Page 7 of Checking Out the Librarian

Her laughter made him feel better. His former therapist might question whether this was good or bad attention, and ask him why he liked it, but he chose to believe it was friendly laughter because he liked Lily.

She clasped her hands in the middle of her chest and opened her eyes to plead. “You need me. Please, I can be your Cyrano de Bergerac and sit behind you and feed you information, I promise I can. You know I have two dads, but also, I played softball for a year in college and helped manage the football team videos, I can carry you. Take me, please. Take me.”

He snorted. “You wish. Get your own himbo.”

No matter how the date turned out, at least he’d have a story for Lily on Monday.

3

MEET CUTE

There was only one clerk staffing the desk at The Salt Hotel when Connor arrived, and two people in line. Hopefully check-in wouldn’t take too long, because he’d left his SUV at the five-minute loading space on the curb and didn’t know where he was supposed to overnight his car in the city.

The logistics of car storage faded as soon as he took a second look around the lobby. Connor was careful not to crowd people, because he knew that for the first several days after teaching ended, he had an adjustment zone where he needed to remember everyone around him was adult-sized, required adult personal space, and was not amenable to being herded into lines. But his eyes clearly had adapted to looking at men in well-fitted summer clothes.

Something about being in Portland, or more precisely, the reason he’d come to Portland, had unleashed his perceptions and he would swear every guy in the lobby was a treat, and not the big-box store generic snack pack kind.

No, these dudes were like homemade cookies bursting with hand-chopped chocolate chunks, and Connor was suddenly famished. The guy working at the door wore the hell out of his tight light blue polo. Its sleeve seams wouldn’t last five washings with the way they stretched across his biceps. The desk clerk had well-groomed dark stubble and a tanned complexion that reminded Connor of the time at a pre-season tournament in Arizona when he’d snuck out of the team hotel and found a leather bar.

Could this be a gay hotel and he hadn’t realized it?

Axel1998 had suggested a restaurant on the same block, so maybe the lobby was an epicenter of gleaming men with nice hair wearing tight shirts because it was a gay neighborhood.

Or this could also be a hockey hotel, the snarky voice inside Connor offered.

But the guy in front of him was no Finnish sliced meat. What even does that mean, Finnish sliced meat, that’s not a thing. And anyway, the hockey-playing Finn he’d met last summer hadn’t been sliced, so snarky Connor wasn’t making sense.

He wanted to tell bad Connor to shut up, but having two internal voices arguing when neither of them were Ribby was not a good thing, it was a case of nerves.

He’d attended enough social and emotional learning seminars to know his bouncing mind was caused by jitters, made worse because he’d rushed here in his booger-scraping, classroom-scrubbing, ball-throwing clothes after hanging out too long at Lauren’s house.

Mistake, Connor, mistake.

The first guy at the desk left, and the one in front of Connor moved to the clerk.

Unlike the other men in the lobby, who resembled the built guys Connor had known through sports, the guy directly in front of him was a different type, more like the diver back in sophomore year, small and narrow-shouldered. He was one thousand percent different from a major league catcher.

Not thinking about Tony. Still a month until the All-Star break.

The dark-haired man waiting in front of him wasn’t trying to hide his orientation, not with those tight gray pants and tucked-in white shirt tailored smoothly to his torso and waist like a wrapped present. He was maybe five-seven, so at least six inches shorter, which meant Connor would be able to tuck him into his shoulder.

The guy’s pants fit so perfectly that Connor visualized one of those sleeves of imported cookies that he couldn’t ever figure out where to pull the plastic apart and had to resort to opening with scissors. Connor wanted to rest his hands right there on the other man’s waist, spread his fingers, and then pull apart clothing. Indications were that the butt underneath would definitely be sweet cookies.

He was fucking desperate, wasn’t he. And hungry.

He closed his eyes, embarrassed for himself and regretting that he’d been so over-scheduled with work and taking extra gigs as a soccer ref and a baseball ump that he hadn’t hooked up since late March, when he’d gone to San Diego during spring break to distract himself from thinking about Tony reporting to spring training and that whole life in the big league. That guy—Eric somebody? A Viking-descended bartender visiting from Minnesota—had expected Connor to make all the decisions for two and a half days, as if being from the West Coast meant Connor knew Southern California. More than once, he’d wanted to say, internet works same for everyone, dude.

He’d returned from vacation with decision fatigue, but also with a sore groin muscle, so on balance mental exhaustion wasn’t really that bad. But somehow he hadn’t made the effort to hook up since March.

“Sir?”

He heard the clerk and opened his eyes.

The guy in front of him had finished checking in, taken the folder with the key card, and turned around.

Connor saw him from the front for the first time, the flow of dark silky hair loosely framing his face, the soft full lips that didn’t belong with the sharpness of his cheekbones, the dark eyes and long lashes even more enticing than he’d expected. The only word Connor’s brain supplied was beautiful.

His white button-down wasn’t a standard cotton or a standard cut, but something softer and slinkier that clung and flowed in a way regular cotton didn’t.