30. Podium Performances #2
All the players crowded home plate to wait for Connor as he rounded third, looking like himself again. That was his happy face as he ran into the crowd of teammates with his hands stretched out, planted his foot on the white plastic pentagon-shaped thingy, and jumped into everyone’s arms.
The pinstripe team looked disgruntled and shuffled around, and Jonathan wanted to stick out his tongue and make faces at whoever had been too stupid to lock down Connor when he’d had the chance, because they’d be softball winners and have baked goods on the regular, but New Jonathan was better than that.
Watching the group photos was so much better than watching photographers circle the kiss and cry.
Connor stood in the front, grinning like the man who’d stolen his tiramisu, grinning like the man who arrived with kitten supplies and announced himself as Paw Patrol.
Or, not to make it all about himself, Connor was grinning like the guy who’d driven in the winning runs in a championship.
Someone even soused him with a shaken-up bottle of fizzy water.
As he watched Connor laugh, the thing that had been wrapped around Jonathan as tightly as skate laces and had felt perilously close to strangling him started to loosen.
Weirdly, Connor didn’t stop laughing.
He’d stop for a few minutes, but then Danny or Trixie or Softball Becka would say something and he’d laugh loudly again, even if no one else did.
The photographer finally marshalled everyone into something that looked like a team shot, and Connor had one arm thrown around Trixie and the other pumped in a fist in the air.
After a few minutes of photos and chaos, Trixie yelled, “Michelle, Jonathan! Get over here! You’re the scorekeepers and party people. Get in the next shot.”
He was shaking his head before she’d finished the command. “No, that’s fine, I don’t need to be.”
He’d rushed from work to the craft store and hadn’t changed. Linen pants and a collared shirt were not a sporty look, not even with the shirt untucked and billowing, not unless the sport was bocce. Michelle was in team colors and logos, but he would look ridiculous squeezed alongside all of them.
“You’re doing it, Jonathan.” Michelle, Trixie’s partner and also a very strong person, pulled him.
He took two reluctant steps toward Connor, wanting to slot sideways into that space and feel the weight of Connor’s arm, but also not wanting to be in the center of the group where Connor stood.
Connor’s gaze, lingering even less than his last hit, slipped across Jonathan’s face and fell to the ground. He bit his lower lip deeply enough that Jonathan could see the edges of his teeth, and his eyebrows drew sharply toward the center of his nose.
That couldn’t mean he was upset with Jonathan joining the team photo. That wouldn’t make any sense, because Connor always went out of his way to include him. Still, smiling through it was a life skill he’d learned from birth, so he diverted his trajectory and crowded next to Danny at the far edge.
He must have smiled for the photos, since no one ordered him to.
The team meal was trays of enchiladas, black beans, chips and truly excellent guacamole, but his stomach hurt as he watched Connor take food and not eat it.
Once everyone had finished, they were going to do the cake, year-end toasts, and appreciation awards, all the things best endured with sugar and drinks.
Jonathan’s current task was setting up a pyramid of plastic champagne coupes and filling them with mocktails for everyone, which should preclude watching Connor drink two beers on a mostly empty stomach, but successful neurotics could multi-task.
Jonathan had learned to count people’s drinks before he was ten, and that habit was so far down the list of things he needed to change for his self-improvement that he couldn’t be assed to stop.
Connor crossed the picnic space to Jonathan’s table. “Can you take me home?”
“Now?” Connor couldn’t want to leave before the toasts and silly awards.
“After?” He sounded pleading.
“Of course. I have my car.” He finished adding the cranberry juice to the glasses at the base of the pyramid, then laid his hand on Connor’s arm, as slowly and delicately as he could manage, because he didn’t want Connor to startle. He looked so close to breaking apart.
“Can’t drive drunk. That’s important.”
“I know that. That’s why I had seltzer tonight.” And because my stomach hurt and I don’t know what’s going on with you and I watched you slam two beers. “Nobody here is driving drunk.”
Under the field lights, Connor’s eyes were luminous and large. Jonathan could see sweat on his upper lip, as if a fever had returned.
Connor stared at Jonathan with Ribby-eyes. “But do you understand?”
This all felt really, really wrong, and really, really bad. “Did something happen, Connor? Was someone you know hurt by a drunk driver?”
“No, no, no.” He spread a hand over his face and rocked forward, then back, and kept rocking. “No one’s hurt. Nothing happened.”
That was such a huge lie, even a Russian judge couldn’t have been bribed to call it the truth.
He needed to finish setting up the toasting pyramid, but he also needed to help Connor. He wasn’t sure why, precisely, two beers had affected Connor this much, but it must be related to yesterday’s illness and his lateness.
“Let’s just step over here and talk.” Farther from the table with a pyramid of drinks.
Connor backed away and fled.
If anyone had been looking at him, they would have seen a man filled with celebratory joie de vivre tilt his head and smile after Connor and then gracefully, carelessly, happily turn back to the second table set up for the sheet cake someone had magically produced from the back of a Subaru.
Not from Connor’s, but there were at least three lesbians with Subarus on the team and that was not a stereotype, it was a fact.
No one saw his hands shake as he set out paper plates, a cutting knife, and forks, because they did not shake.
No one saw his knees wobble when he returned to the drinks table, because a skater could be steady no matter what sort of cracks opened in front of him.
“Hey, great last hit! You’re Connor, right? Remember me?”
Jonathan looked up and watched the blood drain away from Connor’s flushed cheeks in real time while the stocky spectator in cargo shorts and a navy-blue T-shirt continued speaking. “You see your friend was traded to Seattle this morning? How’s he doing?”
“My friend?” Connor’s voice was weird enough that it started a replay of the previous sentence in Jonathan’s mind, even while the conversation between Connor and the person he thought went with Softball Abby kept rolling.
“The catcher? I saw the trade on social media because he played here for the university. Told Abby that I’d met him yesterday at your place. Glad he wasn’t hurt worse but didn’t see Seattle wanting him.” They shook their head. “Hope he gets some help, you know?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t…we shouldn’t…”
The absence of color in Connor’s face emphasized the range of pinks and creams and golden tans that normally ebbed and flowed across his cheeks and lips.
“Shit, my bad.” Abby’s partner tilted their head apologetically. “I’m not supposed to talk about calls. Medical privacy, you know.” Their head swiveled toward Jonathan and then rapidly away. “Shit. Sorry, man, sorry.”
The catcher. At your place. Yesterday.
The catcher.
The air around Jonathan rippled like a sheet of ice had sucked all the heat from the dusty field and left him looking through the distortion of frosted windows.
All he could see was other times.
He was eighteen and missed the podium at Junior Worlds, he was twenty-one and his mother was sleeping with his coach, he was twenty-three and trying to skate after the pandemic, he was at Chelsea Piers and there was the guy he’d started to like, but he had a real family.
They were all on the other side of the icy glass. And so was Connor.
He was stuck in the cold, alone.
No. No. No.
He was none of those former people. He was twenty-seven and Connor was his boyfriend and this couldn’t mean what it sounded like, because Connor had promised he wouldn’t—
Connor looked at him and their gazes locked.
If Jonathan was frozen, Connor was dust already blowing away. There was nothing left to him.
Do not, under any circumstances, bump the drinks table. Half the glasses were huckleberry juice, and half cranberry, so that they’d have a lovely pink and blue presentation. And a few plain soda waters, naturally. And a few with both juices, which created a lovely purple.
Never let anyone say Jonathan Park couldn’t plan an inclusive party.
Jonathan Park could do anything.
Anything.
Except be good enough to keep a boyfriend. Except be enough.
“Drinks are ready, everyone!” His voice sparkled like the soda, of that he made certain.
With one grand Joan Crawford gesture, he could sweep all these drinks and all this work to the ground while he demanded to know what mistake he’d made.
Did he not learn enough softball terms? Hadn’t he appreciated the cooking?
Did he not suck enough cock? What could he improve before the next time he wanted to ruin his makeup over a man? What?
Connor inched closer. He was so pale, he might be translucent.
Jonathan raised his arms, the ones Connor had called pretty when what he meant was convenient. “Let’s toast for the champions of Eugene’s Summer Fast Pitch Softball!”
The team oohed and ahhed over his display. He was good at making pretty things, good on the surface of things, but pretty was never enough.
“Jonathan.” Connor’s voice was low and urgent and Jonathan did not care. Extremely did not care. “I can explain. I can.”
Of course he could.
He moved to the cake table and reached for the knife, amazed to see that he held it steady. Personal growth, well done. “Would you like a piece?”