Page 18 of Flirting with Forever

“Not since her New Year’s party. Shoot. I should probably give her a call, huh?”

“Do me a favor and check your texts and emails right now. See if she’s reached out in the last week or so.”

There was a weighted silence on the other end of the line. “I’ve checked my email in the last week, John. I would know if she’s reached out to me.”

Now John was the one who was silent. Did he appease his brother’s pride and agree with him? Or did he trust his own experiences with Maddox and assume that his brother could easily have let a correspondence or five slip through the cracks? “Will you just check for me?”

His request was met with stony silence, and honestly, John couldn’t blame him. He considered himself to be a good influence on his little brother. Hell, he was the only reliable family member the guy had, but that didn’t preclude him from also being a dick.

“Oh,” Maddox said sarcastically. “Would you look at that? Absolutely no emails or texts from your mother. Just like I told you.”

“All right. Didn’t mean to doubt,” John said briskly. “Look, if she reaches out to you in the next few weeks, about anything, just let me know, all right?”

“Is everything all right?”

For a moment, Maddox sounded just like John himself, that hoarse voice that had apparently originally belonged to their grandfather, though John hadn’t met him before he’d died.

“Yes. She’s just being a pain and trying to manipulate me into something. Using you.”

“Okay...” Maddox laughed and there was a current of pain injected into the sound. “At least your mother cares about you enough to manipulate you.”

It was true that Maddox’s mother, Melody, was less than attentive.

“True,” John agreed carefully. He and Maddox had muddled their way through the last decade, never quite sure how to talk about the many dissonances in their family, their separate childhoods, the awkwardness of their age difference. But they did all right.

“Dinner next week?” John asked.

“Can’t. I’m out of town.”

John heard muttering again, a woman’s voice. He sighed and didn’t ask any questions.

“All right. Call me when you’re back in town.”

“You got it.”

John hung up the call and tapped his cell phone on his thigh. It was a nice night. The sky was still streaked a reckless pink from the sunset and the air was heavy with the potential of a thunderstorm.

Maybe he should take the train to Cobble Hill and explain to Mary in person about all of this. He knew that at least last Friday she’d been working this late. He thought of how her shop had glittered like a lantern once the sun went down. Warmth and light spilled from the window onto the sidewalk, banishing the bad moods of any who dared enter there.

He felt pulled toward her shop and her neighborhood. But he’d walked half a block toward the F train when he registered just how much his shirt was sticking to him. He’d come from work and his dress shoes were pinching his feet after a long day. He was a week past needing a haircut and he probably had guac breath.

He’d once watchedThe Little Mermaidand the image of the poor unfortunate souls trapped in Ursula’s lair popped up into John’s head. He pictured himself walking, disheveled and sweaty, into Mary’s glowing, lovely shop and just sort of shrinking down into a big-eyed worm creature, blinking in the light of her goodness.

Yeah. It would be better just to give her a call once he got home.

John turned on his heel and instead caught the G train. He didn’t interrogate himself too closely as to why he brushed his teeth and showered before he sat down at his kitchen table and called Mary. Maybe he was tired of feeling like a grouchy schlub where she was concerned.

Ruth, John’s cat, jumped up onto the table and roughly pushed her forehead into the palm of his hand. He knew that plenty of cats had reps for being flirty and aloof, but Ruth was not one of them. She was a straight-up floozy, giving it up for free every day of the week. And she was the only cat John had ever met who had bad balance. She regularly miscalculated and tumbled off the back of the couch in a yowling, furry heap. He scratched under her chin and listened to his phone ring.

“Hello?” Mary answered, a thread of surprise in her voice. She probably had never expected to see his name on her caller ID.

“Mary, it’s John.”

“Hi.”

He liked the way she said that one simple word. Her voice so bright it reminded him of the first delicious spoonful of lemon gelato on a hot day.

“Hi,” he said back to her and grimaced, feeling like a doofus. He hadn’t managed to inject the same magic into the greeting. He stood when he felt a bead of sweat travel down his spine and pinched the phone between his chin and shoulder, muscling open his kitchen window and hoping for a breeze. It was hot enough in his apartment that he was wearing only his boxers and an undershirt. He sat back against the windowsill and stretched his legs out in front of him. Ruth stared him down from the tabletop, her tail flicking back and forth.

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