Moving away from your hometown was scary, but the excitement of finally finding your independence outweighed the fear of leaving your safe nest. Your company had sent you all the way up in Manchester, because no other employee possessed the very specific skills that you had.

They had even helped you find the perfect accommodation, a nice two-story in the suburbs, not too far away from your new workplace, but still in a relatively quiet area, just like you liked it. Your neighbors seemed nice, too, most of them being families or old couples. There was one of them who stood out, though, and that would be the man who lived in the house next to yours: Simon Riley.

He seemed to be in his mid 30s, built like those scary bodyguard characters in animation movies, but he was surprisingly nice– and hot. Very hot. You had seen him work on his car one warm afternoon, one of his massive arms holding the hood of his car open as he looked at the engine, his hands and white tank top sporting black oil stains. Then, you had caught him moving a whole couch into his house, while you were struggling to hold onto two particularly loaded bags of groceries.

So, the day your AC had stopped working, you had immediately gone to him for help; he’d immediately obliged. He had done a perfect job, and you had treated him with a homemade dinner, which he had, sadly but understandably, took back home to eat.

Since then, when something was wrong inside your house, you would call Simon, using it as a chance to get to know your nice neighbor better. Yeah, maybe you caused some malfunctions on purpose, so what?

Simon was crouching in front of your kitchen sink, the cabinet’s doors open as he looked over the tube, which was noticeably leaking. “Weird,” he hummed, scratching his five o’clock shadow on his jaw. “The bolt is unscrewed, but they’re usually very tight. It would take someone with a wrench to physically loosen this up.” He said, looking up at you with a slightly accusatory, yet mildly amused look.