Love Thy Neighbor ✓

one

ONE | MID MARCH

(please see the prelude before you read, even if you skim! thank you!)

LUCA MENDOZA was losing his patience. His demon of a neighbor, full-time eighth grader Mason Collins, had been continuously kicking his soccer ball up to Luca's window for the last twenty minutes and his patience was in shreds.

He'd almost pushed the window open and yelled down to where Mason was messing around in his backyard, but he was irrationally afraid of getting ignored and having the soccer ball kicked into his room and hitting him in the face. Considering he was already losing a battle against a thirteen year old, he didn't want to take any more chances.

With a groan, he stood up from where he'd been trying to study at his desk and pulled his bedroom door open, marching down the stairs with a determined fury curling in his chest like a whirlwind.

"Mason!" He called, marching out of the house in only shorts, a baggy t-shirt and a pair of sliders. His backyard and the Collins' backyard shared a fence and, in the space between the two houses, there were gates to his yard and theirs. Fortunately, theirs was unlocked.

Impatient and frustrated, he pushed it open and stood at the edge of their expensive looking garden, holding the gate and frowning. "Mason!" He called again, louder and more agitated, after getting ignored the first time.

Mason Collins, who was already around five foot eight (Luca, thankfully, still had two or three inches on him), turned around with a soccer ball tucked underneath his arm, balanced on his hip with wide, blinking eyes and raised brows. "What?" He asked, frowning suddenly and narrowing his gaze as though he was offended.

"What do you mean what?" Luca cried incredulously, letting go of the gate and throwing his arms out. "The soccer ball! You've been kicking it at my window for half an hour!"

"So what?" Mason scoffed, dropping the ball back onto the floor, kicking it up again and balancing it on his knee.

"So it's annoying," Luca scowled. "Stop it."

"Alright! There's no need to start whining about it," he huffed, rolling his eyes and kicking the ball at the fence.

"No need to start whining?" Luca echoed, staring at Mason. For a second, he was speechless. He paused, trying to catch the consequences of his impatience before they escaped his grasp, like angry little butterflies fluttering out of a net. "I have asked you nicely— one thousand times, one million times— to stop being a nightmare and here you are! Still being a nightmare!"

"I'm not a nightmare!" He glowered, his blue eyes sharp and his brows tightened. If looks could kill.

"Oh, Mason, c'mon," Luca begged, walking further into the garden. "I ask you to turn down your constantly blaring music and you turn it up, I ask you to stop kicking your ball at my wall and you start kicking it at my window, I ask you to be more careful with your stuff and you start kicking it over the fence! Why are you doing this to me? What are you gaining from this?"

He stared blankly, unimpressed, and sarcastically announced, "I'm sick in the head. I have all these terrible things wrong with me."

"Shut up," Luca snapped. "I'm starting to think you're some kind of sociopath."

"Maybe I am a sociopath," he shrugged, uninterested. "You don't know what I am. You don't know what I've got."