24. High Emotional Intelligence. The Highest
HIGH EMOTIONAL INTELLIGENCE. THE HIGHEST
On Monday Jonathan made his own coffee before work, exactly as he had on Sunday morning before the veterinarian appointment.
No ugly anteater mug delivered bedside. No pancakes. No fruit sliced by someone else while he slept, which was quite possibly the pinnacle of decadence for a lazy, entitled snot like himself.
It was ridiculous, but between having to bottle feed the kitten, pack everything the potato-sized ball of energy required for a day at the library, and get himself ready, he fell far behind his schedule.
His skin care routine had not happened, which wasn’t the tone he wanted to set for the day, but it was that or be late.
Kitten’s travel gear included a half-size portable covered tray that Jonathan had poured litter into, since it was time to teach the cute-ster how to do his own business without involving other parties.
Lily had been excited to assume supervisory responsibilities, which, after thirty-six hours of handling Kitten’s biological processes on his own, Jonathan had embraced with promises of muffins, cupcakes, sandwiches, pie, whatever she wanted, as long as it was whatever Connor made, and as long as he had one blessed shift without butt gauze and pee.
Just one eight-hour pee-free block of time.
An hour later, Kitten was doing better at work than Jonathan was.
He was a champion of lounging in the cross-body bag, which Jonathan stabilized with a small cardboard insert.
When Jonathan swayed, he purred and popped his head in and out of the opening.
He was also a champion of the heating pad nap.
For story time, Lily replaced her planned reading of the classic 17 Things I’m Not Allowed to do Anymore, which Jonathan privately felt was an unwise road map for a Monday morning audience, with Kitten’s First Full Moon.
Someone tiny and black and white was asked to make a special guest appearance, and that someone obliged.
Surprisingly, Boss Becca acquiesced to this complete invasion of her fiefdom. “This once, I’ll permit it. Since he was found here.”
She was remarkably agreeable for a dog person, but then he didn’t really understand middle-aged women.
He snuck to the back to let Kitten toddle around while he checked his texts. He’d felt his phone vibrate several times, and since Lily shared the desk with him, it was Connor.
Connor
Let’s try introducing them
You can hold Kitten and I can hold Ribby
I watched videos on how to do this
They are very safe for work
He’d also sent Jonathan a link. And then another. And of course a third, all about introducing tiny cats to dog guardians, a genre of video that Jonathan had not known existed but which cracked things inside his chest that were supposed to stay whole and together.
Maybe those things had already been dropped a couple times and were ready to break open, but Connor and his videos weren’t helping at all.
Jonathan
Liar. Those were NSFW.
By the time he got home from work and changed into his soft clothes and soft robe—he owned three robes, each with a legitimately different use—Jonathan had no energy for anything other than fried eggs with a side of apple slices, the best-looking things in his refrigerator, and the last three pieces of kimbap he found in an undated freezer bag.
And texting. He had energy for texting. Snuggled into his sofa with Kitten snoozing on his heating pad six feet away, he and Connor typed and typed.
Connor
Do your parents know
Jonathan
My birthday?
Connor
No that your gay
You’re
It seemed that Connor was possibly having his own deep existential questions alone in his house, too.
Jonathan
Do they know that when their flamboyantly dramatic figure skating son exits the Luxembourg hotel room of another artistically inclined male skater at two a.m., he wasn’t watching prime time American television sports live?
Connor
Guess they know
Jonathan
They would have known earlier if my mother had been paying attention to me and actually caught me exiting those rooms, but she was drunk-boning my coach.
Connor
Oh
That sucks I’m sorry
Jonathan
She did that too. In the changing room.
Gave kiss and cry new meaning for the people that saw her
Connor
I’m really sorry
Jonathan
It was my last competition.
Connor
Was that why you uqit
That little error tethered him to this place, this time, this new life he’d chosen and built.
Connor wasn’t perfect, even though he actually was, and Jonathan wanted to absorb that through his own pores like some special soul-care ingredient and get better.
To do that, he had to dredge the honesty out of the pit of his stomach.
Jonathan
That’s the terrible part.
I only stopped because of the pandemic. I was too deep in.
Connor
I wish you were here
So I could hug you and show you I car
Care
Jonathan
You could use punctuation. That would be a start.
He was such a defensive jerk. Why had he typed that, why had he sent it, and why did Connor even like him?
Connor shouldn’t worry about being perfect, not in texting, not in anything. That wasn’t what Jonathan wished on anyone.
Connor
You keep talking about this punctuation. Should I be jealous
Jonathan
I’m sorry, I’m going to stop doing that
Connor
What
Jonathan
Being an asshole about punctuation
Connor
I see what you did. Or didn’t do
Jonathan scrolled backwards. Why had Connor asked him if he was out to his parents?
Most people made the correct assumption, and Jonathan so rarely had to do that “I’m gay” thing, it was almost a lark when he had to. Well, not really, but it was at least rare. Whatever Connor wanted to know was definitely bigger than idle curiosity.
He hit the talk button on his screen.
“Hey! You’re calling!”
“Yes, Connor. We can use voices instead of fingers. Then I can imagine the periods and ignore the exclamation points.”
Connor laughed. He was so easy.
Deep breath. This was why he’d hit the talk icon instead of video chat. “Actually, I’ve been bitchy about a lot of stuff like that and I need to stop.”
“I don’t take it personally.”
“I kind of have a problem with perfectionism and also a bit with accepting compliments and also with letting things go when I should and—”
Now Connor was laughing uproariously, and Jonathan wondered if a video call would reveal an IPA bottle in his hand.
“Don’t take this the wrong way, but I sort of figured all that out.”
“You, ah—” Jonathan swallowed and tried again with his voice in its normal register. “You did?”
“I may look like the next breakout underwear model star, but I’m actually very high emotional intelligence, you know.” Jonathan definitely heard a clink like the mouth of a glass bottle had tapped Connor’s teeth. “Very high. The highest.”
He didn’t have a response, because actually, Connor was stating the truth. And he wasn’t going to be the type of asshole to argue with him. He could demonstrate some of that emotional intelligence himself.
“I called because your question made me wonder.” He took a breath. “Do your parents know?”
Connor didn’t answer right away, but Jonathan waited.
“I’ve never said it, and they’ve definitely never caught me leaving a guy’s hotel room, but I’ve also never dated a woman. Not even when I lived at home.”
Jonathan kept waiting, in case he continued.
He didn’t.
“That sounds like probably not.”
“I’m not in the closet. And they do visit.”
Jonathan knew what having a secret meant. It meant Connor was lying to his parents, even if he didn’t want to. Even if he didn’t lie to Jonathan, he was lying a lot.
Lying about who he went places with, lying about his weekends, lying about his softball team, lying by omission and illusion, lying left and right and center, because not telling the people he loved was a form of lying, too.
“What does that mean? You expect them to connect the dots between your single use madeleine baking molds, scented candles, and coffee table books? Can they do that?”
He could hear Connor breathing loudly and realized that hadn’t been the right path out of the yellowed wood of choices to support the man he was dating.
He’d vowed to be better and gone right back to the well-trodden sarcastic route, but the thing was, he didn’t quite know what the other path, the one that was grassy and wanted wear and would make all the difference so Connor could come out, even looked like in this instance.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry.” The words came out fast and blurred.
He hated self-help books, hated them with the feelings he generally reserved for decaf coffee and pilled knits, but they were so, so popular and he had to shelve so many of them that it was probably osmosis the way words like deflected and healing seeped through his fingers into his mind.
“I shouldn’t have joked about your parents and you coming out.
It was…” He struggled for the perfect thing to say to get Connor to understand how sorry and stupid he felt.
“It was juvenile of me to make a joke about something that big. You were being serious and I, well, my former therapist would say I covered my own insecurities by being a jerk. You were nice to me, and I couldn’t be nice back, because I’m… ”
A mess.
Broken.
A loser.
He wasn’t that last one, but he didn’t know what he was. “So, it’s Monday.”
Connor was making noises that Jonathan didn’t think were sobs.
“Are you laughing at me?”
“Yeah, it’s Monday, so I’ve heard it’s free pass day for being a jerk.”
“You are laughing! Was my apology not perfect? I spent a lot of money to learn all of that about myself.” His words replayed in his head. “Oh, fuck, my apology didn’t have to be perfect. It just had to be put out there for you. Not perfect. Just said to you and with some I statements.”
“It was, it really was. Your apology was more than…it was…”
He didn’t know what Connor’s noises meant.
Sort of wheezing and gurgling, maybe laughter, definitely fast breathing.
He wanted to hit the video button, wanted to see that messy blond hair and decipher Connor’s feelings from his eyes and his mouth, but that might sever this fragile connection, and also, Connor would see him, too, and right now that felt untenable.
“You convinced me that I should come out to them. When I’m home in a couple weeks.”
“Now you’re joking when I’m the one being serious.”
“No, I don’t think I am.” Connor’s voice was slower and quieter. “You’ve convinced me that I have to tell them. Soon.”
“Wait, I did?” Nothing made sense, except that he should not talk on the phone, since he could not replay this conversation like he could re-read messages.
“You did.”