The Boy Next Door
I never planned to fall for Bright.
He was just one of the boys who lived on my street. Someone I could see on an ordinary day, someone whose presence had slowly become part of my everyday life. I never imagined that one day, he would become the first boy I genuinely liked without even realizing when my feelings began.
But that was how it happened.
Our mothers were friends, and his mother owned a shop beside our house. Whenever we needed to buy something, we would go there.
To anyone else, it was just an ordinary errand.
To me, it was an opportunity.
An opportunity to see him.
I loved going to that shop, and if anyone had asked me why, I probably would have pretended it was because we needed something. I wasn’t about to let anyone discover my little secret, especially not my sister, who seemed convinced she already knew.
She kept saying she knew I liked Bright.
Of course, I tried to hide it.
I wasn’t ready to admit it, even to myself.
But Bright had a way of making that difficult.
Whenever he stood with his friends and I happened to walk past, they would start calling me. Sometimes, when I answered, they would tell me Bright was calling me.
And sometimes, he really was.
He would call my name for no apparent reason, leaving me wondering what he wanted. Half the time, it seemed as though he only wanted me to look at him.
Looking back, I find it funny that I eventually learned to disturb people because of him. At the time, though, I was simply a girl trying to understand why one particular boy had started taking up so much space in her thoughts.
Then there were the looks.
Whenever our eyes met, we would blush and look away. But somehow, our eyes would meet again.
It became a little pattern between us.
Look.
Blush.
Look away.
Look again.
I couldn’t explain what it meant, and I didn’t know what Bright was thinking. All I knew was that those small moments made me happy.
His friends seemed to notice something, too. They teased me about him, and I began to feel that perhaps I wasn’t the only person who had noticed the strange little connection between us.
For the first time, I found myself wondering whether the feelings I was trying so hard to hide might not be mine alone.
Maybe Bright liked me.
Maybe something was beginning.
I didn’t know it then, but I would spend a long time remembering those little moments.
Because Bright wasn’t just another boy from my street.
He was my first crush.
And before I knew how the story would end, I was already becoming part of it.
