Page 178 of Checking Out the Librarian

Silence.

“That’s me. Gay. Always have been.”

His dad looked at him and opened his mouth to speak. Connor felt like he could see words turning over inside his father’s head, reminding him of a power take-off shaft spinning and spinning without having first been hooked up to anything. All those splines rotating into a blur.

Connor waited, trying to ignore the churning in his stomach.

His mother had promised. She’d promised, and she was his mom.

Then his dad also cleared his throat. “I love you. Your mother and I both love you. We’re glad you trusted us and uh, that’s, ah, that’s all cool. Yeah, that’s cool.”

He glanced at Connor’s mom, and Connor caught her nodding at his father before she picked up her glass of water.

“Whoa, totally a spontaneous statement of love and support there. Not rehearsed at all.” Jessica wasn’t even trying to stifle her laughter. “Well done, Dad. You’ve nailed twenty-first century parenting.”

That broke through, and his dad lifted his hands and shrugged in a familiar gesture. “What was I supposed to say? Connor used to ride wearing a red sash, a plastic sword, and some of Grandma’s pins because he wanted to be one of those royal princes. This took me two minutes to think about when your mother said⁠—”

“David.”

“They know you told me, Jennifer.”

“Look at this full-naming going on here.” His sister wouldn’t keep her mouth shut.

Ribby had apparently had enough of being ignored, and he crept out from under the table to beg more openly. Connor immediately reached for his ears, but Ribby went directly to sniffing his fingers.

His dad stabbed his fork into one of the crispy flattened potatoes and shoved it in his mouth. “Connor’s gay. Sun will come up tomorrow. Herd has to eat. And maybe now someone in this house will have a date and make your mother happy. God knows it’s too much for me to do on my own.”

His glare bounced between Connor and Jessica both, then he ate another potato.

His dad was good with this, it seemed, all good, so he felt empowered to say, “I am seeing someone, by the way. Since June. It’s kind of serious.”

Clearly his mother had already told his father that, too, because he nodded and put a lot of green beans in his mouth.

“Has Connor shown either of you photos of his boyfriend?” Jess never butted out.

“Oh!” His mother looked at him eagerly. “I should have asked.”

He shot his sister the evil eye, but she totally didn’t care and didn’t even shut up. “He’s hot. Looks really young, too.”

“He’s twenty-seven already! That’s older than me.” Jonathan would love to know all that skin care had paid off.

“Jessica Marie, stop trying to cause trouble.” His father weighed in, then ate more chicken.

“Full-naming!” Connor was happy to lob the comment back at his sister.

Jess ignored that. “And I looked him up. Guess what, he used to be a figure skater.”

”I told you that.”

“Well, I looked up his competition videos.”

“Like the Olympics?” Now his mother sounded really excited and his dad looked confused.

“No, Jonathan didn’t make the cut for the Olympics in 2018, and then with the pandemic, he stopped skating to finish college. He competed mostly in the US and Canada, some Junior Worlds, a few times in Europe. He never got to a Grand Prix.”

Jessica’s expression should have warned him. “Oh, I was really hoping you would mispronounce that, Connor. Really hoping.”

He spelled the letters p-r-i-x in his head and realized what she meant a second before she added, “I wanted to hear you make it rhyme with the breakfast cereal.”