nervously chuckle with the waiting delivery man on the other side. I
listened to her murmur about the building settling oddly, the summer
humidity surely swelling the wood of the door frame.
Truth be told, I loved the humidity, even if Tana had a point about my
swelling. The apartment complex's air conditioning units were ancient, and
offered little relief from the early summer heat. That meant that she dressed
appropriately once I was securely latched, which meant she was hardly
dressed at all. In barely-there tank tops and tiny shorts, she pranced around
the apartment, doing little dances to music on the radio as she vacuumed or
worked at her computer job.
One particularly sweltering day, one I’d never forget, we were pressed
together for long, sweaty moments. Tana had gotten a store-brand cherry
twin pop from the freezer to cool off. After peeling off the sticky paper
packaging and tossing it away, she leaned heavily against my back, sliding
down until she was sitting on the floor. The sheer, magnetic attraction of
prolonged contact shuddered through me from lintel to doorstop, making
me realize I definitely had feelings for her.
In fact, my desire for Tana grew greater by the day as I watched her,
filled with pleasure from every brush of her fingertips along my knob, every
gentle grip along my edge as she returned home in the evenings. I was torn
between wanting her to stay with me and wanting to usher her somewhere
better, safer than these rundown apartments on the edge of the woods. Not
that I could, regrettably silent sentry that I was.
Terrible things lurked here, only a building away. Shortly before Tana
had moved in, I’d watched Tana’s overly-friendly superintendent, Randall,
vanish one night into woods beyond the complex. The girl he’d tugged
alongside him had been staggering unsteadily, and looked uncomfortably
like Tana. For a moment on the day she’d signed the papers, I was almost
sure it was the same woman I’d seen that night. But no, my Tana held
herself a little taller, and had reading glasses perched on the edge of her
adorably upturned nose. Her skin was a darker shade, too, something closer
to my own painted-over oak than the pale woman that had never returned
from the woods.
