Page 50 of Strays
Jo catches me looking at it. “They’ll be blooming by summer,” she says with a big smile.
The real estate agent is already inside. I don’t think Jo told her we aren’t a traditional family, because her expression falters when she sees the three of us. Her face flushes, her gaze flicks over each of us, lingering a little too long.
Yeah, I know that look.
I’ve been with enough human women to recognize it. For all their talk about us being less rational or more animal, plenty of them were drawn to exactly that: the size, the strength, the idea of a barely contained aegis.
I glance at my brothers. Shane’s jaw ticks, and Jay’s brow tightens. They’ve picked up on the agent’s mood too.
Jo clears her throat, snapping the agent out of it. By the time we’re inside, she has her game face on, smiling, bubbly, dumping information about the house on us: square footage, flooring, kitchen upgrades. I try to listen, but I’m more interested in the space itself.
The house feels even bigger than it looked from the outside. The living room has a real fireplace. Hardwood floors creak under our boots, but they’re solid. Tall windows let in the light.
I head toward the kitchen, and the agent follows, still talking. The space surprises me, it’s big enough even for aegis shoulders. There’s a pantry and a window over the sink that looks out onto the backyard.
Jo and my brothers join me, stepping through the empty space, and I can see it all over Jo’s face: she likes it.
The agent keeps talking, but I’m barely tracking her words. So I’m not ready when I feel her hand brush my arm, squeezing lightly as she speaks. Jo’s eyes snap to that hand, sharp and hard. She doesn’t say anything, but her mouth sets in a tight line.
The agent keeps messing with her hair and casually brushing her hands against my brothers’ arms as she leads us around. She actually rubs Jay’s bicep while describing the water heater, and he gives her a confused, uncomfortable look.
None of us has ever been in this kind of situation before, never had a mate, so we’re all a little frozen, unsure what to do.
Jo looks livid, her scent so sharp and sour I can taste it like lemon on my tongue. I’ve only ever seen her warm with people, but now her voice is clipped as she cuts the agent off mid-sentence. “We’d like to look around by ourselves.”
She nudges Shane forward and takes me and Jay by the hand, leading us upstairs.
The second floor has two bedrooms, one big enough for a nest, the other smaller, but still functional. The upstairs bathroom has a clawfoot tub that Jo instantly falls in love with.
The place is a blank slate, but I can already picture it. Jo studying in the small room — we can turn it into an office for her. A big nest in the main bedroom. The front porch covered in flowers come summer, just like she said.
We finish the tour and step back out onto the front lawn. The agent is lingering nearby now, keeping her distance and watching Jo warily. But Jo doesn’t even glance at her. She turns to us instead, her expression serious. “I want thishouse.”
Shane nods immediately. “Me too.”
Jay grins, eyes still on the porch. “It’s perfect.”
Yeah. I want it too.
We’re all smiling as Jo grabs Shane’s phone and pulls up the lease application online.
On the way back to her apartment, she’s so giddy talking about the place, I figure she’s completely forgotten about the agent. But as soon as we step inside and close the door, she turns to the three of us.
“Next time another woman touches you like that,” she says, voice calm but deadly, “you don’t just let her.”
That night, she doesn’t even pretend she’s going to her bed, she slips into Jay’s sleeping bag when we go to her room to sleep.
The next morning we wait nervously until the agent calls Jo to tell her our lease has been approved. We all smile watching her do a little happy dance right after hanging up the phone.
We’re kind of drunk with happiness, but the days that follow are pure mayhem. We’re racing against the clock to move in before our time off runs out, and suddenly there’s a mountain of things to do in very little time.
That same day, we hit the furniture store to buy everything we need. Before we go, Jo calls ahead and pleads our case, explains how urgent everything is, and somehow manages to get them to promise delivery within two days.
We buy the exact kind of nest I’ve been dreaming of for her: big, with a thick, soft mattress and a platform made of solid oak.
Jo spends over an hour picking out sheets, blankets, and pillows. She touches everything, brushing some fabrics against her cheek before deciding. I could watch her do that forever.
Shane likes this huge red couch with all sorts of features: cup holders, fold-out tables, built-in USB ports. But Jo vetoes it immediately, saying there’s no way that thing is going anywhere near her living room. Shane just chuckles when she calls it “more monstrous than the truck.”
