the dizzying sensation of the blood leaving her head as her vision greyed out at the edges. Her heart started racing and when she flexed her fingers her palms were sweaty. “Max? Remember how I told you I was claustrophobic?”
Max blinked, eyes adjusting to the dim, blood-colored light. “Of course I do. What does that hav—.” He reached out on impulse when Helen doubled over suddenly, hands on her knees, hand curling around his shoulder. “Jesus, Helen, just hang on, let’s sit down. ” Forgotten was everything that happened — or didn’t happen — between them the last four months, and he slipped on his Max the Revolutionary hat.
Max ran his free hand through his hair; he’d never seen Helen like this before and it was freaking him out more than he wanted to admit. “It’s gonna be okay, Helen. Okay? It’s gonna be okay.” He tried to open the doors first to get some air circulation in, sliding his fingers into the gap in the middle, spreading his feet, and using his weight to aid him in pushing them apart. It wasn’t as easy as it looked in the movies, and the result wasn’t the same either—instead of the doors to the next floor being visible above them, all Max saw was concrete. “Shit.”
Helen leaned against the wall, cursing herself for this weakness. She was Dr. Helen, for god’s sake! She gritted her teeth and kicked off her shoes while she glared at Max. She was in New York for him, she was in this elevator because of him. When she was a child she had hoped she would outgrow this claustrophobia, but thinking about being a child threw her straight back to that bank holiday that started it all, and she didn’t feel her legs go out from underneath her so much as she realized she was falling.
“Helen!” Max caught Helen before she could hit the floor, arms locking around his fiancée’s (or ex-fiancée, maybe? She was still wearing the ring) torso. She was shuddering, involuntarily, and Max ran a hand up her back, lips close to her ear. “Hey, hey—I’ve got you.” Helen let out a shaky breath, hands coming up to bunch the fabric of Max’s scrub top. “Damn it,” she whispered harshly, blinking back the tears that burned her eyes, glad that it was just dark enough for them not to be visible. She was the furthest thing from a damsel in distress, so this was beyond frustrating. “Max, I’m so sorry—”
“Hey, look at me,” Max said. “Babe, look at me.” He hesitated for a second before bringing his hand up and cupping Helen’s jaw, getting her to tilt her head up. He leaned down and looked her in the eye. “Nothing to be sorry for.” He sighed and settled down next to her and leaned against the wall.
They weren’t going anywhere until the fire department broke them out. He could at least distract her for a bit. “Would you rather want to live in the Star Trek or Marvel Universe?” he asked. His head rested against the wall and he turned to face her.
She blinked at him.
He shrugged his shoulders. “Come on, it could be fun!”
“Fun is not how I would describe this.”
“What else do you want to do, Helen?”
She sighed. She didn’t really have any ground to stand on right now. “What is this exactly?” She gestures toward him.
“I call it Two Truths,” he said. “It’s like Two Truths and Lie and twenty questions except there are no lies.”
She was waiting for him to laugh, that he was joking. He was not, unfortunately. He seemed inappropriately pleased with himself. “It goes like this; one of us asks a question, the other one asks truthfully and then gets to ask a question and the other has to answer truthfully.”
She just gave him a long look. “So, just twenty questions?”
He swallowed. “Basically.”
“When will it end?” she asked.
“When the fire department gets us out of here.” Wonderful. “So maybe around two hours.”
She sighed. “You really wanna play this game?” He nodded his head.
She sighed again. “Fine. I start.”
“Perfect!” He grinned.
It was time to change tactics. “Are you still mad I didn’t show up on the roof?” she asked. He would hate to answer that so they would forever be stuck at that question until they’d be freed and she could sit here in silence and—
“Yes,” he said calmly, collected.
She knew that tone. She had used it whenever she had been forced to talk about her feelings about her father. “Which one of my ringtones did you enjoy the most?” he asked, lightly.
She pressed her lips together and looked at him. Keeping it all bottled up wouldn’t help him, she knew he needed to let this off his chest.
So she waited.
“I couldn’t understand why you stood me up,” he said and looked to the floor. He folded his hands in his lap. “I thought this thing between us was forever. And the one time I needed you to show up, you didn’t.”
“You know after I called -”
He shook his head. “I didn’t understand it at first.” He looked at her. “But then I realized we moved too fast, skipped over the important conversations and I maybe invested too much.” Her heart clenched. She could see so much sadness in his eyes.
He shrugged. “You were it for me.”
She wished she could take that pain away from him. She wished she could say something to help him heal. But nothing. Instead, she had to settle for this. “The Yummy ringtone was definitely the most embarrassing one. Lauren would not stop teasing me.”
“I knew it!” he said and snorted.
“Were you really planning to come back to London?” she asked.
“Yes.” Quicker, this time. “Would you have come back to New York?”
“Yes.” Of course. Helen would follow him anywhere, didn’t he know that? She swallowed. “Did you tell Luna that I wasn’t going to be her…”
“That you’re not her mum?” he asked. “No.”
She frowned. “No?”
“No.” He tilted his head. “Are you still in love with me?”
“Yes,” she said.
He smiled. “I am too, you know, by the way. In case there was any doubt.” And there they went, conveniently forgetting the conversation before, but she wasn’t going to let that happen. “Why didn’t you tell her?” She felt the most guilty leaving Luna in New York. Not properly saying goodbye to her to the point she kept her paintings up everywhere. Toys were still scattered in her corner because she deserved the physical reminder of what she lost to her own self-sabotage.
Max shrugged. “Didn’t feel right. And if I’m being honest, I thought you’d come back.”
“To New York?”
“To me.”
She raised a brow.
“It was selfish, and I could never ask you to come back. Not…not after your mother died. But I had always hoped.” He snorted. “I should’ve stayed in London. After the funeral. I wanted to punch myself for not staying, but-.”
“It was the best choice for Luna,” she mumbled.
“I saw the look on your face, Helen.” He rubbed his face. “When I told you I had to go back, but I knew us staying would not help. It wasn’t going to be permanent. ” He pressed his lips together. “I’m sorry for that, too.”
Yeah, she was sorry too.
“Do you regret moving to London?” he asked.
“No.” She looked at her hands while she braced herself for her next question. “Did you regret moving to London?”
“Not even for a second,” he said. “I would’ve followed you anywhere…it was just, ” he pulled his shoulders up and sighed. “There were just so many things stacked against us. Veronica. The pandemic. This hospital. Georgia’s parents. Your mother.”
Relief washed over her and she felt ashamed. He didn’t resent her for uprooting their lives just to move right back to New York. Not the fact that she dragged Luna and Max to a new country where they had no history. She knew she didn’t ask him to move; she even tried to break it off with him before she moved so he didn’t get as hurt as he could’ve been. But, she knew once they crossed the line there isn’t a place either of them wouldn’t follow. She wished she could get over this guilt. She wished she could get over wanting more than she could ever ask of him.
“You know, after the ambulance crash, I was worried you wouldn’t come back, but you always did,” he said quietly. “You always do.” He corrected himself and his eyes were soft as he looked at her.
This was exactly what made it so hard for her to keep her distance when all she wanted was to come back to New York. But she felt embarrassed. She cleared her throat. “That’s not a question.”
He tilted his head. “Why did you always come back to New Amsterdam?”
“I was always coming back to you,” she said. She couldn’t stop looking into his eyes. She wondered who he saw. “Are you mad that I didn’t tell you about what happened with my mother?”
“No.” He shook his head. “I was annoyed at first. Frustrated to say the least. But I pushed you instead of letting you tell me.” Helen’s biggest regret was not telling him sooner about what was actually happening with her mother. She didn’t want Max to see her as a failure.
She wasn’t used to people staying through the hard times, or even just surviving. “I should’ve told you sooner.” She sighed.
“Are you coming back to New Amsterdam, for good?” He leaned into her as he said it, and she mirrored his movements without a second thought. Her breath got stuck in her throat and he briefly cradled her face with his real hand and stroked her cheek before he pulled away.
She didn’t respond immediately. And he was tired of waiting for an answer.
“Helen, you know I love you,” he leaned back. “I’m always going to love you. But I need to know if you’re staying or going.” Max paused, “it’s a yes or no. Because you know I’m all in. Even after you didn’t show up to our wedding, even after moving back to New York. Even if you dont think this will work because-” he was starting to ramble, but the words just kept spilling out. “You. Us? This life, our family? I’m here for all of it. I’ll move to London for good. I’ll go anywhere as long as you let me in and I know that you won’t r-”
Max wouldn't stop talking, so Helen wrapped her arms around Max’s neck, and bridged the gap between them. She pressed her lips to Max’s, tentatively licking the seam of his lips and making a pleased sound in the back of his throat when Max let her in, hands splayed against Helen’s lower back. It was sweet and smooth, but eventually, they had to breathe—and that was when Helen realized she could breathe, that the space in the elevator didn’t seem so tight anymore like it was going to crush her if she didn’t watch out.
It was so foreign yet familiar and it felt like they found their rhythm finally in sync after two years of disarray, Helen always knew the answer, but she was so afraid of losing him. Max was staring at her through his ridiculously thick eyelashes, the look in his eyes difficult to read and far away. Helen didn’t want to ruin the moment—she was pretty sure she wasn’t going to get another one—but she wasn’t sure how long this newfound immunity would last.
Unwinding her arms, she leaned back and said two words he’d been longing to hear for four months, “I’m staying.” Max had a ridiculous grin on his face that she just knew was trouble. “So there’s a chance for elevator sex in our near future, then?” Helen nearly choked on her tongue and slapped Max's arm when she noticed he was grinning again. “Max, there are cameras.”
“Even better.” Max's brow furrowed briefly before leaning in for another kiss, "it's proof of us vandalizing another local heritage site."