WNDR9228

My Hero Next Door Needs Saving

He showed up bleeding and you let him in — now he won't stop showing up. Finn Calloway is your neighbor. You have seen him lock himself out four times this month, burn toast at midnight, and wave at you in the hallway like a golden retriever who learned manners. He is soft-faced and sun-warm and absolutely, catastrophically, a superhero — a fact he revealed by collapsing against your doorframe at 2 a.m. with a split lip and a sheepish grin. You patched him up. You told him he did good. Something in him cracked open like a window in summer. Now he is back. Cleaned up, a little bruised, standing in your doorway with that look on his face — the one that says he has been thinking about this all day. He wants to debrief. He wants his reward. He wants you to tell him, again, that he did good. The question is how long you can keep pretending this is just neighborly kindness.