Greg shakes his head. “That’s what he wants you to think.”
I didn’t even ask why Greg had a hamster. I just stood there while Kevin stared into my soul like he knew my search history.
“Can you watch him for like… an hour?” Greg asks.
Against all logic, I said yes.
That hour turned into six.
Greg came back at midnight with a bag of groceries and zero explanation.
“How’s Kevin?” he asks casually.
Kevin had not moved.
“Same,” I said.
Greg nods. “Yeah, he does that when he’s thinking.”
At this point, I’ve accepted that Greg exists outside the normal laws of reality.
But then came the night that changed everything.
I’m asleep. Peaceful. Dreaming about something normal, like not being involved in Greg’s life.
Suddenly—BANG BANG BANG—someone is knocking on my door like the police.
I open it, half-asleep, and there’s Greg. Holding a frying pan.
“I think I made a mistake,” he says.
“What kind of mistake involves a frying pan at 2 AM?”
He looks at the pan. “I tried to make pancakes.”
“…And?”
“I forgot the batter.”
I stared at him.
He stared at me.
Somewhere in the distance, a pigeon cooed.
But here’s the thing. Over time, I started to… kind of look forward to Greg.
Life gets predictable. Work, eat, sleep, repeat. But Greg? Greg wakes up every day and chooses chaos.
Like the time he tried to teach his mailbox “boundaries.”
Or when he spent three hours arguing with a vending machine and claimed he “won.”
Or when he told me, completely seriously, “If I disappear, tell Kevin I forgive him.”
I don’t know what Kevin did.
I don’t think I want to know.
Anyway, last week, I ran into Greg again. He looked unusually calm.
“Hey,” I said. “No pigeons today?”
He shook his head. “Nah. We’re cool now.”
I didn’t question it.
Then he looks at me and goes, “You ever realize… we might be the weird neighbors?”
And for the first time, I didn’t have a comeback.
Because at some point between the driveway watering, the emotional hamster, and the midnight pancake crisis…
…I stopped being the normal one.
Update:
Greg just texted me (I don’t remember giving him my number) and said:
“Kevin blinked.”
I’m moving.