Page 10 of Flirting with Forever

“Oh. Let’s see. Midthirties, lives with his mother still, dates barely legals he meets on Tinder. Plays it fast and loose with deodorant. And I know for a fact he still shoplifts from Gristedes.”

“Wow. Does Estrella evenhavecriteria?”

John grunted. “I’ve never seen her quite so determined to set someone up before. That’s really what I meant. Before. When I said that thing about you being desperate.” He mumbled the last part. “I guess I just wanted to know why my mother was pushing this so hard.”

Mary, of course, knew the exact answer to that question, but she’d rather eat the entire tube of Chanel lipstick she kept in her purse than explain it to John. “Maybe she just wants a project.” Mary cleared her throat. “Maybe she knows just how great I am and wants to see me happy.”

John grunted again.

What a lovely man.

“I’m going to grab some food, I think.”

She was ten steps away when those two heavy fingers tapped her shoulder again. “Look, Mary, let me make it up to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“My mother is going to keep trying to set you up with guys. Chances are, I’ll know them.” John took two steps to one side and chucked his beer bottle a few feet into a recycling can, came back and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I love my mother, and I can tell you do too, but we both know her definition of ‘nice boy’ is prohibitively inclusive. All you need to qualify is the Y chromosome and a pulse.”

Mary couldn’t help but laugh.

He blinked at her for a second and cleared some gravel out of his throat, although it didn’t make that two-toned voice any less hoarse. “I put my foot in my mouth earlier, but you can trust me to give it to you straight. If there’s one thing I’m good for...”

“You won’t sugarcoat anything for me.”

“Exactly.”

“You want to help me weed through candidates?” she guessed.

“Here, take my number and you can text me the names of the guys she wants you to meet. I’ll let you know whether they’re worth your time. Or email. Whatever.”

“My phone is in your mother’s house.” She eyed John for a moment. He had a thin mouth made thinner by the way he was pressing his lips together. He had the shadowed look of dark-haired men who shave their beards but never lose that bluish shading about the jaw. His eyes were startlingly bright, and cold, and surly, but the judgment that she’d seen at the restaurant was absent. He was rude, but he’d apologized for that, and apologized well. And she definitely trusted his taste in men more than his mother’s. She made a split-second decision. “But you can have my number and text me so I have yours.”

His eyebrows flicked upward from their typical downward V, but only for a second. He seemed surprised that she would volunteer her number. He pulled his phone from his pocket, a smaller iPhone model that had been new about seven years ago, but the screen was completely smudge and scratch free. He typed in her number as she told it to him and sent off a quick text to her.

“Have a good rest of the party,” he told her.

“You too.”

Luckily, Estrella held off on the parade of men for the rest of the time, and Mary was able to enjoy herself. Samuel never reappeared. Mary assumed he’d been summoned home by his wife. She caught a few more glimpses of John through the crowd and then she thought he must have left.

She got all the way back to Cobble Hill, unzipped from her boots, had leftover Indian food heating in the microwave, before she finally checked her phone. She had a voice mail from her mother, who considered texting to be juvenile. “Mary, love, did you get my email? It was a forwarded invitation to Meryl Overshire’s singles event on the Upper East Side next week? It sounds like a classier version of speed dating. Now, I’m sure you’ll be one of the older participants, but Meryl assured me that—” Mary deleted the voice mail. She moved on to the three texts from her friends Fin and Via on a group chat they had together. And then there was one text from an unknown number.

She opened it up.

John Modesto-Whitford, the text said. Mary laughed at it. How boring! Not even a salutation. She hadn’t ever known before that someone could have a frowny name, but she could practicallyfeelthe scowl coming off of each letter. She was almost tempted to text him back a blur of flower emojis. Thirty-five party horns, confetti fireworks, sunshines and trumpets. She pictured him receiving a colorful emoji-filled text from her and scoffing, the V of his eyebrows pulling down so far his nose disappeared.

Instead, she just saved his number into her contacts, ate her Indian food and went to bed.

CHAPTER FOUR

FIVEDAYSAFTERthe block party, John did a confused double take at his cell phone as he sat in his office slogging through paperwork at 6:00 p.m.

Elijah Crawford.

Why in God’s name was an unknown number texting him the name of his childhood bully? For one confused second, John thought that maybe Elijah Crawford was texting him and identifying himself. But from a Connecticut area code?

“Oh,” he muttered to himself once he’d entered the text and saw that he and the number already had a thread going. Well, not so much a thread, but a single other text that had just his own name. It was Mary Trace.

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