8. Using Words
USING WORDS
The first two days of the following week were busier than Jonathan had previously experienced at the central library.
One of the branches was closed for painting, carpet, and plumbing upgrades necessitated by a water leak that had begun after closing two Saturdays prior and not been discovered until the subsequent Monday morning.
That disaster meant the downtown library was extra busy serving branch patrons as well as their own regulars.
By Wednesday, out-of-school children were arriving like fire ants, and the librarians were fraying around the edges.
Jonathan was happy that the next day he stayed until closing, and thus could sleep in and arrive later, an unplanned mercy wrought by the irregular shifts assigned to the newest hire.
He used his hip to push open the door between the storage room and the public area while maneuvering a rolling cart filled with books toward the on-line holds shelves.
He didn’t like to let the door clang into the book truck, so he backed through slowly and checked over his shoulder to make sure no patrons blocked his route.
A woman with an auburn ponytail was pulling several illustrated children’s books and easy readers off where they had been stacked on the holds shelf, but she wasn’t in his path.
Jonathan saw a child whip around the end of the shelf, dashing away, but then the cart’s rear wheel jammed.
“Con! Grab her, please!” the woman called.
“Got her.”
He knew that voice. He’d heard it in his ear for an entire night, and now he imagined it while they texted.
He looked around, feeling the smile starting to break across his face, despite a tick-tocking feeling deep inside demanding, why is Connor here, this makes no sense, how did he find your work.
He would not listen to panic when he could instead listen to Connor.
Connor rounded the end of the row, a small blond girl in his arms. Her hair was lighter and wispier than Connor’s, but similarly curly, and the way his arm wrapped under her butt, effortlessly supporting her, and her legs tucked right above his hip, looked comfortable.
Worse, it looked familiar.
The little girl reached out and tilted away from Connor, calling “Mommy! Show me the books.”
Jonathan froze.
Like an expert, Connor handed her off to the woman with the ponytail.
If that was Mommy, was that Daddy?
The absolute son-of-a-bitch rat bastard.
Connor had a family. A cute mini-Connor, a Kira or a Bean or whatever you named a little girl these days. Something adorable, no doubt. And surprise, she came with a bonus treat, her very own mommy.
Connor wasn’t the first to pull this shit on Jonathan, but he was the first to seem so uncaring about the deception.
That fucker had texted Jonathan this morning with a photo of a blueberry scone, and then he’d said it wasn’t nearly as delicious as the doughnuts they’d had last weekend and asked what breakfast places Jonathan liked, almost as if he’d been issuing an invitation.
Jonathan guessed cheating must confer a secret yum, but all he felt was nauseous. What about him drew men who cheated on their presumably perfect wives?
He shifted to push the cart back into the storeroom, because he didn’t deserve this and neither did the nice mommy out there, but it turned out today was not his day for graceful exits.
“Jonathan? You work here?” Connor’s voice sounded excited and startled and so fucking innocent. Anyone would have fallen for that act. “In Eugene?”
“May I help you?”
“It’s…I was…it’s good to see you. I didn’t know you…”
The red-haired woman looked between them, her eyebrows furrowing. He needed to be better than this; he couldn’t rip her life apart in the middle of the public library.
“Oh, Connor, that’s right. How nice to see you again.” The greeting cut and crackled like ice in his throat as he forced nonchalance.
He gave up and pulled the cart the rest of the way out. He couldn’t skate in the other direction like he’d done that morning in New York, but he could save her by pretending they’d met at a park or someplace innocent that wouldn’t hurt the smiling family.
“How’s your dog? What was its name?”
“Ribby. It’s great to see you, too. Did you get my text?”
Damn this man. He was smiling like his own family wasn’t watching.
“You live in Eugene? So do I.” As he stepped closer to Jonathan’s cart, the woman jiggled the little girl and without a word, Connor divided his attention, taking the armload of illustrated books and easy readers, leaving the woman holding only the child.
Jonathan made a noncommittal noise that would have discouraged conversation with most people and turned to his task.
Books on hold for Murphy, K. slid between the ones for Morris and the ones for Murray.
He’d transferred the holds onto the shelves enough times, he didn’t even have to think about how to wrap his hand around the spines and slot them into spots.
Books for Roberts, G. went to the left of the ones for Robertson already on the shelf, no thinking required, and then books for Ryan, L. went to the right of Robertson.
No thinking required. His hands could do this task while his little diva heart ran away to hide under a desk and bawl.
“This is great! Can we get coffee or something?” Connor failed to understand the message being sent by Jonathan’s stiff shoulder. “Do you have a break soon?”
“I don’t believe so, no.” Jonathan could not maintain this facade in his workplace.
He couldn’t wrestle a steel cart of books at the edge of this cliff, pinned by the innocent gaze of a big-eyed manga waif, and he couldn’t hang out chatting with Connor, a man he’d fucked into oblivion last weekend, under the doting gaze of that child’s mother.
Abandoning the rolling cart as if it could form a levee between the flood of Connor’s personality and Jonathan’s own angry crushed hopes, he walked away and circled the opposite end of the long shelf.
Lily staffed the circulation desk in the youth services area. He went straight to her.
She frowned when he inserted himself at an open computer terminal but said nothing.
Then Connor approached, holding the child and jiggling her until she clutched his neck and laughed.
“Jonathan?” His voice was much quieter and he ducked his head. “Did I do something? Did I say something wrong?”
Lily looked between them.
The break room would have been better.
“Connor? Are you ready?” The red-haired woman wore a diamond ring that Jonathan might have described as adequate, if he’d felt like being polite. “Everything’s checked out.”
Jonathan realized everyone, Connor, Lily, the other woman, the girl, and fuck it, a nearby table of people studying English as a Second Language, all of them, were staring at him.
“You heard her, Connor.” The razor jammed in his throat sliced deep, filling his voice with the bleeding evidence of his own pain, his shame, his absolute despair at doing this again. “You should go.”
Still carrying the moppet, Connor trailed after the woman with the books. He looked over his shoulder once, and Jonathan watched him raise his hand as if to wave.
His expression would have made Jonathan weep if he’d seen it after a competition, it was the level of despair and bewilderment of a person who’d believed they could hit their marks but had fallen and fallen and fallen.
That only meant he was an incompetent liar.
Before finishing the gesture, Connor let his shoulders slump and trudged out the doors.
“Ouch.” Lily exhaled the word. “Exit, stage left, pursued by a golden retriever?”
He took a deep breath to make sure he could speak. “Pursued by a lying, cheating—”
“Maybe don’t finish that sentence here.”
“Sorry.” He bowed his head. He wouldn’t let her see his eyes. “You’re right.”
“Wait. I recognized that view.” She dropped her voice to barely whisper. “That wasn’t the books-by-Dicks guy, was it? Was that him, the jock?”
He nodded. If he couldn’t even trust a guy who sent photos of books, he was definitely unable to trust his voice.
“Nooo, don’t break me like that. Those photos from Powell’s. I thought he would be a good one.” She let the emotions Jonathan felt show on her face, but when she pressed her lips into a hard line and took two steps away from the desk, he reached out to stop her.
“I’ll survive.”
He wasn’t alone. No matter what happened with his love life, he had one superlatively good friend.
“What the heck was going on in there, Connor?” Lauren fished Olivia’s helmet out of the bin of her cargo bike. “Was that an ex you haven’t told me about?”
“I don’t know.” He set Olivia on the ground, and she immediately reached for Ribby, who he’d left tied to a railing. Connor bent to run his fingers in Ribby’s fur as if Olivia needed an example, but really, he was the one who needed to touch the dog.
“I think that guy was unhappy with you, but why?”
Olivia wanted to pet Ribby, so Connor reminded her of the proper way to touch a dog before he answered Lauren. “I don’t know. We texted this morning and it was…or I thought it was…good.” His voice cracked.
Maybe his Powell’s photos had been too much, or the hints about this weekend. He’d been himself, hadn’t held back, and it hadn’t worked, which was nothing new. Nothing to get upset about. Certainly wasn’t anything to get teary about.
He should be glad he didn’t have to waste more time or energy on Jonathan, but he didn’t understand why it felt like a swing had hit him in the chest.
“How do you know him?”
“We, ah, went out last weekend. In Portland.” The description was inadequate, but his dog’s big eyes weren’t giving him any better words. “I thought we were going to have a real date this weekend.”
Once he knew Olivia was stroking Ribby in the right way, not pulling the dog’s ears or poking his face, Connor straightened and moved closer to Lauren.
“But the previous ‘going out’”—she made air quotes—“was not a real date?”