next door ↬ ethma

five

Emma is awoken with a knock on her door. It was only eight in the morning, and that's an hour before she usually wakes. Ellie wakes up to the noise too.

"Who is it?" Ellie asks.

"Beats me." Emma replies, getting up and answering the door...

...to reveal no one. She looks down and sees another note and to her surprise, coffee.

She closes the door and reads the note silently.

"Aw! He actually thinks about things!" She exclaims.

"Another note?" Ellie asks.

"Yeah! And he brought me coffee! Also, his name is Ethan. That's kinda a cute name."

She hands the note to her friend, who was still laying on the couch. Ellie reads it and frowns in happiness. The kind of frown that makes you furrow your eyebrows because something is so cute.

"Why can't I find a guy that writes me cute letters and brings me coffee? When you eventually meet him, you better marry that boy." She says.

"Yeah, as long as he doesn't turn out to be a 40 year old man or a stalker." Emma laughs.

She takes the note back and hangs it on the fridge along with the other ones. She smiles looking at the collection she had gathered. She sips the coffee while trying to figure out who this boy is. He lives near by and was at the coffee shop they were at yesterday. Emma wishes she would have payed attention to who was there but in her defense she didn't think she would see the guy there.

She goes to find another sticky note and this time writes, "thank you", and hangs it on her door again.

There's not much she's actually capable of doing in order of finding out who he is. All she can do is to wait for him to show himself. But she's really intrigued, this boy has said such sweet words about her, and she begins to feel a small connection with the mystery man. The one thing she knows is that his name is Ethan, and that doesn't help with finding anything else about him. She thinks about going to the front desk and asking about him, but she figures that it's most likely private information they would not be willing to give out.

Her and Ellie decide to head out and spend the last day of her vacation doing something entertaining. They end up going to a location that Bryant sent them to take pictures at. She figures she can get some Instagram worthy shots that could potentially boost her following.

They spend the next two hours driving and taking pictures, which leaves just enough time to help Ellie pack her belongings and head to the airport. Their goodbye was saddening, Emma was upset she would be losing her best friend to another state but at least it's not permanent.

Emma returns back to her apartment, feeling pretty tired. All that driving in LA traffic really is draining.

She perks up as she heads down the hallway of her apartment when she notices a man bending down to leave a note under the door. When he stands back up, he turns his head to see Emma.

It was no other than Ethan, the boy that she had been so stumped on knowing his identity. They're only a few feet apart, and he seems surprised to see her standing there, catching him in the act of his mysterious doings.

She finally puts it together. He was her next door neighbor who she had only seen a couple times with his twin. He was really attractive, his hair dark and his body tall and toned. She never would have imagined that it was one of the boys that lived right next door to her.

Ethan freezes, not knowing what to do.

"So you're the one that's been leaving me notes?"