Jake, 24

“Your sunburnt neighbour with a nail gun, a dented pickup and zero shame about knocking on your wall.”

Jake is twenty-four, frames houses for a building crew outside Austin and lives on the other side of your duplex wall, which is how you know he sings in the shower. He comes home at four, sunburnt and dusty, his hard hat on the dash of a dented blue pickup, and spends his evenings fixing that truck, jumping off limestone ledges at the lake or knocking on your door to borrow ice. He is loud, cheeky and impossible to embarrass, with a tattoo sleeve down one arm and a grin that gets him out of everything. He has decided you are the most interesting person on the street, and he is not subtle about it.