Page 152 of Checking Out the Librarian

People cheered, calling Connor Big Mac and Mac Truck and making engine sounds, presumably because no one knew how to make a hamburger sound.

In his carrier, Pawsley mewed until Jonathan bent to put his finger through the screen opening, which made it harder to watch the game. Hank and Emma were stealing all the Ribby love, and Lily was muttering profanity-filled imprecations.

There was an instant where the spectators quieted and Jonathan could sense the thump of his heart. He heard the huge cracking noise and the roars, like a soundtrack.

By the time he jumped up, Connor was heading for first base.

Emma and Lily yelled, but he held his breath.

Don’t catch it. Catching it would be bad.

Connor kept running, and two of the pin-stripers in the far away part of the field were also running, but the ball was really high. And moving really fast. Over the orange plastic hurricane fence!

“Out!” The shout popped from Jonathan’s chest, then he remembered that outs are bad, but when the ball goes out past the back of the field, it’s a home run, a wonderful, excellent, game-winning move.

Everyone was screaming and jumping, in the bleachers and in the dugout and in the spare chairs along the fence.

Lily hugged him, and on his other side Hank was lifting Emma in the air.

All the players crowded home plate to wait for Connor as he rounded third, looking like himself again. That was his happy face as he ran into the crowd of teammates with his hands stretched out, planted his foot on the white plastic pentagon-shaped thingy, and jumped into everyone’s arms.

The pinstripe team looked disgruntled and shuffled around, and Jonathan wanted to stick out his tongue and make faces at whoever had been too stupid to lock down Connor when he’d had the chance, because they’d be softball winners and have baked goods on the regular, but New Jonathan was better than that.

Watching the group photos was so much better than watching photographers circle the kiss and cry. Connor stood in the front, grinning like the man who’d stolen his tiramisu, grinning like the man who arrived with kitten supplies and announced himself as Paw Patrol. Or, not to make it all about himself, Connor was grinning like the guy who’d driven in the winning runs in a championship. Someone even soused him with a shaken-up bottle of fizzy water.

As he watched Connor laugh, the thing that had been wrapped around Jonathan as tightly as skate laces and had felt perilously close to strangling him started to loosen.

Weirdly, Connor didn’t stop laughing.

He’d stop for a few minutes, but then Danny or Trixie or Softball Becka would say something and he’d laugh loudly again, even if no one else did.

The photographer finally marshalled everyone into something that looked like a team shot, and Connor had one arm thrown around Trixie and the other pumped in a fist in the air. After a few minutes of photos and chaos, Trixie yelled, “Michelle, Jonathan! Get over here! You’re the scorekeepers and party people. Get in the next shot.”

He was shaking his head before she’d finished the command. “No, that’s fine, I don’t need to be.”

He’d rushed from work to the craft store and hadn’t changed. Linen pants and a collared shirt were not a sporty look, not even with the shirt untucked and billowing, not unless the sport was bocce. Michelle was in team colors and logos, but he would look ridiculous squeezed alongside all of them.

“You’re doing it, Jonathan.” Michelle, Trixie’s partner and also a very strong person, pulled him.

He took two reluctant steps toward Connor, wanting to slot sideways into that space and feel the weight of Connor’s arm, but also not wanting to be in the center of the group where Connor stood.

Connor’s gaze, lingering even less than his last hit, slipped across Jonathan’s face and fell to the ground. He bit his lower lip deeply enough that Jonathan could see the edges of his teeth, and his eyebrows drew sharply toward the center of his nose.

That couldn’t mean he was upset with Jonathan joining the team photo. That wouldn’t make any sense, because Connor always went out of his way to include him. Still, smiling through it was a life skill he’d learned from birth, so he diverted his trajectory and crowded next to Danny at the far edge.

He must have smiled for the photos, since no one ordered him to.

The team meal was trays of enchiladas, black beans, chips and truly excellent guacamole, but his stomach hurt as he watched Connor take food and not eat it. Once everyone had finished, they were going to do the cake, year-end toasts, and appreciation awards, all the things best endured with sugar and drinks.

Jonathan’s current task was setting up a pyramid of plastic champagne coupes and filling them with mocktails for everyone, which should preclude watching Connor drink two beers on a mostly empty stomach, but successful neurotics could multi-task.

Jonathan had learned to count people’s drinks before he was ten, and that habit was so far down the list of things he needed to change for his self-improvement that he couldn’t be assed to stop.

Connor crossed the picnic space to Jonathan’s table. “Can you take me home?”

“Now?” Connor couldn’t want to leave before the toasts and silly awards.

“After?” He sounded pleading.