Like a good neighbor- Nolan is there!
The first time it happened, you assumed it was just what neighbors did.
You'd been wrestling with your garbage cans — the big ones, the kind with wheels that never actually worked the way they were supposed to — trying to get them to the curb before the truck came, when a pair of hands appeared from nowhere. They simply lifted both of them, one in each fist, and carried them to the street like they weighed nothing.
Your neighbor — the one from the brick colonial across the street, the one you'd waved at twice and spoken to exactly zero times — stood in your driveway in a flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up, looking at you with an expression that was almost aggressively neutral.
"Truck comes at seven," he said. "You were going to miss it."
"I — thank you, I had it—"
"You didn't." He looked at the cans, then back at you. "Nolan Grayson."
"I know," you said, and then immediately felt strange about it. "I mean — we've waved. I'm—" You told him your name.
He nodded, once, like he was filing it away somewhere.
Then he went back across the street and that was that.
The second time, two weeks later, you were on a step stool in your front doorway trying to change the overhead light bulb — the tall one, the annoying one, the one you needed three extra inches of height to reach properly — when you heard footsteps on your porch.
You squawked and grabbed the doorframe, "what—"
Nolan Grayson was standing at the bottom of your porch steps with a reusable grocery bag in one hand, looking up at you with the same unreadable expression he'd had at the garbage cans. He had, apparently, materialized from nowhere. You were beginning to think this was just something he did.
"I wasn't going to fall," you mumbled sheepishly. "I was fine."
"The stool was wobbling."
He came up the steps, held out his hand, and waited. You stared at him. He continued to wait, patient as geology. You sighed and put the bulb in his hand.
He reached up — easily, without any kind of stool — and replaced it in about four seconds.
"The fixture is loose," he stated flatly, examining it briefly. "I can fix that."
"It'll bother me if I don't."
You opened your mouth, before thinking better of it.
He fixed the light fixture with ease. It took him ten minutes and he used tools he produced from his car with the quiet efficiency of someone who did not believe in being unprepared. When he was done he packed up, came back to the porch, and looked at you.
"Thank you," you offered softly. "Really. Can I — do you want coffee or something, I have—"
"I have to get back." He paused at the top of the steps. "But another time."
Even though it was such a small thing to say, you thought about it for the rest of the day.
The third time you stopped being surprised and started being something else entirely.
The faucet under your kitchen sink had been dripping for a week. Not badly — just enough to be audible in the quiet of the house, a slow metronomic drip that you'd been meaning to call someone about and hadn't gotten around to. You'd left your front door open on a Saturday morning while you moved boxes from your car, and when you came inside Nolan Grayson was crouched under your kitchen sink.
You stood very still in your own doorway.
"The washer was worn through," he said, without looking up. "I could hear it from outside."
You set your box down slowly. "Mr. Grayson. You're in my house."
"The door was open." He emerged from under the sink, standing to his full height in your kitchen, and looked at you without any apparent awareness that this was unusual behavior. He had a wrench. He had, apparently, brought his own wrench. "It's fixed. You should have called someone sooner — that kind of drip runs up the water bill."
He looked back at you. Something shifted, just slightly, in his expression — not quite a smile, but adjacent to one. An awareness that he was being evaluated and a complete absence of concern about the outcome.
"Coffee," you said finally. "You're having coffee. I'm not asking."
A pause. "Alright," he agreed firmly.
He took it black, which surprised you for no logical reason.
He sat at your kitchen table like he'd sat there before, comfortable in the space, watching you move around the kitchen with that steady, unblinking attention that you were starting to recognize as just how he looked at things he found interesting. It should have been uncomfortable. Mostly it was just warm.
"How long have you lived across the street?" you asked.
"And you've never — we've never actually talked before two months ago."
"You didn't need anything before two months ago." He said it simply, no subtext offered, and wrapped both hands around his mug.
You leaned against the counter and looked at him. "Is that how it works? You only talk to people when they need something fixed?"
"That's a very lonely way to live."
Something moved across his face, there and gone, "It's a very efficient way to live."
"Mm." You picked up your own mug. "And you just — happened to notice my garbage cans. And my lightbulb. And my faucet."
"I pay attention to my surroundings."
"You pay attention to my surroundings."
He looked at you over the rim of his mug and said nothing, which was somehow a complete answer.
Your face felt warm. You looked out the window at the very normal and interesting backyard.
"Well," you started. "Thank you. For all of it. You didn't have to."
"You take your trash out in your socks," he stated flatly. "In October."
"The first morning. You came out in socks. No shoes." He set his mug down. "It was 48 degrees."
You had absolutely no response to that.
"I noticed," he said, in the same tone someone might use to report weather data, "that you do a lot of things without quite enough help."
The kitchen was very quiet.
"That's—" You laughed, a little helplessly. "That's either very sweet or very alarming, I genuinely can't tell."
"Probably both." And there it was — not a full smile, but the real version of that almost-smile, the one that changed the whole architecture of his face. It lasted about three seconds and then he picked up his mug again and it was gone. "The gutter on your east side is pulling away from the fascia."
"I'll take care of it Saturday."
"Unless you have plans Saturday."
He asked it like it was a practical question about scheduling. He was looking at you like it was something else completely.
"I don't have plans Saturday," you answered slowly.
He nodded, satisfied, and finished his coffee.
When he left he paused in your doorway — your fixed, properly lit doorway — and looked back at you with that steady, unhurried attention.
"Lock up," he stated. "The deadbolt, not just the handle."
"How do you know I only use the handle—"
He was already down the porch steps.
You locked the deadbolt. You stood in your kitchen for a moment in the quiet of your fixed-faucet house and pressed your fingers to your mouth and tried very hard not to smile.
Saturday, he arrived at eight in the morning with a ladder and fixed your gutter in forty minutes. You brought him coffee without being asked. He drank it standing in your driveway, looking up at his work with a critical eye, and then looked at you.
"The porch railing has some rot on the left post," he said.
"Nolan." You held out his empty mug. "You know, most people get to know their neighbors by introducing themselves. Maybe a wave. A casserole."
"You broke into my house to fix my faucet."
He took the mug. He was doing that not-quite-smiling thing again, the one that made it very difficult to maintain a reasonable level of composure. "There's a hardware store on fifth," he offered. "They'd have the right lumber for the post. I know the owner."
You looked at him. "Are you asking me to go to a hardware store with you."
"I'm saying I need to get the lumber anyway."
"No," he said, "it isn't."
The morning was cold and bright and your gutter was fixed and Nolan Grayson was standing in your driveway holding your coffee mug with both hands waiting for you to put your shoes on.
Actual shoes this time, you thought.
You went inside to get your coat.
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