by Jae
They faced each other in the otherwise empty hall.
“So…” they said at the same time and then smiled at each other.
“Want to have the bathroom first?” Leo asked.
“Yes. Thanks. I’ll hurry. You must be pretty exhausted too.”
“Kind of.” She was, but at the same time, she knew she was too wired to sleep.
They took turns showering, and when Leo stepped out of the bathroom, Holly was already snuggled into bed. God, I could get used to seeing that every night. Her steps faltered. Whoa! Every night? Don’t put the cart before the horse.
Holly lifted the edge of the covers up for her, and Leo slipped into bed beside her. Drawn in by Holly’s warmth, she moved closer and wrapped one arm around her. “Is this okay?”
“Very.” Holly put one arm around her too.
Their bodies came together in the middle of the bed, Leo’s face snuggled into the crook of Holly’s shoulder and her leg across Holly’s thighs.
They both let out a hum and then a chuckle.
“Does the Asexual Headquarters award you a toaster oven if you convert a certain quota of women into cuddle bugs?” Leo asked without lifting her head from its comfy space. “Because I’ve got to tell you, you’re well on your way with me.”
The warm body beneath hers shook as Holly laughed. “If they do, I’m nowhere near the quota. You are my first. Converted cuddle bug, I mean.”
Now Leo lifted her head to stare at her. “Really?”
“Yeah. With my other partners, it was more them trying to convert me.” Holly’s voice vibrated as if she was struggling to hold back a sigh.
Leo slid up in bed a little, dipped her head down, and whispered against Holly’s lips, “Fools.” Goddamn fools. She gave her a soft kiss.
Holly slid her fingers into Leo’s hair and returned the kiss. At first, it was just a brush of their lips against each other—a simple, almost chaste contact, yet it felt as if Leo was finally coming home.
Then Holly tentatively opened her mouth and touched her tongue to Leo’s bottom lip.
Oh Jesus. Pleasure surged along Leo’s nerves. She parted her own lips and eased her tongue forward to caress Holly’s with gentle, almost careful strokes.
After a moment, Holly melted against her.
Leo angled her head so she could explore even more of her. God, silk and fire. Heat twisted low in her belly. Holly’s fingers against her scalp and the glide of her tongue against Leo’s felt so incredible that she couldn’t help moaning.
Holly went still against her.
Dazed, Leo broke the kiss and blinked down at her.
Holly looked away. “Sorry, I…”
“Hey.” She caressed Holly’s face with her fingertips until she made eye contact. “It was a kiss. A very nice one, but nothing more. Just because it didn’t leave me, um, unaffected doesn’t mean I’m up for anything more. Even sexual people don’t want to be sexual all the time. You can relax.” She smiled. “Really.”
Holly brought her own hands up to Leo’s face too and brushed strands of hair behind her ears, all the while looking into her eyes. “Okay,” she whispered and pulled her back down for another kiss.
Again, Holly was the one to deepen the kiss, and Leo kept pace with her, grateful that they weren’t going too fast. This slow, unhurried exploration was exactly what she needed right now.
When they pulled back several minutes later, Leo was breathless—not so much because of what they had shared physically, but because of the emotions it evoked. Her gaze clung to the blue of Holly’s eyes, which were watching her as if she were hypnotized. She gently caressed Holly’s cheek with the back of her fingers, then turned her hand around and cupped her cheek in her open palm. “Good night.”
It wasn’t that she was tired, but she wanted to signal Holly that she wasn’t waiting for anything else to happen tonight.
Holly leaned her face into Leo’s touch. Her eyes fluttered shut before blinking open again. A slow smile tugged on her lips as if she had received Leo’s message. “Good night,” she whispered, sounding a little out of breath too.
So she hadn’t been entirely unaffected by their kiss either, even though it might not have been the same effect that she had experienced. The thought made Leo grin. She reached across Holly to flick off the lamp on the bedside table and then turned on her side.
Immediately, Holly spooned up against her back and fit her body around Leo’s.
With a contented hum, Leo pulled Holly’s arm more tightly around herself, flattened their palms against her upper chest with her hand covering Holly’s, and closed her eyes. Even if she might not be able to sleep, she would be happy to spend the night like this.
Holly woke with a start. Her eyes fluttered open. It was still pitch-dark in the room, which meant dawn hadn’t broken and she could cuddle up to Leo and go back to sleep.
Drowsily, she reached out, expecting to find warm skin, but encountered only cold sheets instead.
What the…? She sat up. Had Leo gotten up to use the bathroom? “Leo?” she called out quietly so as not to disturb Sharon, who slept next door.
No answer came from the bathroom, and no band of light seeped in from under the door.
A prickle of worry ran down her spine. She shook off the lingering effects of sleep and climbed out of bed to search for her missing bedmate.
The dormer window was closed, so clearly, Leo hadn’t climbed out onto the roof.
In her pajamas, she tiptoed downstairs, not bothering to turn on a light so she wouldn’t wake Sharon.
A glimmer of light falling into the hall from the kitchen guided her. She paused in the doorway to let her eyes adjust to the sudden brightness. Once they did, she could make out Leo sitting at the breakfast bar, a glass of milk and a notepad in front of her.
Was she working on a new song? Holly watched her without announcing her presence, not wanting to interrupt in case Leo really was composing—or maybe she just enjoyed watching her while Leo felt unobserved.
Leo sat with one of her long legs up, her bare foot half-tucked beneath her on the seat. Her tank top revealed plenty of her smooth skin. She fiddled with a pen, every now and then reaching up with her other hand to tuck a strand of her honey-blonde hair behind her ear.
So beautiful. Holly loved how strength and vulnerability combined in her features and her body.
Whatever Leo was working on, it wasn’t going too well. Crumpled-up pages surrounded her, and the top sheet of the notepad was empty except for a ring of condensation from the glass of milk.
Before Holly could decide whether to announce herself or to let her be, Leo looked up, as if sensing her gaze. Her tense features relaxed into a smile. “Hey. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“You didn’t,” Holly said. “I just…” Couldn’t sleep without you? “I woke up, and you weren’t there. Are you okay?”
“Yeah. Just couldn’t sleep, so I thought I might as well get up and work on the eulogy.”
Holly crossed the kitchen and climbed onto a stool next to her. “How is it going?”
Leo sighed. “Not good. You’re supposed to come up with something inspiring and uplifting, right?”
“Well, that’s what Zack tried to do for my father’s eulogy.”
“Everything I’ve written so far,” Leo indicated the ripped-out sheets of paper strewn around her, “was about as uplifting as bankruptcy or flatulence. Completely lame. I might have written Grammy-winning song lyrics, but I can’t write this.” She dropped her pen on the empty notepad.
Holly slid her stool closer and reached up to massage Leo’s shoulders. The muscles felt like rocks under her hands.
Groaning, Leo leaned into the touch, and Holly would have bet money that her eyes were fluttering closed. After a while, the tension in her shoulders eased a little, and she turned around to face
Holly. “Thank you.” She took Holly’s hands and pressed a kiss to each one.
“I know it’s hard,” Holly said quietly. “Especially knowing you’ll have to read it in front of the whole town.”
Leo shook her head. “That’s not it. I’m used to having an audience. I would gladly get up in front of a thousand people if I had anything to say.”
Holly looked from the long, slender fingers that still held hers up to Leo’s eyes. “How did you do it when you wrote ‘Odd One Out’?”
“I don’t know.” Leo shrugged. “I just…did it. I just let everything I felt about my childhood pour out onto the paper.”
“Then maybe that’s what you should do with the eulogy. Don’t think about it too much. Just speak from the heart. But not now. You need to get some sleep first.” She slid off the stool and pulled Leo up too.
Hand in hand, they climbed the stairs, stopped in front of Sharon’s door, and peeked in on her. It felt strangely as if they were a married couple checking on their kids.
That thought made Holly chuckle, and she quickly closed the door so Sharon wouldn’t hear her.
“What is it?” Leo asked.
“Nothing.” It had been a completely crazy thought, especially since they hadn’t talked about the future at all. She definitely needed to get some sleep too. But first she wanted to hold Leo and maybe give her a head rub until she fell asleep.
Chapter 19
After spending every minute of the past two days with Leo, it felt weird to leave her behind on Sunday, but Holly’s mother would have killed her if she hadn’t shown up for dinner with the family. None of them had missed a Sunday since their father had died.
She had pondered asking her mother if she could bring two guests. No one would have batted an eye since they often had friends join them, but Sharon didn’t feel up to the lively family setting, and Leo didn’t want to leave her mother.
When Holly saw what was for dinner, she was glad she had come.
Zack barely waited until everyone was sitting at the table before he pounced on the ham balls. He gobbled one down almost straight from the pan. “Oh shit. That’s hot,” he mumbled around a mouthful but still reached for a second.
“Serves you right,” their mother said. “Let them cool down a little.”
Holly heaped scalloped potatoes on her plate and took the bowl of carrots her sister-in-law handed her.
“How are Sharon and Leontyne doing?” her mother asked from the head of the table.
“They’re hanging in there, but tomorrow is going to be tough.”
Her mother stared right through the bowls on the table, as if remembering a day five years in the past. “Once the funeral is over, it’s going to get better. At least it’s sinking in, and then you can really start to grieve. We’re all going to be there to show our support, right?”
Zack and Ethan and their wives nodded.
“It’s nice of you to keep looking after Sharon,” Lisa said to Holly, who paused with her fork halfway to her mouth.
Damn. She hadn’t told her family about her and Leo yet, so apparently, her sister-in-law now assumed she was over at the Blakes’ because she’d been Gil’s nurse. Holly hesitated. Should she really tell them now? Or would it be better to wait?
Wait for what? For the funeral to be over…or for either of you to fuck up and ruin what you have? She put her fork down. You can’t keep thinking like that. If she wanted their relationship to work, she had to believe in it—starting right now.
“I’m not over there as a nurse,” she said loudly so she would be heard over the background noise of conversation, cutlery on plates, and Noah pretending the carrot on his fork was a tractor. “Leo and I… We’re together. As in, a couple.”
Zack took another ham ball and grinned at her. “Does that mean we get to fly on her private jet and stay on some Caribbean island for your wedding?”
“She doesn’t own a private jet,” Holly said, choosing to ignore the other part of his question.
“Oh, honey!” Her mother jumped up, hurried to Holly’s end of the table, and hugged her. “That’s wonderful news!”
Holly sank into her mother’s warm embrace, aware how lucky she was to have a family who took this as good news. “Thank you. And thanks for talking me into giving the long-distance thing a chance.”
Her nieces and nephews rushed her for a hug too, even though most of them were too young to really understand what was going on. But Holly was happy to accept their hugs anyway. She ignored the fact that some of their hands were sticky from the brown-sugar glaze on the ham balls.
“I thought you dumped her?” Ethan said when everyone had settled back down.
Holly stared at him. How the heck did he know that? Sometimes, the very effective Fair Oaks rumor mill amazed her. “Who said I did?”
“Leo.”
“Leo?” Holly echoed. “When was that?”
“Thursday, I think. She was crying into her beer at Johnny’s.”
Holly’s stomach plummeted. “Crying?”
“Not literally. More like sulking.” Ethan shrugged. “But she said it wasn’t because…” He flicked his gaze to the other members of the family. “Because of you being…um, unique. She said that wasn’t a problem for her. Cool, hmm?”
Their mother frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean? Of course your sister is unique. Why would that be a problem for Leontyne?”
Holly glared at her brother. Great. Now he had gotten her in trouble. Maybe she finally needed to have that conversation with her mother. “There is no problem, Mom. I’ll explain it later.” Coming out to her entire family in one big swoop was a bit much for her, especially with the kids right there, listening in.
She spent the rest of dinner picking at her food. Normally, she loved ham balls as much as everyone else in her family, but suddenly, every bite sat in her stomach like lumps of chalk—and tasted about the same.
Her mother eyed her the entire time but didn’t say anything until Zack, Ethan, and their families had said their goodbyes.
Holly rinsed the last of the dishes while her mother packed leftovers for her to take to Sharon and Leo.
“So,” her mother said as she clicked the last container shut, “what was Ethan talking about earlier?”
Holly closed the dishwasher, leaned against it, and wiped her damp palms on her shorts. Why was this so hard? She wasn’t a teenager anymore, and even if she were, her mother would hardly kick her out of the house for not sleeping with someone. The thought made her giggle almost hysterically.
Her mother eyed her. “It’s nothing bad, is it?”
“No. It’s not,” she said firmly. “It’s just something about me that I want you to know.”
Her mom steered her over to the breakfast nook and had her take a seat. “What is it? Is this the secret that you never talked about? And don’t bother saying you’re not keeping secrets. I know there’s something you keep to yourself.”
“It’s not exactly a secret, but…yeah. I’m not ashamed of it. It’s just unusual and hard to understand.” Holly gripped the small table between them with both hands and looked her mother in the eyes. “Mom, I’m asexual.”
Somehow, it didn’t have the same oomph as Mom, I’m gay, she thought wryly—and it didn’t get the same reaction.
Her mother furrowed her brow until she looked like one of the bassets she treated. “What do you mean?”
Holly took a deep breath. “It means that I’m not attracted to people. Not sexually, at least.”
“Not attracted to people?” Her mother’s eyes widened. “You don’t expect me to believe that you’re one of the people they showed on TV? The ones who are attracted to their rubber plants or something.”
“What?” A startled laugh escaped her. “No, Mom. That’s not what it means. I’m not attracted to anyone…or anything. I never h
ave been.”
“But…but…I don’t understand. You’ve been with Dana.”
“Yes, but…” Holly cleared her throat. Talking about this with her mother was awkward. “I never experienced a strong desire to sleep with her.”
Her mother nibbled her lip. “Have you seen a doctor? Maybe there’s something wrong with your hormones.”
Holly sighed. She should have expected a medical explanation from her mother, the vet. “No, Mom. My hormones are fine.”
“And you’re sure it wasn’t just Dana who couldn’t…um, who wasn’t right for you?”
Holly shook her head. “I’ve been with other people, and it was the same. It’s not them. It’s me. This is my sexual orientation, just like being straight is yours.”
The lines on her mother’s forehead deepened. “I thought you were a lesbian?”
“I am,” Holly said. “At least I still identify that way. Being a lesbian isn’t only about sex. It’s also about who you fall in love with…about who you want to date and kiss and build a life with. I think Leo is absolutely beautiful. I could stare at her forever, and I love holding her and kissing her, but that doesn’t make me want to…um, get horizontal with her.”
“Then it’s more like a friendship?”
“No, Mom. What Leo and I have isn’t platonic. There’s so much more to a relationship that makes it different from a friendship, not only sex. Just because I’m not eager to sleep with her doesn’t mean that I don’t love her.” She pressed both hands to her mouth. Had she really just said that, and…had she meant it? She breathed in and out deeply. Yes, she admitted to herself. They had only been together for a very short time, but that didn’t stop the feelings from being there—or from being real.
A careful smile replaced her mother’s frown. “You do?”
Her heart thudded in her throat, so Holly couldn’t speak. She just nodded.
“Does Leontyne know?” her mother asked.
Holly shook her head. “I only now admitted it to myself.”
“That you’re…what did you call it…asexual?”