Page 38 of The Librarians

The basketball game, naturally, fails to hold Jonathan’s attention—and would have failed even if Hazel weren’t upstairs breaking the law.

For all intents and purposes, he and Ryan are alone, for the first time in twenty years. Jonathan is grateful for the TV, for the sonic blast and frenetic motion of the match in progress. He is also grateful for the beer in his hand, which gives him something to hold and something to do.

“Oh, I almost forgot,” says Ryan and leaps up.

He seems to have lost none of his agility. Jonathan can easily overlay onto him the image he still carries from those varsity b-ball games—yellow flooring, burnt orange bleachers, a lithe young Ryan levitating for a jump shot.

Ryan comes back with a plate of food. “Ever had karaage? Japanese fried chicken?”

With an H Mart not far from where he lives, Jonathan’s had Korean fried chicken. But the karaage is new to him, and its crispy, salty deliciousness penetrates even his current level of inner distraction. “Wow. Did you make this?”

“It’s frozen food. My mom bought two boxes at the Japanese store and gave me one.” Ryan grins. “For me to put a little Asian gloss on my American ass.”

Jonathan can also overlay this smile on his mental recollection of high school Ryan. The same charm, the same mischief.

But how does he come across to Ryan? Has he changed enough in the past twenty years that Ryan cannot reconcile the current him with his memories? God, he hopes so.

The final whistle blows on the second quarter.

Ryan tsks. “It’s been three weeks since the season started and everybody still looks rusty.”

“Too much bunching,” concurs Jonathan. “Nobody’s rotating properly.”

He did see a bit of the play and it was not inspiring.

Ryan shakes his head. He takes out his phone, frowns, puts it back into his pocket, and turns off the TV.

Jonathan holds his breath. Is Ryan about to evict him?

But Ryan only asks, “Do you want some ice cream?”

“Ah, thanks but no. My doctor isn’t entirely satisfied with my lipids panel and I already had fried chicken.”

This might be the most middle-aged thing he’s ever said. And damn it, he’s not middle-aged yet. Just a man in his prime with a slightly elevated triglyceride count.

“Do you mind if I do?”

Ryan doesn’t wait for permission but leaves again and returns with a pint of Amy’s Mexican vanilla ice cream.

“Now you’re really tempting me.”

“Adulting: Nobody to drag you away from temptations.” Ryan smiles slightly.

An electric caress of a smile. Desire and yearning, wound together like the braids of a whip, lash Jonathan across the heart. He downs half a can of beer.

“So why are you here tonight?” asks Ryan.

Jonathan chokes on his beer and coughs. “I’m sorry?”

“I may not be a cop, but I still search for evidence for a living. There was nothing in that couch before you got here.”

“I—” Jonathan’s brain is functioning about as well as the fried egg in that ubiquitous antidrug PSA of his childhood.

He coughs some more. Ryan hands him a paper napkin.

Jonathan manages to catch his breath. Oh, Hazel, I hope you find All The Things. I’m about to go over the event horizon here.

“Thanks,” he mumbles.

Ryan eats a spoonful of ice cream—he is still waiting for an answer. Jonathan feels naked.

“I—guess I just wanted to see you.”

Ryan raises a cool eyebrow.

Shit. Jonathan’s getting spaghettified. Is this going to be the last time he sees Ryan? “I wanted…to apologize.”

“Really?”

Ryan sounds surprised. That bothers Jonathan but there is no stopping the words spilling out of him like guts from an eviscerated man.

“For all those years ago—the cruel and untrue things I said. I wasn’t ready to face myself yet.

I was still holding on to some illusions.

You shredded those illusions and in that moment, I couldn’t take it.

I’m sorry. I was wrong. You don’t have to forgive me, but you should know that I am sorry and that I’ve been sorry ever since that day. ”

That night.

Graduation was two months in the past. He and Maryam had parted ways but remained friendly and she was the one who told him about the pool party down the street from her house.

There must have been thirty, forty kids.

The temperature had been a hundred and five earlier in the day and the water in the pool was almost warm enough to proof yeast. Jonathan sought refuge in the artificially cooled interior of the house and there was Maryam, sitting on Ryan’s lap, the two of them whispering and giggling.

The sight of Ryan’s arm around Maryam did something to Jonathan. But he wasn’t angry that Ryan was maybe encroaching on his very recent ex. No, he was jealous of Maryam, her hand on Ryan’s nape, her barely covered ass smushed into his groin.

The two spied Jonathan and broke into a fresh peal of laughter. Then Maryam leaped up. “I’m going into the pool.”

She gave Jonathan a slap on the shoulder. Which annoyed him a little. Sure, they never did anything beyond kissing and a little light groping when they were together, but she could have felt his abs or something as she sauntered past, instead of that positively sisterly slap.

But with Maryam out of the way, Ryan’s bare torso filled Jonathan’s vision. He was just so…fit.

Ryan smiled. “You wanna see something cool? Maryam just showed it to me.”

“What?”

Ryan beckoned. Jonathan, despite the alarm bells going off in his head, followed.

Ryan led him into an office lined on three walls with shelves. “Maryam said that she used to play a lot in this house when another Iranian American family lived here. And her favorite spot used to be—let’s see if I remember it right.”

He crouched down and pulled. A three-foot-high, eighteen-inch-wide lower section of the shelves swung forward, exposing a narrow set of stairs behind.

“What?” The exclamation shot out of Jonathan.

“Cool, right? You’re not too big to fit in, are you?”

“Course not.”

But Jonathan did have to shimmy in sideways. The stairs elevated only about five feet or so and he found himself in an octagonal reading nook, with shelves, a floor lamp, and a leather sofa chair facing a trio of large windows that had their blinds drawn shut.

He sank into the chair. Ryan came up, took a cushion from behind Jonathan, dropped it on the floor, and sat down at Jonathan’s feet, between his splayed knees.

Jonathan tensed. The next second he lost his breath as Ryan ran the back of his hand over Jonathan’s shin. It was as if Skynet had unleashed the nuclear apocalypse. Jonathan was scorched, burnt to a crisp.

Stop , he wanted to say. But he was afraid that if he opened his mouth, out would come, Don’t stop. Don’t ever stop.

Ryan peered at him. His hand moved up to settle at Jonathan’s knee. Jonathan was paralyzed—and engorged to the limit. And when, with another grin, Ryan’s hand settled on Jonathan’s waistband, Jonathan’s brain promptly short-circuited.

His still-dry swimming trunks ended up on the floor. Ryan took him inside his mouth. Jonathan’s fingers dug into the armrests of the sofa chair. Ryan. Him. The two of them. It was all he wanted.

It was what he feared above all. The beginning of his worst nightmare.

But as long as he didn’t come, he didn’t need to deal with it.

And then Ryan did something and Jonathan bucked and convulsed uncontrollably for a frightfully pleasurable eternity.

When he opened his eyes, still panting hard, Ryan was again smiling at him with that seductive gleam in his eyes. “Think you can return the favor, big guy?”

Jonathan jumped out of the sofa chair, knocking Ryan backward. He grabbed his swimming trunks and stepped into them, not caring that maybe he was pulling them on backward.

Ryan was on his feet now, rubbing his ribs where Jonathan had inadvertently rammed his knee. He studied Jonathan, a little puzzled.

Jonathan tried to explain that he wanted a life in which he never had to explain anything to his parents. A life in which he was never the butt of any locker room jokes. A life in which he was just a man, not a gay man.

But he shouted, “Don’t try to make me a f—— just because you’re one. You’re disgusting. Stay away from me!”

And then, instead of following that up with a righteous door slam, he had to go sideways down the narrow steps and crawl out of the hidden door that almost trapped him between its too-narrow frames.

Present-day Ryan slowly eats another spoonful of ice cream. “Apology accepted.”

Jonathan blinks.

“Although, to be honest, I’m not even all that sure what you’re talking about. I kind of remember that pool party as a good time—that’s all.”

“Oh,” says Jonathan.

Now his brain is not only fried but hurled out of that pan to land splat on the kitchen wall, yolk dripping down in slow, sticky streaks.

“That’s—that’s good. I guess I didn’t need to give myself such a hard time, then.”

“No, not at all,” says Ryan sincerely and, for the first time ever in their acquaintance, a little uncomfortably.

The significance of everything Ryan is saying doesn’t sink in right away.

Then it does and mortification flays Jonathan.

He isn’t upset that he’s been fixated on his mistake all these years—he was cruel and dishonest and should have been tormented.

But it is crushing that an outburst that has taken on such outsized significance in his life made no impression on Ryan at all.

Fuck. Where does one go from here? The possibility of catharsis is now just unbearable embarrassment. Even Ryan, in all his pajamaed, ice-creaming-eating splendor, isn’t enough to lure Jonathan to stay.

But Hazel—Hazel is still here.

An enormous bang booms from upstairs.

Hazel hardly dares to breathe. The muzzle of the gun presses more forcefully into the side of her head. She blinks—and the handwriting on the postcard, which she had trouble deciphering a moment ago, resolves into legible words.