3. Meet Cute
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.
Then Connor’s wayward gray-matter superimposed a waterfall of a white cravat at the neck of the shirt. Tall black boots too, in the English style, made of slicker and shinier leather than Western ones.
He absolutely needed this man to wear tight boots over his calves so he could kneel and run his hands over leather and up those lean thighs.
The tilt of his pointed chin would be raised higher by the crisp linen at his throat, and his hooded eyes would glare at Connor.
He’d order Connor to kneel in a bored voice, but then nothing after that would be boring.
“Sir?”
Connor re-entered reality in the lobby. The other guest’s gaze flicked over Connor, down past his stomach and legs and then back to possibly—yes?
Please yes—stop at his thighs before he met Connor’s own stare.
He had a tiny bit of glittery shadow in that space immediately under his eyebrows that wasn’t his eyelids.
What was that spot called? Connor wanted to rub his thumb gently across the glitter and smear it. If he didn’t already have plans…
The man paused and locked his gaze with Connor’s.
Shit, probably the entire lobby was staring at Connor in his ratty cargo shorts and his ripped shirt, judging him for being a doofus who dared to gaze upon a guy who looked like that.
The other man lowered his chin and the corners of his lips curled up a tiny bit, and a crazy feeling he couldn’t name flared inside Connor’s chest, but then the guy tilted his head to the desk, as clearly as if he’d ordered Connor to go check in.
The formalities of giving his name and credit card went quickly and required no thought, which was good because half his mind was still kneeling in front of a man in a cravat and boots who didn’t even exist. Then Connor handed his car key to the valet, mentally waved goodbye to his Subaru, and went for the elevator.
One of those amenity tables with a fancy water dispenser and a bowl of free fruit faced the elevator, and Connor realized he was thirsty.
Also, he’d paid a whole lot for this water, so he shifted the weight of his duffel on his shoulder in order to free both hands, one to hold the flimsy cup and one to twist the little brass handle on the spigot. The tiny cup filled quickly.
“Hello, there.” White shirt guy was standing next to him and speaking. To him.
Connor gulped what, given that the drink was small enough for his hand to totally conceal it, was not actually a gulpable amount of water, nor was this a water-gulping location. And yet. And yet. He was parched. And needed to swallow before he could reply.
“Hi,” he finally managed.
“How’s the water?”
“It’s nice.” He nodded, knowing he should carry his weight here a bit more, but a hunk of dark hair had drifted to brush the top of the other man’s cheekbone. “The water is”—don’t say pretty. This guy is pretty, water is not pretty—“nice. It’s nice.”
“Wet too, I imagine.”
“Yep, wet.” No one would believe he was halfway through his master’s in education. Mostly online, but it was a lot of coursework, none of which seemed to be reflected in his current vocabulary, which consisted entirely of the words pretty and want.
The dark-haired man finished filling his own small cup and twisted the brass handle.
His fingers were slender and Connor noticed that he wore dark polish, which sent Connor’s thoughts immediately and slightly guiltily to the photo of Axel1998.
That polish had been closer to black, and this was a deep purple.
He was a gay man who worked with crayons and markers for nine months of the year, which meant he ought to be able to name colors beyond dark purple. This was eggplant, like the emoji that meant dick.
Fuck.
That wasn’t where Connor had intended to go while standing in the lobby looking at another man’s hands.
And he was certain the name of the color was the French word for eggplant, not the English word.
He might have had a prayer of recalling it, but then the man with the eggplant polish turned and locked his gaze with Connor’s again, pinning him in place as surely as a pro-tackle.
Connor watched him lift the plastic courtesy cup to his mouth. His lips were pink and already glistening, then he smirked. “How’s it taste?”
“Umm, you know, like…” He couldn’t stop looking at the lips that unfairly belonged to a guy with such pronounced cheekbones, his lower lip making Connor think of a little tiny pillow until he wanted to nap right there.
“Like?”
“Aubergine!” He’d meant the word for the color of the nail polish. “Crap, I don’t know why I said that. I mean, it doesn’t taste like crap, it tastes like water. Good water.”
“Mmm.” Another sip. “I’m getting a hint of cucumber, maybe notes of lime.”
He couldn’t look away from the plastic rim resting on that lip and then the upper lip pressing down and changing shape and the liquid coating it and the tiny throat motions, all of it locking him into silence until it was his turn to reply.
Shit, he had to be coherent.
“Umm, right, you’re onto something. I think it’s rather a fancy vintage.”
He might also be wearing mascara, because the way his dark eyes looked at Connor through those thick lashes was a triple fucking hammer hit. Connor had seen plenty of attractive guys in bars wearing makeup, but he didn’t remember looking this closely at one and wanting to know more.
“So, do you like fancy vintages?” he asked Connor.
“I’m mostly an IPA guy.” The raised eyebrow made Connor’s traitorous sabotaging mouth keep explaining. “I like microbrews. Does beer have vintages?”
That soft lower lip pressed into the upper one and Connor wanted to tilt forward for a much closer look. “Afraid I don’t know anything about those other than they exist?”
Connor gazed upon the sharply defined, and more sharply raised, eyebrow and squeezed the drink in his hand to keep from reaching out to trace the shape. We don’t touch other people without their permission.
Had there been a question? Maybe about beer? “There’s a huge variety, some really good ones, and some bad ones, of course, but not vintages. Or at least I don’t think. Some have fruit and can be…” He was so dumb when speaking in person to people older than seven. How, how, could he be this dumb.
“Were you about to say fruity?”
“No, nope, definitely not going to say fruity in this particular lobby right now. I’m pretty sure I was going to say that there’s also hard cider, that is, if you don’t like beer.”
“Were we talking about beverages?” That blink was so slow, Connor could have brushed those long eyelashes with his own thumb for the whole ride.
He felt his cheeks heating. “We weren’t?”
“I wasn’t.”
“Oh.”
Fancy vintages.
“Oh.” He wanted to ask a guy whose name he didn’t even know if he wanted to get a drink, even though he already had a plan for this evening with someone who wasn’t this guy, so what the hell was he doing.
Do it.
“I’m Connor.”
“And I’m Jonathan.”
That is a common name and this is not Bridgerton and he does not know about your Jonathan Bailey dream life.
He held out his hand and for a flash of an instant Connor had the weirdest image of taking it and instead of squeezing briefly or shaking, he would rotate Jonathan’s hand, bow over it and then press his lips to Jonathan’s skin, but men in 2025 did not do that, it was not something they did, it was not.
“Nice to meet you, Jonathan.” Under Connor’s thumb, Jonathan’s palm was soft, or maybe his was a normal palm and Connor’s thumb was the product of throwing leather-covered balls for two decades.
And aubergine wasn’t a good enough description for the nail polish, because the longer Connor studied Jonathan’s fingers, the more he saw tiny gold swirls.
“Connor.” His name sounded almost like a purr.
He hadn’t released Jonathan’s hand. In fact, he’d rotated it in his grip and found spots with his thumb that made no sense, none. His face felt hot and he knew he must be totally blushing.
The elevator dinged and Connor dropped Jonathan’s hand.
Jonathan stepped away, reaching out to stop the doors from closing as he looked over his shoulder. “Coming with me?”
He could get in the elevator with Jonathan and be incredibly spontaneous, but his nose told him he needed to shower. And do other self-improvement. And he’d already made plans with someone else.
“I’m going to have another.” He lifted his hand in the direction of the water dispenser. “It was good.”
Jonathan was fully inside the elevator now and turned to face Connor. “And wet.”
“Nice to meet you.” He’d said that already, hadn’t he?
Bridgerton-in-the-City waved his fingers as the doors closed, separating them.
Maybe there would be a party at a country house, and he would step into a quiet garden maze.
There, standing among the towering hedges completely lost—no, Connor would be the lost lord, wearing a rumpled coat, but one with nice shiny buttons.
This Jonathan would be wearing a perfect cravat and would find him in the maze and lift one perfect dark eyebrow and say, “Coming with me?” and mean so, so, many things.
Ah, shit.
Water. More of this fancy water, right now.
And no jerking off in the shower.