MY NEW NEIGHBOR

Chapter Five

          As it turned out, I did not see him tomorrow, or the day after that, but I did play his words over and over in my head, convinced that he had sounded hopeful though I'm sure I imagined it. I kept thinking about how his fingers had felt as he brushed the hair from my forehead and my nerves had gotten the best of me so I wussed out, setting up what my mom called a play date with Brian, an overly flamboyant boy from my dance class who was much happier about me coming over than I was, which turned out to be a mistake since he tried to kiss me and I popped him a good one in the eye. That was an awkward wait for my mom to come get me.

          Four days after I had last seen him, Graham appeared suddenly, leaned against my doorframe, arms crossed over his chest in the classic cool guy stance. "You dodging me?"

          I snorted. "I'm grounded."

          "Yeah, I heard you went full psycho and beet the shit out of a guy," He said stepping inside, flipping through my manga and poking at my model planes. "Anyways, I'm here to spring you."

          "Oh yeah?" I asked, watching him, self conscious of my belongings, everything suddenly seeming more childish than it had a few minutes ago. It was then that I realized he was the first friend I had ever had in my room. Friend? I felt a painful pull in my chest at the thought. I was slipping and he had already gotten too close.

          "Yeah, it was super simple," Graham explained with that devilish grin of his. " I just told your moms how lonely I was."

          "Lonely?"

          He shrugged nonchalantly as if it didn't embarrass him in the least to say such things, and plopped down heavily next to me on my bed, laying back, comfortable enough around me to ignore normal boundaries. "Of course. You're my only friend."

        I felt that tug in my chest again at the word friend, almost painful. Over time I had learned to be alone, always maintaining the cold aloofness of a cat that could leave at any moment and in only a few days, Graham had shattered everything. I knew that I wanted a life, I wanted friends, I just wanted to be fucking normal, but I also knew that I would never have any of these things and this brought me to a crossroad. I could push him away and have him hate me, or I could let him in and have pity me, both making me feel equally as sick. The longer this went on the harder things would be.

          I turned to tell him that I didn't think it was a good idea, that he should go home, anything just to end this, but with one of those mischievous grins he had me nodding and my mouth seemed to move on it's own saying, "okay, cool."

          And so it went. For the next couple weeks we were basically inseparable and I had a taste of what the life of a normal boy could be like. We played video games, which I wasn't good at, went to the movies where he surprised me by choosing a rom-com and rode bikes around town. Something that wasn't a surprise was that he made friends everywhere that we went, mostly girls that laughed loudly, flipped their hair a lot, and passed him their number before departing.

          "She was pretty," I said in appreciation of one such girl that every boy our age, and some that weren't, admired as she strutted away from our table at the pizza parlor to rejoin her giggling friends.

          Graham shrugged slightly focusing on his pizza.

          "You didn't think so?" I asked as if he were crazy. "Dude, she was super hot."

          "Yeah, she was."

          "Then what's the problem?" I was full of questions.

          He shrugged again. " She seemed kinda shallow."

          Graham never ceased to amaze me. I would have taken him as the kinda guy to knock down every hot piece of ass that he came across. The old adage "don't judge a book by its cover," came to mind and I shook my head, laughing.

          "What?" He asked me with a frown.

          Now it was my turn to shrug. "I don't know. Just you I guess. I expected all of your girlfriends to be hot and shallow."

          "I've never had a girlfriend," he replied without the least bit of shame.

          "Are you serious!? No way! Really?"

          He looked up at me from his pizza taking a moment to answer. "You've got cheese in your braces."

        "So..." Graham started, later that night, scowling from behind one of my manga. He still didn't quite have the concept of reading backwards down yet and mostly settled for looking at the pictures.

          I sat my sketch book down and looked at him. "So what?"

          "So, I was thinking..."

          "That's never a good thing," I said with a sigh.

          He tossed the manga down and sat up, wearing that goofy grin of his that he only seemed to ever share with me. "I saw this show on Netflix and it looks pretty awesome. I figured we could go to my house and binge it. You could stay over."

          My belly did that stupid rollercoaster dropping thing. I had been working hard to avoid this. "What? Like... Kinda like a sleepover?"

          "Uh, no. Not kinda," he told me, rolling his eyes in exasperation. "Exactly like a sleepover... Because that's what it is."

          "Oh, yeah... I dunno bro..."

          Hurt briefly crossed his face but he recovered quickly, changing tactics. "Okay, maybe another time... There's a skatepark in town. I was thinking of checking it out tomorrow."

         I knew what he was asking but I didn't take the bait. "Cool... Be careful."

         "Yeah... Sure."

          I didn't look at him as he left.