Completely (Un)expected

I Will Remember You

"Have you ever been here before?" Frank asked, getting to his feet and reaching out for me. I grabbed hold of his slightly rough hands as he pulled me up, off the steps to stand with him.

"Here, where?" I asked, not sure whether he meant New York City or the club specifically. "The city isn't new to me, but before tonight, I never knew that this club even existed."

"So you've never been to the balcony?" he asked and smirked while taking a step up the stoop back toward the club's interior where his dad's band was still playing their set. I gave him a look that encompassed the fact that I thought he was an idiot and that he was becoming increasingly mysterious - and annoying - as the time passed on. If I'd never been to the club before, of course I'd never been to the balcony before, but he was turned around, so he didn't get to see my judgmental expression.

After a beat, I hadn't responded, seeing as I figured his question had been rhetorical, but still he turned around just as I moved to follow him and asked, "So no, then?"

"No, moron."

"Feisty," Frank retorted jokingly, managing to finally get a chuckle out of me, of course, though, paired with an eye roll. "Follow me."

Frank turned and hopped up to the top step, but I hesitated for a moment and stayed firmly on the ground a few steps below him. When he realized I wasn't following, he looked back and sighed before reaching down to me and grabbing my wrist. The sudden contact shocked me slightly and I froze at his touch, resisting slightly and when he made to continue walking his hand slid down to meet mine from my lack of compliance.

He pulled away quickly when he realized he was now holding onto my hand and not my wrist. "Sorry," he promptly apologized before reaching out again and yanking on my wrist with a notably firmer grip this go around. I complied this time and followed where he led back into the side entrance of the club.

Instead of going straight into the middle of the floor, and instead of turning right to head up the stairs back to my dad's sound station, Frank and I hung a left and climbed up a much larger staircase that I was surprised and a little dumbfounded for having previously missed.
He still held onto my wrist, even though I was now fully cooperating with him and following him up the steps, but I didn't mind. So what if Frank was keeping me close, just a reach's distance away. After all, at this point, I had no choice but to trust him.

Half way up the steps, I had regained my composure, still having been in a daze from Frank grabbing hold of my hand. "You're not going to kidnap me or anything, right?" I asked in joking to him to lighten the tension I had noticed rise a little.

He halted his steps and turned to me, a serious look on his face. "Yes," he answered before a lame smile broke out across his lips, giving him away. "No, just trust me." And for whatever reason, I did.

The music progressively got quieter and quieter, and for a while I thought that the song was just fading out, but then I realized that we were entering the farthest reaches of the club's infrastructure and we were merely just moving high up into the ceiling's inner workings.

I started to become a little worried seeing as how we were getting up pretty high and also because I was in a strange place with a rather strange boy I'd just barely met not half an hour ago. A slight twinge of relief washed over me as I started to hear the sound of music returning, reassuring me that Frank hadn't taken me too far from where I was supposed to be.

Then I saw the lights. Red and blue, just like on the stage before, and then it hit me. We were on the stage, sort of. We were above it. Way above it.