Page 194 of Checking Out the Librarian

“You lied to me. You, Mister Don’t Ever Lie, were dishonest when I asked if you had ridden before.”

“I’m certain I wasn’t.” He swiveled in the saddle to stare at Connor’s confused face. “I believe I said I was going to be intentionally vague, and you didn’t inquire further. You made assumptions.”

Connor’s sister’s murmured gotcha and her laughter was loud enough to hear over the morning birds.

“But you’re from Los Angeles.”

Even though Connor’s hat hid his forehead, Jonathan knew exactly how his crinkled eyebrows would draw toward the bridge of his nose. He could see the brackets around his mouth deepen as he tried to understand the completely unexpected fact that Jonathan, city Jonathan, doesn’t like fur or bugs, and yes, fourteen skin care products are necessary Jonathan, was comfortable this far off the ground on the back of a horse.

“You know how everything down there’s named something like Rancho Cucamonga or Diamond Bar? And Irvine was originally the Irvine Ranch? Surprise, those were actual ranches back in the day. There’s everything in LA, including more than a few fenced pastures with horses.”

Connor was nodding. “Okay, that’s the how. But why?”

“Have you ever heard of Johnny Weir?”

“No. Should I?”

“I have!” Jess offered from behind them. “Wait, do you know him?”

He glanced over his shoulder. “I wish. But I was never at that level, and he’s enough older that we never crossed paths.”

Connor looked cartoonishly disgruntled. The man wasn’t good at sharing with his sister.

“He was a figure skater who sort of famously took up the sport late, but he started out doing equestrian competitions before skating and credited that for his body awareness. My mother took villain origin stories very seriously, so she signed me up for a year of riding lessons when I was in middle school.”

He stroked the side of Penny’s warm, damp neck for a moment.

“I’d forgotten all about riding until you asked me to come here. I really liked it. But it was even more expensive than skating lessons, if you can believe that.”

“Well, you’re still decent at it. At riding.” By now Connor sounded more rumbly than grumbly. Then he turned to wave Jess off toward something on the other side of the pasture they were crossing. “I like how you look on a horse.”

“Do you.”

“I do.”

“After last night, I would absolutely say tell me more, but it’s not even eight o’clock in the morning, Connor. And I’m wearing heavily padded ass armor and the beast between my legs weighs a thousand pounds, so I will not say tell me more and you will respect my agony by not doing so.”

Connor laughed, and the horses kept heading out to wherever they were going. Presumably something to do with cows. Cattle. Large bovine things.

Eventually Connor spoke again. “Are you having a good time?”

It had been less than eighteen hours, several of them spent sleeping, but Jonathan didn’t hesitate. “The best. Your family…”

“What? They haven’t said something stupid or⁠—”

“They’re everything that is good. Just like you.” His throat clogged, even though there was no wind to kick up dust. Connor’s family was everything he wished he had.

Maybe he could absorb how they familied by some sort of osmosis like how he must have learned from those self-help books he constantly shelved.

“They’re not like mine, shall we say, not at all. I like yours. A lot. Even the overtalking parts.”

They rode on quietly.

From the moment he’d driven into the John Day River Valley, Jonathan had been fascinated by the line of demarcation between the irrigated land, so green and lush it could be a postcard, and the stark golds of the rocky foothills that rose immediately from the edge of the watered zone. From horseback, he could absorb the contrasts and colors at his leisure.

If the classic science fiction of thriving Mars colonies occupying an altered-atmosphere planet ever came to pass, he imagined it would resemble this place, where the pretty green of human intervention butted up against the far more beautiful stark geology of the original. The two entirely different landscapes somehow created this one breathtaking scene.

They kept riding.