Page 12 of Flirting with Forever

Besides, she texted again.Innocent until proven guilty.

He shook his head at his phone, feeling weird. Maybe he should stop at one beer tonight; he was already a little bit light-headed. He flagged down Marissa, their usual bartender, and ordered a basket of fries while he one-handedly texted Mary back.

As a criminal defense attorney, innocent until proven guilty is obviously a core tenet of my belief system. But trust me on this one. I’ve seen him deal with my own eyes. And as for Michael Fallon having good reasons for what he does? He’s 34 years old and in the middle class. His parents paid for his bachelor’s degree in social theory, for fuck’s sake. Date him if you want but just remember that I voted to veto.

“Jeez, Estrella’s got you worked up tonight, huh?” Richie, who’d been chatting up the guy on his right, finally turned his attention back to John, his eyes narrowing at the phone.

“What? Oh. I’m not texting with my mother.”

Richie’s expression fell. “Oh, Lord. What did Maddox get himself into now?”

John laughed bitterly, nodding his head at Marissa when she came back with his fries.

“He wants mustard, not ketchup, Marissa,” Richie reminded their bartender, who rolled her eyes and slid a bottle down the countertop toward them.

“You know,” John said, “I do, in fact, text people who aren’t my mother and my emotionally stunted younger brother.”

Maddox was John’s younger half brother, connected through the father that Maddox had grown up with and John hadn’t met until a decade ago. Maybe emotionally stunted was a tad harsh. But John couldn’t help but wonder if growing up with access to all their father’s money had kept Maddox from developing certain survival skills that the rest of the world seemed to have. Survival skills like caring about keeping a job and knowing how to do more in a kitchen than call up expensive delivery.

John, who’d grown up without their father, had come by those skills quite honestly.

Richie squinted his eyes into the beyond, theatrically raising his fingers one by one. “Estrella, Maddox and me. But hold on, I’m sitting right here. Who in God’s name is this mystery fourth texter?! I demand to know!”

John shook his head and stuffed some fries in his mouth, buying himself a moment. For some reason, he didn’t want to explain the arrangement with Mary to Richie. Or why he was texting with her. It was simple, innocent, but there was no telling how Richie’s perverted mind could twist it.

“Evening, girls,” a deep, borderline rude voice said from behind them, two meaty paws clapping over their shoulders.

John wasn’t often thrilled to run into Hogan Trencher around town, but right now he was relieved for the interruption. He slipped his phone back in his pocket and hoped that the appearance of Richie’s unrequited crush would squash any residual attention on who John had been texting.

“Evening, Hulk,” Richie said, a light blush washing over his cheekbones.

He called him that in reference to his first name, not because Hogan was built anything like a ripped, green monster. In truth, Hogan was a little chubby, all shoulders and spread legs and thumbs tucked into his belt. He even had the mustache to complete the picture.

John observed Richie’s bashful expression, his eyes looking everywhere but at Hogan. A gay defense attorney with the hots for a straight cop. What a hopeless situation. It wasn’t the first time that John had felt bad for the predicament Richie had found himself in.

Hogan Trencher wasn’t a crooked detective by any means, but he had a healthy disdain for the defense attorneys he felt put his collars back on the street. And John had seen too many detectives bend the truth on the stand to ever truly want to break bread with Hogan Trencher. And so had Richie. Maybe, John reflected as he polished off his beer, that was part of the appeal. People often had feelings for those on the opposite end of the opinions spectrum. It probably made the sex more combative.

Either way, this bar, only five blocks from the Brooklyn Supreme Court, had become a sort of neutral ground for defense attorneys and ADAs, and, occasionally, Hogan Trencher. Who seemed to almost get a power-trippy charge out of prodding at defense attorneys in his off time.

“Haven’t seen you around recently, John,” Hogan said after sending Marissa a wink and pointing at John’s beer to indicate he wanted one for himself. “Keeping busy?”

“Yup,” John grumbled. Talking to cops always made him feel like he was being interrogated. “Those meth labs don’t start themselves.”

Richie laughed into his beer, inhaling half of it and looking utterly mortified to be snotting foam in front of his crush.

“Just making conversation,” Hogan replied easily. “Thanks, darlin’.”

The big man slid money into Marissa’s palm and held her eye contact as he took the beer from her. Marissa tucked her lips into her mouth and ducked her chin, looking up at Hogan through her eyelashes, a slight flush on her pretty brown skin.

Hogan reached forward, stole a few of John’s fries and tipped his chin down at the two lawyers, a smirk firmly in place beneath his mustache. He sauntered away to a far corner of the bar.

“What the hell is it about that guy?” John wondered aloud.

“What?” Richie asked, his cheeks still pink, peeling the label from his beer bottle.

“Why is everyone so into him? From where I’m sitting, he’s just a cocky asshole.”

“You just answered your own question, John,” Marissa said, taking his empty beer bottle away and replacing it with a water. He’d thought that she’d preternaturally predicted his reticence to have a second beer, but then he realized that happy hour was now over and Marissa knew that John categorically refused to purchase full-price beer. “Cocky assholes are irresistible.”

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