A brother - not someone I would love

Chapter 2: How old are you?

It was the next day and I was just about to bring another box into the house, when I saw a woman and a man standing in front of our neighbour's houses. My mother passed me, after she put her box down and walked over to the people. "You must be Mr. and Mrs. Thompson. It's nice to meet you I'm Monica." She reached out her hand, which the woman took, shaking it with a smile. "Nice to meet you Monica, please call me Jennifer. And this is Dean, my husband." In the meantime my father also walked over and introduced himself.
"It's so nice to meet you, I'm Peter." They exchanged some words before they seemingly asked about me, because they looked at me with a questionable facial expression. "Hey Marco, come over here! Introduce yourself to Jennifer and Dean!" turning my head around as I rolled my eyes, I put the box back into the truck and brushed the dirt of my hands on my pants off.
I first reached my hand out to Jennifer, then to her husband. "Hello, my name's Marco, as you might know by now." Both of them laughed, and made me smile a bit. "Oh right, you all should meet our son, Samuel." She turned around right after these words left her mouth and screamed the name of their son into the house, soon after a little boy appeared. He was really small, but that was to be expected, I couldn't see his height yesterday and to be fair, I'm a bit taller than most guys at my age. His mother put bot of her hands on his shoulders and rushed him to get to the group of people.
Both of my parents shook his hands and revealed their name to him. Then he turned to me, we just stood there for some time and stared into each other's eyes. That was until someone cleared their throat, I didn't know who it was, but because I heard my father's voice I assumed he did it and wanted to surpass this moment as soon as possible. "Marco, this is Samuel, why don't you two shake hands?" I didn't take my eyes off him, I just couldn't. I squat down to be on the same height as him, our faces were now on the same level. "Hello Jack." "Hello Mark." He immediately replied, I could feel the look of everyone on us.
It was now Dean, Jack's father that spoke up.
"You two already met with each another?" Getting my eyes off the ocean that was locked into Jack's eyes, I looked now into Dean's. "Yes, yesterday evening to be exact." I answered while standing up. "And... why do you call each other different names?" I turned around, my mother looked confused at me and Jack.
This time, I had no answer, but luckily, Jack replied in my place. "These names are shorter and sound better."
They didn't seem to care much, but both of my parents were surprised, because I'd never let someone call me a different name than my birth name.
"Then, we're looking forward living next to you." My mother said to the other family and had a smile across her whole face, seemingly happy about the friendly neighbours we now live next to.
My father and mother said goodbye to them and went back to the truck to get the last boxes out. "He's quite cute, isn't he?" my mother asked while she looks at my father. He just nodded, but let a smile appear on his face.
After about twenty minutes we put every box in the house and started to unpack our things. My Mom went to the room next to me and put some things in there, soon she'll want to go get a bed and other furniture for guests, if we'd ever get one. Because I unpacked most of my things yesterday, I soon was finished with my room. My desk with the computer was put near the big window, sideways to it so I won't seem like a creep that constantly stares through the window of the other side and spy on our neighbour's son. I sat down and turn on my computer and waited for it to start.
As soon as I started to play (input specific game here), I put on my headphones and got into the game. Today was Sunday, and my parents still had to unpack things, so I had basically the whole day for me.
The sun started to sink and turned the sky's colour to an orange-red beauty. I just died for what felt like the 100th time, because of frustration I put both of my hands behind my back and wrapped them in one another while turning my chair towards the sunset.
Tomorrow I'd be starting school again, I didn't know how to feel about that, but I certainly wasn't happy. My eyes glanced to the glass window on the other house, expecting the boy to sit there and about to talk to me, just as yesterday. But his blinds were down, maybe he sleeps already. I chuckled to myself and let me sink deeper into the chair, closing my eyes by doing so. My brain shouldn't be thinking so much about a little boy.. That's just wrong, right? My ears heard something rolling up, which made me open my eyes again and when I looked to where the sound came from, I saw Jack on the window, just like yesterday.
With that smile.
"Sleepy?" with my feet I rolled the chair over to the window. I copied the exact same position he's in and looked at him, awaiting an answer. "Nah, the sun just blinded my eyes. You're lucky, when it shines into your room it's just half as bad as it would be on my side." He chuckles and looked down, at the fence that separate our garden from theirs. "How old are you?" he asked me without looking up, I couldn't see his facial expression, but his words didn't bring any emotions with them. Before answering, I waited some time, wanting to see his face.
But he didn't lift his head up, it remained downwards.
"16." Around the corner of his mouth I could see a smile forming, I wanted to smile too, but it filled me with sadness and I just couldn't figure out why that was.
He finally then lift up his head and looked me straight into the eyes. "Well, then you surely don't wanna hang around with me right? Since I'm ten years younger than you. Dang, that's quite the age gap isn't it?" he nervously laughed and closed his eyes by doing so. He was right. We probably don't have many mutual interests and not much to talk about.
"You're probably right, but let's get along well as neighbours."
His laughter froze, nothing could be heard but birds chirping. I saw him licking his lips, he seemed down. He moved back from the window and stood up, not a much difference in height. "G'night." He simply said before closing the window and letting his blindfolds down, once again.