Page 46 of Flirting with Forever

“Really. Well, that was after I asked her out and she said no. Then I let her know about the two-years-from-now plan.”

“And what’d she say?”

“She rolled her eyes.”

“You’re fucked.”

They both laughed.

John rose and gathered his things, not wanting to wear out his welcome. Maddox followed him to the door, and the brothers quickly embraced. They made a plan to see one another in a few weeks, but John knew that there was a good chance Maddox would cancel in the meantime.

He walked to the train and thought about old money. How, like anything, if it was ever present in your life, you barely thought about it. Mary must have spent a couple hundred bucks on the food alone for her party. A party she’d thrown just because she’d wanted to have a party, celebrating nothing but summer and friends and life. He thought about the difference between Mary’s party and Estrella’s annual block party. Both parties were for the same reasons, and both were jovial and lively. And strangely enough, Mary had looked at home in both settings.

MARY’SHOUSEFELTempty after the Coateses left just shy of a week after they’d arrived. Their air-conditioning had taken longer to be fixed than they’d thought, and Mary hadn’t minded the company.

She didn’t want to feel vulnerable after the conversation with her mother and John’s words at her party. She wanted it to roll off her back. But for whatever reason, her mother and John had served up a one-two punch that was still smarting five days later.

Mary had taken the opportunity to give Jewel a million cuddles, to bring home dinners for Josh and Joanna, to laugh and fill her time with company.

But now they were gone, and her apartment felt much too large for one person. Mary was normally a good sleeper. Good enough that even after thirty-seven years of life, 3:00 a.m. still felt like an unfamiliar and vaguely creepy betrayal of the daytime. She wasn’t ever comfortable at the witching hour.

She rolled in her sheets and wondered whether John was a good sleeper or not. She could easily picture him as an insomniac, red eyes cracked and the sheets twisted at his hips. But then, he was so intense and focused in his waking life, maybe he was one of those people who just passed out cold the second his head hit the bed. She could also picture him dead to the world, his face finally relaxed and slack in the kind of sleep that restored a man.

And therein was the problem. Mary didn’tknowJohn. She didn’t know him well enough to predict his propensities or inclinations. If she’d known him well, maybe she wouldn’t have been so shocked by his words to Tyler. So appalled. So embarrassed.

She tossed and turned for another hour before she started to drift.

A noise brought her back, dimly, to the surface of sleep. She sifted back down, warm and soft. But then the noise came again. She opened her eyes.

Sat up.

That sounded like it was coming from downstairs. From her shop. There! The tinkling of glass. Scuffling.

Mary scrambled to the end of her bed and grabbed her phone, tugging on her robe over her nightshirt, even though sweat had sprung up down her spine.

She was frozen. Call the cops? Go down there by herself? She walked carefully across her bedroom floor, avoiding the creaky spots. She stopped in her tracks and listened for more sounds. Nothing.

Then a crash so loud that she couldn’t help but yelp. She covered her mouth with her hands, staring into nothing, her heart’s fists beating against the glass pane in her chest. Oh, God. There was someone in her store and they were destroying things. She had to call the cops.

Mary made it to the kitchen, somehow feeling unsafe in her own bedroom, and once again froze solid.

The sound of footsteps on the stairs that led up to her apartment was unmistakable. Mary peered out toward her front door and saw that she’d pulled the chain and cocked the dead bolt before bed. They would have to break down her door in order to get in. Even so, she scampered back toward her bathroom, the only other lockable room in her apartment, and locked the door behind her. She sat down hard on the edge of the bathtub and called the police.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

ITWASAtwo-shirt kind of Friday. John had fully sweated through the button-down he’d worn to court that morning and was in the bathroom across the hall from his office, shirtless, and swiping cold water over the back of his neck, when he heard Richie’s voice in the hallway.

“Hey! What’re you doing here?”

A woman’s voice, more muffled than Richie’s, echoed back and then faded away as they stepped into the office.

Wondering who it was, John dried off with paper towels, reapplied some of the deodorant he kept in his bag and quickly buttoned himself into his clean shirt. Now he had to get out of this sweltering bathroom before he melted again.

He shouldered into his office, absurdly grateful for the measly five-degree differential provided by their wheezing, ancient window unit.

“Beth!” He was surprised. He’d never known Beth Herari to pay a house call before and he rarely saw her in her dress blues. He wondered if she was here in an official capacity. It was exceedingly rare to see a cop in a public defender’s office. They didn’t, in general, play nice. After all, public defenders built their careers around their abilities to pick holes in a cop’s procedure and even, occasionally, their character and credibility.

John’s eyes bounced to Richie, who wore an expression that John had rarely seen him wear before. Shock and chagrin.

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