The Hallway
299 Words
Chapter Two — The Hallway
We met in the hallway three weeks after I moved in.
I was struggling with a box that had outlived its usefulness, too wide for the doorway and too heavy to pretend I didn’t need help. I had already tried turning it sideways, then diagonally, then with the stubborn optimism of someone who believes force might solve what patience would not.
“Need help?”
The voice came from behind me, close enough that I startled. I turned too quickly and knocked my elbow against the doorframe.
He stood barefoot on the thin carpet, holding a folded piece of mail. Gray T-shirt. Soft eyes. He looked like someone who had been interrupted in the middle of a thought and didn’t resent it.
“Yes,” I said. The word surprised me. I had meant to say no.
We maneuvered the box together without speaking, the way people do when they don’t yet know what to say to each other. His hands were careful. When our fingers brushed, it felt brief and unremarkable, which somehow made it worse. I had trained myself to expect sparks or nothing at all. This was neither.
“Daniel,” he said once the box was inside.
“Anna.”
He repeated my name quietly, not as a question. I wondered, briefly, if he had already known it—if he had heard it through the wall the way I had heard his mornings.
He gestured toward the box. “You moving in, or out?”
“In,” I said. “Hopefully.”
He smiled at that. “Welcome, then.”
After he left, the apartment felt altered. Not fuller. Just aware of itself. I stood in the kitchen longer than necessary, listening for sounds I had already memorized.
- Writer
