Page 150 of Checking Out the Librarian

Connor

I love the video

I love you.

Connor

I’m in bed

I need you.

Connor

Sorry

I’m so sorry.

He couldn’t fix today.

30

PODIUM PERFORMANCES

Unless the Eugene Fast Pitch Summer Softball League awarded style points, Jonathan didn’t understand how the Swish Hitters had earned a berth against the undefeated Queers for Beers in the championship game.

However, the Queers, who should have been confidently preparing for total domination, were milling around in different stages of nerves, anger, and disbelief.

Connor was forty-five minutes late.

Lily, Hank, and Emma had arrived to spectate, but Connor, the weaver of their little friendship chain of folding canvas seats, hadn’t appeared. Or texted. Or called.

Jonathan heard someone say Connor had to be here before Trixie turned in the final batting order, or he wouldn’t be allowed to play. Everyone—and that was not hyperbole, because even Hank and Emma were texting Connor—had been trying to reach Connor.

He’d given up twenty minutes ago.

He pressed the cuff of his shirt to his mouth. He didn’t want to touch his face at the field, but also, if he didn’t press hard against his lips, he might whimper.

This morning Connor had let Jonathan know he didn’t need anything today either, and he planned on playing, so when Connor was only fifteen minutes late, Jonathan had told Trixie that Connor was fine.

Now Jonathan wasn’t sure.

Was, in fact, certain that only falling down the stairs or getting trapped under his house or having a heretofore unknown anaphylactic reaction could have made Connor this late for the championship. He was a cook who could plan his roast vegetables to finish at precisely the moment his seared salmon reached perfection. He understood timing.

Trixie didn’t share Jonathan’s certainty that Connor must be near death, because she was slamming balls off a practice tee and yelling fuck.

He paced from their folding chairs to the bleachers to the grubby water fountain, and back, while Hank stood near the parking lot, arms crossed, glowering at cars.

The villainous miscreants Lily and Emma sat next to Pawsley’s carrier chatting with a pathologically uncaring casualness. Connor was obviously injured, or worse, and they were discussing where to get the best cardamon lattes. Sociopaths.

He could drive to Connor’s house, the thing he should have done after work instead of buying poster board and making a useless sign. His car was here, Lily had Pawsley, it would be easy. He unzipped his cross-body to find his keys, which was at least doing something.

“Connor! Move it!” Hank yelled into the parking lot.

Everyone near the dugout turned.

Jonathan recognized the silhouette of his boyfriend, his backpack with the bats sticking out like lightning rods, weaving between parked cars, and had to brace a hand on the aluminum bleachers. The sun had heated the metal enough to be almost soothing, its warmth restoring the interrupted circulation in his fingers.

Even if he’d missed warmups and pissed off the team, Connor had made it. Jonathan wanted to squeeze him and then maybe stomp around behind the bleachers because they’d all been so worried, but Trixie would do enough stomping for everyone, and there was no time for squeezing.