Sweet Romance12 min read
The Neighbor Across the Hall (and the Clownfish Pillow)
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I never planned to fall for the nicest face in our building.
"My feet are wearing new clothes today," I told my parents as I barreled out the room with my slippers on the wrong feet.
"Your left is on the right," my mother laughed from the sofa. "Come show them."
I froze halfway down the hall. On the sofa between my parents sat a person who shouldn't be there—Avery Hahn, the kind of campus legend who makes corridors thin and blurs the rest of the world.
"Avery?" I managed. "What are you—"
"My mom asked if I could help fry eggs for Qin—" Avery's mouth twitched like he wasn't used to smiling, but the smile landed soft as sunlight.
"Clara," I said, and the name felt strange in my mouth because I hadn't thought of myself the way he might see me. "I'm... dizzy. I'll— I'll go back to bed."
"Don't faint now," Avery said, handing a plate toward me as if plates could catch wandering hearts. He moved like everything was measured and slow. "Eat, please."
"You're so polite," my father teased. "Help yourself, son."
Avery's eyes flicked toward me for half a second—his gaze that always made my mind empty—and I had the sudden urge to wipe my face clean. I managed, clumsy and loud: "Thanks."
"Morning at eight, huh?" he asked. "What time did you get here?"
"Eight," he said.
"Thanks for the egg," I said, more brittle than I meant. "You can go now."
He set the plate back on the coffee table and, for a second, looked almost embarrassed under the domestic light. Then the conversation slid to something ridiculous about my mother's neighborly plans, and my heart spent the whole time stuck on that half-second he looked at me.
Our neighbor life changed the day the building was sealed because someone had tested positive. Volunteers in gear came through the stairwell. The "dry-moms" in the community chat started playing matchmaker. Holly Omar, the choir-leader-aunt, personally messaged me a red packet and three voice notes about how I shouldn't be lonely. "One day a dry-mom, always a dry-mom!" she wrote in bold emojis.
"Aunt Holly," I said when she asked me to join their group dance in the courtyard. "I'm not sure—"
"Come dance," she insisted. "You need to see boys. Boys need to see you."
"I only came for the exercise," I told her. "And the pity fruit."
"Humph," she sang back with righteous amusement. "Then you shall have cherries."
Overnight, I gained ten dry-moms. Lydia Conway and Kaylah Bentley sent pictures of impressive, wholesome young men in their twenties. "Which one do you want?" they asked like I was at some cartoon coronation.
"Don't tempt me," I replied, which was a lie. I clicked on each photo. I checked whether they ate enough, what their building looked like, whether their arms showed signs of too much gym. I justified everything to myself as "caring about their diet."
"Are you being picky about the boys?" Avery asked once when he appeared in my kitchen, leaning casually against the frame while I placed my hand on an offered plate.
"I'm not picky," I said, "I just—"
I couldn't finish. Avery reached out and took the plate. His fingers were long and careful. He tapped the cut piece of egg and then pushed it back toward me with a smile that softened the sharp edges of morning.
"Eat," he said.
"Do you have—someone?" I asked, because gossip finds its way into every alley of our building.
"Someone?" He tilted his head. "No."
"Good," I said too quickly.
He ate his breakfast like someone who notices everything and says little. After he left, my mother kept fussing, arranging cups of tea and telling me to be polite. "He looks like such a good boy," she sighed.
"He's not mine," I replied.
"Well," she said, "it takes guts to bring a boy into your living room."
The building being under quarantine made neighbors more present. Avery ended up staying at my place because his apartment was temporarily unlivable, or because dry-moms are persuasive—depending on who you asked. He began to be the neat one in a way that felt unearned: borrowing my father's undershirts while leaving a ghost of cologne on my closet door, rearranging the cushion on the sofa like he was performing small rituals to make the living room breathe better.
"You're here now," I complained one evening, stirring tomato and rice without much aim.
"I'll be considerate," Avery said in those small, low tones that could be soft and scolding in the same breath. "I can help with the groceries."
He carried a bag inside with two boxes of summer-thin underwear and a head of cabbage like it was a treasure. "You have a lot of snacks," he observed, crossing to the kitchen with an easy, boyish smile.
"It's the volunteers," I said. "One of them brought me some things. He's— nice."
"Who?" Avery's eyes were instantly alert.
"His name is Kai," I said. "Weird boy. Lives near us."
"Okay," he said. "Thanks. For telling me."
There were moments—tiny, electric moments—when he forgot to be distant. He laughed in a way that made the room warmer, like the time he caught sight of me opening the chat full of dry-moms and making a face.
"You're really into this, huh?" he said, and the laugh was a public gift.
I had never been brave around boys. In high school I'd been the one who quietly sat at the edge of the basketball field so that the crowd could pass by whoever it was they followed. People made assumptions; rumors got planted like little flags. I learned to protect myself by being carefully uninteresting.
But Avery was different. He'd studied the maps of my laugh and knew the turns where it would fall. He delivered small surprises: a warm towel when my wrists twitched from too much typing, a cup of simple tea when I looked like I wanted to vanish. Once he sat on the edge of my bed and said, "I can tell when you're about to cry."
"You're very observant," I muttered, maddened and grateful.
He smiled, the sort that made your knees feel briefly unreliable. "I was always good at reading scenes."
That was one of our first real soft spots. He was not all cold distance. He could be private and startlingly tender in moments that seemed to have forgotten to be dramatic.
"Why are you still so careful?" I asked him one rainy night, when he crouched by my door with a towel caught in his hands.
"Careful about what?" he asked.
"About telling people things. About how you feel."
He swallowed. "Because I don't like to hurt the people I care about," he said. "Sometimes, keeping quiet is the kindest way."
He had a way of breaking rules without opening the hinges of the room. He made small rebellions: he would hold the front door when I came in late, he would stand between me and a sudden gust, and once, when rain leaked through the window, he pulled the blanket over us both without asking and I realized my hair smelled like summer for the rest of the day.
There were other people—Kai Ruiz, the volunteer who seemed to orbit our building like somebody cast a light net and left it there. Kai was young and earnest. He dropped off a bag of snacks and stood on our least formal stoop like he was offering me a choice.
"From my uncle," he said. "He asked me to tell you not to worry about the groceries."
"Thanks, Kai," I said, and it felt absurdly private how warm my ears got.
Avery watched the exchange with a quiet that didn't structure itself into possessiveness; it was more like a shadow noting another shadow. Later, he took my hand in the kitchen—not in a dramatic way, but to move me away from where the knife sat. The contact was accidental enough to be purely practical, but his fingers stayed.
"Does that always make you shy?" I asked, breathing too fast.
"Not always," he said, and his mouth tilted with something that wasn't exactly a smile. "Sometimes only around you."
That time he helped me realize the small, private ways someone could care. He did little favors that made me feel seen—he complained when the apartment lacked decor, he put a small green plant on the sill and told me it would forgive me if I forgot to water it. He seemed to like making things better in ways that didn't call attention.
Then there were things I didn't remember.
Two separate mornings I woke with my phone cracked and photographs stacked in my album: a dozen pictures of us, in different lights, different angles. In every photo, his eyes looked at me like I was the only thing in the room. I looked braver in the pictures than I felt.
"Clara," he said in the photo sequence, "did you mean—"
I could not remember beyond scattered memory fragments: the taste of citrus in the air, my arm slung across his shoulders like we had more right to that closeness than the blinking world allowed. When I saw the photos in the repair shop with my old phone buzzing at four percent battery, the shame and shock heated every inch of my face.
"I don't remember," I told him that afternoon, standing by his apartment door with a basket of eggs in my hands.
His reaction was an ache that pinched my chest. "You don't?" he asked.
"No," I whispered. "I went out with friends and I... I remember the walk home. Nothing else."
"I thought—" he started, and closed his eyes as if he were pulling together a stable surface. "You told me once, drunk, that if I didn't open my mouth when you kissed me, you'd consider it an answer. You said we would wait for a good day, an auspicious day, to announce it. You told me to be patient."
I stared. The weight of time between us thinned into a single line. "I— I don't remember any of that."
"You pulled me down the street like you were leading me to a stage," he said, the words careful and pained. "You said you wanted me, but only if I agreed to be 'the secret' until you chose the right moment."
"That doesn't sound like me," I whispered. "I hide things, yes. But that—"
He rose, sudden and earnest. "Clara, I waited. I caught myself every time I wanted to push us out into the light. I kept quiet because I thought you wanted that. I thought I was protecting you."
I could feel the truth like a stone in my palm. He had been quietly authentic, giving me space when I asked for it with words that were sometimes confusing. And yet, here was proof there had been a night where I claimed him and he believed it.
"I thought I was the only one here," I said, voice small. "I always thought I had to be careful not to take things for granted."
He looked at me as if he were memorizing my face to keep from forgetting. "Then don't be careful with me," he said, soft but firm. "Be yourself. Even if it means being messy."
I laughed, a sound that was half relief. "Messy is my default setting."
He moved closer and kissed me the way you close a book you know you will read again: careful, decisive, and full of promise. My pulse leapt so loudly I was sure the apartment walls heard it.
Days moved into a rhythm. He cooked eggs that were never quite perfect but always made with intention. He defended me in small, fierce ways: when someone in the chat mocked the dry-moms' pictures, he told them they were lovely. When my old classmates whispered rumors, he stood before me as if he would physically stop the noise.
"Why are you like this?" I asked one evening when we were sitting on the balcony watching the building lights blink.
"Like what?" He watched the street with the calm of someone who always kept the lights on in his own head.
"Like you don't leave the scene," I said. "Why do you stay?"
"Because I like the place," he said. "And because someone has to be reliable in this mess. I thought that someone might as well be me."
I tilted my head. "That's romantic."
"It's practical," he countered, and his smile came like a sheltered breeze.
There were soft arguments, too. I was protective of my independence the way some people nurture an old plant. "Don't call me baby in public," I once said with mock severity after he had murmured it against my ear.
"Why not?" He cocked an eyebrow with exaggerated innocence. "I'm making sure everyone knows you have me."
"That's obvious," I protested.
"Not to you," he said, leaning forward and capturing my mouth with a kiss that tasted faintly like the tea he'd made hours before.
Avery's patience had a history. Dry-mom Holly, with her tall voice and gifts of cherries, told me stories from the past: how he had been stubborn once, a boy who took blows and never answered. "He would stand there and take it," she said, voice thick with memory. "I was so scared one day we had to get him out."
"He used to be cruel?" I asked.
"No," she insisted. "Just shut. He'd let people do a lot without asking. It isn't right."
Holly's small confessions suddenly gave me a map to the man I'd been piling tenderness onto: someone who had waited a long time.
Then, one day, when things seemed arranged like a picture frame, the building opened sooner than I expected. Folks came and went. Volunteers folded their safety suits into neat squares and left.
Kai appeared at our door with a shy smile and a bag. "I brought more things," he said. "These are snacks my uncle bought. He asked me to deliver them."
Avery—who had been perfectly polite to Kai all along—took the bag and immediately offered to pay. "How much?" he asked.
Kai waved his hands away. "Don't bother. They are gifts."
"Then thank you," Avery said, and his tone had a brotherly warmth.
Kai looked at me with something like an apology for being young and earnest, and it made me want to protect him with the same easy care Avery protected me with. The circle of people who cared about me grew in ways that felt comfortable, like a quilt stitched one careful hand at a time.
But there were nights when the world crowded in. One thunderous sleep was broken by a knock.
"Clara?" came the soft voice from the hallway.
I opened the door. Avery stood there wrapped in a duffel, hair damp from rain, eyes honest as a confession. "I—" he started. "I heard thunder and I thought you might be alone."
I laughed. "You're more cowardly than you look."
"I've been pretending," he said. "For you."
He curled into my doorway like a child and asked me one of the smallest favors with a big, trembling heart: "Can you tell me a story?"
I had always been the one to be told stories. This time, I told him the little mermaid in a rush, condensing centuries into a few sentences so he would sleep. He closed his eyes and breathed against my shoulder and, for a while, I thought the world was steady.
When the morning came, he wasn't beside me. He had left a note folded into the clownfish pillow on my bed—one of those ridiculous stuffed things I carried since childhood and refused to outgrow. The note read: Clara—thank you. For the story. For everything. —Avery.
The message was small and felt like something he would have said in a hundred different ways. Later that day, I found old photos on my repaired phone—pictures of that night, images of us laughing, me resting my head on his shoulder, a dozen closed eyes and open mouths. I couldn't remember the lines between those pictures, but I knew now the story that had been writing itself the whole time.
"Did you ever think you'd be the kind of person to stay?" I asked him later, pressing a thumb into his wrist.
"That depends," he answered. "Are you someone worth staying for?"
I tried not to cry. "Yes," I said, and the word tasted like a promise.
He smiled and leaned his weight against mine until our knees touched. "Then I'm staying," he said, every syllable grounding like a small house settling into the earth.
The dry-moms sang and celebrated when we "announced" ourselves in the group chat, sending red packets and scandalized voice notes. "I knew it!" Holly gasped into the phone during one of her long voice messages. "He waited! That stubborn boy finally waited!"
I found it funny and ridiculous and utterly wonderful. We didn't make grand public declarations; we used small proofs: his hand showing in mine at night, his text messages that were never too long but always the right color of caring, his quiet presence when my father wanted to talk shop and my mother needed company.
"I like you," he said at the end, when everything had become less tense and more like a warm, steady routine.
"I like you too," I said, and the words were both a joke and the last stubborn thing we needed.
He laughed. "Then we'll be very annoying together," he said.
"Annoying?" I repeated.
"Yes. We'll exist like a pair of matching mugs," he said with mock gravity. "Some people will roll their eyes. But they'll remember the mugs when the cups are gone."
We built a small life with quiet rituals. He always ate what I failed to cook well. I kept a list of things he said in soft voice messages, and he kept my clownfish pillow on his side of the bed sometimes because I liked that the absurd little fish looked at him when he slept.
There were moments when my past—mean girls from school, the old rumors—showed up at my kitchen door, thin with age and expectation. They tried to make a spectacle of pain, but Avery stepped forward like a person who knows what dignity looks like for someone he loves.
"Leave her alone," he said once. He said it without drama. It was like stating a fact. They blinked in surprise and retreated faster than I expected. Avery didn't shout. He simply made a line and became the border.
Afterwards, as silence returned, Avery turned to me and said with that impossible softness, "Do you see now? I meant it when I asked you to be patient. I wanted you to choose."
I wrapped my arms around him. "I did choose," I whispered. "I chose the one who waited for me even when I forgot the map."
He kissed the top of my head. His mouth tasted faintly of cherries Holly had insisted I accept.
The months that followed were ordinary things stitched into an extraordinary safety: the way he ruffled my hair in the morning, the way he moved my faint around like it was a small bird to be sheltered. Once, when I complained about how full the community chat had become, he pulled my phone away and sent a single emoji: a clownfish.
"It fits," he said.
Sometimes I thought about the night I had no memory of, about how this whole story had been written across two people who didn't always remember the same moments. But he remembered enough to be honest and enough to wait. That was bravery of a kind I could learn to treasure.
One night, months after the rain, I tucked my clownfish pillow under my chin and stared at it like a talisman. Avery came in, sat beside me, and watched me with the precise patience I had come to love.
"Promise me one thing," he said.
I smiled. "What's that?"
"Promise me you'll keep the pillow," he said. "Even if it becomes ridiculous."
"It's mine," I said. "I'll keep it."
He leaned forward, planted a kiss on my forehead, then on my nose, then later on my mouth—each one small and full of intention. When he whispered my name, it felt like a private song.
"If anyone ever asks," he murmured against my lips, "tell them we were always just two messy people who decided to be brave."
"That's not a bad story," I said, and laughed.
He kissed me again, and I could hear the soft snore of the building around us, the living thing we both leaned into. The clownfish pillow rested between us as if it had always been the witness to how two people decide to stay.
The End
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