Page 21 of Five to Love Him

They’d been holding each other’s hand again, maybe a sign of anxiety for them, and it made me feel bad. From all I knew, hives never intentionally hurt anyone and went out of their way to save people. Children abandoned in the wilderness to die for example. Or teenagers who fell through the ice of a not quite frozen lake maybe. That was at least a possibility.

“Sure. That’s fine.” I opened my hand, and our fingers interwove effortlessly.

ten

We had lied to Leo, and we were feeling very guilty about it, and with his hand in ours, the guilt nagged us even more. Our third was just down the street. Leo would have seen us if he had turned, much like we could see the back of his head, the light brown-blond hair with the cowlick at his left temple.

We walked a few steps back from the window, mostly because the server had caught our eye and started frowning.

Leo’s hand felt so warm. Oh, how we hated lying to him. We watched him drink his coffee and added cashew milk to our grocery list. There wasn’t much room for storage at our cozy little place, but this we always wanted there. In case he came over. In case he stayed over.

We waited until he had put his cup down before we said, “We have something to confess.”

He narrowed his eyes, but we thought we saw a softness in his features that hadn’t been there before.

“Let me guess. You were stalking me after all. You know where I live, and you’ve been watching me.”

“We know where you live because your cab dropped you there, but we haven’t been watching you. No, we are three after all. We didn’t want to overwhelm you, and the third is outside.”

We even pointed at ourself where we stood outside the window, looking inside. Leo turned his head and met our eyes.

“Wow. I mean, that’s sort of stalking.”

“We know triplets are rare, but we thought it would be fine. And we did want to give you all our attention or as much of it as you would allow. Then we got scared and changed our mind.”

He groaned, picked up his cup, and finished what was left of it. He didn’t let go of our hand, and we were relieved.

“Fine. Tell him to come back in here. Being on a date with three people is totally normal.”

We tried to parse that as we hurried inside, opening the door with more force than it needed.

“Welcome to the Moonlight Diner,” the server said, one brow raised.

We stopped at the counter. “Can you bring our other more coffee, please? He finished his. With cashew milk, please.”

“Sure thing,” the server said, that brow still raised.

To Leo, we said, “We are one. You are on a date with one. We are also three here, but fundamentally, we are one.”

Leo had turned to watch us come inside. His head turned, his cowlick was within reach, and we longed to reach out, run our fingers along the defiant hair.

“I mean, yes, I get that, but there’s three of you. Hey, you want me to scoot—”

“Yes, please.”

He let go of our hand when he moved over, but we sat next to him now, were close enough to feel his body heat, and we were fine with the trade.

“Hi,” Leo said.

“Hello. But we have been here. You don’t need to greet us. It’s what we’re trying to explain.”

The server brought Leo’s coffee. “And more iced tea too?”

We nodded. “And a slice of the cherry pie, please.”

When the server left, we watched Leo fix his coffee. We were very sure we could do that now, and we added stevia to our shopping list as well, decided on the spot that we might as well head out to the store right then.

“Thanks. For the coffee,” Leo said.