Before my brother can respond, I sprint the rest of the way to my neighbor’s front porch. I shove open the screen door and knock before noting the doorbell. Shit. I should’ve used that. Did she hear me knock? If I ring the doorbell will I seem overeager? Dammit. I hate this shit. I’m not good with people and never have been. Bells and Mick don’t understand it, saying with my looks and body, I don’t have anything to be worried about, but I really don’t know what they’re talking about. I’m an ordinary man who works out and is a little taller than most people. Sometimes that gets the attention of others, but it’s not good attention. Ah, fuck it, I should’ve never come over here. I bend down to leave the cookies in the doorframe when it opens. I close my eyes in frustration as the first glimpse my hot neighbor gets is of my ass. I wipe away all the emotion from my face and straighten up.
“Here.” I shove the cookies toward her. “I’m your neighbor, Dane. Nice to meet you. Don’t be noisy. I like peace and quiet,” I say and then walk away.TwoJoy“What the hell was that?” I give my best friend an evil smirk. “A new project?” She snatches the cookies out of my hand.
“Let me test those cookies out. In case they’re poisoned or something.” I snort a laugh as she shoves one in her mouth and then another. I’m guessing they aren't poisoned.
“Why are all the hot ones jerks?” I shut my door, flipping the lock. “Did you see how tall he was?” My roommate Cece does not answer me; she just shoves another cookie into her mouth.
“He was hot,” she adds in. A weird jealousy swirls in my stomach that I don’t like. It takes me by surprise because I’ve never felt that way before about anyone and especially not when it comes to Cece.
“He doesn't even know us, and he’s trying to boss us around. Who the heck does he think he is? It should be us going over to his place telling him he better keep it down and taking a pie over or something.”
“You do have a pie.” She nods over toward the kitchen. I do. It just so happens that last night I did a live stream of me making little pies. I was teaching everyone all the ways you could make cute crust toppers.
“He shouldn't be getting any of my pie. Did you not hear how he talked to me? I wasn't even being loud!”
“That was kind of loud.”
I put my hands on my hips and glare at Cece. “You are supposed to be on my side.” I remind her.
“Oh maybe we should slip some ex-lax in the pies?” I fall back onto the sofa. I was so happy when I found out that the old neighbor had moved out. He was creepy. Sexy jerks are way better than creepy ones. I bet this could even be fun.
“I think we should declare a war.”
“We should! I’ve been saying that Wendy’s needs to have spicy nuggets year-round. I’m glad you’re finally on the same page. So what do we do first? We should start by writing an email.”
“I meant a war with hotness next door.”
“So you agree he is hot? Does this mean you’re calling dibs?”
“You don’t even like men. Why would I have to call dibs?” I sit up, and Cece drops down in front of me on the floor, giving me a hair tie and silently asking me to style her hair in one of those cute messy buns. “Besides, I don’t date jerks anymore.”
If she watched some of my videos she would know how to do it herself. She always says that she doesn’t watch because she has the real thing so there’s no need. I do her hair in less than twenty seconds.
“We can have a little fun. I’m sick of men being assholes and thinking they can get away with it. I want him to get a taste of his own medicine.” I’m usually a nice person and pretty easy to get along with, but he rubbed me the wrong way and for some reason I’m not willing to let it go.
“Can you even be mean?” Cece asks.
“I’m not going to burn down his house or anything. I was thinking more along the lines of a few small pranks. Welcome to the neighborhood pranks.”
“Pranks?” She lifts her eyebrows. I grab my laptop, going to my Facebook page. I tell all of my followers about the new hottie next door and how he was rude. After much debate, they make me promise to upload a picture of him at some point and that we should wrap his vehicle in Saran Wrap.
I rub my hands together thinking about how much fun this is going to be. Cece and I head to Costco to buy a ton of Saran Wrap. We agree that we should leave it in my car until we’re ready to go on our mission. We have to change because we obviously need to be wearing all black in order to go undetected.