Love is Always Write Anthology Volume 8

precious to Peter."
    Hinata shook his head. The cousins were all obviously quite insane, although charmingly so. Andre snorted. Hinata looked over to find him leaning against the hood of the car, arms folded against his chest. "Do you suppose we could go eat sometime today? I haven't eaten since dinner last night and my stomach is about to crawl out of my body."
    Rufus turned his high intensity smile on Andre and lay an arm lightly over Hinata's shoulders. "Well, we can't have you wasting away to nothing, Andre. I reckon Hinata here would be lost without you, so taking care of you is really part of taking care of him, and we just went over how's I'm obligated to keep things right for him."
    The big man swept them up the neat walkway as he spoke. He unlocked the front door and ushered them into a home filled to the brim with warmth and color. Hinata longed to linger in the entryway, but Rufus swept them both into the kitchen, seating them on tall kitchen stools at the scratched wooden breakfast bar before he began hauling multiple containers from the fridge.
    "I was going to make lasagna tonight, but that takes over an hour, and I thought maybe we could save that for another night. How's about we have some sandwiches and sweet tea? I made it the old-fashioned way, just like Gram Jenkins taught me." His words tripped over each other, and his face scrunched up in an endearingly earnest expression.
    Hinata found himself smiling, his breaths coming easier than they ever did when he was in his own kitchen. "I think sandwiches would be lovely. I like iced tea. Is sweet tea like iced tea?"
    Andre chortled beside him. "I lived down south my whole life until I started working for Hinata's family. I'd surely love some real sweet tea made like my Granny used to make it."
    Rufus poured the tea, and sliced up some sandwich rolls, and then they passed around containers of meats and cheeses and vegetables as each of them piled their plates high with whatever they fancied on their sandwiches. Hinata couldn't stop smiling. He'd never had so much fun nor laughed so much at a meal in his entire life. Afterward, they piled onto the long, slightly tattered couch in the living room to watch what Rufus assured them was a "must see" movie. The antics of the carrier pigeons and their friends were delightful, but Hinata's sleeplessness the previous night and then his emotional day of searching first all over campus for clues as to Peter's whereabouts, and then through two of the local hospitals before finally finding Peter caught up with him before the dramatic climax.
    As the final credits rolled, he woke to find Rufus lifting him from the couch. "No, I insist y'all stay the night. I'll put him in Peter's room, and you can take Tater's as they share an adjoining bath. That ways I figure you can leave the doors to the lavatory open, and if he wakes up you'll hear him."
    Hinata rolled his head to the side. "Mmmm. I'm awake, I can walk."
    Rufus laughed down at him. "Goose. You're as bad as baby Cee, telling everybody how growed she is right as she's having us haul her outta some scrape or another."
    Hinata opened his mouth to protest, only to gasp as Rufus dropped him. He landed with a soft plonk on top of a wide, high bed covered in a creamy colored quilt made up of hundreds of tiny squares in various shades of white, cream, eggshell and ecru. Hinata ran a hand over the quilt's amazingly textured surface. He couldn't believe the detail present in the bedcover.
    "I– oh, is this Peter's room? Is that what you said?" His fingers ran over the surface of the quilt over and over again.
    Rufus nodded. "Yep. And you gotta stay. If'n Peter or Tater finds out I let you go home this late they'll both skin me alive."
    Hinata yawned. The bed gave beneath him, a perfect blend of firmness and comfortable lushness. "I am very tired. And if I go home I'll sleep enough in the car to have trouble sleeping in once I get home." He yawned again, harder and longer.
    Rufus gestured to the door across the room. "That there is the bathroom. Your man Andre will be right through there if you need anything, Butterfly." He smiled, somehow sly and shy and sweet all at once, and Hinata was unable to be angry about the silly nickname.
    "I, awwwwwwwhhhh, I um. Okay. I'll see you in the morning."
    Then his head was lying on a pillow that seemed to be made especially for him. Hinata giggled. "I feel like Goldilocks."
    Rufus laughed. "I can see that. You found the bed that's