27. Using That Word
USING THAT WORD
The next day Jonathan dragged himself to opening shift while Connor minded Kitten a second time.
When Jonathan returned shortly after four o’clock, a tired cat needed to nap in his new bed, a giant felt taco that Connor had bought when Jonathan wasn’t looking and stuck in the mud room, and an energetic Ribby needed a romp in Skinner Butte Park along the South Bank path.
Jonathan hadn’t expected to be hiking after work.
He’d anticipated lounging in Connor’s yard among the blooming hydrangeas and watching a shirtless blond giant wield sharp tools to perform manly gardening tasks, so now he was hiking in shorts designed for a very even tan, and a cropped pale blue T-shirt with a bunny barista.
At least he hadn’t chosen to wear black, so he would be visible if he became lost.
He was too fabulous for the forest, but he didn’t think it was the mismatch between his sartorial choices and their activity that was making Connor tense.
“You’re my boyfriend, right?” Connor had stopped behind him on the trail.
When Jonathan turned around, he realized a breakdown was imminent, he was just surprised by whose it was. “Is that what we’re calling this? Are you really using that word?”
“I am. I think. I mean, yes, I am.” Connor’s voice rose. “Why shouldn’t I?”
Internet influencers could redefine his hands on hips stance as a power pose until they keeled over, but Jonathan would always say, or think, that he stood with his arms akimbo. There was no need to update a classic phrase. “Please, why?”
“But how much do we have in common? I mean, you do think it’s enough, don’t you?”
“What is bringing this on? Is the pollen count addling your brain? Or is it my ass and legs in three-inch inseams? Seriously, Connor, what’s going on inside your head right now?”
He looked at the ground instead of answering.
The woods were also silent, and Jonathan realized he wouldn’t talk to Kitten in that tone of voice, so why had he deployed it at Connor?
Mistakes like this were why he shouldn’t be anyone’s boyfriend. He was a self-involved prick, and he didn’t know how to be the right person for someone else.
He should try. He could try.
Cosplay a better person, he reminded himself.
“I’m sorry.” Being neither self-destructive nor generally destructive required those words more often than he’d anticipated.
Connor scuffed the toe of his shoe into the trail and remained quiet.
“I shouldn’t have deflected by…” Another self-help book moment, or maybe it was auto-recall of his own time in the talking chair, gave him words to finish his sentence. “By lashing out.”
Whatever. It was time for him to try to shift old patterns with fucking intent and manifest his authenticity while choking his limiting beliefs with all that chicken soup that did nothing for his personal soul except shrivel it.
Even if he couldn’t be the perfect boyfriend, even if he made mistakes, that wasn’t a reason to quit in advance.
He could work at being good enough. Just because he hadn’t seen any good relationships and he was surely going to mess up the best thing that had ever happened to him didn’t mean he shouldn’t try.
Take that, double negatives.
He took a deep breath. “Yes, you’re my boyfriend.”
Ugh, that word tasted like meat and not in a good way. But he survived.
This could be a success worth describing in Monday night’s first consultation with his leader in the inner landscape terraforming process, i.e., his new therapist.
“We are boyfriends. I think.”
It slipped out easier the second time.
Ribby nudged Connor’s knee. Jonathan watched Connor drop a hand to the dog’s head, but his shoulders remained high and by his neck. “But do you think we have enough in common? To last?”
He couldn’t stop the sound of gritted teeth from escaping his mouth, and he copied Connor by kicking the dirt.
“I want to be the type of British character who mutters oh fucking shite and marches off across the moors right now, I really do. Especially because I know how much you enjoy those types of characters.”
He bent and grabbed a broken branch from the side of the trail.
“But I don’t have a moor. I only have this random piece of wood and I’m sure Ribby is looking at it covetously.” He started scratching at the dirt. Luckily, it had drizzled overnight so it wasn’t hardpan. “I’m only going to demonstrate this once, so pay attention.”
While he drew two overlapping circles, each about twenty-four inches across, Connor inched closer.
In the combined middle space of the Venn diagram, Jonathan slashed a short line. “Books.”
And another. “Pets.”
And another. “Your amazing cooking.”
And another. “Period television dramas.”
And another. “You tried cycling and keep trying despite your lack of affinity or skill.”
Connor nodded along with each hash mark Jonathan drew, which was a good sign.
“Multicultural cooking shows, although to be fair, you watch sincerely and I watch for other purposes, but we can call it an overlapping interest.” Hash mark in the center.
Connor exhaled loudly.
“Food trucks with friends. Candles.” More marks.
“Tight pants, wearing.” One hash mark.
“Tight pants, staring.” Second hash mark.
Connor stepped closer, his toes almost on top of the edge of the diagram. He focused on the stick, or maybe on Jonathan’s hand on the stick, but his shoulders had loosened so Jonathan knew he wasn’t in the teeth of whatever had been gnawing him moments before.
“Now over here—” He moved his stick away from the very full overlapped area and made a deep puncture. He rotated the tip of the stick in the hole to enlarge it.
“Punctuation. That’s on my side.”
And he flipped to the other side, Connor’s solo part, and drew a sunshine. “Mornings. Your side, AKA, hell.”
Despite the dense woodland canopy that cast afternoon shade nearly dark enough to lose the edges of thoughts, Connor stepped into a pocket of light that illuminated his face. Teeth gleamed in his smile.
His eyes, his chest, his arms, all of him looked so much more relaxed and present that for a delirious moment Jonathan considered whether he could write a non-dreadful book of grounding exercises to help emotional, overthinking boyfriends get out of their own heads.
He’d done it.
He’d morphed into a fucking spiritual caretaker.
“So.” He waved with the stick and Ribby twitched and whined. “Look at it. Do we have enough in common?”
Connor held out his hand for the stick. “My turn.”
“I’m warning you, this better be good.”
“I’m very good.” Connor added a horizontal dash across a bundle of lines already in the middle section. “Reads pictures books out loud while making animal sounds.”
The stick hovered in the air, and Jonathan couldn’t stop staring at its vibrating tip.
“Let’s see, where does covered in fur go?” He started to lower the point to the side where Jonathan had drawn a sunshine but then stabbed a line in the middle. “Both! It’s both of us because you have a pet!”
“Fuck you.”
“Honesty, good idea. I like that.” Hash mark in the middle.
Connor hesitated and dropped his chin. “Deleted iEros profile. Where should I put that?”
“Where do you think? In the middle. After one week, but only because I was lazy.” He looked at the ground and forced himself to be completely open. “Or I would have done it sooner.”
Ribby was entirely involved with the chart at this point, trampling their confessions, which felt exactly like what was supposed to happen.
“Lastly, perhaps most importantly, likes hot dick.” Connor scratched energetically at the middle section, and Ribby started to mouth the stick at the same time.
“You are so fucking evolved.”
“And where should I put a mark for that?” Without taking his gaze off Jonathan’s face, Connor moved the tip of the stick to the separate area that represented his own qualities. “Here? Or is that evolving thing something we’re also sharing?”
He gave Connor his biggest smile, which wasn’t difficult at all because a stray sunbeam hit Connor’s hair and created a halo effect.
His life had become a rom-com cliché, all the way down to the lighting and cinematography, but there was nothing to be done except speak his lines.
So he held out his hand and, in his best customer service voice, said, “Let me show you where that goes.”
Connor’s eyes narrowed, clearly suspicious, but he surrendered the stick.
Jonathan immediately threw it as far as he could, which admittedly was about five feet away, but it was enough to distract Ribby so he could throw himself into Connor’s arms without tripping on the dog.
Connor caught him, of course; Jonathan had never had a doubt.
In the filtered light of the woods, Connor needed words that didn’t exist.
Jonathan’s lips were soft, not dry like his own, and tasted like vanilla cookies. His boyfriend was a cookie.
He, himself, was a monster, but the best kind, the big happy kind that wanted to eat his boyfriend, so he let his hand slide down Jonathan’s spine over the bare skin at his waist and he palmed the curve of his ass in those dangerous denim shorts.
For getting an even tan, Jonathan had explained when Connor had raised his eyebrows at the shorts, and Connor fully supported all of Jonathan’s goals.
Jonathan had molded his body to Connor’s, and it was nothing to pull him to his toes and settle him so that their cocks nestled together. Mouths slanted against each other.
Nothing soft now. Jonathan yanking his head down, Jonathan thrusting his tongue into Connor’s mouth and opening for Connor, Jonathan shaping himself to Connor, almost climbing him.
Lifting Jonathan, his senses full, his hands full, those short shorts gliding up until his hands filled with the warm, bare skin at the curve where Jonathan’s thighs became his ass.
One kiss. That was all it took for him, every time. One filthy kiss.
Their tongues twisted together in ways that Connor wanted to mimic with the rest of their bodies.
One kiss, and they were both hardening.