Page 44 of Flirting with Forever

Maddox grunted. “You’re feeling philosophical today.”

John tugged track pants on and his T-shirt over that. He wore his nice work clothes almost every day of the week, wanting to look respectable and put-together no matter what he was doing. But it gave him a perverse thrill to look shabby and tossed-together whenever he visited Maddox’s penthouse.

“Do you know what negging is?” John asked, sitting down on Maddox’s couch.

Maddox looked slightly surprised, whether it was because John seemed to be extending their hang or at the question itself, John wasn’t sure.

“Um. Yeah.” He took his own seltzer and spread out on the far side of the couch. “It’s when you say negative things to a woman about her appearance or her personality. Backhanded compliments. Like ‘your hair is pretty, but it would look better long.’ That kind of thing.”

John screwed up his face. “What’s the point of it?”

“Well, I think the idea is that if you’re a little bit mean to her, it intrigues her. She seeks your approval.”

“That’s—”

“The dumbest shit you’ve ever heard? I know. It’s just some stupid pickup-artist shit. Misogynistic crap.”

John’s eyebrows rose. He’d never heard Maddox refer to misogyny before. But then his stomach fell as he considered the concept of negging. “I think I accidentally negged this woman recently.”

Maddox laughed, loud and boisterous, so unlike his brother. “John, you can’t accidentally neg someone. The whole point is that it’s a calculated move to knock her off her game and get her to lean on you. If you said something negative to her, it’s not because you were negging her. It’s just because you’re a—”

“Dick, I know. I’ve been told.” John leaned his head back and looked at Maddox’s high, perfectly white ceilings. No water damage for the penthouse. “I accidentally told her I thought she was old, when what I really meant was—Ugh. God. Never mind.”

Maddox laughed again. “Well, is she old?”

“No! She’s only five or six years older than I am.”

“And I take it she didn’t immediately seek your approval following the negative comment?”

John raised an eyebrow at his brother. “Of course not. She left the restaurant and I spent the next few weeks trying to convince her that I’m not an utter—”

“Dick.”

“Right.”

“And?” Maddox prompted.

“And now we’re friends.”

“Ouch.”

“Yeah.” John rolled his head and looked out at the view again, but in his mind’s eye, he was back at yesterday’s party. “There are a million reasons it’d never work out. I just expedited the process. You should see her apartment. Huge two-bedroom right on Court Street. Skylights in every room. Fancy furniture. Whole bunch of copper kitchen stuff. Candles the size of my head.”

“Rich?”

“Yeah.” John messed around with the buttons at the side of his crappy track pants that he’d had for a decade.

“Money isn’t everything, John,” Maddox said after a quiet moment. “It doesn’t have to draw lines in the sand the way you think it does.”

John rolled his head to look at his brother.That’s something rich people say, John’s face told Maddox.

Maddox read his expression, and his own tightened in response. No longer was he resting easily on his gigantic couch. He was stiff and uncomfortable, looking angrily away from John.

They’d been here before, with the disparities between their upbringings sitting between them like a rock wall.

It had taken years for them to see over it even enough for John to come and swim and eat spaghetti.

Once, Maddox had shouted at John,“You think I wouldn’t choose your life over mine, John?”

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