Summary: Living in the neighbourhood that she did, MB was used to all kinds of weird; which was why she didn't really think much about the crazy guy across the hall. But her daddy raised a lady, so she helped the guy out now and again. Too bad he got attached. "Please stop breaking into my apartment."

Author's Note:

Did ya'll think I was gone for good? I graduated high school! I have a full time job now that pays really well. I got into a really good university and will be starting soon. I'm travelling the world with my best friends in a few months. Life is great! Unfortunately, it means I have less and less time to write just for the fun of it.

Anyway, here's a little ditty I wrote on a whim. Please enjoy.

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See the thing is, MB hadn't been raised with much – being the stereotypical farm girl – but what she had been given was the inability to be surprised by much, an unflappable attitude and an unfailingly polite manner. Her daddy raised a lady, thank you very much; a lady with the know-how to kick all sorts of city boy ass.

Still, it was the manners installed into her that made her stop to ask. He was just standing there, hands flapping about his body, making frustrated little noises and looking thoroughly pissed off with the world. He looked familiar, really familiar – from his militant hair cut to his sheepskin jacket and dirty, white, wife beater. With a slow blink, it came to her.

William, or Wayne or something. He was the guy who seemed to live in the apartment across from her own. He was never really there, but when he was, it was hard for MB not to notice. So far she knew that he had a strange, almost obsessive love for George Michael and never cooked (if only because he blasted Wham at all hours and the delivery boys always seemed to mistake her apartment for his.)

"Locked out?" She asked, rather rhetorically. It was pretty obvious at this point that he had lost his keys.

William, Wayne, Wyatt, something – who had, at this point, raised his leg, no doubt ready to break down the only thing keeping the creepies out from their stack of apartments – froze and turned his upper body towards her. Absently, MB noticed that his eyes were a warm chocolate brown.

"Well, aren't you gorgeous," he cooed. Cooed. Actually cooed; like a mother to a newborn baby. "Oh! You're wearing cowboy boots, actual cowboy boots. That's so cute, with your frilly little dress and your little boots."

And that…was unexpected? Yes, unexpected.

Ever since coming to the city five years ago, after winning a scholarship for college here in the city, MB had been subject to a litany of farmgirl jokes with less than benign undertones. It was apparently the New York standard welcoming. It had been quite the shock to a girl who had only known warm, drawling greetings and men who still tipped their hats to women passing them by. But daddy hadn't raised her a quitter, so she kept on.

And just for not being a right jerk, she gave her neighbour her best 'apple pie and lemonade' smile, the kind that her daddy used to say made the sun come up to shine for her. Immediately he slapped his hands to his cheeks and cooed at her again. She swore she heard him sigh out an, 'aww baby girl.'

"Imma let you in," she said, feeling better about the day. Her neighbour was a little too eccentric to not be on something – acid or maybe just some street styled happy pill – but he seemed relatively harmless and it had been a while since someone appreciated her lucky boots. Fashionable back home, hillbilly here in the big city.

"You're my hero, baby girl," he sung with a hand pressed to his temple, a parody of a damsel in distress. "If you ever need anyone killed, let me know okay? On the house, just for you," he said the moment the gate swung open, skipping inside with a happy little jig in each step – looking back only to blow her a quick air kiss and an exaggerated wink.

Yes, he was definitely on something.

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MB had come to the city with a dream. A dream that she held on to despite everything. MB would take the opportunity her fancy scholarship and her fancy school had given her and milk it for all it was worth. MB's dream was simple, graduate with her double degree in business and accounting and open a small café. Most people thought it was a waste, to throw five years away on something as simple as coffee and croissants.

Why not put that piece of paper to use in some tiny, crammed cubicle in an office where you're one in one hundred faceless paper-pushers? MB knew she was being smart about this. Food – cooking and baking – had always been her passion, given to her by her mama as her own mama before her had. MB also knew that fifty percent of small businesses fail within the first year and ninety-five percent in the first five – they all made the same mistakes. Her degree was important in teaching her how to avoid those mistakes.

Besides, this was America; coffee and food were two commodities that would never stop selling. Owning her own business would mean flexible hours and the privilege of choosing her own salary and daddy always did say, it's the girl who works smart and hard that wins in the end.

Despite all that, school really did make her want to run back to her rolling green hills, her mama's cooking and her daddy's words of wisdom. Or, in the very least, burn all her text books and throw her old, faithful laptop out of a window.

In times of great stress, MB did what she did best: bake. Today it would be simple apple crumble - to go with the vanilla bean ice cream that sat within her freezer, begging to be eaten – because she was feeling a touch homesick and according to the emails her mother had sent, her parents had once again lost their shared mobile phone once more and she was therefore unable to hear their voices.

But the atmosphere of the kitchen, with its warmth and sweet scent only served to further highlight the missing presence of someone standing beside her, helping to slice up apple pieces. Still, MB at the end was very pleased by the outcome of her venture. The apple crumble was a perfect, toasted gold on top and the apple pieces were neither too crispy nor gelatine-like.

Fishing out her phone, MB snapped a shot of her creation with an aesthetic helping of ice-cream and on her prettiest round, serving plate. Quickly it was posted on Instagram with the tagline: for the small-town boys and girls missing home. MB had started the account as a long term marketing event to get customers for her future business and now had a generous number of followers. She could only hope they also pay for her creations, rather than just look at them, when the time came.

Watching the steam rise off of the apple crumble, a flight of fancy struck her and MB was quickly cutting a large portion of out and placing it within one of her many disposable containers without thinking too much about it. Plucking a permanent marker off her desk she wrote atop the container in her looping, cursive scrawl.

Tastes best with vanilla ice-cream.

Your saviour.

Not giving herself anytime to think about what the consequences of her actions might be, MB opened up her door and headed down to the only other apartment on that floor, warm parcel in her hands. Arriving at the dingy door, she took a moment to take in its cracked wood and fast peeling paint. 'Wham' was once again playing loud and she could hear the energetic tenor of a man's voice singing, almost screaming, alongside it.

Her neighbour's antics made her want to laugh and she wondered if it would be okay to maybe slip in some pamphlets about some help circles for drug addicts or maybe not. She didn't want to come off as self-righteous and wasn't really any of her business. Still, the least she could do was give him something to eat that wasn't ninety percent processed junk.

MB gave the doorbell a push but quickly realised the thing was broken and sighed. The entire apartment block was pretty run down and all the residents that she had met so far were rather eccentric. Each small apartment was filled with drug dealers, single parents with screaming, neglected children that made MB's heart ache and her – the broke student whose left over money went into a savings account, until the day she could afford to buy a small starter shop.

The real-estate agent had showed her the apartment with a tight grimace, took one look at MB in her pale yellow sundress, with white lace edging, her bright red boots, her bouncing blonde ringlets and open blue eyes and practically begged her to consider raising her budget and find somewhere nicer.

MB didn't. But she had made the place her own. She'd scrubbed the place clean and ripped out the vinyl that had been stained with grease, what looked like blood and replaced it with cheap cream carpet. Her next pay check she had splurged and bought cans of matching cream coloured paint. MB had spent two weeks stripping the paint on her doors and painting them over with a fresh colour that brought her dreary brick walls to life. Over the next years she'd taken time to make the apartment hers – it would never be home but it was better than the damp, dark place that she spent her first night in.

She wondered, as she held her hand in a loose fist to knock on the door, if her kooky neighbour had also personalised his apartment, or was he, like most of the other residents, resigned to their surroundings?

Well, she wouldn't find out today. To her relief and disappointment, her knocks went unheard or simply ignored and his singing went on undisturbed. With a sigh she placed her package down at his doorstep and retreated to her apartment.

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It was three days later, while she was in the middle of watching her latest addiction on Netflix instead of working on her latest assignment, that a knock on her door echoed through her small abode. No one ever used her door bell, assuming it wouldn't work since apparently, none of the other apartments had bothered to fix theirs – MB had in fact fixed hers and no one had yet to ring it.

Grudgingly, she pressed pause and unwrapped herself from her blankets to go and open the door. Wearily she unlocked it, but kept the heavy duty chain across, to peep outside and see who was knocking on her door at what was essentially the middle of the night.

"Fi-na-lly!" Her neighbour groaned, his short hair a mess and a large purple bruise bloomed across the side of his face. "Do you know how many doors I had to knock on to find you? Twenty-two! This door was literally the last one I tried. But hey, look at that baby doll, we're neighbours!" He finished with a happy little clap.

She wondered if she should be irritated by the fact that they'd lived along-side each other for three years and he hadn't so much as remembered seeing her about the place, after all, there were only two apartments on the floor – but decided she didn't have the right considering they'd never spoken to each other and after three years she herself, was still unsure about his name.

MB still hadn't unlatched the chain but was quick to do so when she realised that her mostly harmless neighbour was now suddenly attempting to squish what looked to be a multitude of white bags through the small space.

"I brought gifts!" He said pushing the warm bags into her now exposed arms. "The good, edible kind too."

MB blinked down at what looked to be the entire menu of the only Mexican place on the street. Her brow furrowed the tiniest bit, she felt really bad, especially as she wouldn't be able to eat it all.

"What's wrong?" His voice cut through her thoughts, the tone of which was suddenly edged with steel (defensive, she'd later realise), "You don't like food?"

Tucking a strand of blonde behind her ear, MB nervously rocked back onto her heels. "Uh, no, I love food actually but I can't really eat this, y'know unless you want me to die."

His face went blank, which she distantly thought was pretty cute for an eccentric possible drug dealer, so she decided to explain. "I'm allergic to peppers and well, not to be stereotypical but Mexicans are pretty well known for adding peppers wherever they can."

His entire face brightened before it morphed into an expression of pure pity – it would have been comical had he not looked so sincere. "Baby girl," he started, eyes alight with sympathy, "a life without Mexican food." Here he shook his head.

She shrugged. "It's not so bad. I mean Greek food is pretty good."

"It's just not the same."

If it could inspire such emotion in him, she guessed it must be true. "But why bring me food?" She asked, not really understanding his sudden need to interact with her.

While it was true she had gifted him first, he didn't really seem like the type to go around giving people food. But then again, here he was and he had already offered to kill someone for her, just for letting him into his own apartment block. He seemed to go above and beyond for someone at the hint of kindness towards him – that in itself made something thrum within her. Empathy? The people of the big city could be cold, especially in neighbourhoods like theirs. But MB had her parents calls and video chats to keeps her strong, she wondered if this man had anyone.

In her internal musing, her neighbour had begun what sounded like a hymn dedicated to the intricacies of the holy relic that was the chimichanga but considering the little amount of love poured into take-away food, she doubted he'd ever had a truly good one. Maybe she'd make him one? She'd never attempted to before, mostly because of her allergies. She had an epi-pen around somewhere, didn't she?

And oddly enough, that reminded her to ask, cutting effectively into his epic about the glories of the soft-shelled taco as opposed to the other varieties. "Hey, please don't be offended…but what exactly is your name?"

Her neighbour took it without a flinch, in fact bobbing on the spot excitedly. "None taken baby doll, I'm Wade. Wade Wilson! What's your name, bestie?"

Her head swam. Bestie?

"Uh, MB," she heard herself mutter absently.

Wade clapped. "Oooh, letters! Mary Bethany, Mabel Brooke? How about Molly Bella! Anyway bestie, we should have a sleepover, I bought popcorn too."

MB blinked, unbalanced. What?

What?