He’s the boy next door, literally. She’s backing out of the driveway to go to school when the mover’s truck pulls in to her left. She doesn’t think much as to who exactly her new neighbors could be but realizes in hindsight that maybe she should have given it more thought.

 

It’s because he flips her world upside down: she returns home after school – sweaty forehead, heavy backpack, rumpled school uniform – she locks the car door behind her and he’s there, standing in her neighboring front yard, across the bushes.

 

“Hi,” he says with a pensive wave of the hand, smile spreading from ear to ear. He’s wearing a snapback hat, and even though she normally dislikes that kind of styling on boys, she kind of likes it on him. There is a sense of innocence, cheekiness, mischief. His eyes are black and shining. “I’m Baekhyun, your new next door neighbor, in case you didn’t notice,” he gestures to his house.

 

“I noticed,” she says nonchalantly, smoothing out her skirt.

 

He’s looking at her pointedly now, and all of a sudden she feels a bit self-conscious. “What’s your name?” he asks, and his eyes are still smiling in half moon crescents and she feels her breath caught in .

 

“Jieun,” she replies softly, tender on her lips.

 

(And that’s how it starts: two teenagers separated by a green hedge, her head peeking over the bushes and his shoes untied. It is junior year in high school and that’s when Jieun decides that maybe the rest of high school won’t be as bad as she thought.)

 

 

 

 

It becomes kind of a routine: their after school chats in their front yards—sometimes in his, sometimes in hers—just sitting on the front porch steps in their school uniforms, feet tapping on the pavement. At first, he rides the bus because he simply has no choice, but eventually he guilt-trips Jieun into driving him to and from school, since she has a car and all. Once I get my license and get a car, I’ll make it up to you, he promises while trying to convince her with excessive winks and painfully cheesy facial expressions. Ew, gross, she would shove his shoulder, and oops, I almost fell into the bushes!—he cries. She laughs. Serves you right.

 

She doesn’t think he’s going to get his driver’s license soon because he makes no move to even start studying for the written permit test, let alone put his hands on a steering wheel. But she gives in anyway, because he is Baekhyun and she might as well give the poor next-door neighbor a ride once in a while.

 

“Here,” he gets into the car one day, handing her an ice cream bar.

 

She gives him a questioning glance.

 

“Take the payment before I decide to eat it myself,” he simply says, while unwrapping his own ice cream sandwich.

 

Jieun rolls her eyes. “Alright.”

 

(And so they sit there in the school parking lot, silent in the car save for the slurping of ice cream and Jieun’s occasional giggle at the mess on his face. What a slob, she laughs at him, and maybe it’s the way he looks at her all proud and smug and all, but she decides that she really doesn’t find him all that annoying. Quite the contrary, to be honest.)

 

 

 

 

One day, she knocks on his front door, tears streaming down her face.

 

“What happened?”

 

Her words are broken. “Parents, they—I hate it when they fight—it’s so scary,” she hiccups.

 

He gulps, noticing that she’s trembling like crazy and his heart is broken for her. He wordlessly ushers her in, handing her a box of tissues and brewing hot tea for her even though he at making it. She tries to hide her sniffles but he tells her to let it all out, that she doesn’t have to afraid.

 

(The next weekend she’s at his house again with a box of chick flick DVDs, and Baekhyun doesn’t miss the way she looks sadly and longingly at the romances unfolding before her. She would cry easily at all the heartbreaking parts, and he almost thinks that those are real tears of hers—and then he realizes that he’s never seen Jieun with any other friends before. He shakes his head in disbelief.

 

Sorry for being such a crybaby, she apologizes incessantly, but he murmurs that it’s alright. It’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright, he repeats, rubbing her back.

 

In hindsight, Jieun knows that this is when it all truly started.)

 

 

 

 

It’s fall now and the sun sits a little lower in the sky, its vibrant colors reflecting off the autumn leaves. Backs against the grassy expanse in his backyard, shoulders almost touching, breathing in the cool breeze.  He reaches over to pick a fallen leaf off her sweater.

 

“Hey Baek?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Nevermind.” A tiny smile lingers on her lips.

 

Baekhyun turns to face her and smiles in return. And Jieun thinks that he knows what’s in her heart, her thankfulness for his presence in her life, for being a friend who is always there, even though they’ve only known each other for a few months. It has felt like a forever in these past few months—homework study sessions, car rides, coffee runs, amusement park excursions, dinner at each other’s houses.

 

It’s the most fun she’s had in a while and she’s almost too afraid to admit to herself that maybe this boy lying next to her means more to her than she thinks.

 

“Hey Baek?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Thank you.”

 

He chuckles. “Thank you.”

 

A laugh escapes . “No, thank you.”

 

“But I’m thanking you, too,” he puts his hands up in the air in defense.

 

She gives him a good shove. “Just accept it, Baekhyun.”

 

He sits up and stares at her from above. “And I could say the same to you, Jieun.” His eyes are twinkling and he has a stupid grin on his face so she sits up too.

 

“Ugh, fine. You ruined the moment.”

 

He winks. “That’s my specialty.”

 

(She would probably disagree though—his specialty is probably making things funnier, more exciting. His specialty is making her feel special, for bringing a smile to her face when she’s down. Even the moments that he “ruins”—they are moments for her to remember.)

 

 

 

 

Jieun’s family is throwing a new year’s party, and her house is filled with guests—mostly her parents’ co-workers and friends. She is kind of disgusted at the way her parents act all lovey-dovey in front of others when in reality they probably want to bite each other’s heads off. She scoffs and drags Baekhyun to her room to watch TV shows.

 

“You would think that we would be spending New Year’s Eve in a less lame way,” he comments, as they settle down in front of her laptop.

 

“Okay, this is not lame,” she retorts. “I mean, what else do we do? Get a fake ID and go out clubbing or something?” She rolls her eyes, turning her attention back to her screen.

 

His face brightens. “You know, that’s actually a good—” He shuts up when she glares at him. “I mean, we could still go outside?”

 

So they escape out her bedroom window to sit on the roof. It’s not exactly a club blaring with music and overflowing with alcohol, but it’s exciting just the same—if exciting is the right word to describe Baekhyun’s half-serious-half-not-so-serious teasing about pushing Jieun off the roof. A trip to the hospital is not a way that Jieun would want to spend her New Year’s Eve.

 

There are shouts coming from the living room below them now. “Five! Four!” they start counting down.

 

Jieun almost jumps off the roof on her own accord when she feels Baekhyun’s arm around her shoulders. “What are you—”

 

“Shh,” he murmurs next to her, eyes gazing at the starlit sky.

 

“Three! Two! One!” the loud chatter from inside grows exponentially, culminating in a bunch of cheers and toasts. “Happy new year, everyone!”

 

Jieun turns to face him but instead finds her nose buried in his chest. Her pulse quickens unexpectedly and she panics when she realizes that he isn’t moving away. But he’s holding on to her tightly, as if shielding her from the cold. “Look,” he says, pointing in the distance.

 

She hears the loud crackling sound before she sees it. To the west, fireworks explode in the night sky, lights reflecting in their eyes.

 

“Happy new year,” he says, and she can barely hear him over all the noise.

 

“Happy new year to you, too,” she nearly shouts back, and his arm is still around her and it kind of feels comfortable now.

 

(After a while, the fireworks spectacle ends and Baekhyun gives her a cheeky smile that effectively melts her to pieces. She doesn’t know when it happened but somewhere in the wee hours of the morning, she falls asleep in his arms, and by the time she wakes up with the sun upon her face, she’s in the comfort of her own bed. And that’s when she wonders if the previous night had all been a dream.

It’s not, she realizes, when she checks her phone and there’s a text from him.

 

 

And she thinks “nice” might be an understatement.)

 

 

 

 

She wonders if it will be awkward from now on, after the, er, incident, on New Year’s. But when he rings her doorbell the next day to hang out (thank goodness for winter break) and greets her with the same old smile with no sign of tension whatsoever, she breathes a sigh of relief.

 

“What are we doing today?” she asks him.

 

He shrugs. “Whatever you want. We didn’t get to watch any shows yesterday.”

 

“I thought you said it was lame,” she side-eyes him.

 

But Jieun decides against spending a whole day locked up in her room and instead opts for stuffing herself with food (I mean, what else would you do on a day off? She asks, and he nods in agreement). And so they adventure downtown to a famous bakery and drool over the samples in the windows. They spend all their allowance money on cake and pastries and pies and Jieun has never had such an unhealthy breakfast, but who’s complaining?

 

She ignores his teasing at watching her calories because she knows that he really doesn’t care, despite his annoying jabs. After all, look who’s talking, she rolls her eyes, as she watches him shove things oh-so-gracefully in his mouth.

 

It is overall quite satisfying, except maybe for the food baby settling down in her stomach.

 

(And so things haven’t changed at all. But maybe secretly in her heart she hopes they did.)

 

 

 

 

Winter melts into spring but Jieun doesn’t really care because she’s suffocating in her room, studying for midterms. She’s not really in the mood for anything other than curling into a ball and sleeping for a good two weeks straight. One Saturday afternoon, when the sun comes out from behind the clouds, Jieun stubbornly closes her window curtains and stares at her history textbook until her eyes almost water.

 

Her daze is disrupted by a loud tapping on the window. She covers her ears, muttering, “It better not be who I think it is.” But when the tapping continues, she rolls her eyes and whips the curtains open.

 

 

He’s standing in her front yard, looking like he’s ready to throw up rainbows judging from the ear-to-ear smile on his face. She heaves a sigh. She’s really not feeling it today.

 

“What was that for?” he asks, feigning hurt at her insult.

 

“Lame, I said. You’re so lame,” she merely repeats, throwing him daggers with her eyes.

 

“Sheesh. I was just dropping by to say hi.”

 

“Okay then. Hi,” she responds. “Happy now? How come you don’t have midterms to study for?”

 

He shrugs. “Not horribly worried about it. I mean, I might be screwed, but that’s never stopped me from having a bit of fun.”

 

She’s about to unleash a flurry of scolding but five minutes later, she finds herself down in the front yard with him and that’s when she sees that the roses are blooming.

 

(He picks off a flower for her and jokingly gets on one knee. She takes it and later he steals it back to put it behind her ear. His lips look kind of kissable today and she can’t believe she’s even thinking such thoughts. It must be the mixture of the blinding sun and lack of sleep, she thinks to herself.

 

 

 

 

 

It’s the end of the school year and it suddenly hits her that she has one year left of high school. There’s a little thought gnawing at the back of her head (one more year left with him – but she convinces herself that she can avoid it, somehow) and she looks next to her in the passenger seat to see a sleepy Baekhyun. She breathes a sigh of relief, kind of wishing that she can keep this moment forever, even if it means that Baekhyun never gets his driver’s license and she’s stuck driving him around for the rest of her life.

 

That is, until he wakes up, wiping his eyes groggily and turns to stare in her direction; his gaze is caught in hers—magnetic, almost. She brakes at a stop sign and she’s sure she’s been engrossed in those eyes of his for more than the standard two-second stop sign waiting time. His eyes travel down her face and her jaw clenches, tension hanging in the air.

 

“Uh—”

 

He silences her with a quick peck on the lips, but to them it feels like an eternity captured in a split second, hearts racing with all the excitement of youth and adrenaline. They pull away, breathless—because all of this is new to her, this love business, but Jieun thinks that she can’t imagine having this with anyone else but him.

 

She smiles shyly, and after a few deep breaths, continues driving home, eyes fixed on the road ahead. He chuckles next to her, ears red and fingers trembling a little. She catches him grinning to himself when she tears her gaze from the road to look at the mirror.

 

(And she finds herself laughing, kind of uncontrollably, for no reason at all. Because all of this is simply ridiculous—two next-door neighbors who are best friends for only one year but it already feels like she’s fallen for him a million times too many like she’s known him forever. 

 

They end up on her couch that afternoon, snuggled up in a blanket with the AC on full blast, browsing TV shows and eating popcorn. It kind of feels like the chick flicks on the silver screen are no longer elusive concepts to her, and perhaps finally she has found something of her own. Sometimes he presses his nose in her hair and she settles a bit deeper into his chest—and she doesn’t know when they crossed the boundary between friends and lovers but maybe she wouldn’t have it any other way.)

 

 

 

 

And so they spend the summer kind of like that, filling up their days with naps on the grass and water fights at the beach, movie nights and dinner dates and failed barbecues. It’s not horribly exciting but she likes the simplicity. Because it is Baekhyun and Jieun, who met on their front lawns—she doesn’t know if it can get any simpler than that.

 

So she rests in that simplicity, choosing not to worry about the future and instead enjoy the stretch in time that they have together. They are young with the world ahead of them and maybe it’s better to see what happens.

 

They’re walking into school on the first day of senior year, hands clasped together tightly.

 

“Hey Baek?”

 

“Yes?”

 

“Thanks. You know, for—“

 

He bends down to press his lips against her forehead.

 

“It’s my pleasure,” he whispers into her ear.

 

And she’s glad. Glad that she’s finally found a true friend, and maybe—just maybe, love. The butterflies churn in her stomach and she decides that the feeling isn’t really that bad. Not bad at all, really.

 

(She drives him home after school and by now, she thinks that it will truly be an impossible feat to get Baekhyun to start on the driver’s license business. Not that she minds, anyway.)