Page 51 of Flirting with Forever

He entered into a phone call, which surprised Mary a bit. He never made calls or texted when the two of them were together. She realized then how much she usually had his entire attention. The sudden loss of it threw into sharp relief the heady electric zing of having his full focus.

“Christo?” he said after a second. “Hey, it’s John. Yeah. Right. Good to hear your voice too. How’s Candy? No way, already? Hunter’s a good school. Definitely. She gonna live at home? Probably for the best.” He took a bite of food while he listened to the other man on the line for a minute, swallowing down half his water at once. “Listen, I called to see if there was a chance you’d break your no-work-on-Saturdays rule. Friend of mine got her house broken into last night and I was hoping to get her apartment secured by tomorrow. Nah, tomorrow is soon enough. With me, actually.”

John’s eyes met Mary’s for a moment before they flicked away.

His cheeks went pink. “Yeah. No. It’s not—Jesus, Christo.”

Mary could hear laughter coming through the line loud and clear. John abandoned his dinner and rose up to stalk over to the kitchen window, looking out into the world. “Yeah, that should work. All right. I’ll text you the address. Thanks, man.”

John sat back down, digging into his food again, the tips of his ears and his cheeks still slightly pink.

“You just...handled that,” Mary mused, setting her fork down.

“Oh. Right.” John cleared his throat. “Sorry, I should have told you that my old friend is a locksmith and a carpenter, and he’ll definitely get you fixed up.”

“No apology necessary.” Her eyes fell to the candle that sat between them. “I can’t remember the last time someone just handled something like that for me.”

“You’ve been running the shop on your own for a long time?”

Mary’s eyes rose to his. This she could talk about, the history of the shop, not the way it was now, in shambles. “Almost six years. I inherited it, actually.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. My aunt Tiff bought the building almost forty years ago. She lived in the apartment above and ran the shop below, just like me. She left the whole thing to me when she passed.”

John blinked at her. She could see him filing away the information that she, in fact,ownedthat fancy Cobble Hill apartment, but thankfully that wasn’t what he chose to comment on. “I’m so sorry for your loss. Was it sudden?”

Mary shook her head. “No. Cancer. We knew for a few years before she passed.” She paused. She didn’t have to tell him the rest, but for some reason, she felt herself wanting to. “She actually refused treatment there at the end. Her last year. She said that she’d rather live enjoying the time she had than hoping for a few more stolen moments.” It was the choice that Naomi would never forgive her for. The choice that Mary had understood innately. “My mother seems to think that if Tiff had had a partner and a couple of kids, she might have chosen differently. Might still be with us.” Mary shook her head. Being able to explain her mother’s behavior didn’t make it any less painful to endure.

“Wow,” John whispered.

“Anyway. I still lived out in Connecticut in my hometown, but after I inherited the store and the apartment, it was a no-brainer to come here.”

Plus, Cora’s accident had happened and Mary had found that there was no way to stay away from Matty. But she didn’t think that John needed to hear every sorry detail of how hard the last six years had been for her.

“Anyways, I took about six months to sort of revamp the shop and build up some inventory and renovate, and the rest is history.”

“What did the shop used to be?”

“Oh, Aunt Tiff was a real free spirit. It was a hippie shop. All the usual suspects. Incense, crappy essential oils, big turquoise rings.”

“Tibetan carvings?”

“Exactly.”

“Actually,” John said as he squinted his eyes, “I think I’d been in there before. Sometime in high school. I was looking for a present for my girlfriend’s birthday.” Recognition sparked in his eyes. “Was your aunt blond? Like you?”

Mary nodded.

“Did she wear, like, muumuus?”

Mary nodded again, this time laughing and tearing up at the same time.

“I’m pretty sure I met her, then. She talked me into buying Julie this big necklace thingy.”

Mary laughed again. “Tiff was quite the saleswoman.” Her words were almost strangled, weighted down by the emotion they had to squeeze through to get out of her mouth. John had met Tiff. John and Tiff had spoken at one point. It was a gift to hear this story, like one more stolen moment with a woman whom Mary would never speak to again.

“I’m sorry,” John said again, this time in a low voice. He slid his hand across the table and pressed his heavy fingers to Mary’s forearm for just a sliver of a second.

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