34. No Lie Detected
NO LIE DETECTED
“I finished all the prep and taping this morning. It’s ready to paint.” Jonathan glanced at Lily while he continued sealing the plastic bags holding the finger weaving kits for the upcoming Crafturday kids.
There was no universe in which that would be his choice of name for summer craft sessions aimed at five-to-seven-year-olds, but the library had leaned heavily into imagery of anthropomorphic poop doing crafts, so he was stuck with Crafturday.
A fairy misplaced his mascara wand every time Jonathan had to even think the word.
“Still free tonight?”
Next to him, Lily perched on a stool, designing the instruction flier, or at least finding a template on the internet.
Yesterday she’d offered to help paint the walls in Connor’s entry if Jonathan took her to dinner.
He didn’t want to force her to honor the casual commitment to wearing out her arms by rollering walls and cutting paint into corners, but surprising Connor with a redecorated front hall had sounded easier to do than it was.
Also, one measly night of being alone had broken his spirit. Him, the man who had once maintained an apartment-sized fortress of solitude.
She answered without looking up from her screen. “Absolutely. I’m in. I’m going to soak you for so much pad thai, you won’t believe it.”
“Enough leftovers for one lunch. That’s my limit. Or at least my credit card limit.”
She flapped a hand at him. “Ugh, I can’t use this graphic program and talk at the same time. Give me a minute.”
He caught a glimpse of his face on the dark reflective surface of an extra monitor. He looked petulant, which wasn’t a good look. Being a better person meant understanding that other people had priorities that weren’t meant to slight him. He could wait.
He counted the craft kits again. Fifteen was the stated limit for the class, but he should make extras because siblings and others always squeezed in to Crafturday.
“Done.” She swiveled her screen in his direction. “What do you think?”
“Oh, the eyes on that smiling pile of feces really humanize it.” The gossamer rainbow wings around his heart shriveled and turned to dust. Poop dust. His life was poop.
He took a deep breath. “There’s one more thing. I sort of need your vehicle because it’s larger than mine, and also your very strong arms and back to help move a piece of furniture from my place to Connor’s.”
She looked over her totally fake cat-eye glasses, allegedly for blue light, but really just fake. “Gonna cost you extra.”
“Two dinners?”
“One tonight, and then one at your apartment later.”
“My place.” His voice wasn’t as confident as he would wish, but Connor had never criticized his apartment. If anything, he’d seemed to like it, even if most of the furniture was trash.
“Yes. The place you want me to help de-furnish. The place I’ve never seen. The place you allegedly live. Unless your apartment is actually a coffin at the Masonic cemetery?”
“Fine, we can do that. Fine.” Lily would like the chaise longue, she wouldn’t stay long, and anything she said about his home would be funny, not mean.
He would craft the fuck out of these kits and not think about more people in his space. It would be glorious because he was improving and opening up to new possibilities and la la la. Also, next Monday he could tell his therapist, so double win.
The rest of the day followed the pattern, story time, answering questions about how to get on job posting boards, constantly handling books and periodicals, helping people open new library cards. All of it the same. He should be enjoying this.
He missed Connor.
Connor was going to come out to his family this week and Jonathan had no earthly idea how that would go, which was eating at his dark doomed soul.
Connor was the world’s nicest man, thus his family must be nice because they raised him; but he suspected that corollary had no basis in logic and he was spiraling.
He was so fucking spiraling. He needed Pawsley and a glass of chilled pinot grigio and, most of all, Connor.
Finally, it was the end of the day. He carefully draped his library cardigan, which had survived the dry cleaner after being Pawsley’s emergency blanket, over his chair.
No more delay. He turned and saw Lily gathering her bag, and the pit of his stomach told him that taking the next step might mean he was no longer merely cosplaying as a well-adjusted person.
“So, you want to meet me at my place?”
She looked at him wordlessly but nevertheless conveyed her disbelief that he’d bothered to ask.
“Fine.” Ugh, he needed to stop using that word. It had become meaningless. “I’ll give you the address. We have to load up Pawsley and take him to Connor’s too so he can get socialization.”
“He’s in my car! Mine!”
“He rides with a litter box.” They should get a second one when Connor returned.
“Your car! He’s in your car!”
An hour later, after a blessedly brief interlude of marveling over his couch, his Rebecca poster theme, and the faux zebra rug, they had retrieved everything, including a rambunctious kitten, from Jonathan’s home, and unloaded at Connor’s.
“Where did you get this furniture?” Lily examined the pieces they had carried through the hall and into the living room.
“Various places.” He crouched to put the drop cloths in place along the baseboard, which gave him something to do with his hands.
“Seriously, this is nice.” She ran her fingers along the white lacquered sides of the shallow closed cabinet perfectly sized to conceal shoes, something which had been sadly lacking in Connor’s front hall and which recent events had only emphasized.
“And the gold handles match the mirror perfectly.”
Jonathan felt his face get hot.
“Wait. You look funny. Why?”
“It’s mine. They’re mine.”
She continued to stare at him. “Both things? The shoe cabinet and the mirror?”
And the pillar candle waiting to become a welcoming object d’art, but he wasn’t going to mention that.
“I didn’t have time to thrift, alright? It’s not a big deal. I’ll have plenty of time in the fall when Connor’s back at work to find myself a replacement and refinish it, but I wanted to get this done for him.”
“You did this finish?” She stroked the glossy white sides again. “You’re good.”
He ducked his head and shoved more of the drop cloth into the corner. “Should I get a blue and white floral type bowl, or a more natural stoneware, what do you think?”
“Absolutely no idea. What’s it for?”
He stood and moved to the stack of paint trays and rollers he’d bought yesterday.
“Well, there’s already going to be a lidded jar for dog treats, and a scented pillar candle.
I’ve discovered that dog treats are not unscented, and that has to be neutralized.
” He finished removing the plastic wrapping.
“The bowl would be the third thing in the vignette, and it might hold keys or whatever Connor decides. It’s his house. ”
“Hmm. Yes, his house.” Her carefully neutral voice didn’t fool him for one second, not even one.
“Here.” He handed her a roller. “Be quiet and paint.”
She tapped the soft fuzzy side to her forehead and knocked her heels together. “Yessir. Right away, sir.”
After his morning chat with Jess, Connor enjoyed a day riding fence with his sister while his father did equipment maintenance.
In near ninety-degree heat, they took it very slow and easy and gave their mounts long breaks in the shade.
Jess hadn’t minded that he kept sneaking looks at his phone, but eventually they ended up back at the house as dinner approached.
Jess volunteered to finish up the watering and left him to help Mom in the kitchen.
“Holding up under the hardship of all this honest work?” His mother must have spotted his wince as he reached for a water glass in the upper cabinet. Her grin was more amused than concerned.
“Yep.” Running around as a soccer ref and squatting behind home plate to ump were in no way equal to hours in the saddle interrupted by fencing work. Arm curls were good for the way he looked, but repairing fences damaged by elk or weather or stupid heifers was another level.
“So, you want to take charge of the flank steak?”
Had he been promoted to the grill position? “What about Dad?”
“He’s fixing the screens on the coop. Slowly.” She rolled her eyes. “I don’t want the potatoes to be finished before the grill is even heated.”
The pecking order must not be yielding space for his father today. Given that his dad preferred talking to animals over people, it would be funny to eavesdrop on him and the hens.
“You’re calling up the minor leaguer to be the starting grill tender?” He pressed his fist to his chest and then pumped it in the air. “I appreciate the confidence, and I’ll try my best to be worthy of this historic moment.”
“Don’t forget to season them.”
“I got it. Salt, pepper and the Connor special worstsure—worster—wooster—whatever sauce. That stuff. With soy and garlic.”
“Look at my city boy. Fancy steak!” She flicked a fresh green bean across the space between them.
“Hey!” He caught it in the air and tossed it right back. “It’s your marinade!”
They were both laughing as he went out to start the grill.
The light feeling buoyed him through dinner, and the familiar give and take about ranch life and local people and all the nothing-much that his family batted around happily.
Day after tomorrow, it would be time to rotate the head into a different pasture, then after that, a light harrowing of the empty pastures to break up and spread the manure the herd had left.
All very predictable, even comfortable, until eventually he was stretched out on his old double bed with the nine p.m. twilight filtering through his window, amazed he could be this sore without having ridden fifty miles on Jonathan’s damn bike.
He was also tired. And needy. And so, it seemed, was his Jonathan.
Jonathan
I need another photo
Connor
Need is a strong word
Jonathan
You’ve been away for days. I have strong needs
Connor
Two days
One pont five days
Point 1.5 you know what I mean
But here
He attached a shot, taken when he and Jess had returned from checking fences, of Ribby sleeping in the shade under the apple tree.
Heavy fruit bent the branches because his father hadn’t pinched back this year for some reason.
The leaves dappled the light over Ribby’s coat and made him look patterned, like a mini-Appaloosa pony.
Jonathan
That’s nice, your dog is great, blah blah, you know what I want
Connor
Told my sister
Jonathan
What?
Connor
That I’m gay
That I’m dating you
Not lying anymore to anyone about anything
Jonathan
I’m calling
Connor
Need to find my ear bus
Buddhas
Buds
They were across the room charging on his dresser because he hadn’t intended to get out of this bed for another eight hours, but he was happy Jonathan wanted to talk.
He hit the camera icon and saw Jonathan wearing his super-soft pale green sleep shirt. Connor knew exactly how that shirt would feel under his hands, how it would catch on his calluses but glide on Jonathan’s skin.
“How’d it go?” Jonathan’s warm voice in his ear let him pretend Jonathan was next to him on the pillow. Connor should have used his laptop screen so he could see him better, but at least his voice was like a hug.
“She thinks you’re hot.”
“And water is wet and the orange man is a felon. None of that is news, big guy.”
Of course, his boyfriend smirked. If he was there, Connor would kiss that smirk right off his pretty lips.
“Did you show her my iEros pic?”
“Absolutely not.” He put as much vehemence into his voice as a whisper could sustain. “It’s a pickup photo!”
“Well, you should. Or the cowboy one I sent.” The smug confidence in Jonathan’s voice evoked an image of his boyfriend, curved lips and flirty eyes and that knowing smirk. He wanted to be able to reach out and press their lips together and worship that confidence.
Then a much less happy thought intruded. “Wait, you don’t still have an account, do you? I deleted mine so I can’t see that photo.”
Jonathan made a dismissive sound. “Of course I deleted it. We talked about this in the woods ages ago. But you didn’t download my photo? I think I should be insulted.”
Connor kicked himself for not doing that.
He could be looking at Jonathan’s naked torso and mysteriously placed below the frame hand whenever he wanted, but he hadn’t thought strategically.
“I guess it didn’t occur to me, because I had the real-life model in my bed, you know?
It’s a nice photo. But no substitute for you. ”
“Ahh, flattery.” The gust of air that Jonathan exhaled didn’t sound as mocking as Connor would have expected. Someone did like to be complimented late at night in the dark.
“I want your sister one hundred percent on our side, that’s all. That photo will seal the deal.”
“Nah, you’re just a vain and shallow praise-seeker.”
“No lie detected.” His grin faded into a half-smile. “But seriously, how did it go?”
“Really well.” He told Jonathan about how Jess had started the conversation by mentioning the softball team. “And then I had to defend my own hotness!”
“However did you manage that?”
“I am hot, right?”
“What did you call me not five minutes ago?” One of Jonathan’s fingers tapped on his smiling lips. “Let me see if I can recall. Was it perhaps…vain? Praise-seeking?”
“And hot. I called you hot.”
Jonathan tilted his head to the side. “I think I’m going to have to see more of you before I can confirm your hotness. I’ve forgotten.”
“You need a reminder?” His dick was extremely interested in Jonathan’s answer.
“Take off your shirt, Connor.” And that was the voice that found its echo inside Connor’s chest. The voice that slowed him and sped him both, the voice he craved in his ear.
His breath hitched. “Okay.”
He pulled the cotton over his head. Air from the open window flowed across his chest, but even that didn’t cool his skin.
“Now roll it up and prop your phone on it. I want to see your arms and shoulders.”
The sound that slipped between his lips was more of a sigh than a word.
“I’m going to help you feel good.”
“Yes.” Even listening to Jonathan’s voice and seeing his face made Connor feel good; anything more, and the firm set of Jonathan’s lips promised the exact type of more Connor wanted, made him thrum with anticipation.
Some people might claim honesty was its own reward, but video sex was a way better prize for the honesty he’d shown today.
Way, way better.