Page 179 of Checking Out the Librarian

He immediately felt himself turn red.

“Jessica!” That was his mother, but his father looked a little uncomfortable, maybe thinking about the stereotypes of skaters.

“Now Jonathan’s a librarian in Eugene,” he hastened to divert the conversation.

“Oh, that’s perfect!” Connor’s mother had one hand pressed to her heart and was leaning across the table toward him, probably as relieved to ignore Jessica as she was excited to hear more about Jonathan. “A librarian! Connor, you love books.”

His mother could hang a relationship on anything. Two gay men who liked reading, trigger the fated mates alert.

“When can we meet your Jonathan?” his mother asked.

“Yes, Connor, when can we meet your boyfriend?” Jess parroted.

In the unexpected pause while they waited for his answer, Ribby yawned loudly and far too close to Connor’s face. “Toothbrush tonight, dude. We’re doing your toothbrush.”

“Ask him down for next weekend.” Abrupt silence followed his father’s words.

Connor, his mother and sister all stared at the head of the table.

“It’s River Days. Good time for a visit.” The older man kept his gaze on his plate, lifted a fork of glistening thigh meat to his mouth, and chewed slowly. He looked almost smug when no one else spoke. “Just putting that out.”

“Yes, Connor, ask him for River Days!” His mother had caught the crazy now.

And his sister was grinning. “Yes, Connor!”

“I’ll ask. But he might—I mean, he might not really⁠—”

He started to lift his hand and realized he had no idea how to finish the sentence in a way that didn’t throw Jonathan under a bus, as if his boyfriend wouldn’t want to meet his family, or insult his family as not being good enough to meet Jonathan, so he shut up and dropped his hand.

After a breath, he continued, “He has a kitten. He’ll have to find someone to watch it.”

Lily or even Lauren would watch Pawsley in a heartbeat, but at least this way they had an out if Jonathan didn’t want to come.

“I’ll ask him.”

What a fucking plot twist. Now he had something new to worry about.

Connor and Jess offered to clean up the kitchen, but their mother told them to take a walk because she and Dad were going to do it together. Hot date with a sponge, she said, and that guaranteed they fled out the back door.

The swifts had left off swooping after insects, so he and Jess were the only things chasing away bugs from their arms and faces as they sat at the picnic table. Connor heard the nightjars call in the close-by dark, their poor-will, poor-will, poor-will-low song one that he remembered listening to through his open window.

He’d never seen one of the elusive, tiny gray birds, but their song was part of his childhood.

Jess had apparently been quiet as long she could endure. “What the actual fuck, Connor, ten minutes after coming out, they practically order you to bring a guy home to River Days. Mom is probably already on the phone with Aunt Rebecca, bragging, and even though I still live here, I am never, ever going to be the golden child. I will not let you forget this.”

There were a fuck-ton of Rebeccas and Beccas in his life right now.

“Duh. I’m not going to forget I’m gay.” He couldn’t figure out what to do with his hands. He needed a stick or a pencil or something to twirl.

“No, I’m not letting you forget that you could make even coming out into a school musical and upstage everyone forever.”

They wouldn’t hear the barn owl unless they shut up, which Connor knew wasn’t his sister’s skill set. Or his, truthfully.

“Instead of The Music Man, we could call it The Gay Man, and we could sing, like, Trouble with a capital T and that rhymes with G and that stands for gay and you’re just born that way, and I’ll never get my day.”

“You want one of Dad’s beers from the garage fridge? Because after hearing that stuff you said—sang?—and those weird gestures, I want alcohol. But I don’t want to go back inside.”

He unfolded himself from the bench and headed for the triple-garage where they kept the person-cars, rather than the big barn where they kept equipment.