Page 175 of Checking Out the Librarian

He bobbled his head. “Sure, I’ll own that. I’m kind of needy.”

“Does your boyfriend know that about you?” Her head tilted and her face lit up like she was about to laugh, mouth open, eyebrows raised, looking far too much like Ribby but sounding like Jonathan, and how was this his brain.

He felt the color hit his face. Looking at his boots did nothing to hide his cheeks.

“Eww. That is not what I meant.” And she was laughing, hard. “Got more photos?”

He snorted. “I sure do. But I’m not showing them to my stinky sister.”

“Jerk.

36

PASS THE FRUIT CRISP

“So, Mom.” Connor might not know how to start this conversation, but the kitchen was the right place to try.

Since yesterday’s conversation with Jess, he’d drafted a dozen openings in his head, even written down several and practiced them quietly in the shower. All those words vanished like a high fly ball into the sun.

He knew the thoughts had gone up and were most definitely coming down somewhere, but he had no idea which direction to start running.

It felt like, despite his preparation, everything he was about to say was going to drop five feet out of his reach.

“Here, quarter these.” His mother handed him a mixing bowl filled with fresh apricots from the orchard and pointed at the cutting board and knife on the counter before she returned to measuring oats, brown sugar, and spices into the processor.

He washed his hands and considered what to say next. “Jess said you’re all going to a new church. That’s nice.”

Wait, no, it wouldn’t be nice when people left their church because it had become oppressive and bigoted. That wasn’t actually a nice/not nice type of thing.

“Yep, we are.” His mother kept measuring spices into spoons, so he must not have sounded too weird. “Seems like a good place.” She paused to loudly whirl the oat topping together.

The apricot pits twisted easily out of the fruit. At least he knew how to do something.

“Jessica was right. We shouldn’t have been sitting there letting the pastor say those things. We didn’t agree with half of it, not even half, but we kept setting our butts in those pews and it made it look like we agreed. It’s a lot nicer to worship the Lord and leave the hating out of it.”

“That sounds good. Glad you did that. Well, uhhh,” he dropped more pieces of fruit into the bowl with the other quartered sections. “Guess I could go with you sometime.”

For the last couple years, he’d managed to avoid their old church outside of Christmas. He knew his parents had noticed, but no one had addressed it head on.

His decision had meant a lot of extra-busy Sunday mornings with the herd, some of them very cold and alone, but that wasn’t a hardship compared to worrying about whether he’d have to sit through a condemnation of his own life.

“Connor!” His mom turned to him, smiling and holding out a spoonful of crumbly oat and brown sugar topping. While he popped it in his mouth and added a half an apricot, until his cheeks puffed out with the impromptu unbaked crisp, she asked, “Have you started going to a church over in Eugene then?”

He shrugged and chewed for a moment while she waited. “Not really.”

Even though he missed the idea of church, he didn’t miss the tension of worrying if this week would be one they tried to pray away the gay. Although maybe there would be a place that didn’t preach that bullshit. Somewhere nondenominational or Unitarian? Episcopal like where Jess said they went now?

Somebody had to have a place for him, if he looked. He could ask the softball team chat if anyone went to a friendly church.

All this rumination wasn’t taking him closer to telling his mother the truth.

Take the leap.

“Jess made it sound like your new church might be more for me.” He swallowed again, trying to dislodge the lump in his throat that he knew wasn’t composed of oats and apricots, and failing. His eyes felt hot. This had been two weeks of tears like he couldn’t remember since, well, never, but he couldn’t stop now. He wouldn’t. No more lies. “For people like me.”

His mother looked like she was waiting, the spoon forgotten in the air and her head tilted as she watched him.

It was his mom, so she undoubtedly read him well enough to know he was struggling with something big. It felt like he could hear everything in the room. The brush of denim on denim, the creak of the old floor, a crow outside.