you’re invited, but your girlfriend can’t come

I officially have new neighbors.

I returned home from work on Saturday to find a rather fine-looking fellow carrying boxes from a stack in the hallway through the door directly to the east of my own. We exchanged smiles and hellos, and I entered my apartment already plotting ways to win over this pretty (but not too pretty) moving-in man. I would make him my close proximity cuddle buddy, my neighbor boy with benefits, my conveniently located (and adequately adorable) lips to kiss. Or so I thought.

My (potentially inappropriate) plan was foiled by the arrival of a female roommate sometime on Sunday. I’d like to believe the relationship between my man and his mystery madam is purely platonic, but the fact that their apartment boasts of only one bedroom certainly suggests that there’s more going on.

So now the initial excitement I experienced has faded, and I’ve abandoned all hope of getting freaky or fresh with the fellow next door. But I’ve realized as well that this sabotaged seduction may soon become the least of my worries. Like the day the cute boy and his gal pal decide to get down and I’m forced (by the ineffectively insulated walls) to overhear it all. Which will be awkward and uncomfortable, and stand in sad contrast to the lack of such happenings here.

The truth is that—in spite of all insults—I miss my old neighbor a little. Sure, she hated my music and (possibly) me, and she told me one day that I looked like a boy (believing her comment was complimentary somehow). But I still prefer her oddities and offenses to the sound of my former future boyfriend having sex with his sweetheart while I’m stuck in a state of involuntary (and unwelcome) intimacy.