19. Sports With Balls Do Not Always Suck #2
“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.
Somehow before the end of the song, Jonathan’s palm ended up over his eyes and Connor’s arm curled him face-first into his sweaty team shirt, and Connor’s other hand was patting his back while the squeaks of that dumb song and the people talking, talking, talking faded.
“It’s okay, J. It’s okay.”
“Not my name.” Synthetic material stuck to Jonathan’s cheek, but that was the least of the indignities flooding him with embarrassment at the moment. He was going to have to turn around and face everyone, and he had no idea what his face looked like.
“I think you’re sungry. I’ll get you some cake.” Connor’s voice was a low rumble above his head. “I ordered a yellow cake soaked in lavender simple syrup, with lemon curd and vanilla mousse filling, lemon buttercream frosting, and decorated with candied violets. I think you’re going to like it.”
“You think? Merely think? That cake is going to star in my fantasy life.” He let himself be peeled off Connor’s chest and spotted only two people hastily lowering their phones, so the photo evidence would be minimal. Hopefully.
The cake did fix almost everything, or at least it let him push the feelings down far enough that he could laugh and pose for photos and listen well enough to confirm that yes, Trixie’s girlfriend’s name was Michelle.
He was nailing this friend thing. And maybe sticking the landing on the dating part, too.
By the time they finished the cake, ate the hoagies and salad, and tidied the park’s picnic area, somehow Connor had drunk three beers and Jonathan two hard ciders.
Lily insisted she could drive them to save rideshare costs, and Connor assured Jonathan and their audience that he could easily run over and retrieve one of the cars in the morning.
A six-mile run was within his abilities, he was a young twenty-six-year-old, not twenty-seven like Jonathan, not decrepit, for fuck’s sake, he still had stamina and good knees.
Even the insults didn’t make Jonathan stop leaning on Connor’s side. Also, the rest of the team swiftly picked up the gauntlet and insulted Connor’s stamina and his knees, so in the residual glow cast by a sheet of lemon-lavender birthday cake, Jonathan took the high road.
“Connor’s knees work very well.” He flourished the arm that wasn’t wrapped around Connor’s waist in the air. “I can attest.”
Oops.
The cake and cider had delayed his brain to mouth connection more than he’d realized.
In the midst of an epic volume of hooting, Softball Abby said, “Or you could, you know, take the bus.” She was a transit driver. And that was how Jonathan planned to return to the field when it was time for him to leave Connor’s.
Luckily, he wasn’t on shift until noon, but poor Lily had to open.
After Jonathan retrieved his bag from his own car, he settled into the front of Lily’s, Connor and Ribby safely contained in the back. Despite the seat barrier, Connor and Lily chatted as she drove, their topics occasionally overlapping to create a conversation that Jonathan could follow.
Listening to them, he felt content to keep his snarky observations inside. His friends were sweet. He’d landed in a life of cake and cider, and it was all nice and glowy.
He was definitely glad to not be driving. No driving while feeling glowy.
“Here you go, gentlemen. And Ribby.” Lily pulled to the curb in front of Connor’s. “Looks like a house. Maybe next time Connor will ask me in. I’ve heard sometimes friends ask their other friends to bring takeout over to their houses and hang out. Like friends do.”
“I’ll file that complaint with customer service, shall I?” He most definitely had not said shur-vice, or shur-vish, but ser-vice. Eighty percent definitely. But he wasn’t too fuzzy to know she meant she wanted to see his apartment.
Whatever.
He finished thanking her and exited the car with his bag while Connor fumbled with the back seat door handle.
Lily rolled down the passenger side window to talk to Jonathan. “Should I keep your boyfriend? Or are you going to rescue him?”
“Hey, I can hear that.” This time the door opened for Connor. “See, I did it on my own.”
Lily looked at Jonathan and raised her eyebrows.
“He’s a big boy, Lily. A very big boy.”
“I imagine he must be.”
“I can still hear you.” Ribby wrapped his leash around Connor’s legs.
“It was a compliment.” He put an arm around Connor’s waist again, not because he was swaying, more because it felt right.
“Was it?” His eyebrows came together at the bridge of his nose.
They went through the arrival routines, unlocking Connor’s front door, slipping off their shoes, carrying Connor’s gear through the kitchen to the back mudroom, watching Ribby push his face into the food bowl, watching Ribby slurp water, and remembering to get themselves glasses of water to offset the drinks they had each had, which had been more than usual for Thursday night.
It was almost ten o’clock. Jonathan had entered the phase of life where ten p.m. was checking door locks and drinking water time. He was so fucking grown up, and grownups handled things that were awkward. So be it.
“I have something for you.”
“But it’s your birthday! I’m supposed to give you things.” Connor looked nervously at the entry to the living room, back at Jonathan, back to the living room, and then again at Jonathan.
There might be something in the living room.
“You can, I promise. But first, I have this for you.” Jonathan pulled a yellow business document envelope, the depressingly official-looking type with a metal clasp, out of his messenger bag.
Holding his test results in his hand felt charged with meaning; if he put them back in his bag, nothing would change.
“Not a beer.”
Jonathan gave him a searing look, but it bounced right off. “It is better than beer.”
“No gonna lie, that’ll be hard, now that I started thinking about beer. And fries. Why am I thinking about fries?”
“It might be the aforementioned beer you consumed. Open the envelope.”
“Whatever you say.” His brow furrowed as he looked at the single sheet of paper. “Lots of words. Lots of all caps and abbreviations. But not a beer. Or a bear.”
“It’s my test results. Like we talked about getting last week.”
“Oh!” Connor kept staring at the paper, but Jonathan didn’t think he was absorbing it.
Jonathan’s stomach would not settle. No more two-cider nights on top of sugary treats, because he did not like feeling this wound up and jittery. The glowy part had been nice, but this was not. He took a deep breath. “I’m good on all of it, HIV, Herpes, Hep B and C.”
“All the Hs. Like HGTV!” Connor giggled.
“Connor.”
“What?” The big hazel eyes looked at him, waiting for him to speak. Connor’s eyes were like another slice of cake, no way to refuse the sweetness that snuck up on you until your stomach hurt. Those eyes left him without a way to say no. None.
“Do you have your results too? We discussed this.”
“There’s something I have to tell you.” He clasped his hands in front of his chest and gave Jonathan his best Ribby-wants-something look. “I can’t give you a paper like this.”
His stomach dropped into a pit familiar from his years on the ice, but that he’d believed had been erased from his life when he didn’t have to wait for scores, wait for judgments. This couldn’t be happening. Connor couldn’t have—he was on PrEP, he’d said so. “Why not? What’s wrong?”
“Because it’s 2025 and there’s this thing called…wait a minute.” He fumbled with his pocket and brought out his phone. “Digital health records.”
“Fuck you.” He whirled away, had to get away from these whipsaw feelings that he hated. He hated all the feelings, up and down and back and forth, they could just be gone.
“Aww, honeycake, your annoyed face drives me nuts, you know that, right?” Connor followed him to the living room, clearly not comprehending that Jonathan needed to be away.
Jonathan didn’t even comprehend, so of course Connor couldn’t.
“I really, really like it when you squish up your nose like a cranky cat. Or grumpy cat. That’s it. Grumpy Cat.”
“I am not—” Jonathan halted at the sight of two wrapped presents on the coffee table.
One was the size of a clothing box, and Connor had folded and aligned the silver, black, and white striped paper so precisely that the stripes came together on the ends to create a rectangle, not one inch of misalignment.
The bow was a mix of white tulle and silver and black ribbons frothing across more twisted silver and black ribbons that crossed the box.
But it was the much smaller box next to it that froze Jonathan in the doorway. Wrapped in coordinating glossy black paper, it had a simple silver ribbon looped across the top and held in place with a silver sticker. It was jewelry-size levels of smaller.
Connor had done all this for him, cake, gifts, wrapping that looked like it required an internet tutorial, and here he was huffing away like a diva without an oat milk double cappuccino.