My 'Friend'

Based on a prompt I found online. John is a bored man who makes friends with a man who breaks into his apartment on several occasions. This is the intro to their relationship.

‘Friend’ is what I’ve been calling him. He’s probably best compared to a stray cat that comes and goes and leaves dead mice every once in awhile.

He’s a really nice guy. Handsome, good money, happy with life and he’s ridiculously smart.

He just doesn’t have any friends. Besides me.

At first, I didn’t understand how such a seemingly outstanding guy could be so lonely. Surely guys like this are constantly swarmed with chums and nice ladies, right? Not stuck in an empty apartment with some lame IT guy who can’t even make eye contact with the cashier at Walmart.

I met him at a bad time in my life. I was getting over...it wasn’t even a break up. It was a crush I had on a girl forever and she rejected my feelings.

I was also just getting used to life on my own and it wasn’t doing so well. Being the networking guy wasn’t all I hoped it would be. I knew most of the customers I’d work with wouldn’t be too smart with technology but...some of these people were seriously lost causes and it really took a lot out of me. I couldn’t just move back in with my parents though. That’d be a whole other level of pathetic.

I was stuck in a bit of a rut. I felt I had nothing and to make it worse, I did nothing in my free time except sleep. At least some hopeless guys go to bars and complain. I couldn’t even do that. Too shy.

I came home from another bust of a day to find a man I didn’t know in my living room scratching the back of his head.

He did nothing when I entered. Simply stood in the center of the room with his mouth in a small ‘o’ shape.

I stood in my doorway awkwardly with my bag still hanging over my shoulder. I glanced at the window door to the balcony, wide open, then glanced back at the strange man in front me. I lived on the fourth floor of my apartment complex.

I knew I had no fighting experience. I didn’t have any weapons on or around me either- nor did I particularly have any motivation to fight someone off, so I just continued to stand there.

Besides, he didn’t seem dangerous. He just looked genuinely confused.

He suddenly made a fist with one hand and clapped it against his other hand as if he just realised something.

“Oh! It was the third floor, not the fourth. I’m sorry mate, I’ve made a terrible mistake,” he explained almost cheerily.

I raised an eyebrow.

“No...problem?”

He threw his head back and barked a laugh.

“Did you just say ‘no problem’ to a man who broke into your apartment?!” he wheezed.

“...Sorry?”

My reply sent him into another fit of laughter. At this point, I was more annoyed than confused or frightened anymore. It felt like this man who had no business in being in my home was just making fun of me for being confused. It felt like living out a weird anxiety induced nightmare; like the ones where you’re out in public naked, except this was the at-home edition.

“Well, I have something pressing to tend to, so I will get out of your hair. If you don’t mind though, I would love to meet you again on better terms and chat. You seem like a great chap- we’ll have some beer and just talk!”

His words...almost sounded like a melody. His voice was smooth and low, and there was a slight hum in the way he spoke to me. His hands waved throughout the air as he talked and it looked choreographed with the way he floated towards the door as if he was dancing.

Maybe it was just his accent. I didn’t meet too many englishmen.

Once he was out, he poked his head back through the door I had just entered through myself and winked, “Oh and do me a favor? Don’t mention this little encounter to anyone. I promise you, it will be far better for you if you don’t.”

I didn’t even bother to see where he went after that. I just sighed and closed the door.

Frankly, I should have been far more concerned with that event for obvious reasons, but I was so focused on my own self-pity that I somehow brushed it aside in favor of a shower and sleep.

I had completely forgotten about the strange man the next morning. It was a boring day as it was my day off. I usually tried my best to sleep through the entirety of my days off since I had nothing to do, but I couldn’t sleep for the whole day.

I had gotten up around the time I usually ate lunch and pretty much walked around my apartment aimlessly for a little bit.

I tossed around some ideas in my head of what to do but nothing grabbed my attention.

See a movie? Didn’t know what was out and didn’t care for them.

Go out to eat? By myself?! Hah.

Go for a walk? Ew.

Go...shopping?? For what?

Read a book? About what??

I spent quite a few hours trying to think of something to do and surfing on the internet on my phone, so that killed some time.

The point is, I had plenty of time to call the cops about the intruder from the night before. Plenty of time to try to look up something about him. Plenty of time to ask my neighbors about any strange occurrences.

But I didn’t. I simply didn’t even care enough to remember I had seen him.

I quickly remembered when I heard some banging in my kitchen though.

Surely it’s nothing, I thought. Surely… I heard something from my neighbor, yeah. That’d be crazy to get my place broken into twice in a row...unless it was him again…

I laid completely still for a moment and waited for another sound.

It didn’t take long for me to confirm someone was, in fact, in my kitchen. Whoever it was, they weren’t hiding it.

There wasn’t much for me to defend myself with. I decided that the screwdriver I left on my dresser would have to do and slowly made my way to the kitchen.

I inched down the hall as quiet as possible with my phone still opened on reddit in one hand and the screwdriver in my other hand. Once I made it out of the hall that led to an opening for the living room and kitchen, I spotted him.

The same weird Brit. He was looking for something in my cupboards.

I found myself surprisingly relieved to see him. At least it wasn’t someone in a Jason mask carefully inspecting my kitchen knives. No, it was the weirdly friendly intruder who made fun of me. Not the best scenario, but easily better than other possibilities.

I lowered the screwdriver and relaxed.

“Welcome in??” I called out pointedly.

He didn’t startle at all. In fact, he proceeded to search through my cabinet for a couple more seconds before turning his attention to me.

“Hullo my friend! I was just looking for some glasses we could use. I brought the beer I promised!” He greeted me warmly.

I was annoyed again. I didn’t ask for him to come into my home, uninvited, with beer. I simply wanted to sleep the day away until I had to go to work again. I didn’t want the interruption in my peacefully lame routine that he was shoving on me.

I decided to lay it out plainly.

“Dude. What the f**k?”

He raised an eyebrow and walked to the kitchen’s entry to face me.

“Such language towards a guest is rude. I’m hurt,” he pouted a lip slightly and mocked a shocked expression.

I got a better look at him from his new position though. He was wearing dark grey skinny jeans with some simple black vans and a t-shirt that distracted me greatly. It read, “a criminal’s best asset is his lie ability”.

I was apparently distracted enough to start laughing my a*s off instead of asking the guy about what he was doing and who he was.

When I finally finished my horribly timed laughter, I looked up to see him smiling at me with a confused but pleased expression.

He was a very attractive guy. He had light brown hair that looked as if each strand had been perfectly set in place. He had sharp features that contrasted the soft aura about him. I expected him to have unrealistic eyes like a movie star; a deep blue that I could drown in, or a warm hazel like the sunset or a bright green that electrified me or something else stupid.

Instead his eyes were a dull grey. A hard, cold ashy grey that seemed empty.

Somehow, it seemed to even out the rest of his out-of-the-ordinary features and made him seem more human. It probably would have been intimidating if he wasn’t smiling.

He glanced down at his shirt, “I thought it was fairly humorous. I’m glad you think so too.”

He set down the beer bottles in his hands and walked towards me.

Reaching out a hand he asked for my name.

I gingerly took it and raised an eyebrow.

“Uhm, I think you should be telling me who you are first. Seeing as you’ve now broken into my apartment twice.”

His eyes narrowed slightly, so slightly I wouldn’t have possibly caught it if he wasn’t holding my gaze so intensely.

“Mate, just tell me your name.”

As much as I wanted to press him for answers, I was not one for conflict or pressure. I was merely a spineless coward.

So I caved.

“I’m John... Now would you care to explain to me what’s going on and who you are?”

He grinned and turned around to head back to the kitchen.

“Right! I had someone I had to see last night and I simply made a mistake on which floor I was on, terribly sorry to have barged in like that. But here! I’ve got plenty to last us all day.”

He came back over to where I was and held out a rather expensive bottle of beer.

Like ridiculously expensive. As mentioned, I wasn’t much of a drinker, but I at least knew that drinking that beer so casually with a friend at home was not something I would ever do on my paycheck.

“Whoa- what is...why this stuff- this is crazy expensive!” I exclaimed.

He didn’t reply and instead took a deep swig of his beer with his eyebrows raised high.

Holding an odd drink that a stranger had given me made me nervous, though.

He noticed me lower the beer and look away.

“What? Do you not like this brand? I can get us another one, or wine if you’d prefer!”

That offer made a panicked confusion start to swell inside me. Why was this strange guy so desperate to get me to drink something?

“I uh… I’m not drinking anything you give me.”

He let out a loud disappointed sound that resembled that of a seal and grabbed the beer from my hand then took a drink out of it.

He thrust it back on me, as if having proved something.

Slowly, I took it back, but I still had no intention of drinking it.

He noticed this again.

“Well what now?”

“I’m not drinking out of a bottle that a complete stranger just drank out of-”

He tilted his head back and let out an over exaggerated sigh.

“-and I’m not just sharing some drinks with a complete stranger!”

He rolled his eyes and took my bottle yet again.

“I’m not a complete stranger. This is our second time seeing each other.”

The panic I felt earlier had melted into a frustration. A frustration I would have felt with someone I was familiar with enough to try to pick a fight.

“Dude!”

He blinked, surprised by my outburst, and stared at me innocently.

“What?”

In a fit of rage, I released some sort of angry shriek and whacked his chest.

Good going John. That would show him.

He stood still for a moment, as if trying to wait for a confirmation that I had in fact just done such an embarrassing thing. His confirmation came in the tense silence that followed and my angry, yet mortified face.

He dropped the two beers into my hands, then covered his face and fell into a terrible laughter. A laughter that made him double over in front of me.

This time I let out a loud sigh and finally took a big gulp of the beer. My patience was wearing thin and yet he seemed to find great joy in that factor.

He returned to planet Earth looking quite pleased with himself and wiped a few tears from his eyes.

“I like you, Johnny. I like you a lot.”

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath to gather myself. Clearly, whoever he was, he didn’t want me to know and was satisfied with being entertained by my reactions to trying to find out.

“Who the hell are you?” I demanded.

Something in his dead grey eyes twinkled. The laughter in his voice disappeared but a smile remained. His stance over me suddenly seemed rather scary.

“Trust me, it’s better you don’t know. Don’t ask again. I won’t tell you.”

I stared at him for another minute. Perhaps I was trying to determine if I could strike a come back or perhaps I was too shocked by his answer to reply. It was probably a combination of both.

But something about his words struck me. Something about how he was kind of growing on me despite his suspicious character.

Whatever it was that caused it, I found myself not wanting to ask who he was anymore.

And thus the spineless coward I was, I never asked again.

Author's Note

I found the prompt with the intention to do a short story that consisted of only a couple thousand words but I actually like these characters and want to continue writing them. So this might be a standalone piece or it might be continued.

Reviews

[Karen Redburn]

I enjoyed the read, good story. I must admit I was hoping for a bit more of a pay off at the end, and do hope you end up turning it into a longer piece, or at the least help the poor guy figure out what this guy is doing in his apartment and why it is better for him not to know who the guy is. Great job!

[DarlingDarjeeling]

Thank you for the comments, it is much appreciated!

[ZakLeonRamsey]

Nice story. I think you should carry on with your stories. With your story, you've proved my words. Your story is quite nice and your thinking is excellent, the imagination in this short prompt is very strong. I think anybody could see what wonderful imagination you've put into this story. Keep going. :)

[TheCreativeNerd]

I would love to read more of this if you have continued.

[DarlingDarjeeling]

Thank you, I'm glad you like it!