Page 2 of Demon's Desire

“Yaaaaaaaay!” I cheered. We had a private parking lot behind the apartment building that we could use instead of looking for street parking. And by ‘private parking lot,’ I mean that there were, like, four parking spots shoved between the back door of the place and a thin alley. But, hey, at least we wouldn’t have to fight for parking since I hadn’t brought my car.

“I’m so glad Mrs. Halston drew us a map of how to get here,” Kelly said as she pulled through the alley. “I’d have never found that little drive. I can’t park in those little spots with the U-Haul trailer, though…”

“When I called her, she said that we could just leave it in the alley,” I explained. “She said as long as we don’t block any cars and move it by six.”

Kelly laughed. “Four hours to unload all this shit? We’ll see about that.”

We got out and headed around the front of the building to meet up with our landlord, Mrs. Halston. Once she gave us our keys, she showed us upstairs to apartment 2A.

It looked exactly like the pictures online. I figured that was a good sign. All the white walls and beige floors looked nice together. Both of our rooms were by the living room. Kelly’s room was technically a craft room, but at least it was bigger than it looked in the pictures. The apartment had one of the smallest bathrooms I’d ever seen, I’d need to learn how to work the gas stove, and the only washing machine and dryer were in the basement two floors down. Still, to me, it was the most beautiful thing in the world.

Once everything was squared away, Mrs. Halston said a quick goodbye, reminded us to move the truck by six, and left. I was ecstatic. This was a real apartment, and it was all ours!

After a quick thirty-second celebration, Kelly and I hurried to get the truck unloaded. There was a set of stairs that led to the back that were identical to the stairs in the front. I’d have loved an elevator, but the walk-up was way cheaper, so we started moving boxes up the stairs.

After maybe a dozen or so trips interspersed with a few breaks, all that was left were the beds and their frames. The frames weren’t put together at the moment, so that was easy, just tedious. Kelly’s twin mattress was a breeze, but my full mattress was a bit awkward with the two of us trying to turn corners on the stairs. I will freely admit that we dropped it a couple of times, but eventually, we made it into my room, and the truck was officially unpacked.

We took a quick trip to the nearest McDonald’s, dropped the U-Haul trailer off, then came home and started unpacking for a few hours. We did that until around nine at night, when Kelly knocked on my door holding a bottle of our favorite wine and two glasses.

“Look what I found in the kitchen stuff!” she sang.

I laughed and started to stand up from my suitcase. “We said we would save that for a special occasion.” It was a local brand, and we wouldn’t be able to find it outside of northern Texas.

“It is a special occasion!” She smirked. “It’s our first night in our new apartment! Besides, consider it, like, a ritual.”

I raised my eyebrows. “Ritual? Like witch stuff?”

“No!” She rolled her eyes. “We are ceremoniously consuming the last remnant of our old lives! Then tomorrow, we hit up the liquor store, and we find a new local wine that becomes our new favorite, and it’s, like, a metaphor and shit.”

I walked over, grabbing one of the glasses from her. “You make a compelling argument.”

“Also, we still have two more bottles of this stuff, anyway.” She shrugged.

“That’s an even more compelling argument.” I nodded. “Let’s do it.”

We took the wine to the living room. We hadn’t unpacked the boxes in here yet since we were still without furniture, but we had bought some floor pillows just in case it took us a while to pick a couch, We’d also gone ahead and hooked the TV and the Wi-Fi up, so we were able to put on some Real Housewives—a show that I actually wasn’t allowed to watch at my house when my family was around. My mom had a lot of rules like that. Music, movies, TV shows, anything that she thought was inappropriate or improper weren’t allowed under her roof. But I wasn’t under her roof anymore.

“I fucking love these women,” I said, shaking my head. “She just finds out he’s cheating, and she stops to get a manicure.”

“I would fucking kill him.” Kelly rolled her eyes. “If you don’t want to be with me, don’t fucking propose.”

“That’s the thing.” I gestured at the TV with my half-full glass of wine. “He does want to be with her. He wants to be with both of them. Or he just wants her money and the fame, but he still wants to fuck the other woman.”

“I hate men,” she groaned. “I’m also hungry. What do you want?”

We pulled up Kelly’s DoorDash app and scrolled through local restaurants. There was a Taco Bell not too far away, so we ordered some tacos from there. It wasn’t even twenty minutes later when the buzzer for the front door went off and the Dasher texted to say our food had arrived.

“Oh, shit.” I smiled and got up, but I blinked when I looked at the intercom. “Um… Buttons…” I picked one at random, and there was a harsh buzzing noise. I winced and pulled my hand away, then touched the other one. “Hello?”

There was no response. Kelly got up and looked at her phone. “I think he just left it. Come on. Come with me.”

“Okay!” I grabbed my keys just to be safe since the front door locked automatically, and we started heading down the stairs. We had both changed into pajamas by now, and the wine had made us both a little giddy.

We went to the front door, and Kelly popped out to grab the sack of food. When she came back in, I heard a door open behind me and turned around to see a short older woman standing in her doorway. She was wearing a thick fleece nightgown like she was about to head to bed. Her wiry gray hair was all over the place, and I couldn’t tell if she was squinting her eyes because she was having trouble seeing or if she was glaring at us.

“You,” she said in a stern voice.

I blinked and looked over at Kelly. She frowned at the woman. “Us? Can we help you?”

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