The Neighbor Next Door

Repeating Cycles

OJ didn't know what to do. It was Wednesday now, and he didn't even have work to distract him from his current problems, since he was off today. He was sitting at the dining room table, one hand over his mouth, the other tapping fingers against the table, while he was deep in thought. Something had clearly happened on Monday. Everything was... Well, a little awkward, but it was still nice. Until it clearly, and suddenly wasn't.

And now he was getting ghosted by his friend. He was just glad his kids were upstairs, and weren't being subjected to him acting so... Down. He had been keeping his mood outwardly fine for the most part, but he did wonder if they noticed, but if they did, neither of them said anything. He just hoped he was good at masking his current misery. He was giving the guy time. That's all he could do. They were going to talk about this eventually, as that had been the pattern with this guy apparently, but it still sucked. He felt like he was yearning for someone who didn't... Exactly even know who they were yet, really. That was such an awful thought. He clearly just had... Problems. OJ wanted to help with that. He was even approached by him to help if he ever needed to talk, but here he was being shut out anyways. He didn't know what to do.

It was only noon, and he still had most of the day ahead of him. He hoped to find a distraction in the house, but... There just wasn't anything he felt like doing. He didn't have a passion for his writing today, and he wasn't going to go bother his kids right now.

It was as if fate itself was listening when his phone buzzed with a text. He scrambled to check it, honestly briefly praying it was MePhone, but his expression couldn't help but visibly sour as he realized it was... Salt?

'Hey. So I've been wanting to apologize about the whole party thing. Do you think we could meet for like coffee or something?'

OJ stared at the text, honestly surprised. He hadn't expected her to talk to her again. The last time they had spoken, she had made a very big move on him by asking him on a date. Which... He declined in a very awkward way. But... He was also curious to see where this might go.

'Sure.'

That's how he ended up asking Fan to come over for an hour or two to keep an eye on the cherries, while he drove into town to meet up with this girl. He was a bit worried, but he was going to take whatever distraction was handed to him at this point. There was a good chance that maybe there was an ulterior motive to this, but he wanted to give Salt the benefit of the doubt. When he walked into the cafe she requested to meet at, she was already there, sitting at one of the small side tables. She gave a weak smile as she noticed OJ enter. If anything, she looked nervous, which was a bit of a surprise considering how confident she always seemed. He decided to skip on ordering anything, just moving to sit in the other seat at the table.

"Hey, thanks for actually showing up," She started, both of her hands over the table, and holding a cup of whatever coffee she had decided to order.

"Yeah, of course, I don't really uh... Have anything going on today anyways," OJ glanced away, a bit sheepish.

"Uhm... So I guess I should probably get this over with. First of all, I'm like incredibly sorry. Really, about the party thing. I really didn't know, and if I had, I wouldn't have made any moves,"

"It's uh... I mean It's fine, right? I never really said anything, and uh..." He trailed off, not knowing if he wanted to be completely honest with this girl, but he decided why not, just letting it out; "I didn't really figure any of that out until recently, really."

"Oh," She paused, keeping her gaze on the cup in her hands. "Well, that's obviously fine, I mean we're all just trying to figure ourselves out, right?" She gave a small, slightly awkward laugh as she looked up at him finally.