Trapped For The Night

“I’ve got a plan.” 

“Oh god, what is it?” Selena rolled her eyes at the mere sound of her annoying next door neighbor’s voice. 

Leo Alvarez was the bane of her existence. He always played ridiculously loud music that made her eardrums ring, he would park in her assigned parking spot all the time, and whenever it rained, he would always leave muddy footprints in front of her door. 

In short, he was the absolute last person on earth that she would ever want to get stuck in a locked room with. And yet, here they were. 

It was in moments like this where Selena wished she had the ability to travel back in time and stop her past self from making decisions that would ruin her life. If she could, Selena would go back two hours in the past, when she had been in her apartment packing up all the dirty shirts and pants that she wanted to wash. She would warn her past self to not step foot in the communal laundry room because the rickety old door would unexpectedly jam and leave her trapped with her worst nightmare. 

Selena looked down at her phone, which only functioned as a clock now because there wasn’t any cell reception down in the laundry room of the antique apartment building that she lived in. It was just after 11 pm. Unless there were any night owls who wanted to do their laundry at midnight, their chances of being rescued any time soon were low

Not as low as the chances that Leo’s plan to get them out would work. 

“If I get a running start from here,” Leo explained as he backed up all the way to the opposite wall. “I might be able to get enough momentum to knock the door off its hinges.” 

“So your plan is to run into the door head first and hope that it opens.” Selena physically had to resist the urge to face palm. “Were you dropped on your head as a baby? Wait actually, don’t answer that. You must have been if you think that what you just said constitutes a good plan.” 

“Hey!” Leo protested. “I don’t see you coming up with a better plan.” 

“My plan is to just sit tight until someone comes down to do their laundry.” Selena said as she leaned against a washer. “I know it's not ideal, but it won’t kill us to spend a few hours in here.” 

“I refuse to sleep on the cold hard ground knowing that I could be in my queen sized bed instead.”

 Leo bent his knees as he assumed a track star’s starting position. He kept his eyes locked straight ahead and broke into a sprint. Once he got close enough, he jumped and lunged all his body weight onto the door. He smacked his face hard against the wood, which made such a loud sound that even Selena winced in pain. She watched in horror as he crumbled to the ground. 

“Leo, are you ok?” Selena blurted out, as she rushed over to his side. Her stomach turned as Leo groggily sat up with a bloody nose. Looking desperately around the room, she spotted some of the freshly clean hand towels that she had folded up on top of the dryer. “Here, use this.” 

“Thanks.” Leo’s voice was muffled as he tightly pressed the towel to his face. “Damn, that hurt.” 

“Of course it hurt.” Selena mumbled as she watched spots of red bloom onto her pristine white towels. She could already tell that those stains were never coming out. “You owe me some new towels by the way.” 

“Wow, you couldn’t even wait until I stopped bleeding.” Leo laughed. “You really don’t like me, do you?” 

“What makes you say that?” Selena asked, the slightest hint of sarcasm was evident in her voice.  

“Every time I see you, you have this weird prissy look on your face that looks like you just ate a lemon.” 

“I do not make weird prissy faces!” 

“So that’s just what your face looks like naturally then?” 

Selena crossed her arms against her chest. “I’d like you a lot more if you stopped blasting your music at full volume all the time.” 

“Just trying to show you what good music sounds like.” Leo shot back. He finally stopped bleeding and removed the towel from his face, which meant that Selena could now see the stupid grin on his face that was growing bigger by the second. 

“I’d also like you more if you stopped parking in my spot.” Selena said. 

“Ok fine, sometimes at night I get a little confused and accidentally park in your spot.” Leo admitted. “It’s not that big of a deal though, if I park in yours then you can just park in my spot. Problem solved.” 

“The problem wouldn’t even exist in the first place if you just parked where you were supposed to!”

“Speaking of problems that shouldn’t exist, you have got to stop leaving your delivered packages out in the hallway.” Leo said. “One of these days, I’m gonna trip over them and break my ankle and you’re gonna have to pay my hospital bills.”  

“I’m not always home when they get delivered!” Selena protested. “At most the boxes only spend a few hours outside.” 

“You also use your blender way too early in the morning and it always wakes me up.” Leo continued, although he didn’t really seem that annoyed. In fact, he seemed to be rather amused by the back and forth dance they were doing. “Because of you I’m sleep deprived.” 

“You are not sleep deprived.” 

“I am too, don’t you see the bags under my eyes?” 

“I’m pretty sure those are bruises you got from running into the door.” Selena grew quiet for a second, unsure if he was joking or not. “Is my blender really that loud?” 

“Nah.” Leo shook his head. “I mean, I do hear it cause the walls are so thin, but it's really not that big of a deal. I can sleep through anything.” 

“Good to know.” Selena smiled. “I can’t function properly if I don’t make my green smoothie every morning.” 

“A green smoothie? Sounds gross.” Leo pretended to gag. “What do you put in it? Grass?” 

“It is not gross!” Selena protested. “It’s got spinach, apples, bananas, pineapple, and mangos.” 

“Blended spinach? There’s no way that tastes good.” 

“It tastes perfectly delicious!” Selena insisted. “You can’t even taste the spinach at all.”  

“Really?” Leo raised an eyebrow in disbelief. “Well maybe you could invite me over sometime so I can try one.” 

“Maybe.” Selena checked her phone again. She still didn’t have any service. 

“So how long you figure we’re stuck here for.” Leo asked. 

“Maybe six or seven more hours. Depends on how early people decide to do laundry tomorrow.” 

“I can’t last that long.” Leo groaned as he patted his stomach dramatically. “I’m starving. Didn’t get a chance to eat dinner today.”

Selena opened up her purse and rummaged through it. She fished out the granola bar that she always kept in her bag in case of emergencies. “Here, you can eat this.” 

“Really?” Leo asked with a surprised look on his face. He grabbed the granola bar and inspected it closely. “You didn’t poison this, did you?”  

“It’s just a regular granola bar.” Selena rolled her eyes. “I can be nice sometimes.” 

“I like Nice Selena.” Leo eagerly ripped the wrapper open. “Thanks for this, I thought my stomach was about to start eating itself.” 

As Leo ate, Selena looked through her purse once again to see if there was anything else useful in there. The only things she managed to dig out were some tissues, a lipstick, a mirror, a ton of old receipts, and a small paperback book. 

“You read a lot, don’t you?” 

Selena looked up and saw that Leo had spotted the book. “How do you know that?” She asked. 

 “I’ve just happened to notice that a lot of your packages come from bookstores.”

“You look at my packages? Sounds like something a stalker would do.”

“Hey, if you don’t want people to know what you order, stop leaving your packages outside.” Leo’s face grew slightly flushed. “Plus ‘The Book Stop’ always has their logo printed all over the boxes in huge letters.” 

“Again, sounds like something a stalker would say.” Selena teased. 

“So, um…what’s that book about?” Leo asked. He crumbled up the granola bar wrapper and tossed it into a nearby trash can. 

“You really wanna know?” 

“Yeah.” Leo shrugged. “We’re gonna be here a while anyway.” 

“You sure you don’t wanna think of another genius plan to get us out of here?” Selena turned and gestured to her laundry basket. “I’ve got a few more clean towels on stand by just in case.” 

“That’s so generous of you to offer,” Leo laughed, shaking his head. “But I think I’ve bled enough for one night.” 

“I still can’t believe you thought running into the door would work.” 

“In my defense, everything in this building is pretty old and rundown.” Leo explained. “I didn’t think the door would be that strong.”

“I’m surprised you didn’t want to try crawling through the air vents.” Selena pointed towards a vent that was up on the back wall. “We probably could have pried it open.” 

“That actually did cross my mind.” Leo confessed. “But only you’re small enough to crawl through there and it's probably pretty dusty and dirty so I didn’t want to ask you to do that.” 

“Wow, that’s actually pretty considerate of you.” Selena was beginning to think that maybe he wasn’t as bad as she had always thought. 

“I can be nice too, sometimes.” Leo said, pretending to be offended by her words. “You never did answer my question by the way. What’s the book about?” 

“It’s a murder mystery.” Selena said, showing him the cover. “One of those old timey detective novels.” 

“Hey, that sounds cool.” Leo said excitedly. He sat up straighter and started cracking his knuckles. “Let’s read it. I wanna see if I’m as smart as Sherlock Holmes.” 

“We’ll see about that.” Selena grinned as she opened the book to the first page.

As she read, Leo listened intently to her every word, and he would jump in with little comments and theories every now and then. She was surprised by how much she was enjoying their time together. At one point, Leo made her laugh so hard that she cried when he tried doing a British accent. 

 Never would she have imagined that she  would be sitting on the floor of the laundry room with Leo Alvarez in the middle of the night. An hour ago, she thought she was living her worst nightmare, but now she realized that she had been wrong about him all along. 

Eventually the two of them fell asleep, and after a few hours the door to the laundry room swung open. A very surprised old lady woke them up and after spending the entire night trapped the two of them grabbed their things and hurried outside to freedom. 

“I never wanna sleep on the floor ever again.” Leo complained as he stretched his arms. A couple of his joints cracked audibly and he rubbed his neck. “So what are you gonna do now that you’re free from the horrors of the laundry room?” 

“I’m gonna go make myself a green smoothie.” Selena stopped at the base of the stairs that led up to the third floor where they lived. With a shy smile, she said the words that she never would have imagined saying to him before. “Wanna join me?” 

“I’d love to.”