Page 53 of Checking Out the Librarian

His panic had made it weird, so he took a deep breath and reminded himself of how to smile. “Some other time, sure.”

“Really?” She cocked her head. “That would be fun. You have cool clothes.”

“Sure.” He’d said it. He’d agreed. And that meant he was going to have to follow through and that meant he must clean everything and re-organize his closet.

Or he’d be a liar.

13

PICKLEBALL WITH HANK

Connor reserved summer Friday mornings to hang out with Hank.

He’d met Hank, a quiet football player from Hawaii, when they were randomly assigned to share a room in a quad eight years ago. Most people wouldn’t have pictured a chatty cattle ranch kid on the baseball team and a grumpy homesick Hawaiian defensive end bonding as fast as they did, and that was without even adding in the gay/straight difference.

But they both liked movies, Connor’s ability to bake brownies in the dorm’s woefully understocked and occasionally squalid common kitchen, and doing laundry before the sport stench took over. That made them compatible roommates. That they both tried their best to be decent human beings made them friends. Then the type of friends who visited each other’s homes for breaks. By this many years in, Connor’s mom had Hank’s number saved in her phone and invited him to dinner directly when they came to town.

So, best friends.

Today’s pickleball game might break down that history like a cheap, wet box.

“Eight-seven, server one.” Connor called the score, a narrower lead than he would have liked against two math department guys who pretended to be bad ass, but who Hank and he usually beat in the neighborhood of eleven-three. He didn’t particularly care about the score, though, because all he could think was that yesterday at this time, the bright morning hour of nine o’clock, he’d been on his knees in front of Jonathan.

His serve sliced past the baseline without bouncing first inside the required court.

“What was that?” Unfortunately, Hank cared far too much about this game, probably because he hadn’t had a blowjob in at least three years, if Connor had to put a number on how long the most recent round of pining over their friend Emma had been going on.

“My bad, sorry.”

Hank’s role as an assistant coach at the university’s Division I football program meant that he had periods of huge recruiting activity, a frenetic fall of travel, recovery, and practices, and then some lulls in the space between the end of spring football and restarting in August. From the middle of June, when Connor’s break from teaching began, until Hank had to start preparing for training camp, they both had chill schedules.

Hank’s serve hit where it was meant to, and somehow the other guy returned it deep into Connor’s zone, and then—shit—he lined the ball back hard into the net.

Hank barked a sound that would have been laughter, if he’d been a sea lion at Haystack Rock, but was more like disbelief verging on bad sportsmanship in this setting.

A chill schedule did not transform Hank into a chill athlete. He was mow-you-down Hank, the Hitman, Hank who was not here to play, only to demolish opponents on the autobahn to victory. Without football, he took that lack of chill onto a twenty-by-forty-four-foot pickleball court tucked behind the campus swim complex.

That left Connor to trot up to the net, retrieve the ball he’d screwed around with, and under-hand it to the other team.

“Make that up to me by helping me move Emma’s new couch,” Hank said.

“Sure, when.”

The serve came right at Connor, and his arm moved automatically to return it as deeply as possible, then he hustled closer to the net. Hank was more than capable of covering the back half in case the dude mixed it up with a deep lob.

The next ball was a shallow drop shot, and he was totally ready to reach into the kitchen zone and dink that beauty back at a sharp angle that flipped it all the way to the far out-of-bounds line.

That was his mojo. That was good. Hank would be happier.

The second guy served, and they volleyed without talking, but eventually Hank answered Connor’s earlier question. “Tomorrow night. At Emma’s.”

Those two needed to finally start doing the dirty deed, so Hank could quit being such a charging rhinoceros and be a run-of-the-mill resting grump face who’s getting some. They were nauseatingly coupled-up, but without the sex.

“Can’t. I have a date.”

Thwack, no other word for the sound as Hank leaped and nailed the ball hard into the gap between the guys on the other side, getting the serve back.

They’d played pickleball and worked out together often enough that they were both used to the start and stop interruptions of having a conversation weave through their game.