Page 31 of Flirting with Forever

Mary caught Sandra’s eye through the big window of the store and gave her a friendly wave. Sandra waved back, sneaking her phone back in her pocket, obviously hoping that her boss hadn’t seen her Tweeting when she should have been manning the register.

“Yup.” She turned back to John in time to see that judgmental expression on his face. She hadn’t seen it since the first time she’d met him, not in full force like this, and she’d forgotten how much it could sting.

“Wow,” he said tonelessly. “You have an apartment on Court Street. Fancy.”

She leaned forward and, with her two pointer fingers, forcibly drew his eyebrows up out of their judgy V. He jolted at her touch, his expression quirking into humor for just a flash. “What was that for?”

“I didn’t want you to pull a muscle while you judged me.”

His face collapsed into a soft chagrin. “Busted. You’re right. It’s an asshole move to judge where you live.”

“I’d never judge whereyoulive.”

His eyes bounced back and forth between hers. “You really wouldn’t, would you?”

“Nope.”

“Even if I told you I live in a studio in a crappy building above a bus stop?”

“I hope I get to see it someday.”

He did that choppy exhalation of a laugh and shook his head, his eyes on his shoes again. “You’re something else, Mary.”

“Something good, I hope.”

“The best.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

JOHNTOOKAbreak from Mary for the next two weeks. It was necessary. A matter of survival, he felt. Two things had become extremely clear the night of the fake date. John wanted something more with Mary, and she, decidedly, did not.

He figured it wouldn’t take too long to get over her, as long as he wasn’t forced to see and interact with her in the meantime. Which meant that John had to clear things up with his mother. The morning after the fake date, he called Estrella.

“John? Is everything all right?” she asked as she answered the phone. “You’re calling so early.”

He blinked in confusion at the clock on his microwave. “It’s 9:00 a.m., Ma.”

“Yes, but I thought you might...be sleeping in this morning.”

John groaned, her meaning so clear it stung. Despite her public stance on premarital sex, she’d apparently hoped he’d spend the night and morning with Mary. “Ma, enough.Enough.”

“What?”

He’d have to remember to have her come in and coach his clients on how to affect innocence so effectively.

“You know exactly what. You have to stop trying to push me and Mary together.”

“John—”

“No. Ma, we both know what you’re doing, with the dates, with the terrible guys and getting me to walk her home and the tacos. We tried it out. It didn’t work. And now you pushing us like this is just getting—”

He cut himself off because he wasn’t sure he wanted to say the wordpainfulout loud right now.

“Oh,” Estrella said after a quiet moment. “Oh, John, I hadn’t realized...”

With a mother’s twenty-twenty vision, Estrella had seen to the heart of his words immediately. John sighed.

“You have feelings for her,” Estrella guessed after a moment.

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