Chloe was so scared of the loneliness she would experience moving to a city in which she knew no one.

She was never the kind of girl who was alone, or good at it. There were always at least two or three girls around who she could call friends, often there was a boy that she could fool around with for a month or so before one of them got bored, and her parents were way too present. She never learned how to be alone, and she was sure she didn't want to. There was nothing like people. Nothing like listening getting to know someone. Like learning about the little world everyone has inside.

When she decided to accept that job in a town she had never been before, that was her biggest fear: loneliness. But, for some strike of luck, she was gifted with company and kindness in her very first night in the city. She just wanted a screwdriver, she ended up with Chicago.

He was sweet enough. They would spend the nights together at her place talking very little and exploring each other's bodies too much. He may not be a good friend, but he was very good at other things. That wasn't the kind of company Chloe feared not having, but in the lack of any other, she accepted him in the best way she could or the way he would allow - she was not sure about which was the case.

There were no clues that that was the situation she was going to end up in. Or maybe they were there all the time and she was just victim of some spell. In that first night, she remembers vividly the way she could see him fight his own walls to keep a conversation with her. She remembers the shy blush on his cheeks as she thanked him for the screwdriver. She remembers how he looked at her: a little marveled, a little intrigued.

He doesn't know exactly how to define the way he looks at her now. The lights are always off. She thinks she doesn't really care anymore about what he thinks as long as his hands are in the right places, erasing her mind from this new kind of loneliness she was trapped in.

She cursed herself for expecting too much. If she hadn't allowed herself to think that those were sparks, that those were signs of something great, she might as well be more acceptable about the way their relationship developed. She should've had learned that first meetings can be tricky; same mistakes all over again.

Maybe she had this self-critic in her mind when she saw her in that morning. Maybe that was the safety belt she was wearing when their worlds collapsed, when Chloe felt like she had been there before.

Four weeks had passed after the day she moved in when she saw her for the first time. When Chloe opened her door to go to work that morning, a blonde woman was on the threshold of the door of the apartment in front of her. She was wearing a navy-blue overcoat and had a messenger bag hanging on one shoulder. She was holding a keychain with a blue crystal hanging on it and going through her phone with the other hand. The door behind her was slightly open and she didn't seem to notice that Chloe was watching her.

Chloe knew someone lived in that apartment, but she never saw them. Apparently, that was her front door neighbor and she was about her own age. Maybe that was what got Chloe dying to talk to her (the longest conversations she had since she got in the city were with pets. Her coworker and owner of the vet clinic she was working at was an old man that she tried to avoid even during her work hours). Maybe that blonde woman was a chance.

Though, in the moment Chloe opened her mouth to speak to the her, the elevator's doors opened, and another woman got out of the elevator. She was a tiny brunette in combat boots, skinny jeans and a flannel under her heavy black coat, carrying a suitcase on her shoulder. Chloe just sighed and walked to the elevator. Next time, she decided.

"I have no idea what you did to your keys, but you better don't lose these," Chloe heard the blonde advice the other woman, handing her the keychain. "Why do you need to work here anyway?"

"It inspires me," the brunette said, entering the apartment and closing the door behind her.

The blonde walked to the elevator without looking up from her phone and Chloe was caring enough to hold the door open for her. When she raised her head to thank Chloe, she had this very peculiar look on her face.

Looking closely, she confirmed that her neighbor was a beautiful woman. She was a long blonde hair that fell in waves on her shoulders and she looked like someone better. Better like one of those people who are always one step ahead of everyone, who are intriguing and who are invested in exceed at everything. Chloe noticed her pink lips had this almost-o shape and there was a slight, almost unnoticeable frown on her brows. Maybe she was just surprised to see a new person, Chloe thought.

The redhead tilted her head a little amused with the new attention. They had eleven floors together and there was no way Chloe could hold her tongue.

"Hi, I'm Chloe. I live in the apartment in front of yours," the redhead chatted with the lighthearted voice tone, offering a hand to shake.

The blonde blinked twice before accepting Chloe's handshake. "Aubrey."

There was a tense energy in Aubrey. It was almost palpable. Not in a creepy way, though. Chloe just felt that Aubrey was taking that encounter in a different way than she was. She wasn't going to judge, she was a little nervous herself.

Aubrey's hands were warm even if autumn was fighting all the heat away. "Your hands are really warm, Aubrey," Chloe said, trying to dissipate the thick air but she thinks she saw Aubrey blushing a little with the comment. "I live here for a few weeks now and it's funny that we never saw each other."

Aubrey hesitated before nodding. "I work a lot," she said.

Chloe nodded understandingly. "What about your roommate?" she asked, referring to the brunette.

The blonde frowned slightly. "Oh, Beca? Beca is not my roommate. She is just a friend," Aubrey clarified.

Chloe wanted to talk. Wanted to ask her about her job. Wanted to say her coat fitted her so well. That her hair had a beautiful color. That they should talk, befriend each other, because they were so near in a city where everyone was so far. She also wanted to understand why Aubrey seemed nervous, why she kept looking at Chloe through the corner of her eyes when she thought the redhead wasn't noticing. She also wanted to know why she found herself wanting a few more floors.

Chloe was too absorbed paying attention to way Aubrey knuckles danced against her palm when the doors opened, and Aubrey practically ran away, with a short "bye" to her and an interrogation mark over Chloe's head.

How could Aubrey look so familiar if she was sure they had never met before?


"Do you know Aubrey?" Chloe asked Chicago during a rare dinner together that night. She had insisted so much that she was sure that he agreed out of pity. Or hunger.

"Aubrey who?" He asked back, dipping a broccoli into the sauce.

"The neighbor from the apartment across the hall," she explained, watching him dip a piece of carrot there too.

"Oh. Yeah," he said, thoughtful. "She is a weirdo."

Chloe frowned, pushing food around her plate with her fork. "A weirdo?"

He nodded. "She had an owl there once. What kind of person has an owl?"

Aubrey has an owl? Chloe was entertained with her neighbor's choice of pet. Of course, she didn't look like someone who would have a cat, or any pet at all. This is the kind of thing you learn when you are a veterinarian. People who have pets show it in some way. Like cat people always have cat hair on the end of the legs of their pants. Or like bird people occasionally have bite marks on their hands. And other than that, it just shows in their personalities, what Chloe is not able to explain. She just knows when someone had a dog or a lizard or a snake. So, she was intrigued about the thought of what led the woman to get an owl – she didn't see that coming.

"Owls, if compared to other cases, are pretty normal," she informed him. "I once heard of a guy who raised a baby crocodile on his tub."

He shrugged. "She is still a weirdo. She only has one friend."

"It's hard to make friends," Chloe said, putting a piece of chicken in her mouth.

Chicago raised his brows in that cute way. "I can't believe you just said that. You look like those girls who are friends with everyone. You befriended me," he said, playfully.

Chloe wanted to say that they weren't exactly friends. There wasn't a beautiful word to what they were doing. But she ignored him and decided to let him believe in that.

She chuckled. "I'm nice to people, that's all. I like making people happy."

"You do," he said giving her a kind look. "You are good at it."

Chloe smiled at him. His handsome face and kind eyes made his words seem way more meaningful than he probably meant initially.

She really wished she could be as enchanted with him as she was in that first evening. She wished that the sparks she felt had lasted. Sometimes it felt almost like it wasn't the same person.

Feeling a little guilty with that thought, she leaned forward and kissed him, feeling his surprise. They could always stop seeing each other, of course, but he was the closest thing she had of a friend, she wasn't ready to let it go, even if it was a selfish decision.

She pushed her thoughts aside with an idea.

"I should befriend her," Chloe said as she pulled back. "I will befriend Aubrey. Wait and see."


She knocked on Aubrey's door in the next day after work. She had prepared some pumpkin bread to herself and decided it would be nice to share some of it with her neighbor/soon to be friend.

Though, Aubrey didn't open the door. The tiny brunette did. Her eyes went wide, and her lips were shut tightly. She looked a little bit frightened.

Maybe Chicago was right, those people really were weirdos. First Aubrey's tension in the elevator and now her friend looked like she was about to confess a crime. Chloe decided to ignore that and keep on with her project of loving the neighbor.

"Hi, I'm Chloe, is Aubrey home?"

The brunette opened her mouth to say something and then shut it again. She looked briefly at the inside of the apartment, that she exposed less, closing the door a little bit. "She isn't. She's working."

"Oh. Can you tell her I passed by and left this?" Chloe asked, offering the bread for the woman to take.

"Sure," she said, taking the plate from Chloe's hands. She still seemed uncomfortable in her own skin. She was avoiding eye contact and fidgeting on the metal pieces in her ear.

"Alright," Chloe concluded. "Thank you…" She waited for the brunette to offer a name. Wasn't it something with B? Barb? Brenda?

"Rebeca," she said in a rush. "No, I'm lying, it's Beca. No one calls me Rebeca. My father used to but now he just goes for Beca. It's shorter, it's better and sounds way cooler, right? Becaw!" she was blushing by the end of her rant.

Chloe stared at her, amused. Total weirdo ahead. If befriending Aubrey meant that Beca was coming along, that was an extra that she wouldn't mind. The more the merrier, she always said – about people and about pets.

"Okay. Thanks, Beca," she said. "I hope you like pumpkin bread."

Beca nodded and closed the door. Chloe decided to come back. She was never one to give up on the first try.


It took her three more attempts to see Aubrey.

In the second time, two days later, she knocked but no one came. Which was a shame, because she was sure that that carrot cake was the best she had ever made.

In the third time, in the following day, Beca was there again, seeming a little more at ease. She promised to give Aubrey the chocolate cupcakes and said they loved the pumpkin bread, what did put a smile in Chloe's face. The progress was coming slowly, she thought.

In the fourth time, two days later, a Saturday, Aubrey was finally the one to open the door.

She was wearing a wine turtleneck – that looked surprisingly good in her - with blue jeans, barefoot and looking way different from what she looked like at the elevator in the beginning of the week. She kept the door open only enough for her body to lean against the door frame. Chloe felt like she had seen that image before, in a distant dream or an old movie.

"Hi, Aubrey," Chloe greeted, smiling with her hands free of food.

"Hey, Chloe," Aubrey greeted her with a sympathetic expression. "I didn't have the chance to thank you for the food."

Maybe she was just naturally uptight like that. Maybe her hands were always like that, never relaxing her fists completely. Maybe her browns were always slightly frowned. Chloe decided that there were people that lived worrying their lives away and maybe Aubrey was one of those.

"I made a pumpkin pie," Chloe told her, giving her a smile. At that moment, she couldn't know why, but there were very little things that would make her give up of befriending her neighbor.

"Oh," Aubrey said, the corner of her lip tugging up, as if she knew what was about to happen. Her arms were crossed, and her sleeves were pulled up to her elbows.

"And what do you say about coming to my place and having a piece or two?" Chloe suggested, ready to beg if Aubrey said no.

But much to her surprise, Aubrey agreed after a second that seemed to be a small hesitation.

"Sure," she said. "Why not?"