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The bells on the door jingled and Wei stepped inside. She was in jeans and a casual T-shirt today, and her hair was purple. There was a girl with her, so small and slight that she looked like she was trying to vanish. She had a duffle bag over her shoulder.
“And this is Leo!” Wei exclaimed. “Leo, this is Hayley, who Father O’Malley was talking about.”
“Oh, of course,” Leo said. “Hi.”
“Hi,” the girl whispered.
“Well, the flat’s great,” Leo said. “And you’re welcome to stay for as long as you need. Just bang on the floor if these idiots are playing the music too loud when I’m not here.”
That won him a faint smile.
Leo had talked a lot with Kev in the past few months about how that modest little flat above the shop had saved his life when he’d first landed in Sydney, lost and alone. While Leo could have rented it out, it felt wrong. This was a case where ‘what would Jimmy do?’ was a no brainer, because Jimmy had already been doing it, hadn’t he?
Leo liked to think Jimmy would approve of his decision. More than that, he liked knowing that he was keeping Jimmy’s legacy alive. One day, he hoped to have enough local business owners on board to do something much bigger. Father O’Malley had ambitious plans for a twenty-bed shelter, and Leo wanted to do what he could to make it happen.
“If you need anything at all,” he said to Hayley, “my number’s on the fridge.”
“Thanks,” she whispered, and Wei showed her up the stairs to the flat.
Orlando climbed down from his ladder. “New tenant?”
“Yup.”
“Can this one pay rent?” There was no sharpness in Orlando’s tone.
“Probably not.”
“Okay, so you need to stop telling them they can help with stocktake in exchange for board,” Orlando said. “That last kid? We were doing stocktake for three months. Three months, Leo. There are only so many vibrators you can count. Just admit to them that you’re a soft touch and put all of us out of our misery.”
“But your misery makes me happy, Orlando.”
Orlando rolled his eyes. “Puta. I’m telling Jenny that you’re mean to me.”
Leo shrugged. “She’d approve.”
“She would,” Orlando agreed with a dreamy smile.
A glance at his watch reminded Leo that he’d need to get moving soon. He wanted to get home in time to make dinner for Tris, who was coming off a brutal ten-day run of shifts—the result of a series of swaps so that he could have the entire weekend off. Leo was planning to cook them dinner then try out his powers of seduction. Tris had been too weary to do more than shower and bitch about how tired he was, which meant it had been a long, sexless ten days. Jack and Harry were going out for the evening so they had the place to themselves. It hadn’t made any kind of sense to keep paying rent on his flat when Leo owned the terrace house, so once the renovations were complete, he and Tristan had moved back in—and so had Harry and Jack. By unspoken agreement, each couple got one evening alone on the weekend, and the others made themselves scarce. It was an arrangement that worked.
Friday night dinners with his family were a thing of the past, and Leo didn’t miss them.
“Right, I’m going home,” Leo said. “Keep an eye on that kid over there who looks like he’s about to shoplift those condoms, will you?” He never failed to be amazed at how many people tried to steal shit, even when there was an entire bowl of freebies right there on the counter.
“See you on Monday,” Orlando said. “Have a good weekend away.”
“We will,” Leo said, and hurried out of the shop.
The terrace house in Dickson Street, Newtown, had once looked like the derelict bad seed cousin to all its neighbours. Now it was pristine. The Davos and the other contractors had done an incredible job. If it had been the blackened stump in an otherwise flawless smile before, now it was the diamond tooth that outshone all the other houses in the street.
It was still a pleasant surprise every time Leo unlocked the front door and it swung open smoothly instead of sticking on the lumpy bit of floorboard, and he stepped into a hallway painted in muted sage green without a single crumbling skirting board. The best, most important thing about the terrace house, though, was that it contained Tristan, who Leo loved with his entire heart, and who loved Leo in return.
Leo poured himself a glass of wine, put on some music, and got busy assembling the fettuccine carbonara that was Tristan’s favourite dish.
Not only were Harry and Jack already out, but the kitchen was sparkling clean, even though Leo knew he’d left dishes sitting in the sink on his way to work. That was all Jack. The man hated working in a less than clean kitchen, which begged the question of how he’d ever managed to put up with Harry and Tristan in the first place. But Harry had cleaned up his act, literally, since the house had been renovated. He’d bought a handheld vacuum and everything, just for his preschool craft projects and the inordinate amount of fuzz, shredded paper and glitter they seemed to leave behind.
And Tristan…
Well, Leo thought as he stooped down to collect a flimsy scarf off the floor, knotting it loosely around the back of a chair for safekeeping, Tristan is Tristan. He had other qualities.
