Sweet Romance11 min read
Who Said Childhood Friends Can't Be a Surprise
ButterPicks10 views
I never expected to see them both at once.
"I told you, don't be weird about it," Lucas said when I knocked on his door at two in the morning.
"You were the one making noises," I hissed back, with less dignity than I intended.
He opened the door wearing only a towel. Water beaded down his collarbone like tiny glass beads and my carefully rehearsed rebuke died on my lips.
"Juliana?" he asked, eyes wide. "What are you doing here?"
"I—" I couldn't finish. The sentence broke under the weight of my own surprise. There was heat in my face, pure and acute. "Are you crazy? At this hour—"
A slow, breathy "mmmmm" drifted out of the room behind him, soft and ridiculous and shockingly intimate. The sound hooked my chest and tugged something fierce and stupid inside of me.
Lucas' face went green. He slammed the door in my face.
"You're impossible," I muttered to the hallway.
He refused to explain.
"Don't expect me to explain," his muffled voice came through the wood. "It's not what you think."
For half an hour I believed him, and then the bathroom became the theater. Water, laughter, whispers—then a new kind of sound that made my plan to send a clever message to his mother dissolve.
I crept to my window, slipped the sash open, and peered across. Steam blurred the sight, and at first I saw only a familiar silhouette hunched under the shower. Then a head emerged on the other side: broad-shouldered, bare-backed, as unexpectedly close to perfect as a postcard.
I nearly fell backwards. I had expected to catch Lucas in flagrante, not to discover a stranger in his neighbor's tub.
I made a ridiculous sound—half laugh, half hiccup. Lucas' face changed again; he slapped his hands over himself like that would fix everything.
"What are you doing?" he whispered when the glass door slammed. "Get away from there."
"Me?" I said. "You two are—"
Another long, ridiculous "mmmmm" eased across the thin night air. It sounded like a tail of a song.
I opened the window wider. The bathroom on the other side was unexpectedly bare except for that man—who now turned and looked straight at me.
Our eyes locked across the gap between buildings. Water streamed down his jaw. For one foolish heartbeat I had the very wrong kind of admiration.
"You're not supposed to be seeing that," he mouthed, half-teasing, half-embarrassed.
My plan to blackmail Lucas' mother into moral righteousness with an audio clip evaporated. I had filmed nothing—my selfie pole hung uselessly from the sill.
He smiled. I did what any sensible person in my shoes would do: I pretended like I had never been there.
The next morning, of course, fate—call it cruel coincidence—brought him to my blind date.
"I'll just get you coffee," he said, lifting the menu when I arrived.
"It was you," I said flatly. "You were in Lucas' bathroom."
He set the menu down and looked at me with a smile like he'd remembered something lovely mid-breath. "Oh."
"Yes. You. With a towel, last night. Please tell me you brought clothes."
He laughed like it was charming. "I did. Mostly."
"Mostly?"
He shrugged. "You'll live."
He was polite, cheerful, practiced at conversation. He called himself Dante. He said things like, "I'm a programmer," like it was something ordinary. He asked about my work with a real curiosity.
I sent a screenshot to my mother. She immediately replied with a string of heart emojis and a list of reasons Dante would make a fine son-in-law.
"You're doing this on purpose, aren't you?" Lucas accused later when we met by the elevator, his hand clutching a grocery bag too tightly. "Setting me up."
"Is that what you think?" I said. "That I would orchestrate all this?"
He flicked me with his index finger. "You look like mischief on a poster."
We stood in the elevator, and I felt like a prize too awkwardly held between them both.
"Are you two—friends?" Dante asked, sudden.
"Since we were kids," I said.
"Was it always like this?" he said, nodding at Lucas.
"What like this?" I asked.
He gestured vaguely at the apartment complex as if to include the thin walls and high windows and the way privacy seemed optional.
Lucas shifted. "We grew up together. We have...history."
Dante laughed softly. "History is code for 'we have enough secrets to be interesting.'"
I didn't feel interesting. I felt like a trespasser.
"You're both terrible," I told them together. "Stop letting me be confused."
Dante was the kind of guy who had an answer for everything. He had a way of making you believe that his life was as neat as his shirt.
"But the important part," he said, leaning forward like a conspirator, "is that you can be honest. If you like somebody, say it. Don't let them wonder."
Lucas made a sound that was part protest, part adoration. "I don't like being advised by my neighbor's boyfriend."
"Boyfriend?" Dante repeated with a slow blink. "Boyfriend, huh? That escalated quickly."
By the time we left the restaurant, Dante had waved at Lucas like they shared a private joke. I walked home watching them argue about something I couldn't hear and pretending—failing—to be unaffected.
That night the apartment vibrated with noise again. It wasn't just talk. It was movement, small thumps, a rhythm. I couldn't sleep. I pressed a plastic cup to the wall and tried to hear. The cups amplified the sound in a ridiculously realistic way. It was a private concert.
Then the sound stopped. Computers hummed. A show closed. The apartment went quiet, like a lamp switched off.
I thought about the hush, about all my assumptions, and I laughed at my own absurdity. Maybe Lucas was being secretive for reasons that had nothing to do with me. Maybe the neighbor was not the kind of man my mind had invented.
A few days later, I carried too much and dropped my keys in the lobby. Dante was there as usual, leaning against the bronze plaque like he'd been born to it.
"Working late?" he asked.
"Always," I said.
"Then let me," he said, taking my bag with a grace that seemed choreographed.
We reached the elevator. The lights flickered. The car juddered. The world inside the steel box tilted.
The elevator dropped. For a breathless second everything shrank to the size of my heartbeat: the space below us, the faint scent of his cologne, the bright fear in my chest.
"You alright?" he asked, nearly shouting to be heard.
"I—" I couldn't say anything. The air felt thin and heavy, like being wrapped in cotton.
He put his phone flashlight on and focused it like a stage light. He kept talking to me with that clear, patient voice. "It's okay. They called maintenance. We'll be out soon."
When the maintenance crew pried the doors open, Lucas' face was there, hovering over us like a furious angel.
"Juliana!" he barked.
"You okay?" Dante asked, with surprising earnestness.
"I'm fine," I said, but my knees had softened.
Lucas looked between us. His voice came out tight. "What the hell is going on? Why are you in his arms?"
"He..." I started. "He helped."
Lucas' jaw tightened. "You had him on the balcony. You were—"
"He saved me," Dante cut in. "Calm down."
Lucas' expression folded in on itself. "I thought—"
"You thought what?" I asked.
"I thought he was—"
"Awhat?" Dante said, eyes narrowed, like I had committed a crime by not being perfectly readable.
"Tell her," Lucas demanded suddenly, like he had made a decision. "Tell her about the recordings."
Dante blinked. "You want me to explain to your friend why I have a mic and soundproofing foam in my place?"
I waited for a scandal, for a confession. Dante only shrugged.
"It's my job," he said. "I record audiobooks. Adult audiobooks sometimes need...realism. So I record with props. People pay for voice that feels honest."
"Props?" Lucas echoed. "You told me you were making a podcast."
"Same thing," Dante said. "Look, it's not what your mind's painting, Lucas. It's work."
Lucas sat back as if the floor had given way.
"You moved in here? To my house? To use my place as a studio?" He stared like it was a personal betrayal.
Dante tilted his head and smiled sheepishly. "Your place is quieter and closer to the company."
Lucas went pale. "You used my place to pretend to be someone else. And you didn't tell me."
"It wasn't pretending," Dante said calmly. "They need voices. I record scenes. I act. It's acting."
Lucas had that ridiculous, helpless look that he gets when a spoon won't fit into a jar and he has to take it as a personal failure. "You could have told me."
"I thought you'd be fine," Dante said. "You said you trusted me."
Lucas had the decency to look ashamed then.
I swallowed. A thousand scenes ran behind my eyes, each one worse and more embarrassing than the last. My own trespass—the peeking, the screenshot, the lunch with him—sat like a small, hot coal in my chest.
"I didn't know," I said. "I thought—"
"You thought wrong," Lucas said, then softer, "I should have told you."
The whole thing could have ended there if someone had wanted closure. But that would have been too neat. Our building does not do neat endings.
After that revelation, a new and odd intimacy grew. Dante began to message me to check in. "You okay?" he'd write. "Did everything settle?" His tone was straightforward, almost protective.
Lucas noticed. "Are you two...chatting?"
"Because you leave everything for me to worry about," I snapped, and then felt like an idiot.
He pouted like a child. "Fine. But you have to admit, him being a recording artist is the least scandalous thing he's done so far."
And it was. Over the next weeks, the three of us fell into a pattern that was less a triangle and more a careless braid.
We ate barbecue together. We argued about the best way to persuade mutual friends to try weird desserts. Dante would call Lucas by nicknames that made Lucas' ears burn. Lucas would roll his eyes at Dante, then smile like a person who'd won a game he only just understood he'd been playing.
"Why are you like this?" I asked once, watching them as if from another country.
"Like what?" Lucas asked, wiping sauce off his fingers.
"Like you think you can claim me and the neighbor in the same breath."
Lucas shrugged. "Because I can."
"Because you can?" I repeated. "That's not an explanation."
Dante snorted. "Because he grew up with you. Because you keep showing up like a comet. Because you like to be dramatic."
"You're dramatic," Lucas accused, offended in a lovable way.
I found myself laughing, the sound strange and free. It surprised me how much comfort there was when two people cared about the same one thing: my ridiculous presence.
But then, there was the night of the small war.
They fought like children who'd grown old together.
"You're always crossing lines," Dante said. "You leave me notes about deadlines and my food disappears. Where do you even put it?"
"It's called caring," Lucas said. "It's called watching. It's what friends do."
"We're not just friends," Dante said.
Lucas blinked. "Explain that."
They stood too close, arguing with a softness that made my chest ache. I had to drag myself out of that kitchen before I broke something.
I arranged my life so I wouldn't be the matchmaker or a pawn. I started bringing work dinners to both of them. I became the person who delivered muffins and took calls and pretended that everything was under control.
And yet, one evening the neighborhood went quiet and the whole building shifted in ways I could feel even through my slippers.
The landlord's assistant—Ford Diaz—came to the lobby like a man who knew things. He was here to inspect an issue with the elevator and he didn't bother with small talk.
"Everyone okay?" he asked, looking at our trio like we had secrets.
"Fine," Lucas said quickly.
"Your elevator's been tripping," Ford said. "We had a report. Be careful."
When an elevator gives up, a lot of things come loose. People think about safety. About who might be holding them when the floor tilts. About where they want to be if the world stops for a minute.
I had always thought if I had one of those slow-motion moments, I'd want to be brave. But when the ceiling slipped and the light died and Dante's hands found me like a map, my brave plans dissolved.
He held me and asked me plain questions. "Are you okay? Do you need anything?" His voice was steady. "Don't be afraid."
"Will they come?" I whispered.
"Yes," he said. "They're already on their way. We'll be out soon."
In the dark, Lucas' hand found my shoulder. "You okay?" he asked like he cared more than anyone had a right to.
"I am now," I said.
When we emerged, the lobby smelled like burned bulbs and civility. The maintenance men were apologetic. People made jokes about elevators that fell in a building where everyone lives like neighbors in a sitcom.
Afterward, Lucas sat on the stoop and punched his palm with a plastic bag. "I told you to be more careful," he grumbled, which in Lucas-speak meant "I was terrified."
Dante just laughed. "It'll be a story."
"You think everything is a story," Lucas said.
"No," Dante said. "People make stories with me because I know how to listen. You stubborn, Lucas, you live in your story."
"You started in mine," Lucas said with all the well-worn accusation of a man with a past.
"That's called being neighborly," Dante said, and they bickered like two brothers who'd decided to fight over who loved someone more.
One night, I caught them naked—of pretense and of pride—arm in arm on the stairs as if the whole building had assembled to admire a small, ridiculous romance.
"Pick a side," Dante said, half-joking.
"I don't want to be a side," I said. "I want to be me."
Lucas flicked my forehead. "You are you."
"You're also a drama," Dante added.
I laughed, because how could I not?
People will tell you three things about neighbors.
They are noisy, they are inconvenient, they know your rhythms.
They are also, sometimes, the people who will catch you.
"Promise?" Lucas asked once, late on a Sunday when the sky went soft.
"No promises," I said. "Just coffee."
He grinned like it was the best bargain he'd ever heard.
We kept living—dropping by, fighting, being ridiculous, making up. Dante played a strange mix of protector and provocateur. Lucas was stubbornly kind. I was, finally, beginning to be honest about the tiny things that made me tick.
"It is possible," Dante said once, "that you two will end up in a movie where I narrate your life."
"Don't take my agency," Lucas said.
"The narrator chooses," Dante said. "And the narrator pays for coffee."
We all laughed. Outside, the city breathed and the building hummed like a living thing.
One day, my mother, Janet Blanc, came to visit with her matchmaking warpaint on.
"You're not marrying anyone yet," she declared, eyes sweeping our triangle theoretically like she inspected a chessboard.
"Mother," I said.
"Call me Janet," she said. "Also, Dante, darling, very handsome. Good jawline."
Dante took it with the grace of a man who'd had praise before.
"I'd like to meet his parents," she told him.
He bowed like an actor and said, "Soon. Maybe you'll like my father. He grows tangelos."
My mother laughed. "Good answer. Good family."
I felt the entire ridiculousness of my life close like hands around my ribs. It was messy and loud and warm.
There was no perfect ending then. Not yet.
But there was a small apartment, two men who made a complicated shelter and one woman who had learned to stand in the center and decide that being loved in odd ways was still being loved.
"Tomorrow," Lucas said, fiddling with his keys. "I'll bring pancakes."
Dante winked. "If you burn them, I'll narrate the sizzle."
I smiled. "I'll decide if it needs narrating."
Lucas looked at Dante and then at me. "You two could be allies."
"We already are," Dante said.
We stood there under the building light, which buzzed like a distant audience, and in that moment I realized I had been living in a drama I didn't need to escape.
I had two neighbors. I had a childhood friend who was inconveniently brave and infuriatingly tender. I had a neighbor who recorded other people's stories and made fiction sound like truth.
And I had my own small voice, stubborn and intact.
"Are you happy?" Lucas asked suddenly, sincere and unadorned.
"I'm curious," I said.
"That's better," he said. "Curiosity keeps things alive."
Dante reached out and squeezed my shoulder. "Curiosity is my favorite adjective," he said.
We laughed. Outside, the evening made a soft promise: the elevator could fail, the walls could be thin, misunderstandings could happen. But people would keep knocking on each other's doors, sometimes at two in the morning, sometimes at a reasonable hour with muffins.
"Do you ever think," Dante asked as we turned to go upstairs, "that childhood friends and unexpected neighbors are just two different names for the same kind of safety?"
Lucas looked at me. "Depends if they bring pancakes."
"Then bring pancakes," I said. "And bring the narrator."
Dante saluted like a man who'd already written the scene.
I left them on the stairwell, two bright things at either side of a dim hallway. They were ridiculous and stubborn and unexpectedly kind. I loved them both in ways that had names I couldn't quite place.
When I closed my door and leaned my head against it, I let myself rest for the first time in a long while.
Outside my window, the neighbors moved—a soft life, imperfect and noisy, but mine.
And somewhere deep in the recordings that Dante made, a soft, practiced "mmmmm" would carry across airwaves, and someone would smile in the dark and think of us, three people who had learned how to stand close without stepping on each other.
We were not a neat story. We were not a scandal. We were simply, astonishingly, alive.
The End
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