Page 30 of Flirting with Forever

She shrugged. “They’re lonely? Horny? Depressed? Looking for a way to feel alive? Scared of the life unlived? Desperate? Sad? Overzealous? Proud? I think there’re a lot of reasons why.”

“Mary, you might be the most compassionate person I’ve ever met in my life. I would have just said they were all dirty perverts and left it at that.”

She laughed. “And this from the public defender? Takes more than an unsolicited dick pic to send me running home.”

He squinted at something at the top of the app. “Mary, you said this app was called Silver Fox.”

“Right. See?” She pointed at the logo.

“That isn’t anoinFox. It’s an asterisk.”

“So?”

“So, asterisks usually indicate the vulgar spelling of a word, right?”

Her brow furrowed. Then a look of horror transformed her face. “You think this app is pronounced Silver Fux?” She buried her face. “Oh-my-God. No wonder I’ve gotten so many dick pics. This is not a dating app. This is ahookupapp.”

She might have shriveled up into a dust bunny and let herself be blown away on the breeze right then and there if John hadn’t laughed. And not that airy exhalation of a chuckle that she’d heard him do before. But a real laugh. Deep and quiet and rolling and, actually, quite charming.

When she gaped up at him, he looked like he was trying to hold it back and couldn’t. His lips were pulled over his teeth and his face tipped away, like he didn’t want to show her what he looked like unarmed and open. But there was no hiding a laugh like that. It was utterly infectious. The CDC would have rated it highly contagious.

Mary couldn’t help but laugh as well. “That’s the last time I buy an app without reading the reviews.”

He laughed harder. “It was an honest mistake.”

Her phone chose that moment to bark, and she jumped about six inches in the air, making John laugh harder.

She shoved her phone in her purse.

“You’re not going to check that notification?”

She did her best to glower at him, but she was so charmed by his laughter that she only ended up smiling. “I’ll pass.”

“You can’t leave them hanging, Mary. It’s rude. The barking dicks await.”

She burst into laughter again, and it was half a block before they’d wound down, a silence settling over them again, but this one wasn’t tense like when they’d left the restaurant.

“Mary,” John said softly after a moment, his hands in his pockets and his eyes focused dimly on the night in front of them. “Did I ruin everything?”

“Ruin everything? When?” She was taken aback by the quiet tone of his voice, the set of his shoulders. She had the almost unquellable urge to knock her shoulder into his, try to cheer him up.

“On our first—On our date. When I said that stupid shit about expecting someone younger. Did I absolutely ruin any chance of us ever being—”

“Friends?” Mary cut in, horrified that he thought he’d ruined the chance to become her buddy. Maybe she’d been mad at him at the beginning. But those days were long gone and John had proved himself to be a kind enough person. A little rough around the edges, but he was looking out for her, she knew that. She’d never withhold friendship from someone as worthy as John on the basis of one stupid comment. No matter how much it had hurt her feelings. No matter how alone she’d felt in the wake of it. “Of course you didn’t ruin it! I think we’re actually becoming pretty good friends. Don’t you?”

“Ah. Yeah.” She watched his profile as his eyes dropped from the middle beyond to the ground. He watched his own wingtips as they walked another half block in silence. She tried to get a bead on his mood, but he was so mercurial, she gave it up as a lost cause.

“Look, don’t beat yourself up, John. You could have been a lot nicer to me that night, sure. But, truly, when I look back on it, you did both of us a favor.”

“I crossed us off each other’s lists?” he asked, lifting his eyes to hers. She was relieved to see a self-deprecating humor flash there for a moment. Even if it gave way to his usual cold expression directly after.

“Exactly. Because sometimes you date someone for a while before you realize that you’re not what they’re looking for or they’re not whatyou’relooking for. With you, we got that part out of the way immediately. So, we’re not meant for each other. No big deal. We’re friends now. Even better.”

“Even better,” he repeated dimly.

“Well, this is me,” she said, wishing they had a few more blocks to walk, feeling like she was leaving in the middle of a conversation.

John blinked up at her front door. “Oh. You live above your shop?”

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