Page 17 of Love Thy Neighbor

She looks normal. The same. Like nothing at all has changed between us.

See? It’s not a big deal.

Then our eyes meet, and her cheeks turn bright red.

Yeah, it’sdefinitelya big deal.

I clear my throat.

“Coffee?” I ask, trying to push forward and act like everything is fine.

Maybe if I pretend enough, it’ll be true.

“Please.”

I nod, reaching for the coffee beans from the cabinet above the coffee station we’ve created. I pour the desired amount into the grinder and turn it on.

From my peripheral, I see Caroline move through the apartment and into the kitchen. I try to ignore her, focusing on getting the coffee from the grinder and into the filter and pressing start on the pot.

The legs of the stool scrape noisily across the floor, the sound breaking through our silence. She hauls herself up onto the seat and rests her elbows on the counter, looking anywhere but at me.

I lean against the counter, as far away from her as possible.

I can’t help stealing glances at her as she picks the polish off her nails. Then moves on to pulling at the strings of her worn pajamas, still avoiding looking at me.

She looks nervous, and Caroline hasn’t looked nervous around me since we first met the summer before high school.

I recognized her from school almost instantly. She was the girl people whispered about when there was no other good gossip to go around.

She was so quiet back then. It’s not that she isn’t still quiet now, especially around people who don’t know her, but back then her shyness was ten times worse. She lived inside the pages of her books, and it was near impossible to get her to talk to anyone.

When she moved in across the street, something in me screamed to talk to her.

I “accidentally” threw at least ten balls into her yard the first two weeks she lived there. Not once did she look up from her book. It didn’t matter how close anything came. She was oblivious to them.

So one day I stomped over there and stole her book.

She talked to me then all right. Yanked her book back and told me to stick it where the sun doesn’t shine.

Being the absolute dumbass I am, I did it again the next day. And the next.

I was there every day until she finally gave in to my advances, taking pity upon a bored neighbor kid and talking to me.

We’ve been inseparable since.

Through all the awkwardness of high school, first kisses, and first dates, the loss of innocence. Through first car wrecks and heartbreaks. Hell, we even survived college together for fuck’s sake.

But this? It’s a whole different kind of difficult to navigate, and it’s the exact reason we had those lines. The exact reason we stayed on our respective sides.

Thoughts like this begin to creep in, and you can’t control them. You’re suddenly thinking of ridiculous things like how soft your best friend’s hair looks while you’re trying to make your morning coffee.

The timer sounds, signaling the brew is finished, and I push off the counter, heading toward the caffeine I’m in desperate need of.

Yeah, that’s it—I just need a good dose of caffeine.

These ludicrous notions have nothing to do with last night and the thoughts that lingered in my head until the wee hours of the morning.

“Big cup,” Caroline requests quietly.

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