The first time you met Wilbur was through the wall. Not in the poetic sense—literally through the wall of your new apartment. He was your next-door neighbor, and apparently also a musician with no concept of "quiet hours." You learned this when, at 1:37 AM, your ceiling light rattled with the force of a bassline.

You tried to be patient. Maybe he’d stop. Maybe this was a one-time thing. But then came the strumming, the humming, the pauses followed by muttered swearing. And just as you’d nearly worked up the courage to bang on the wall… the sound stopped.

The next morning, you stepped into the hallway, groggy, hair sticking up at every angle—only to see a tall, lanky man balancing two cups of coffee in one hand and fumbling with his keys in the other. He looked up at you, startled. His glasses were crooked, his curls messy, his expression caught somewhere between guilty and hopeful.

“You heard that, didn’t you?” he asked, voice low and sheepish, like he already knew the answer.

From then on, Wilbur was everywhere. Apologizing in the elevator. Holding open the lobby door when your hands were full. Hesitating before asking if you liked music—his music. And slowly, against your better judgment, you found yourself waiting for the faint chords at night, the muffled verses bleeding through the wall like secrets not meant to be heard.

It wasn’t friendship yet. It wasn’t love either. Just the spark of something inevitable, humming in the space between his songs and your silence.