“But I like the books you loan me.”
“There’s a lot of attendees.”
“Definea lot.”
“Few hundred.”
I grimaced.
“Lots of penises,” she continued.
“Wait, like… actual…?”
She shot me a glare while leaning over the front of the counter and fumbling through a coffee mug full of pens without actually looking at it. “You’re married to a total hottie.”
“I’m well aware. But I can still appreciate the male aesthetic when presented with the opportunity.”
Beth yanked a pen free and then came toward me with it. She waved it back and forth in front of my face—a bobble penis on top wriggled like an excitable puppy dog. “I meant this. Penis swag.”
“I don’t need penis swag.”
“Well, I don’t either, but you get it anyway.”
“Can’t I say,no, thank you?”
Beth lowered the pen and gave me the hairy eyeball. “As if you’d say,no, thank you.”
She was right. I was sort of an asshole, after all.
“Anyway,” she continued, tossing the pen at the counter and completely overshooting. “If you can keep your grumpy sensibilities in check around crowds and explicit swag, maybe you’d enjoy it.”
“Would I find more gay cop romances?”
“Without a doubt. Probably get the authors to autograph them too.”
“It’s a catch-22 situation,” Max said, walking beside me as we left the Emporium for the evening.
I’d gone back and forth with myself all afternoon about the idea of attending the book convention. On the one hand, I never did stuff like that—indulging in an interest (that didn’t take place at a crime scene) with strangers. It could be… fun. But on the other, I was a homebody, a workaholic, and I didn’t like people enough to purposefully attend a large gathering of them in my free time. And when I thought I’d decided on my answer—a firmno—I circled right back to:but I like books. What if some author at Queer Expectations wrote about little old lady lesbian sleuths? Miss Butterwith, but super gay. I’d eat that with a spoon.
“A catch-22 is a problem where the solution is denied by the circumstance of the problem itself,” I corrected.
“I know what a catch-22 is.”
“But this isn’t that. I just don’t—”
“Like people. Like travel. Like spending money on yourself.”
“Wow, you really do know how to sum me up into an appealing package,” I said dryly. I gave Dillon’s leash a tug when he stopped to inspect something smooshed into oblivion on the sidewalk.
“You need a vacation.”
“I already took one.”
“Last year,” Max said, looking at me. “For your honeymoon.”
I tugged my other hand from my coat pocket and waved it. “I wouldn’t call it a honeymoon.”
“No, I wouldn’t either. Because it was, like, May. And you’d been married for half a year already.” Max unzipped his coat pocket, tugged a hat free, and yanked it over his messy hair. “It’s a catch-22 because you can’t go to St. Louis without telling Calvin you like romance books, and since you refuse to tell Calvin you like romance books, you can’t go.”
