Dark Museum

Josh

Sophia shrieked and scrambled from under him.

"Whoa!" Josh protected himself as he sat back on his heels as she pulled on her dress. "What's going on?"

"I saw him," she said, keeping her eye at the window. "Out there. Demetri is out there!"

Josh sprang to his feet and approached the door. Peering into the dark station, he shook his head. "I don't see anyone." After checking the nearest windows, he retreated to the conductor's booth, pushed the button to open the subway's doors, and approached the platform.

Sophia threw his pants at him, which he pulled on before exiting the car.

The station from one end to the other was quiet and empty. The bookshelf door to the next gallery stood ajar more than he remembered leaving it, but nothing alarming. A fault in his memory. Because Sophia's wide, glossy eyes followed his investigation from the bench in the car, he peered into the neighboring gallery and found it empty.

"There's nobody around," he said, but as he entered the car, an uncovered camera just inside, nearly hidden by a string of lights at the ceiling, grabbed his eye.

He joined her on the bench and put his arm around her.

"Hey," he murmured and brushed a chunk of hair from her face.

She blushed, smiling.

"Everything's okay."

"I guess I'm exhausted. Seeing things? I mean ..."

"I'm so good I made you hallucinate?"

She groaned and covered her face. "I can't believe we just did that."

He kissed the top of her head. "You okay?"

"Yeah. You were..." Her eyes sparkled, reflecting the Christmas lights. "Just how I imagined."

"You were like a beast."

"Uh..."

"Not like—" He paused, stuck for words. When he screwed his eyes shut, she laughed.

"I like you," she said.

He smiled. "I can tell."

"What do we do now?" she whispered.

She leaned her head on his shoulder and he tightened his arms around her.

He'd never have told her about his dad if they'd gotten to know each other outside. They might have met the day after the concert (his low mood after Erica's unequivocal heart-stomping almost guaranteed it), gotten dinner, taken a walk through Central Park, where he would have invariably told her something embarrassing about himself: like what he thought about last night's episode of Alien Architects.

Realistically, he would have been leaving town in the next few days with the tour, and wouldn't return to New York for months. He wouldn't have opened up, wouldn't have slept with her. If either of them still thought of the other in that amount of time, he might call her again, but more than likely those one or two initial dates would have been it.

Instead, he'd done both. And either they'd die here in the museum together or be tied by the inevitable court hearings afterward. His family knew the story about some reckless country bumpkins, probably carrying out a gang initiation, but not that Josh had provoked it. When he imagined his family finding out the truth... the police...

"You're gonna hit me?" Ajay's voice rose from somewhere, followed by a deliberate, destructive bang.

Demetri said something unintelligible but angry. Ajay raised his voice as the two of them moved farther away.