Page 88 of Checking Out the Librarian

Letting others talk while he stood here breathing and enjoying the flow was oddly comfortable.

Connor turned and rested his cheek on the top of Jonathan’s head, but through the bucket hat he could only feel the weight of Connor’s head, not the contours of his face. “I would have asked you out right there at the water table if I hadn’t already had a date that night.”

“With me. That date was with me too.” He felt that his clarification added one more layer to the story, but it was also the opposite of snark.

“I want to throw up,” a short person said, and sipped their cucumber water.

Jonathan might possibly share the feeling. A moment ago, he’d been vibing off Mister Romance McMillan’s electricity, but he’d lived in New York City long enough to fear the third rail.

“I want to throw my bat at them, but I’m too lazy to go get it,” a tall woman said.

“Violence is never the answer,” Connor said.

“I want to win this game, assholes.” Another woman yelled from where the dugout gate opened on to the field. “Connor, you’re on deck.”

Connor swore and dashed back into the dugout, looking for the helmet that crushed his cute hair while pulling on the neon yellow gloves he wore when it was his turn to bat, and then grabbed his bat out of the rack.

By the time Connor completed his circuit of the bases, Jonathan had only missed recording a few at bats in the book-keeping hieroglyphics system he was supposed to use during games. Today he’d drawn one blocky space alien and a few, but not many, angry birds into the blank grid squares.

An hour later, it seemed like it was the next-to-last inning and the Queers had never lost their lead. When the game ended, the subs and salad would be offered around and it would be another summer Thursday night in his new life.

Twenty-seven was going to give Jonathan everything he wanted. His brain knew he shouldn’t dwell on how long it had taken him to get to this point. The pandemic year had happened; he couldn’t and shouldn’t hold himself to some standard of achievement that wasn’t remotely possible because of an epic global disaster.

He’d spent a lot of time at school in New York working on accepting that skating had been on balance, positive. It had been a good thing that he gave it a serious try, because he’d proven to himself that he could. Not being as successful as his idols or his competition didn’t mean he wasn’t good, nor did it mean he tried less hard or he was unlucky. Not making the cut was just a thing.

It happened to athletes everywhere, had certainly happened to Connor and probably to everyone playing here today, but they’d shaken off their disappointments. Now they ran the bases for fun.

“Way to go Abby!” Next to him, Michelle boomed. “Make that ball your bitch!”

That wasn’t going to come out of his mouth, so he went with a generic but loud yay and assumed from Michelle’s tone that he should append a positive notation next to Abby’s name.

He hadn’t skated in more than a year but watching these people enjoy their sport gave him a glimmer of something that might be the urge to get on the ice.

Maybe then he’d stop with the stupid bloody dream.

Skating had been a good thing for him. Mostly. Mostly good, even if all he had left were some second-tier pieces of crystal, a video site that hadn’t been updated in five years, and ugly toes.

He could skate for fun the same way Connor ran the bases.

Not actually the same way, because he didn’t think he would ever thump his chest with his fist and mouth what appeared to be the phrase bite me to Trixie, not ever, but he could be his own version of exuberant. He could twirl.

He didn’t have to be perfect. He could just skate.

A moment later, Lily appeared, carefully carrying a large pink box and a bag that contained suspiciously bright-colored paper plates, and Jonathan knew exactly what was going to happen after three more outs.

“Girlfriend, what deep betrayal have you perpetrated on me?”

“Me? Nothing.” She raised her chin toward the field, where Connor was swaying and bouncing on his toes in his spot between second and third base. “All that guy. I’m merely the chauffeur.”

Last year at this time, he’d been at Fire Island and had tried to forget the actual date because he wasn’t prepared for near-strangers to comment on his age when he’d known he was renting half a bedroom in a fourth-floor walk-up, sharing a single bath with three other people, and living with a cube refrigerator that regularly made the fuses blow.

The year before that, he’d bought himself a slice of cheesecake, figured out he didn’t like New York-style cheesecake, and then found three people to go dancing with, but clubs in July in New York City were too hot and too empty to be worth having promised to pay for the shots.

Those, honestly, had been two of his better birthdays.

But this year, Connor had organized a cake, and seemingly without effort even provided friends. There was no way he was escaping the singing foreplay.

The singing was what it was. Trixie and Connor actually had nice voices, Lily not so much.