The Neighbor (a mini fic)

Part 3

It had been about 2 months now and I was settling in pretty well. Daniel was so helpful showing me around Monaco. I had seen him nearly every day that first week. We went for random walks through the city or hiking, he showed me some of his favorite restaurants and where to order food from (or more importantly where NOT to order from) and we'd hung out with his friends some more.

I was actually starting to feel... comfortable? Yeah, I think I am comfortable here. I was starting to see why my parents liked it here so much. It just has this vibe. It's cool and relaxed but there's just something unique about it. Maybe it's just because of all the money going around but it was different here.

I will admit, the first weekend alone here I had caved and googled my new neighbor. He was away at a race and curiosity got the better of me. What started as a quick name search turned into countless YouTube videos and the next thing I knew it was 3 hours later.

It all felt so weird to me because when I'm with him, he definitely doesn't strike me as a celeb. He just seems like a normal goofy guy. Even in his interviews that I'd watched he is so chill. Nice to know that some people can stay humble in this world.

Anyway, Daniel had started to make a habit of dropping by unannounced. After my first few days here Daniel had suggested we exchange spare keys in case of emergency which I thought was a great idea at the time. What I didn't realize was that Daniel considered coming home from a race and being too exhausted to cook and too impatient to order food an emergency.

He'd done it atleast 5 times now. After the second time I just started to make extra anyway. A couple times I took a container to his apartment with a little note if I knew he'd be coming back really late. I know he didn't expect me to but I felt like being neighborly, that's just how it is in Buffalo. You take care of your neighbor. And he did really help me settle in so I figured it was the least I could do.

I also knew that he would be too polite to risk waking me up if he came back late because the first time it happened I heard him come back and go into his apartment. It was about 10 at night and I was still awake having some wine enjoying the view on my balcony. I waited for him to knock on my apartment door but a half hour later I still heard nothing. So I had messaged him asking if he was hungry and he responded instantly saying he didn't want to wake me up.

I had just told him to come over and I'd heat up some leftovers for him. Of course he stayed for a while after that telling me all about his weekend. He was clearly passionate about his career. I always loved listening to people talk about their passions. You could just see the love in his eyes for the sport. I didn't understand half of what he was taking about usually but I didn't mind, he made it enjoyable. Almost like I had been there to witness it all.

And he tried to explain formula 1 to me a bit here and there. I think I was actually getting pretty good at it too. I would sometimes watch his race on Sundays to be supportive and I could actually figure out what was going on more and more now.

It started to get to the point where I would expect him to come over when he got home. It had just become so routine lately. This night however I was really glad that Daniel had a late flight. I had met this guy the other day at a cafe and we got to talking and had a connection so I asked him out on a date. I had invited him over for dinner tonight. He was also new in town and he was really cute and sweet. Kind of a boy next door type.

I had put on this red dress that I've been dying to wear since I moved here. It wasn't too showy, just flattered my body well. It was red silk that draped ever so perfectly around me with skinny spaghetti straps and ended just above my knees.

I put on a slight bit of makeup and did my brown hair in natural waves. I decided to make my mom's spaghetti sauce for dinner. You can never go wrong with Italian food and I knew how to make it so there would be little risk of accidentally fucking up dinner.