Page 59 of Flirting with Forever

“It was a really crazy few days. I didn’t really call anyone.”

“You’ve handled all of it on your own?”

“Actually...” Mary kicked some broken glass away from her feet. “John was here. He helped me through most of it.”

There was a telling beat of silence, but Estrella seemed to be committed to butting out of the situation. “Ah. I see. All right, well, I brought you good wine and good cheese and good bread. Let’s have a picnic.”

Mary laughed. “It’s 10:00 a.m.!”

“All the better. If you can’t drink wine in the morning when you sit in the wreckage of your beautiful shop, then when can you?”

Mary considered that a very good point. A few minutes later, they were arranged on the floor on a blanket Estrella had brought, spreading goat cheese over baguettes and sipping wine from plastic cups. Mary used the food and drink as an excuse for why she wasn’t adding to the conversation, but really, it was because it was soothing to hear Estrella chatter about the future of the shop. She had all sorts of big ideas for how they could use the break-in to start fresh, changing this or that, refocusing on certain areas. Mary didn’t agree with half of Estrella’s vision, but it was just so good to hear someone else dreaming and planning and TLCing her shop.

It was a stark contrast to her parents’ reaction. They’d been horrified, of course, and Mary had had to talk them out of coming in from Connecticut. But their reaction had also been—surprise, surprise—judgmental. As if they weren’t shocked that it had happened because, after all, Mary had been the one to choose to move to the big city, where things like this happened every day. She had told herself that they just hadn’t understood the context.

John was lucky.

His mother fed Mary bread and fruit and cheese and wine and then packed up the picnic and set herself to work. The two women worked side by side for a few hours before Sebastian and Tyler showed up as they had yesterday as well. A few hours after that, Kylie was there, her bag tossed to the floor and determination on her face. She loved this shop as much as Mary and Estrella did, and the girl had seemed to take an almost personal offense to the destruction of it.

An hour after that, Via and Fin showed up, dinner in hand for all the workers. And after that, John. As they all had the day before, the group worked until well after the sun went down.

Mary fell into bed that night, exhausted, aware that she was going to have to do the whole thing again tomorrow. But not hopeless. Not the least bit hopeless.

IFSHEHADN’Tbeen in the middle of a crisis, John might have truly considered going on another Mary fast. The first one hadn’t worked well enough. The crush he’d been so deftly attempting to two-step around had finally sunk its claws in. Good and deep. A full-time dance partner.

It took Mary five straight days to get her shop back in order. And John was there five nights in a row, after work, Monday through Friday, to help. It relieved him to see that though she hadn’t initially called any of her friends to come be with her the day after the break-in, they all showed up in spades to help with the reno of her shop. Sebastian and Tyler spent the most time, followed closely by Via and Fin. Kylie and Matty did their fair share as well.

But there was only so much that people who weren’t Mary could really do. The actual cleanup of the shop wasn’t going to take nearly as long as the paperwork that came with it all. John watched as Mary slowly got buried in the particulars of her insurance company. It was all made even more complicated by the fact that so much of what had been destroyed had been original pieces of artwork. Insurance would cover a lot of the damages, but not all. Mary was going to take a financial hit for this act of random cruelty.

It was the following Sunday night when John and Mary found themselves sitting at her kitchen table, wading through booklets of paperwork she’d printed out, John working from her laptop as well.

He figured that he probably had the highest tolerance for desk jockeying out of all of her friends, so he’d been the one to take on this particular aspect of aid. Meanwhile, down below, her shop was generally put back together. Just that morning Sebastian had overseen the installation of her new plate glass window in the front and Mary had started fresh with her late summer window display that afternoon. She’d reopen the store on Monday morning. Only a week and a half after the break-in. She’d be on quite a limited inventory for some time, but she’d be back to work at the very least.

John took another forkful of the room-temperature spaghetti and vegan meatballs in a glass casserole dish that sat on the table between them. A gift from Via, it had been heated up an hour ago, and he and Mary hadn’t even bothered with dishes, just him eating from his end and her eating from hers.

John studied Mary for a long moment, her sunny head bent toward her phone as she looked something up on the insurance company’s website, her face in repose. She’d worn a sundress again today. John wondered what she wore come wintertime. He hoped he’d be around to see it.

“Beer?” he asked her, knowing that Tyler had fully stocked her fridge that afternoon.

“Hmm? Oh, sure. I think I need a break, to be honest.”

He’d been hoping she’d say that. John cleared the paperwork to one side and grabbed two beers from her fridge.

Mary looked absently out the window as she set her phone aside. He realized that there’d been no notifications barking from her phone all day. She hadn’t texted anyone or taken any calls. He wondered if she was still searching for the right dating app. He’d been with her every night of the last week, but maybe she was waiting until things died down with her shop before she got back on the dating horse.

“You’ve been so sweet, John,” she told him, breaking his reverie as she accepted the beer he held out to her. “Coming over here after work. Helping me with all this. So sweet.”

He frowned. She’d never called him sweet before. Honestly, no one but Estrella had ever called him sweet in his entire life. He thought back to the brunch with his father that she’d endured last weekend. She’d said he had a huge, bleeding heart. She’d said it with absolute certainty, like she’d bushwhacked into the land where John’s heart reigned and seen it with her own two eyes. He’d been mulling it over ever since then.

“I just want to make sure you’re okay,” he said, clearing his throat.

“I know you do.” She seemed almost sad about that, looking out the window. After a minute, she looked back at him. “So, whydidyou choose to become a public defender?”

His eyebrows rose when he realized that she too had been thinking about that brunch with his dad. He lowered his eyes to his beer, took a long, thoughtful drink and leaned back in his chair. “Because the people who can’t afford their own lawyers are disproportionately charged, sentenced and imprisoned.” He paused. “I saw a map once, of New York City, and it marked areas based on wealth disparity and rate of incarceration. Lot of big old red zones in Brooklyn.” He sighed. “I was in high school when I saw that. And, of course, I knew who my father was, even if he wasn’t acknowledging me yet. He was already the DA of Manhattan at that point. The only interactions I had with him were watching him on the television giving half answers to reporters outside of courthouses about the black and brown people he’d just put behind bars.”

Her eyebrows were the ones rising now. “So, he was right? You did become a public defender to spite him?”

He laughed and shook his head. “No, but I felt the weight of my bloodline on my back. I...believe in karma and I guess I wanted to somehow balance out some of what I’d seen my dad do. Even then I’d already gone to see him in court, even though I didn’t introduce myself. And he’s good at what he does. Really good. I just knew that I could be that good too, but that I could be on the team of the little guy. But it bothers me when he claims that I did it for him, because really, I made that decision for Estrella more than anyone.”

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