Page 63 of Flirting with Forever

John had actually spent a fair amount of time with these two men over the last few weeks and he liked both of them. Except when they were teasing him over his apparently obvious reaction to Mary’s proximity.

“Yeah,” John said gruffly, catching the pretty bartender’s eye. “Long week, though. You?”

“Pretty good, pretty good,” Sebastian said a little distractedly.

“Yeah. Me too,” Tyler chimed in, sounding just as vague.

John paid for his beer and turned back to face the dance floor, the way the other two men were. He immediately understood their distracted manner. Via and Fin were on the dance floor, cutting two very good-looking rugs.

“Where’s Matty tonight?” John asked.

“Got a babysitter for him,” Sebastian responded, tearing his gaze from his girlfriend. “Actually, Kylie is looking after him.”

“Can you believe that?” Tyler chimed in, looking a little bemused with the development. “Eight months ago, I wouldn’t have even trusted her to be at home on her own. And now she’s looking after your kid.”

“She’s come a long way since Thanksgiving,” Sebastian agreed. “And I gotta admit, it’s nice to be out on the town with you and Mary at the same time. I don’t actually remember the last time that happened.”

“She seems happy,” John said, unable to keep himself from finding Mary in the crowd, laughing at something Beth was saying and lighting up her corner of the room.

“It takes a lot to keep Mary down,” Seb replied. “She’s been through a lot over the last few years. As traumatic as these last few weeks have been, they weren’t anything that she couldn’t handle.”

“She’s strong,” John agreed. “When you first meet her, you kind of think that someone that happy must be out of touch or naive. But she’s not. She works hard to be happy. I respect that.”

Tyler’s beer came down on the bar as he turned to John. “All right, I’m just gonna say it. You avoided answering at Mary’s party, but come on, it’s obvious. You’re into her. She’s in—Mmph!”

Fin, possibly with the accuracy of a clairvoyant, had appeared at Tyler’s side in just enough time to clap a hand over his mouth, tugging him toward the dance floor. She hissed something that sounded suspiciously like “Let them figure it out!”

But John couldn’t be sure. He cleared his throat and finished his beer a lot faster than he’d anticipated. He chanced a quick glance at Sebastian, who looked about as uncomfortable as John felt. “He has a big mouth,” Sebastian said after a beat. “But he means well. And he wants what’s best for Mary.”

“So do I,” John said carefully.

Thirty quiet, awkward seconds passed.

“Look, man,” Sebastian said. “If you—”

“Who the hell is that?” John interrupted as soon as his eyes zeroed in on the redheaded male model talking to Mary. John might not have cared if not for the fact that Mary seemed about three shades duller than she usually did. She seemed almost to have shrunk in on herself, one hand gripping the other elbow and her eyes on this stooge’s chest instead of his face.

A woman with beautiful black hair down her back tucked under the redhead’s arm and Mary seemed to wilt even further.

John put the pieces together just as Sebastian answered.

“Aw, shit. That’s Doug. Her cheating ex.”

“And that’s the woman he left her for?”

“Yeah.Shit.I told Mary that we should choose another bar, but she insisted on this one. It’s one of her favorites, and she said it would be like Doug won if she avoided it.”

The guy, Doug, was giving Mary a casual wave and pulling his girl to the other side of the bar. He passed by John, and John had to resist the juvenile urge to stick out one foot and make Darling Doug face-plant on the parquet.

John’s eyes went immediately back to Mary, who was now talking with Richie, her mouth pulled down and her eyes sad.

“This,” John said in a voice he pretty much only used in a courtroom, “is completely unacceptable.”

And he meant it. With every beating centimeter of his cracked-open heart. Seeing Mary with her light this dimmed was a crime against nature. Against the universe. It defied the laws of physics and made John’s skin crawl.

Doug, he couldn’t care less about. Doug could jump in a lake. It was Mary that John was concerned about, and before he thought twice about it, John slapped his empty beer bottle down on the bar and strode through the crowd with one thought and one thought only pulsing through his mind along with the beat of the music. He was going to turn Mary’s light back on if he died trying.

WELL,THATSUCKED.

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