Neighbors...

“Mikey, stop drooling.”

My best friend Jessica and I were scoping out my new neighbors through my bedroom window. Apparently my saliva didn’t want to stay in my mouth. I licked my lips, gathering all of the excess spit and gave Jess a sheepish smile, my cheeks probably turning light pink.

“Sorry,” I whispered. I leaned closer to the cool window, pressing my forehead into the cool glass. It’s the beginning of September, right before my eighteenth birthday, and the start of my senior year in high school. I didn’t have many friends and I'm not very social but I do get good grades and I got an early admittance to Brown University in Rhode Island, which I have a full scholarship to.

Other than Jessica coming over almost every weekend I didn’t have much of a life. I studied night and day in hopes of being a British literature professor, ideally at Brown in fact, and the most excitement in all of my existence was when I came out to my family that I was gay. Jess was there for me, as always. She’s known forever, and so did everyone else evidently, but I felt relieved to get it off of my chest.

Being the bookworm that I am, I've never had time for any sort of relationship and I'd be too shy for one anyways. I haven’t been to a party for someone that wasn’t related to me or wasn’t Jessica’s since I was 10, I think, and I don’t plan on going to one any time soon either. Occasionally I go to the movies and sometimes I go shopping. I only drive if my mom makes me and I don’t even have time for a job! My and Jess’s Saturday nights are spent watching movies, listening to music, and hanging out with my older brother Gerard. If we were super bored we’d make these weird dance videos, or sometimes write crazy plays. She really brought out the best of me, the Mikey that no one ever got to see.

“He is pretty cute, huh?” she asked. I only nodded then felt her presence beside me. Soon enough she was leaning on me, her head rested on my arm. Lucky for me my parents like Jessica and didn’t see any harm in her staying over, especially since they knew I had no intentions of getting her pregnant any time soon. When I told her about the new movers today after school she rushed right over to get a glimpse of them with me. It was a Friday, giving her two full days to convince me to go over and strike up a conversation and providing me with two full days of hiding in my room, timid and bashful as ever.

I spotted out the certain individual who had caught my attention before she came over, and she immediately knew why I was so excited that people were moving in across the street. He appeared just my type, short, thin and punk. I've always been attracted to the punk style; it always seemed to be something that I wasn’t. I was cautious and safe in my blue jeans a sweater vests where as these fashionable people let on that they lived on the edge in their studded belts and their kick-ass boots. This boy wasn’t wearing the boots, but Converse and black jeans. He had a t-shirt on, I think, but it was covered by a sweater that looks like it should be in my wardrobe opposed to his. He had black hair that was cut short and looked messy and from the looks of it he had a lip piercing because every time he moved his head his thin lips shined which in turn made my dreamy smile widen.

I hadn’t been staring at him long, only a half an hour or so, and I just couldn’t get enough. I've looked at other guys before, thought about how good my arms would look around them or how nice it would be to share my first kiss with one of them, but never have I ever acted upon any of these feelings. Ofcoarse I haven’t, I practically don’t leave my room! I'm not one of the those kids who seeks out online dating or porn, I didn’t feel a need to expose myself when I really wasn’t ready for anything. I accepted my naivety and figured that if something was supposed to happen, when I was going to meet someone, then it would just happen. For an avid intellectual, I was also a believer of fate. And Jess believed that this was my chance to play my hand at the risky game.

“Michael, are you going to make a move or not?” she asked me. She wasn’t up against my body anymore so I finally took my eyes off of the movers to look at my best friend. She was up on her tippy toes in a failed attempt to match my height. Her hands were on her hips and she had a stern but playful look on her face. I gave her a weak smile, glancing back out the window and then directed my gaze to my bare feet. It’s not that I didn’t want to, because I honestly truly did, I just didn’t know how. I wasn’t blessed with charisma and charm. “Mikey, if you don’t make a move then I will!” she shouted. My eyes grew wide and my head shot up. She gave me a smug smile and nodded her head. “Yep, that’s right; you better believe it buddy-boy!” I knew she wasn’t serious; Jess’s had a boyfriend since forever and saw him every week at school. We didn’t go to the same one, me attending a private all boys academy while she had a public education, and made it a point to see each other as much as possible when I wasn’t studying ofcoarse. We met in kindergarten before grades were important and she was the only one who didn’t make fun of me because I towered over all of the five year olds and had huge dork glasses. From then on our parents couldn’t separate us even if they wanted to. I've met her boyfriend a few times. She insisted on bringing him over the first week they dated to see if I approved. Lucky for her I couldn’t find any fault in Logan, a college freshman and an amazing poet, and gave her my consent. And then she asked her parents.

Without answering her I looked out the window again. She was just trying to egg me on even though it never worked. I've never given in before so why would I start now? Why would I man up now and just go and talk to my new neighbor, say hello maybe find out what his sexual orientation was? Why, because that would be something Mikey Way just wouldn’t do! Mikey Way just notices the new kid going back and forth, maybe carrying a box or helping lift the couch. Sometimes he was fiddling with his cell phone and sometimes he wasn’t even outside. This second he was sitting on the porch, looking down at his cell phone again. His hair was in his eyes, shadowing his face. He looked really cute right now and I sort of smiled. If I had to put up with being his secret neighbor for a whole year then I was going to enjoy the view, right?

“Well, fine.” I heard Jessica huff. I smirked, loving how childish she was sometimes. I looked over to see that she was at the other window in my room, probably staring at the sight I had been a second ago. I left her to her people watching and continued mine. He was still on his phone but now his elbows were perched on the step above the one he was sitting on and his legs covered the rest of them, not reaching the ground. He had nice legs, nice thighs more importantly. They were thick and strong; I could almost feel the drool leak from my lips again. I heard a window open but I wasn’t fazed by it. As of this moment my attention couldn’t be taken off of Mr. Mystery neighbor. What was he doing? Texting, maybe? Who, though? It could be someone from wherever he came from, a friend possibly. Or… a girlfriend? That would just kill m---

“HEY!” Jessica’s voice called out and then I heard an ‘umph’ and something drop on the floor. If I hadn’t been wide eyed and frozen I would have dove from the floor and away from the window where my new neighbor wouldn’t see me standing here like a dope.

He looked up, most likely out of shock, and immediately over at me. Before I was tackled to the rug I saw him smile and wave. I don’t think I could breathe…

“Oh my ghod! Mikey, I thought you would duck!” she whispered, even though it wasn’t really necessary. I didn’t just ignore her this time, I actually couldn’t answer. My eyes were bugged out, focused on the ceiling and my Anthrax poster, my breathing was heavy and my chest rose and fell with intensity. I was stunned, in the very least. In all my years of knowing Jessica and being her best friend she’d never actually gotten a guys attention for me! Usually she was just bluffing, all talk, fun and games and stuff! Now this kid probably thinks I'm a creepy stalker freak! And, well, I kind of was but he didn’t have to know that! He didn’t even have to know that I existed as far as I was concerned.

“Mikey? Mikey, are you alive in there?” My so-called best friend asked me. I only now just started blinking. I could feel her straddle my waist, her hands on my shoulders. “Mikey, okay, it’s no big deal! He probably didn’t even look!” she said, trying het best to get my attention. I took a few more deep breaths and blinked again.

“H-he… he w-wav-ved to m-mee!” I wheezed out. I wasn’t used to such attention; I was a wall flower in my own home! She straightened up, now sitting on my tiny stomach and looked at me with a scrunched up expression.

“Really? Oh, uhh…” she looked around like she wasn’t sure what to do next. She didn’t have to think about it for very long, though, because the doorbell rang. She scrambled off of me, getting up and pulled me along with her out of my room and out into the hallway. Usually I couldn’t be bothered with silly things like answering the door or telephone, that’s what my parents were for! But Jess knew that neither of them were home and the gentleman in me couldn’t leave a door unattended to.

She hauled our asses downstairs and we had been going so fast that she ran us into the wooden front door. I pulled myself off and made an attempt to run for it but she grabbed my arm before I could escape. The doorbell rang again, rattling through my ears. I was nervous. What if it was the boy across the street? What would I say? What would I do? Is it sad that I don’t know how to act around other people?

“You answer it!” I whispered, looking from the door to Jessica. Her eyes rolled and she pushed me to the entry.

“Mikey, it’s your house! Go ahead, you’ll be fine!” she said, slapping me lightly on the butt. I glared at her and as my stomach was twisting, so was the door knob. The door was opened very slowly to reveal my most recent crush looking around, his hands behind his back and teetering on his feet. I pushed the wooden frame aside and then opened the glass door. My hands were shaking and I could hardly breathe. I glanced over my shoulder to find that Jessica was nowhere in sight which left me cursing her in my head.

“Uh, hello…” a voice said slowly. Suddenly my interest was on my neighbor. I tried my best to open my mouth and give him a polite response but I'd be better at catching flies. I did my best to even out my breathing and smiled, embarrassed that I was turning red. The boy grinned at me and flicked his hair out of his face. He stuck his hand out and introduced himself. “I'm Frank, my parents and I just moved here.”