Page 16 of The HalloQueen

I couldn't help but laugh and snuggled back into his chest. The rumbling from it was hypnotic.

“You mentioned watching someone bake a cake. I don’t need popcorn, but watching a cooking show with you sounds like a wonderful way to end our night.”

It felt warm and natural to be holding him in my kitchen. It certainly didn’t feel like I introduced myself to him only twelve hours ago. I took his hand and pulled him toward my living room to curl up on the couch, stopping to give Tim a scratch behind his huge black ears. “Hi Tim, did you have a good day, baby?”

“Tim?” Thomas asked, looking at the overweight creature on one of my armchairs.

“Yeah, it seemed very fitting for him.”

“So now you have a Tim and a Tom?”

“Maybe I’m making a collection,” I smirked and lifted Tim off my black fluffy blanket before I pulled my projection screen down above my fireplace and curled up on the couch.

“A projector?” Thomas asked before sitting next to me and pulling my feet onto his lap, covering them back up with the blanket.

I shrugged, “I’m nothing if not a whore for aesthetics. I like being able to put it away when I’m not using it so I’m not just staring at a giant black box on my wall.” I pointed to my bookshelf to turn the projector on before setting it to a streaming cooking show. “This one okay?”

“Of course, Annabel, whatever you want.”

I burrowed down a bit into the couch, “so what is your favorite thing to cook?”

Thomas turned incredibly bashful, “would you believe me if I said that I don’t cook? I just like to watch other people do it. Especially French cooking. I miss French food.”

I laughed, “I can believe that. A mug of coffee is about the extent of my cooking most days. I get groceries delivered here but it’s not like I’m ever itching to be in the kitchen at the end of an insane work day. Most of my dinners include a sugary cereal and a glass of wine.”

“So what do you do to relax at the end of the day?” He rubbed my legs through my tights.

“I like to design clothes, I’d like to have my own line someday instead of just curating pieces.”

“Ah, so you leave your clothing business to come home and think about more clothes.” The way he delivered his comments so dryly was funny to me.

“I….” I looked around, “I read too.”

“Do you really?” He raised his dark brow at me, “Anything besides our dear Poe?”

I laughed “Okay, I read a lot of romance books. They’re a nice escape when I’m too fried to even watch tv.”

“That makes sense.”

“What do you like to read?” The chefs on the projector were panicking over how to turn a pickle into a dessert and I cringed at the one trying to make it into a funnel cake corndog type thing.

“I’ve read a little bit of everything. I enjoy meeting authors too and picking their brains. They have a different energy than most people do, I think it has something to do with the fact that they can create something out of nothing. I find it very intriguing.”

“There you are mentioning energy again, are you totally woo woo or something? Like crystal alters and all that?”

He lifted one shoulder, “we live in Quaker's Wharf, everyone here is a little woo woo, are we not? All the fun of Salem and none of the insane housing market?”

“I don’t know about that. Though I know we monetize it here. Everyone wants to think magic is real.”

“You don’t think it is?” He asked and chuckled when I groaned at the corn dog pickle thing falling apart as soon as it got out of the fryer.

“I don’t know,” I answered honestly, “I think there’s got to be more out there than just us, whether that’s aliens or sasquatches or gods or whatever; it would be very self-absorbed to think that all this is just for us, but I don’t know if that is actually magic or if it’s just a part of life that I don’t understand.”

“That was very deep.”

“What about you?” I asked, stress floating away the longer he rubbed on my legs and feet.

“There are definitely more than mortals here.”

---