Page 26 of Five to Love Him
Leo lifted his head off our chest when we came in. His face had more color now, and his pupils were two pretty circles of black ink.
“Oh, you guys are here,” he said.
He was so cute. We almost dropped one of the bags of snacks.
“What do you want to do?” we asked while heading into the kitchen to put things away. He’d been distracted by our arrival, driving home once again that we had to move slowly.
“I, uh. Movie, right? Movie’s good. Something…a K-drama but horror. Something like that. Right?”
“We want to see something you like,” we whispered into his ear, enjoying how he shivered under our hands.
It truly seemed as if Leo hadn’t received comforting touch much. Maybe he lacked in friends. If he’d known another hive before us…but no. That would have been terrible. It was easy to give comfort for a hive, and we couldn’t stand the thought of someone else doing that for Leo. But still, the thought of him not having anyone to comfort him at all was painful.
In the photograph, the woman who had looked far too young to be called Gran had smiled brightly, their—her arm around Leo. We feared Leo had been without the comfort of touch when she had died, but that was not anything we would explore. We didn’t want the memories to bring pain, not in this moment that we shared with Leo. In this moment that was truly good.
“T-that movie with the alien on the spaceship. The evil, hungry alien, you know. The one with the seven sleepers,” Leo said. He’d grown soft in our arms. We headed back outside to the garden where mint and lemon balm grew, and upon peering into the fridge, we found a sad-looking but still usable lemon. We decided to make tea and started collecting some herbs for it and finding what we needed in the cabinets.
“That sounds great,” we said. “Tell us what to do.”
“I’ll just”—Leo cleared his throat. “Office. My laptop. I’ll go get it and, uh. Set it up.” He gestured, not minding our arms around him. “Make yourselves comfortable in the window seat. Maybe the floor. I don’t know if we’ll all fit.”
“We’ll fit. And we’re comfortable.” We dared another chaste kiss on his lips. “Will you show us the office, Leo?”
He pointed. Two steps led up from the living room—probably more of a dining room originally. From the outside, we could see where those led to, a big, window-fronted room with a large desk in the center. A glass door opened the room to a patio lined with overflowing flowerpots, matching in their mismatched nature.
“You have a green thumb,” we told Leo as we walked with him—slow but keeping close—to the back of the house.
We spotted a small room on the right off the corridor, storage, we thought. We’d found the bathroom behind the stairs. It had a connecting door that led to the kitchen, an odd design that made us wonder how old this house was. It certainly was big, much bigger than our place. We knew we’d have to move into this large space as soon as Leo allowed it and fill it with things he loved, make it a warming comfort. It would mean living among humans and truly having a reason to look over our shoulder, but we could tell this was what our gleaming one needed.
“Yeah…hey, whoa. Have you been rooting around in my garden this whole time?”
He gaped at us through the large windows, and we winked, walked off with the sprigs of mint and lemon balm we had collected.
“We’re making tea. Flowers and plants we can’t do, but anything to do with cooking, we are very, very good at. You’ll see.”
He pursed his lips. “Do you realize that this is my first time really kissing someone? I mean, I know this wasn’t like a real kiss, but the only other time I did it was during spin the bottle when I was a freshman at college. I did that once, and then the second time I chickened out.”
“Who did you kiss?” we asked, the jealousy biting, something we hadn’t been prepared for.
“This math major. They were cool. I don’t think they were into it either though. What can you do? It’s spin the bottle, you know.”
“Not a very good game,” we mumbled as we tossed the mint and lemon balm into a large saucepan along with the lemon zest and some of the stevia we had bought and brought along, just in case.
“Here. I need this,” Leo said and pulled his laptop out from under a few printouts.
We picked one of them up. “What’s this? Box of Flames?”
“Ugh. It’s Gran’s company. She made candles and monthly boxes with books and stickers, stationery, soap, lip balms, that sort of thing. I stopped all of that when she…you know. I’ll shut the company down probably. I just haven’t been able to bring myself to do it, to delete the website and everything she made. But maybe it’s time.”
We straightened, resting our hands around his waist and feeling along the gentle slope of his back, following the rise and ebb of his belly as he breathed. We could hear it in his voice, that this meant something.
“We can do that.”
“Shut Gran’s company down for me?”
We shook our heads and said, firmly, “No, we can run it for you. Or help you run it.”
He gave a wry laugh. “I didn’t ask you to do that.”
