Page 37 of Checking Out the Librarian

Maybe a medium bit.

However much it took to make Connor moan.

He drew closer, but Connor kept reading, so Jonathan continued to study him. He wasn’t the type of book snob who cared that Connor was engrossed in a Jack Reacher thriller. His book crushes were gothic romance dark heroes or manhwa antiheroes or Edwardian detectives, so if Connor had a man-crush going on Reacher, who was basically nothing like Jonathan in any way whatsoever, that was also fine.

The cup in front of Connor contained mostly ice and a paper straw, bent as if Connor had chewed it. Next to a plate holding two small scones, a second compostable cold beverage cup filled with inky dark brew waited, condensation dotting the sides while the cream topping its surface drifted slowly down through the liquid.

“Thank you for the coffee.”

Connor’s shoulders jerked and he looked up quickly, immediately smiling. He stood and started to come around the table, but something happened, perhaps the dog, perhaps its leash, perhaps this was the natural state of an excited second-grade teacher.

Suddenly Connor was stumbling toward Jonathan faster than anyone could wish to when already this close, and the paperback flew out of his hand and skittered across the sidewalk, thankfully away from the drinks.

Jonathan raised his hands, as if he could catch a man who outweighed him by approximately a pallet of books, while Connor pinwheeled until his arm landed on Jonathan’s shoulder.

The dog barked, massively helpful. Although both Connor and Jonathan were a mess of colliding torsos and flailing limbs, no one fell.

They stood motionless for a long moment. Jonathan could feel the heat of Connor’s body through the worn cotton under his hand. The shirt stuck to Connor as if the late afternoon sun had dialed up to the melt setting, and he was breathing faster and harder than required from one minute of moderate excitement, leaving it to Jonathan to break the silence.

“Well, hello.”

Connor blushed and couldn’t meet his gaze, but also, he didn’t let go of Jonathan’s shoulder. “That was not how I pictured this going,” he muttered.

“No? But you conveniently ended up in my arms.” Jonathan recognized Connor’s nerves, as if the connection of Connor’s hand to Jonathan’s shoulder conveyed the other man’s inner thoughts. Because Jonathan had been a performer who’d known that if he fell in front of hundreds, sometimes thousands, of spectators, he’d have to rise and continue skating, he didn’t telegraph his own nervousness, but he’d have to be oblivious not to recognize it in the other man’s wide eyes and flared nostrils.

“Try again?” Connor asked.

This close to each other, his chest almost brushed Jonathan’s when either of them inhaled, creating the illusion that their words vibrated with each other’s bodies.

The momentary intensity was too much, too uncomfortable. He had to change gears. “Will my coffee survive a second attempt?”

“I think so.” Connor came closer, and Jonathan had a stuttering-brain moment where he pictured being kissed on the patio of the café he went to a couple times a week with his co-workers.

His lips parted, ready to accept a kiss or maybe to say something cutting, he didn’t know. He didn’t. But then he felt the lightest glide of warmth across his cheekbone, just a brush, and he froze with a certainty that caused his chest to seize that this was something riskier than the meeting of his mouth with Connor’s mouth.

It was a kiss of familiarity, rather than seduction. A kiss of what might be.

Connor pulled away first, glanced down the sidewalk in both directions, and then met Jonathan’s gaze. “So.”

Jonathan couldn’t think of anything to say.

“Guess we’re both intact.”

He bit back his instinct to tell Connor to speak for himself, because at the moment he, Jonathan, was held together by the loosest of stitches and maybe a three-inch piece of skate tape, nothing more. He stepped away. “I should confirm how intact my coffee is.”

“Good plan.” The niceties of arranging themselves in the black iron café chairs led to discussing the two scones sitting on one plate in the center of the round metal table.

“I asked the barista what you liked,” Connor said.

“What do you mean, you asked the barista?”

“Well, I asked what the hot Asian-American librarian liked, and she said which one, and I said the dude.”

Jonathan snorted. He’d tell Lily she qualified as hot to at least one person. “I hope she didn’t say dick.”

Connor’s grin stretched so wide, it squished his cheeks up toward his eyes. “That was probably implied, but she said scones, so I complied.”

Jonathan shouldn’t find the way Connor emphasized the internal rhythm lent by the words implied and complied to be sexy; he was only a slight Merriam-Webster-stan, but nevertheless, he fell into the words. Words kept coming out of Connor’s smiling mouth while his tawny eyes laughed and promised, and now his cap was off and he was fluffing his hair with his hand. How could Jonathan resist this man and his words and his laugh. He could not.