Boy Next Door

Make Yourself at Home

Camila sat in the waiting room of her obstetrician's office waiting for her first ultrasound appointment. She couldn't help but feel irrationally nervous about her reasoning for being there alone, but she continuously reminded herself that she definitely wasn't the first woman to go through a pregnancy on her own. Sure enough, none of the nurses or doctors asked any questions as to why there wasn't a man there with her. As her doctor, Dr. Morena, spread the cold blue jelly across her stomach Camila couldn't help but smile. She figured the circumstances of this pregnancy would make things like ultrasounds more difficult, but she genuinely was excited to be a mom so she found herself more hopeful about the future in moments like these instead of wishing that things were different, or the way they used to be.

"There's your little baby!" Dr. Morena said happily as she looked up at the monitor. Camila's eyes almost instantly began to tear up. "Do you know the date of conception?"

"No, I'm not sure..." Camila said shyly as she wiped a tear from her eye.

"No worries! It looks like you're about eight weeks along. That gives you a due date of October 31st."

"How spooky," Camila chuckled. Dr. Morena took a few pictures of the fetus and printed them out for Camila to take home. As soon as Camila got back into her car she immediately started crying, which seemed to be happening more often lately. She wasn't sure if it was the emotional stress of the breakup or just being overly hormonal due to the pregnancy, all she knew was that almost everything made her cry.

She passed by a local coffee shop that also doubled as a bookstore on her way home, so she made the impromptu decision to stop in. She walked straight to the counter and ordered an iced tea before noticing the live music coming from the corner of the large room. She didn't pay much attention to it at first, until realizing that the acoustic melody was coming from Shawn. She watched him intently as she waited for the barista to make her drink. He was singing an acoustic cover of "Sunday Morning" by Maroon 5 and if she were to be completely honest, she'd listen to Shawn's version over Adam Levine's any day. Shawn's eyes scanned over the room as he strummed and sang, landing on his petite brunette neighbor standing at the counter waiting for her drink. He flashed her a smile when their eyes met, and she smiled at him in return before taking her iced tea from the barista and heading out of the shop. Part of her felt like staying longer, but she also didn't want to seem like a creep—so she left. It was probably a good thing that she left. She had a lot of work to do, and she wasn't going to get any of it done by just sitting in a coffee shop listening to live music all day.

——

She had somewhat of a routine when it came to putting together a poetry collection. She wrote each poem by hand, but would then type it out and print it how she imagined it would look in the book. As she got close to finishing a collection of poems, she would then start to focus on figuring out the order she wanted her poems to be published in. Whatever order they were published in was also most likely to be the order they would be read in—so ordering them properly was a big deal to her. The entire expanse of her living room floor and parts of the kitchen were covered in printed out poems, leaving her barely any room to even walk. Just as she was looking over some of the papers in the kitchen, she heard a knock on her door. Go figure someone would stop by right then. She climbed her way over to the front door, careful to avoid stepping on any of her poems—almost like a glorified version of "the floor is lava". She opened the door to see Shawn, who looked down at her floor with a puzzled expression.

"Hey! Oh...um, sorry...about all this." She vaguely motioned to the floor behind her. "This is what organizing a poetry collection looks like. For me, at least."

"Ah, no worries. That makes sense. I just wanted to bring you this cake pop." He held up a white stick with a small pink frosted ball of cake on the end of it.

"You...got me a cake pop?"

"Well, the café gave it to me for free for playing there...but I was too shy to tell them I can't have it because of a gluten intolerance so I just said 'thank you' and took it. I'd feel too bad just throwing it away so I thought you might want it," he shrugged. Camila giggled and took the cake pop from his hand.

"Well thanks. I could use a little mid-workday pick-me-up."

"So...you're organizing the poems? Does that mean you're done?" he asked curiously.

"For the most part," she responded, looking back at the papers strewn about her apartment floor. "I still don't feel like I have a solid ending to the collection. I never want to leave a book open ended. Even though poetry collections don't always have a singular storyline, I still like it to feel like there's a conclusion...and I just don't think I've written the perfect poem for that yet."

"Well you will," he said with a smile. "I mean, I've only read one of your poems but it was like...ridiculously good. I'm sure you'll come up with the perfect ending."

"Thanks," Camila said with a shy smile.

"A-anyways...I better get going. It was nice seeing you..." Shawn said as he stepped back away from her door.

"Nice seeing you, too. You sounded great today, by the way. You're really talented."

"Thanks, I'll see you...when I see you...I guess?"

"Sounds like a plan," Camila chuckled. "Thanks for the cake pop by the way!" she shouted as he crossed the hall into his apartment.

——

Camila woke up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat. She knew pregnancy dreams were a real thing and that they were supposedly super vivid and realistic, but she didn't realize she'd be getting them so early on in her pregnancy. Go figure the first one she got was a nightmare—a nightmare of a situation that felt all too real. She knew Zach well enough to know that in reality he was gone for good, but in her dream he came back in the middle of the night and broke into her apartment in an attempt to attack her, maybe even kill her. She couldn't quite tell what his plan was. All she knew was that she couldn't go back to sleep, no matter how hard she tried. She even took a hot shower to try and relax her but it didn't seem to help any.

Deciding to swallow her pride and look for comfort elsewhere, she grabbed her pillow and a blanket and walked from her apartment over to Shawn's. She stood at the door contemplating what she was about to do for a few moments before finally bringing her hand up and knocking on his door. Part of her was worried that she would be waking him up, but the much more rational part of her realized that it was 1:00 AM and he was a guy in his early twenties. She may go to bed early, but most people her age did not. Sure enough, he was awake and answered the door almost immediately. He furrowed his brows in confusion when he saw the pillow and blanket in her hands.

"Sorry...I must've forgotten about our slumber party. I didn't even make the homemade face masks," he said with a chuckle.

"Ha ha, very funny," Camila said sarcastically as she rolled her eyes. "Would you mind if I...maybe...crash on your couch?" Shawn furrowed his brows in confusion, but didn't say anything. Instead, he just stepped back and opened the door wider so she could come inside.

"Thanks," Camila said under her breath.

"Did the poems overtake your bed, too?" he laughed.

"No, I just..." She got quiet for a second as she set her things down on the couch. "I just don't really feel safe over there by myself right now." Shawn's face got serious as he moved closer to her.

"Camila, did he—did somebody...threaten you?"

"No, no. It's not like that. I just had a really vivid dream that he..." Her voice broke slightly. "It was just really bad and I know I won't be able to get any sleep if I'm over there by myself." He gave her a sympathetic look before nodding.

"Well then, make yourself at home."

A/N: Alternate titles for this chapter were "I Got You a Cake Pop" and "The Floor Is Lava"