Page 61 of Flirting with Forever

She made a face as she weighed her answer, tipping her head from side to side. “I’m the odd one out with my parents. If anything, my relationship with my mom got even worse after Tiff died. Tiff was really the referee between us. Even more than that, she was the translator. She understood us both so well that she could explain us to the other one. We’ve never quite gotten back to that point, my mother and I, being able to understand one another.”

Mary sighed. “So, yeah. I had the shop to tend to and Sebastian and Matty to take care of. And then when things started getting better with them, I had Tyler and Sebastian to keep me company. A few years after Cora died, I did start dating again. This guy named Doug.”

Doug.What kind of shit-stupid name was Doug? Doug sounded like a telemarketer. He sounded like he wore dirty socks too many days in a row. Doug sounded like a boring, lifeless prick.

John cleared his throat, a little surprised at his own internal vehemence. “Ah, what was Doug like?” He didn’t give a shit what Doug was like, but he had to say something.

Mary cocked her head to one side and thought for a minute. “The life of every party. Gregarious. Friendly. Great first impression.”

Oh. Great. Literally everything that John wasn’t. “Uh-huh.”

“Cora would have sniffed him out immediately.”

“Sniffed him out for what?”

“For being disingenuous. She had a bloodhound nose for that kind of thing. And a zero-tolerance policy. She would have known right away that I shouldn’t have wasted my time on him.” Mary sighed. “I thought he was great, however. He was just sofun. And it had been a long time since I’d had any fun. And it had been a long time since I’d had somebody who thought I was the most special, out of everybody else. Cora and Tiff, they were both such persistent cheerleaders. They both thought I was the crème de la crème. They gave me such confidence on a daily basis. I hadn’t realized I’d missed that until I had Doug in my corner.”

John took a long drink of beer. “So, what ended up happening?”

Mary sighed. “He was sleeping with someone else.” Her eyes dropped. “A woman in her young twenties. Though he’s my age. They’re still together. I see them around Cobble Hill sometimes and... You know, I wish it didn’t bother me. I really do. But it just does.” Her eyes stayed down. “I’m not naive. I know that it’s considered weird in our culture to be a woman and thirty-seven and childless and never been married. But I wasn’t interested in either of those things in my twenties. A lot in part because of how much my mother pressured me togetinterested.” She laughed, somewhere between humor and disdain. “Cora had Matty, so I had my baby fix whenever I wanted it. And then, out of nowhere, both Tiff and Cora were gone, and life happened, and grief happened, and then Doug happened, and here we are, six years later, and I’m finally starting to think about wanting a partner and find out I’m over the hill.”

I was expecting someone younger.

If there’d been a dagger sticking out of her kitchen floor, John would have gladly tossed himself onto it. What an absolute asshole he’d been. He hadn’t realized, until this second, how personal that comment must have felt to Mary. He’d known it was a stupid thing to say, but she was just so gorgeous, so undeniably perfect in his eyes, that he hadn’t thought there was even a chance that a comment like that might actually stick to her. But there, with the first words he’d ever said to her, he’d shredded through one of her most tender insecurities. She’d been left by her boyfriend for a younger woman, and John’s words had made her feel as if there was something wrong with her for looking for love in the latter half of her thirties. Which, honestly, he didn’t think there was anything wrong with that no matter what the reason. But certainly not when the reason was dealing with the deaths of the two most important people in one’s life.

God. No wonder she’d left the restaurant. No wonder Tyler had given him a hard time at the party. No wonder she’d crossed John off her list. He considered it a holy miracle that she’d even let him back into her life as a friend.

But that was just who Mary was. She was not a grudge-holder. And less than two months after he’d told her she was too old and stabbed her straight through the heart of her self-consciousness, she’d defended him to his father, asserted the existence of John’s apparently huge heart.

She was the one with the heart. Even after everything she’d been through, she was still handing that heart out in handfuls, welcoming people into her life, smiling at block parties and cheek-kissing her friends.

Shit. John felt a crack run down the center of his chest, like the first telltale sign of an earthquake. He pressed the heel of his hand to his heart, trying to hold himself in one piece. This couldn’t be happening to him. He couldn’t crack open for Mary. He couldn’t fork over his entire heart to her right at that moment, over spaghetti and paperwork. Not at the exact same moment he’d realized just how badly he’d screwed everything up.

He’d known that he’d been rude enough for her to lose interest in him immediately. He hadn’t realized that he’d deeply wounded her. So, what was he supposed to do now, his stupid, beating heart in one hand and Mary’s in the other?

He couldn’t fall in love with her right now. He just couldn’t. It was insanity. It was a road to nowhere.

It was unstoppable.

John took a deep breath he hoped didn’t sound as shaky as it felt. He still held the heel of one hand over his breastbone, trying to keep his heart where it belonged, in his own chest. “Mary, I just want to be clear here. I should never have said—”

She held up a hand, stopping him. She’d never done that before. It was a forceful gesture that belied the seemingly easy smile on her face. “Let’s not talk about that. Yeah. It’s been a rough week and a half. And my brain is fried from all the paperwork and the conversation. Let’s just not rehash the night we met. Okay?”

He closed his mouth, opened it, let his eyes slide from her face to the hand she still held up. That hand was certain, steady and telling him in no uncertain terms that what was done was done. Of course it was. How many chances did John expect to get with the world’s most lovely creature? He’d had it, and he’d blown it. And now all he could do was staple his chest closed and keep his heart in its home. All he could do was try not to hurt her again.

He nodded and cleared his throat. “All right.”

She dropped her hand. “I think I’m done with paperwork for the night. I was thinking of watching a movie,” she said brightly. “You’re welcome to stay if you want.”

“No,” he said gently as he shook his head. “No, I should go.” Always he was telling her no when he just wanted to sayyes, yes, yes. But just as when she’d invited him to stay and have dinner with Tyler and Fin last weekend, he’d known that it was time for him to go home and remember who he really was. What his life really was. To refamiliarize himself with the constraints on his actual world. So much of the time he spent with Mary had a Technicolor, dreamlike quality to it. It wasn’t good to stay there too long. It made his real life seem too drab and harsh by comparison.

He wanted nothing more than to sit next to Mary and watch a movie on her couch. Which was why he dragged himself up, said a quick goodbye and hauled his ass back to Bed-Stuy. An hour later, his hair wet from the shower and Ruth on his lap, John finally let out a deep breath, the one he hadn’t quite been able to catch sitting at her kitchen table with her. And it was then, in the safety of his own solitude, that he let his chest fully crack open. That he let himself feel it. Truly feel it.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

THENEXTFRIDAY,Richie and John packed up a little bit earlier than they might have normally done and walked to Cobble Hill from the public defender’s office. They’d been invited, by Tyler of all people, to an impromptu party at a bar around the corner from Mary’s shop. They were going to celebrate her shop’s return to glory and all the hard work that Mary had put in over the last few weeks.

Richie had jumped on the invitation surprisingly fast. “I’m sick of seeing Hogan at Fellow’s every Friday night,” he explained to John as they weaved their way through the traffic on Court Street, ignoring the honking horns. It was the height of summer, but New York was rewarding good behavior with a surprisingly fresh night. There was a breeze and low humidity, but John knew that by next week, this would only be a fond memory. Even the sidewalks would sweat while the city baked from the inside out the way it did every August.

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