Page 55 of Checking Out the Librarian

“Oops.” His partner was stone cold expressionless.

The smackdown from Hank did, somehow, focus Connor on the game and he didn’t miss another play, and suddenly they were shaking hands over the net on an eleven-nine win.

Connor looked at his sports watch. Not as many steps as usual, which maybe reflected him mostly playing in his head instead of on the court.

“You want to go get something to read? I mean, eat?” Maybe Hank wouldn’t notice the slip. “Taco truck breakfast burrito?”

“Bud, what am I going to say?”

“That my playing sucked.”

“The other thing. That I always say.”

He swallowed and looked down. Why was the toe of his right shoe more scuffed than the left? Did he drag his foot weirdly?

“Conman?” Hank’s voice was calmer.

“Hitman.” The nicknames settled him into their routine. A one-two, they were smooth criminals.

Not at all, actually, both of them awkward fuckers despite their athletic success and the frequency with which women called either or both of them nice, which reaped no benefits for either of them, although for radically different reasons.

So they were Conman and Hitman pretty much only to each other.

“What do I always say when you start something new?”

“No smothering.”

Hank nodded.

“This time I’m not going to. I’m not.” Jonathan had worn his shirt. Jonathan had responded immediately, the within-fifteen-minutes type of immediately, to the pics of Dicks who were authors, not pleasure-seeking appendages. Jonathan had liked his stuffies. Those were things Hank didn’t know, but that maybe meant Connor was in the clear on the overwhelming attention issue.

Also, he wasn’t sure Hank was such a great source of advice on dating. He wasn’t actually dating Emma, even though he spent every weekend with her, he and Connor had re-roofed her garage, and he’d been a greeter for both her grandparents’ funerals.

Hank was doing all the relationship parts with Emma except the fun parts, and Connor was already doing the fun stuff with Jonathan, so maybe he should listen to Hank but also…

…not listen to Hank.

14

NOT A DOG HANDLER

The second time Jonathan stayed at Connor’s, following directly after the successful Saturday picnic and concert, he was less surprised to wake up without Connor, but startled to be staring at Ribby.

Who was sitting alertly on the bed. Staring back.

No amount of miniature caprese sandwiches and tiny lemon tarts with glistening raspberries on top served to him on blue and white patterned melamine plates—paper is for sports fields, these are for outdoor dining, Connor had said with a rising flourish that was as close as Jonathan had heard his voice come to sounding like a gay influencer—could balance waking next to a dog.

“Get down.” He didn’t know if he should pull his hands out from under the covers and point, or if that would be like waving a toy and then the dog would open his mouth. “Go. Away.”

Obviously Ribby neither talked nor listened; he was a dog, and Jonathan was not a dog handler. When he’d said as much last night after Connor expected the three of them to share one picnic blanket, Connor had added “yet.”

There was no yet in this morning’s interlude. There was Connor, who had a dog, and Jonathan, who did not have a dog, and who was at Connor’s place again rather than vice versa precisely because he did not want fur on his own sofa and Connor and Ribby were a two-for-one deal.

Jonathan definitely did not want dog feet, which could not be removed like outdoor shoes, on the thrifted chaise longue he’d re-upholstered in a rose-colored wool blend during his first month in Eugene. And that wasn’t even addressing dog claws. He assumed Ribby had claws since he clicked on the kitchen tiles.

Jonathan had a faux zebra throw rug. Full incompatibility.

Connor would love the rug.