Page 95 of Flirting with Forever

“Zero?”

“Yup.” John sighed, long and hard. “I’m starting to rethink my stance on that, however. You’re helping me.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Our differences. What you can afford versus what I can afford. I thought I might never be able to get over it. But with you, I don’t take it as personally as I do with my dad. I don’t know. I’m finding myself less and less threatened with the whole thing. You don’t measure my worth by my bank account. So, I’ve been starting to wonder whyIdo, you know?” His hand sifted through her hair. “For a long time, I figured that my dad was trying to buy my forgiveness with his gifts and trips and trust funds. But now I think he’s just trying to figure out a way to spend some time with me.”

Mary smoothed his T-shirt down. He’d planned on wearing his usual slacks and button-down, but she’d recently started talking him into more casual clothes on the weekend. She’d shown him how to do something called a French tuck with his shirts that supposedly made his plain clothing look a little more fashionable. John cared about that just about as far as he could drop-kick it, but still, it made Mary happy.

“Have you thought about inviting him to do something you could afford to do? I dunno, a baseball game? Or even, like, a weekend out on Far Rockaway? Something like that?”

He kissed her forehead. “Yeah, actually, when I told him I wasn’t coming out to Colorado this week, that’s exactly what I did. I floated the idea of a weekend in Toms River. Whale watching from the ferries. Something we both like.”

Mary cranked her head back, a smile on her face. “You’re into whale watching?”

“Not that I’ve done a ton of it, but yeah. Whales are cool.”

She laughed and buried her face against his shoulder. “You’re cool.”

He was the one laughing now. “We both know I’m a dork.”

“You’re a hot dork. Which makes you cool.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Lawn bowling?” Tyler shouted from the back porch over to the lovebirds in the hammock. “Just found a kit in the garage!”

“What the hell is lawn bowling?” John asked.

“I’ll teach you, city boy,” Mary said, rolling from the hammock and tugging him upward.

They passed the rest of the day in lazy luxury, playing lawn games, going for a walk around the neighborhood, grilling their early dinner on the back patio.

John was just trying to decide whether or not an after-dinner nap would disturb his sleep cycle when Mary slid onto his lap. She was biting her bottom lip, looking nervous about something.

“If we were going to go, now would probably be the time.”

“Go...” A light flicked on in his head. “To Connecticut?”

“Yeah. I just looked it up. It’s only a thirty-minute cab ride from here. Which would put us at my parents’ house in time for their nightlyDownton Abbeyslash glass-of-brandy ritual.”

John blinked at her. “That’s a thing?”

“They’re in their early sixties and live in suburban Connecticut, John. It’s not like they have a hopping nightlife.”

He stood up, setting her on her feet. “Yes. Let’s go. If you’re inviting me, I’m accepting.”

He wasn’t sure why her reconciliation with her mother was so important to him. He just knew that it was clear how much it had been weighing on Mary, and he wanted to do anything he could to help lift that weight off of her.

They were in a cab and on the highway when Mary turned to him. “I kind of feel like I’m copping out, being the one to reach out to them. Show up on their doorstep.”

“Because you laid down an ultimatum?”

She bit her lip and nodded. “Yeah. And then I had all these fantasies about my mother showing up in Brooklyn and saying she was wrong.”

John didn’t know Mary’s mother, but he knew people, and he figured that the odds of that panning out the way she’d hoped had been vanishingly slim. “Whether or not she admits she was wrong, you know the truth. I know the truth. She can’t take that from us.”

Mary studied him. “Something you’ve learned as a public defender?”

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