The Gravity of Love (7 page)

"Must be broken." He said.

His cell phone rang.

"Redford." He answered.

"Hey, where are you and Molls
at?" It was Marty, sounding aggravated.

He checked his watch, seeing he was now
over an hour late. A little late for him but passable, but not for Molly. Molly
would have been there on time. She was always on time.

His gaze passed over the closed doors of
the broken elevator.

"Oh damn..." He whispered,
shutting his phone quickly.

_______________________________________________________________________

Molly clung to the rails on the elevator
after it had started to groan loudly. She scolded herself for letting a whimper
or two to escape her chest. She was strong and she wasn't afraid.

A scream escaped her throat when the
elevator shook back and forth.

"Molly? Molls, you up there?" His
voice was faint, but recognizable.

"Harrison! Oh thank God! Get me down
from here now!"

Harrison sighed, putting on his gloves and
tying his dog's leash to a doorknob nearby. "You have the weirdest ways of
getting yourself in trouble, Radcliffe." He said.

"Oh, like I tried to get myself stuck
up here with open doors and rats and bats and dark and freezing cold..."
She spite fired back.

"Good Molls. Keep getting pissed at
me." Harrison whispered, trying to get her mind off of her situation.
"Well what the hell got you to take the elevator? You haven't taken it in
over two years after the last time you got yourself stuck in here!"

"It was because I didn't feel so good
after your sickening sweet Candy Grey decided to come and talk to me again
about things God knows I don't want to hear. Do you think you could stand to
explain to that woman that your romantic affairs do not concern me and I rather
not hear of them at all? I mean really this is the second time she came to
talk to me about you and I don't want to hear it! I don't want to know!"

Harrison snickered, grabbing the line and
preparing to climb it.

"So, she's telling you how terribly
romantic I can be when I want to?" He looked around him, groping the line
with all his limbs to keep on. "You know, with all this training I've done
right here, I might have made a damn good firefighter." He commented, more
like thinking out loud.

"You could have been a damn good many
things if you had tried." Molly said, drifting off the subject.

"Yes, but had I done that, I wouldn't
of been able to get you a good job and you wouldn't be here."

She looked around her damn and dark
surrounds and sighed. "Gee...thanks?" The voices of doubt that had
been talking to her for days now came back.

"Well, I didn't exactly mean right
here..." Harrison said with a light chuckle.

"I really don't see what's so funny
about this."

"Eh, I don't really find it funny
either. But it's quite entertaining, isn't it?"

"What? You're not enough of a hero for
Candy Grey so you have to come acting all firefighting heroish to me?"

"Hey, you wanted my help you need my
help. So I wouldn't be dissing the hero factor in me."

She groaned, crossing her arms and
subjecting herself to his mercy. "Just please...please try to hurry. I've
never been more miserable in my life."

"At least you're doing okay. Much
better than last time, anyway. Now you're just complaining. Quite an
improvement for you. For me? Eh, it's still a little hard on the ears."

Molly rolled her eyes, playing with her
dying flashlight on her cell phone. Two blinks of light. Three quicker ones.
Illuminating the walls and making the squeaks louder by yet with more distance
away from the elevator.

Finally, one tan gloved hand slammed
against the floor of the elevator, visible from the hole the open hatch left.
She gasped in delight, grabbing hold of his wrist and helping to haul him in.
Once his full body was contained in the elevator, he laid against a corner
wall, his eyes closing for a moment. "God that's a hard climb." He
panted.

Molly smiled, crawling over to him and
wrapping her arms around his chest, laying against him. "For all the
moaning and frustration I give you...I really am so grateful that you're here.
Thank you so much for coming up here." She whispered in to his shoulder.

He kissed the top of her head.
"Anytime, babe. Anytime. But last time I checked, Marty was getting pretty
mad that the two of us were so late. So let's get us back down to ground
level."

Groaning as he got up, he pushed his body
back down the floor hole and disappeared for a few minutes, banging perusing.

Once it fell silent, Harrison's upper body
reappeared. "Alright Radcliffe you're going to slide your legs down and
wrap your arms tightly around my neck just like last time but hold on
stronger. Can you do it?"

"Of course I can." She replied,
blocking out the memory of last time when her shaky hands had accidently let go
of Harrison and she nearly fell to her almost certain death.

Harrison sat on the floor with his legs
dangling down the hole and she did the same, opposite of him, then carefully
leaned over and wrapped her arms around his neck as tightly as she could with
him still breathing.

He skimmed down the wire with his feet for
a moment or two, then pulled a free fall until Molly's body followed suit and
was dangling in the air, Harrison's hands gripping the thick wire.

He did his best not to show his strain and
not to groan in his distress, but Molly saw it anyway it was hard enough to
handle his own body weight, let alone hers of a hundred and twenty.

"Almost there." He whispered in
to her curly mass of hair, his voice straining, like the rest of him.

Molly took a peek down and saw that he was
just trying to make her feel better. He had noticed sooner than she that she
was trembling everywhere.

"Okay Molls, when I tell you to, I want
you to lean your foot back as much as you can. Ready? Now."

Molly stretched her foot until it landed on
firm ground.

Harrison winced as he let go of the wire
with one hand and swung that arm around Molly, placing his hand on the wire
once again. "Okay, I got you good. Take the other foot off of my thigh and
get the ground with your other foot now."

She did, her body stretched out and looking
like a diagonal mark. "Now what?" She asked, her body still
trembling, but now from her own strain as her face turned a deepening pink from
awkward breathing.

"Now I'm going to swing towards the
door and you're going to let go. I'll push you as far as I can and then you
have to finish falling back." He explained, then started swinging back and
forth, Molly having a death grip on her own wrists.

"Now Molls!" He shouted in her
ear. In shock, she let go and the force of his body against hers sent her
flying backwards, landing flat on her back with a deep groan.

"Move girl!" Harrison yelled. She
managed to roll over a few times until she hit the wall. Laying face down, she
stayed that way, cringing when she heard the impact of flesh against tile
floor.

"You okay?" He asked her in a
worried tone.

"I am never going on that damn death
contraption ever again, no matter what Candy Grey says." She said faintly.

Harrison looked skyward with a shake of his
head. "Yeah..."

_______________________________________________________________________

Molly got out of the car, a sharp cry
escaping from the pain of her back. Rubbing her spine, she cringed.

"Dammit Molls, lean against the car. I
don't care what you say there could be something really wrong there. You
landed hard." Harrison said impatiently, turning her around and pushing
her against his truck until it was supporting her, taking some of the strain
away from her back muscles.

Shielding her from the rest of the public
with his own body, he lifted the back of her shirt and examined her back, where
he found bruises of black, purple and blue, stretching a good foot or so from
the middle of her back and spreading around it. "Aw man, Molls...you might
want to go to the hospital and get it checked out that's a lot of
color."

But Molly shook her head, slapping his
hands away and pulling her shirt down to conceal her pain. "What about
you? Are you hurt?"

He shrugged. "I'm a little sore, but
nothing bad." Which was what he always said when he was hurting.

Groaning, she lifted up his own shirt and
saw he had spots of bruises all around the worst at his right shoulder and at
the base of his back. She had noticed he was taking care not to bump with right
elbow and looked at that it was mostly black from injury.

"You're worse than me. I've seen you
limping too you're leg's hurt."

"Wanna make it a date to the hospital?
You and me? Ditch this old town and take the world in to our own hands."
He teased. Molly sighed, looking towards the restaurant that had Josiah and
Marty already in it. She peaked at Harrison's injuries and got back in the
truck. Because that's what they have always gone they looked out for each
other, even when they didn't really feel like it.

"Might as well call in and have them
reserve a room for two." She joked, then relaxed against the leather
interior of the seat.

_______________________________________________________________________

Marty swirled the ice in her cherry coke
with her straw, staring out the window. "So...I don't think they're
coming."

Josiah shrugged, enjoying his club
sandwich. "Oh well we'll just guilt Harrison and make him pay for our
meal. Want some dessert? I could go for that seven layer double chocolate
cake..."

Marty grinned. "Sounds great."

Josiah waved over the waiter and ordered a
seven layer chocolate cake with a hot fudged sundae, then returned his gaze to
Marty.

Feeling uncomfortable with too little to
say to the man she actually didn't know very well, she cleared her throat.
"So...tell me about yourself, Joe."

"What do you want to know?" He
asked.

"I don't care. I mean, all I know is that
you're Harrison's friend and that you two wind up in jail a lot and you're
willing to sit through a Patrick Swayze marathon, so you must be pretty brave.
What else is there to you?"

He shrugged. "I came from nowhere,
Utah. Little else to do there but camp out and ride horses...my dad wanted
more, so he moved us to a town in Vermont. I was in high school then, and hated
Vermont as much as Utah. I wanted California. In high school, I met Harrison in
my senior year on the football field. He barely ever showed up for the sport,
but he was good at it so they kept him on. I didn't really know Molly until she
moved here, but I did see her in the stands whenever Harrison played.

And then we all graduated and Harrison left
for the army. I moved to California. But it didn't work. Everything costs way
too much. So I moved along the border to Nevada. About six years later I saw
Harrison on the streets he had moved here to take over his dad's business. We
got together and were good friends. And then Molly came two years later and
Harrison's presence with me faded a bit. I had to share him with work, with
Molly, with all his girlfriends it was hard to keep up a friendship. But we
did. It got easier when you and Molly got close, because Harrison didn't have
Molly with him all the time any more, but he got really in to the dating
business then, so it all evened out again." Josiah laughed. "You
asked about me, not about the history of Harrison and when I knew Molly. Well,
I have one older brother Erik, an older sister Anna, and a younger brother
Michael. All are pretty cool, but I don't see them much. My parents are still
back in Vermont. My sister and Michael are there too, scattered around. And my
older brother is in the military. He would like Harrison if they ever met. And
uh...well, that's about it. I didn't go to college, I work as a construction
worker and a carpenter, the latter a trait I got from my father, and I live
here and pretty much, my life is bland and going nowhere. Now tell me about
you."

Marty shrugged, looking towards the ceiling
at the green ivy plants and wood colored fans. "Not much to tell. I grew
up in this town, born right on the line where California and Nevada meet, which
is an interesting story to tell when someone wants to know where I was born
bad story when places like colleges and such want to know." She laughed.
"I have three brothers, no sisters, my mom and dad still married and
living a few towns away. My brother Dan is still here works as a chef in a
nice, fancy restaurant on the other side of town. He's the second oldest. The
eldest brother Mark is also a chef, but he works on a cruise ship. Great
career, but I never was a fan it takes him far, far away from me and the two
of us were always the closest. He has an apartment in Miami, Florida. And the
brother that's a year older than me is Matteo. He lives in France and studies
art. Very talented. Always wanted to be a famous artist, despite everyone else
wanting him to be a chef like the other brothers. But it wasn't for him. Matt
and I were close growing up did a lot together. But now...I haven't seen him
in over seven years. Um...I went to college here. Nothing fancy, just
community. Put my four years in and got my degree. I worked for Harrison's
father before he came. He was a pretty nice old man. But stern. Very strict and
had to have everything how he wanted it. Understandable, but not always good
for us, you know? Then Harrison came and a lot changed. Well, at least for the
school not for me. I didn't have much back then the same apartment I have
now, but with little furniture. No friends, really. Nothing to do. No interest
in dating. I don't know...I wasn't very happy. But Harrison gave me a best
friend. I still remember that day...I was exhausted from school and I was
struggling to grade the test papers. It hadn't helped that I was laying in my
bed. But he knocked on my door. I knew him pretty well whenever he had to go
somewhere overnight, he'd ask me to feed Jake and he'd always offer me twenty
bucks, which I would refuse and he'd end up either slipping it under my door
the next morning anyway or adding it to my pay that week. There was no refusing
Harrison. But this time it wasn't for his dog. Instead, he needed another
favor. Said that his dearest and best friend in the whole world was coming
later that day to come live here three doors down from me in the apartment
that had been empty for near forever. He said he was really busy that week and
he wouldn't be able to be with her as much as he'd like, so he wanted me to
show her around town and get her barrings. I did so, and instead of twenty
bucks, I gained a great friend that I adore. A great friend that currently
isn't here." She laughed. "But yeah...that's basically all there is
to me. Not much, but enough, I suppose. You know? I'm never going to be famous
or world known...but I'm pretty happy with how my life is and that's good
enough for me."