Neighbor Dearest

Because I need a distraction from you.

At the same time, I love being around you.

“What’s the harm in spending time with someone?”

“The harm is that while you’re passing the time, he’s getting more and more smitten with you. And I’m gonna have to kick him off the property when he becomes disgruntled.”

“I think you’re jumping too far ahead.”

“Okay. We’ll see about that. Anyway, you shouldn’t be wasting your time with him if he’s not exactly what you want.”

“You can’t always get what you want.” I was sure Damien had no clue that I was thinking of him when I’d said it. I thought I’d been doing a pretty good job of hiding my true feelings for him lately, going along with us just being friends. But if there was one thing I’d learned from this, it was that you can’t control your attraction to someone. If it’s there, it’s there. It can either be ignored or acted upon but not controlled. But I was grateful for Damien, even if things couldn’t progress past friendship. At the very least, he’d helped take the focus off of Elec.

“Where’s he taking you anyway?”

“Fondue.”

“At least he’ll be dipping his stick into something.”

“You are bad.”

“Did you tell him you like to be double-dipped?”

“Excuse me?”

“You know…two guys…double dipped.”

“I don’t like that at all…nor would I ever do it in real life.”

“I’m just messing with you.”

“You like to do that.”

“Double dip?”

“No! Mess with me.”

“I love it, Chels. Especially when you blush.”

“You’ve never called me Chels before.”

“Do you not like it?”

“Elec used to call me Chels, so no, I’m not really crazy about it.”

“Well, then we need to come up with a new nickname.”

“What?”

“I’ll think about it.” He grinned.

“Oh, boy.”

Damien rested his chin in his hand. “Any other names banned?”

“Leeches.”

“Leeches? Why would I call you leeches?”

“Elec used to like to scramble the letters of words, to make new words. He once figured out that if you scramble the letters of Chelsea, you get leaches. But then we both later realized that leeches is actually spelled with two E’s and no A, but the nickname stuck.”

“Hmm. Elec is not that bright. What do you get if you scramble the letters of dumb fuck?”

“Now you have me thinking about that.” I laughed.

“Bum fuck?” He chuckled. “No, wait…that’s missing the D. I can see how that shit would be addicting, though.”

“Bum fucking or anagrams?” I joked.

Damien spit out his coffee in laughter. “Yes and yes.”

Staring at Damien, I thought about how at the very least, I was grateful to have found a friend and protector in him.

“You’re a good egg, Damien. And you make good eggs, too.”

“My mother taught me how to make scrambled eggs fluffy but not runny.”

“How is your mother? You don’t talk about her much.”

“She’s alright. I’m due to visit her soon. Tyler and I have tried to get her to move closer to us. She’s about an hour from here down 101.”

“She doesn’t want to move?”

“She still lives in the house we grew up in. I think it would be hard for her to leave, since there are so many memories of my father there. She’s never really gotten over his death, hasn’t even dated anyone since he died.”

“That’s got to be hard.”

“We both keep telling her she needs to move on.”

“What does she say to that?”

“She says when you really love someone as much as she loved my dad, it’s irreplaceable. She says she’d rather just spend her time alone, trying to seek out and connect to his spiritual presence.”

“Wow. God, that makes me want to cry,” I said as a lone teardrop travelled down my cheek.

“You are crying.”

“Well, see? There you go.”

He reached over and swiped my teardrop. “Yeah. It’s pretty fucking sad to see her so depressed.”

“You know, it makes me wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“Wonder if there are different levels of love.”

“I definitely think there are,” he said.

“I think the level of love that is irreplaceable is the highest level. I mean, even after Elec broke my heart, I never once felt that he was totally irreplaceable. But that could just be because he hurt me. I don’t know whether it would have been different if he’d died. And I mean…plenty of people remarry after loss. So, clearly, those people were able to move on.”

“Well, I wish Mom would move on, because that’s no way to live.”

“Yeah, but she can’t.”

“I know,” he whispered, swirling his coffee around mindlessly as he gazed into his mug.

“Anyway, I hope to meet her someday.”

“She’ll come visit at some point.”

“Why doesn’t she visit more often?”

“She doesn’t like to leave her dog by himself. She has a small terrier that’s scared of my dogs. Since I have Dudley and Drewfus every other weekend, it makes it tough to get them together.”

“That sucks.”

“Speaking of sucks, I have to figure out what to do with these monsters next week.”