8. Using Words #2
His face was definitely flaming red and Lauren wasn’t going to accept him blaming it on the heat, but if he kept looking at Ribby maybe she wouldn’t notice. “We met there, so I was surprised to see him here.”
“I see.” She lifted her hands for those annoying finger quotes again. “You ‘met’ for a ‘date’.”
He dropped his voice so Olivia wouldn’t hear, even though she was only three and wouldn’t understand the second meaning, probably not even the first. “You don’t have to do that finger thing, but, yeah, that. But then we wanted to, um, see each other again. At least I thought so.”
He’d been wrong before. He didn’t know why being wrong this time made him feel like dog poop.
They watched Olivia and Ribby for a long moment.
“You know, I was picking up the holds and he was sort of between you and me when you came around the corner with Olivia and I saw his face.” She paused. “Maybe he thinks…”
“Thinks what?”
“You and she are both blond and you were carrying her.” She made a circling hand gesture that encompassed the three of them. “Maybe he thinks that we’re your family?”
“Oh.” He felt his mouth fall open. “But why would he? He knows I’m gay.”
“What does he actually know, though? I mean, you didn’t know he lived in Eugene, or that he worked at the library.
Does he know anything about the real Connor?
Like, that you have those books because you’re a teacher, not Olivia’s father?
” She gestured at the bags of children’s books resting beside her bike.
His shoulders slumped. Lauren could be right. He bent to gather the bags of books. “No, he doesn’t. We’ve just been our witty best selves, I guess.”
“Witty?” She raised her hand to cover her mouth. “You have been lying to him left and right, haven’t you?”
“I want to say many very bad words to you right now.” He glanced at Olivia, who was happily petting Ribby.
“I’m sooo impressed with your restraint.”
Back in Portland, Jonathan had been, too. Pushing his self-control had been one of the hottest things he’d ever done. Today, however, it was more a lack of energy holding him back.
“If he thinks you’re witty, then maybe he has a lot of other misunderstandings you need to clear up, too?” She ended her question with a nice hum that made Connor’s chest relax a tiny bit.
“Shit. I mean, sorry. I mean, thanks.” He tried to push his hair out of his face but the heavy tote bag dangling from his wrist swung into his chest when he raised his arm and the bonk made him drop his hand again. “What should I do?”
She jerked her thumb toward the library entrance. “Go right back in there. Straighten this out.”
He could feel his breathing get faster, so he looked at Ribby.
Lauren reached for the bag he held. “Olivia and I will take the books to our house, and I’ll see you later? Maybe Friday?” Her hand on his arm attempted to push him at the double doors. “Ribby will be right here waiting for you, after you fix this with…” She paused and looked at him.
“Jonathan.”
“Jonathan.” Another push, and this one convinced his feet to move, too. “Now go. And good luck. You’re a nice guy. He’d be lucky to go on a real date with you.”
Lots of women told him crap like that. “Thanks.”
Jonathan was still behind the desk when Connor re-entered the building.
His black dress shirt wasn’t as tightly fitted as the white one he’d worn in the hotel lobby, but it was far nicer than Connor’s gym shorts and T-shirt.
Jonathan’s shoulders looked narrower than Connor remembered, like he’d squeezed himself into a tube, and dark hair spilled forward to partially obscure his face.
Connor remembered pushing his fingers through that thick tumble and holding Jonathan’s head still when they’d kissed. It had felt warm and happy, like stepping into the end credits of one of his parents’ Sandra Bullock movies, not like this shut-down, silent block in his chest.
His feet faltered, but he had to approach the desk. “Hi again.”
Although Jonathan’s hands stopped typing, he didn’t raise his gaze from the keyboard. “This is the youth services desk.”
Jonathan cut off each word so clearly, Connor felt flayed.
The woman behind the counter working at the terminal next to Jonathan curled her lip and glared. An audience. Great.
He stood as straight as he could and looked at Jonathan. An air-conditioning vent in the ceiling seemed to be blowing directly on Connor’s arms. “Lauren is my co-worker.”
Jonathan’s eyes flicked to his for an instant. They looked wet. “So that’s what the cool kids call it now.”
“We’re both teachers. And Olivia is her kid, but definitely not mine. That is a thing that has never happened.” Despite the air-conditioning, he felt over-heated and suspected his face was turning red.
And now the woman behind the desk next to Jonathan had her hand over her mouth, but it didn’t suppress the choking sound she made.
He’d done that to more than one woman in less than five minutes. If he wanted a trifecta, he should phone his sister from the parking lot. That would be par for the day. No, that would be what, a double bogey?
“Oh.” Jonathan’s voice was softer, so Connor kept going.
“We teach second grade. We were picking up books to figure out what to request for next year from our classroom supply grants.”
Jonathan’s lips parted. “Now I feel stupid.”
And he looked gratifyingly unhappy about it, too. Connor couldn’t stop his grin. “Welcome to my life. I spend fifty percent of my waking hours with seven-year-olds. Friends roll their eyes when I use the word poop.”
Jonathan rolled his eyes.
“I did it again, didn’t I.” He glanced at the counter between them, surprised to find that he’d placed his hands on it.
He didn’t need support, his knees were functioning as usual, but the unyielding surface provided enough grounding that he knew where he was, in the library, and what he was doing, embarrassing himself in front of a handsome, smart guy.
At least his arms were doing their bit and keeping him from collapsing on his actual face.
Jonathan rested his fingertips on the end of Connor’s fingers, in the space between the first and second knuckle. It was nothing sexual, barely a touch, but Connor couldn’t stop looking.
Today Jonathan’s nails were a dark burgundy, one of those iridescent colors that looked gold at a certain angle. He wanted to lift Jonathan’s hand and move it so that he could lose himself watching the color change, but mostly he wanted to press it to his face and sink into whatever he could get.
“I’m sorry. I assumed you had been lying to me.” He removed his fingers as quickly as they had arrived, and then he shrugged. “I should have, I don’t know, asked. My fault.”
Connor wanted to reach across the desk and rub his thumb across Jonathan’s lower lip until his mouth relaxed into softness, but this was the library.
The other librarian cleared her throat and greeted someone who had been standing behind Connor.
Jonathan jerked into motion, clacking his keyboard loudly.
“I’ll let you ah, get back to work.”
The look Jonathan gave him was possibly regret, maybe hope, or maybe goodbye, but he had no intention of leaving until he figured it out, so he drifted to the fiction section.
He could find a Lee Child book, skip the automatic checkout terminals, and ask Jonathan for help. That way they could talk again.
Glancing out the front windows, he saw Ribby imitating a hilly pancake cooking on the warmth of the courtyard concrete.
When his dog was off-leash in proximity to a park, a field, a playground, or a yard, Ribby remembered he’d once been a running machine, but being tied to the library hitching post on a sunny afternoon, after having spent an hour in a park, was the retired and relaxed Ribby.