Page 198 of Checking Out the Librarian

Jonathan came around to the passenger side and linked his fingers with Connor’s. The dry air carried the distant soundtrack of rides and crowds, but screened between the Subaru and an F-250 extended cab, their cocoon was quiet and dark.

“How do you want to handle this?” Jonathan asked. “We don’t have to do this if you don’t want.”

“What do you mean?”

“Connor, you’re emoting a lot of nervous energy right now.”

“I’m not.” He heard gravel crunching under his boots and stopped rocking. For a moment. “Okay, I am.”

A deep breath shuddered into his chest, and he knew suddenly why he felt like this.

“I don’t want to have the same conversation twenty times. Hey, this is my boyfriend Jonathan, and then while I wait for you to have a minor stroke over that word, the other person is like, wait, are you gay, and I have to nod politely and say yes, I am, in my not at all femme voice, and then they start verbally running through every clue they ever had about me, like, oh, in third grade you drew a rainbow, I should have realized. Do you know how exhausting that’s going to be?”

“Sorry, I don’t.” Jonathan shrugged, but at least he didn’t remove his hands from Connor’s.

“Honestly not something I have to keep explaining. Most people meet this”—he let go of one hand and waved at himself—“and they immediately know how amazing I am. And how gay.”

“Not helpful.” Connor sighed and pulled Jonathan closer to his chest. He wanted to feel his weight and, hopefully, sense the thud of his heart. “And until this week, you hyperventilated when I introduced you as my boyfriend, so forgive me if I doubt your no big deal attitude.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t mean to make light of this.” He tightened his arms around Connor and stepped closer into the embrace. “We could hold hands? You could put your arm on my shoulders? Then it’s sort of clarified? Or is that going to be uncomfortable here?”

“I want to.” Even Connor heard the hesitancy in his own voice.

“But?” Jonathan squeezed his waist, encouraging him.

“I don’t know how anyone is going to act.” He raised his hand to rub a thumb across the ridge of bone under Jonathan’s eye.

He’d skipped his usual night-out sparkling highlights, just the smooth glowing lotion he used and probably mascara. He should know if the glossy lips were natural or cosmetic, but he could never tell. They were just Jonathan.

Connor wanted to kiss him more than he wanted to go into the fair and eat fried food and greet people who remembered him from his high school baseball days, and Jonathan was right here in his arms, but words kept pushing at his throat to escape.

“I want you to like it here, I want you to like being here together, and I don’t want us to hear shit, you know? I don’t want you to hear anything that means you don’t want to come back. I don’t want someone I haven’t seen in years to come up out of nowhere and insult us because we’re doing what everyone else gets to do!”

His chest was heaving more than he’d expected.

Jonathan threaded his fingers through the hair on the back of Connor’s head and pulled his forehead down until their brows touched. “We’ll be okay. You and me. No matter what. We won’t let go of each other. Even if we’re not touching, we’re together. Agreed?”

“I love you.” It felt like a moment made for those words.

“I love you too, Connor McMillan.”

He took a deep breath. “You’re getting good at saying that.”

“You make it easy.”

He lifted Jonathan’s chin with his finger and looked into those eyes that sometimes pierced him, sometimes comforted him. “Someday you’re going to say it first.”

The eye roll and smirk deserved his best work in reply.

They kissed, hidden between the parked cars, at the dark end of the gravel lot. Slowly. Sweetly. The way they kissed when he was trying not to smudge Jonathan’s makeup, not the way they kissed when he absolutely wanted glitter-powder proof of Jonathan’s existence spread all over his body. Jonathan’s pulse beat against Connor’s thumb, steady, and steadying him.

They stopped before it went too far, as if they both knew they were going to go forward to the fair, and not back to the farm.

“You could tell your sister she’s free to spread the word.”

As if cued, his phone chirped. It was Jess.

“That’s spooky. Is she clairvoyant?” Jonathan asked.