Page 24 of Flirting with Forever

When their train was only a few stops away from Penn Station, John started to sweat in his dress shirt. When he’d agreed to ride with her, he hadn’t thought about Mary leaving the train. How did they usually part ways? A handshake? No. Should he stand? No. That was weird and formal for a train ride. He inwardly shuddered as he imagined publicly going in for a hug.

He’d settled on a wave and a tight-lipped smile as his safest bet when the train rolled into Penn Station.

“All right!” she said brightly. “See you on Friday. Don’t be late!” And just like that, like it was the easiest thing in the world, she placed one hand on John’s forearm, leaned over and pecked him on the cheek.

Before he could even stiffen in response, she was bouncing up with a final wave and striding off the train. John blinked after her. He ducked down to watch her weave through the crowd on the platform. If he hadn’t known it was crazy, he would have sworn there was some sort of traveling spotlight over top of her head, constantly setting that sunny hair of hers aflame.

She disappeared from view and the train pulled out of the station. John adjusted his messenger bag at his feet and pulled out the ream of paperwork he probably should have been doing while he’d been chatting with Mary instead.

Still, he couldn’t get the glowing warmth in his chest to just cool down already. It was distracting in its heat.

Then a thought occurred to John. He laughed humorlessly to himself. They’d ridden the train together, sure. But, the whole time, she’d been on her way to visit her rich parents in Connecticut and John had been on his way to Rikers Island. Mary’s world was so much more similar to John’s father’s world than it was to John and Estrella’s world. Part of him tsked unbelievingly at himself for this position he found himself in. Trying to catch a lingering glance of a woman who he firmly needed to remember lived in a different universe than he did. John hadn’t been born into that sparkling, designer-clothes tier of humanity. His father had made sure of that. John had always viewed that as an unintentional favor, the lesson his father’s abandonment had taught him about money and the doors it firmly closed in certain people’s faces. It was part of the reason why John was currently headed to a prison to meet with a client. Because everyone deserved to enjoy the privileges of the constitution. Not just the rich. It was part of the fabric of John’s very belief system. And yet here he was with a glowing warmth in his chest for Mary.

He needed to stay in his lane.

Connecticut with a Prada overnight bag over her shoulder. Rikers Island with a ratty, decade-old messenger bag he’d stowed at his feet.

If that didn’t say everything about the differences between them, he didn’t know what would.

“DOYOUHAVEto be so hard on her, Naomi?”

Mary blinked at her father in surprise. He rarely spoke up during one of her mother’s passive-aggressive tirades. Actually, he rarely spoke up at all. He’d clearly learned the hard way that no good deed went unpunished. But about once a year he reached some private, internal limit and actually plucked up the courage to defend his only child. This dinner, apparently, was the annual event.

“I’m not being hard on her, Trevor,” Mary’s mother snapped. “I’m being realistic.”

“Actually, Mom,” Mary cut in, “it’s possible to be both at once.”

Naomi glowered at Mary. “I’m just attempting to get you to be honest with yourself.”

Mary sighed and talked herself out of a theatrical yawn. That was something a younger, less emotionally mature Mary would do. Mature Mary simply pushed her carrots to one side of her plate and set her fork down. “You want me to be honest with myself about my hypothetical egg viability?”

“It’s not hypothetical. A woman’s fertility plummets at forty! PUH-LUM-METS,” Naomi keened, practically forming the outline of each letter with her lips as she said it. Her pretty green eyes filled with tears. “I’m scared for you, my love. I’m scared you’ll wind up lonely with none of the things that actually matter in life.”

Mary took a deep breath. How could something possibly be so heartfelt and so freaking annoying at the same time?

“Single doesn’t equal lonely, Mom.”

Naomi pressed her eyes closed in a move that was the emotional equivalent of an eye-roll, though Naomi believed eye-rolling to be juvenile and would never engage in such behavior. “Maybe not today or tomorrow, while you’re still beautiful and have all those friends of yours. But someday, Mary, single does equal lonely. What about when your father and I aren’t here anymore? What about when you’re old and frail and sick and there’s no one there for you?”

“Yes,” Mary grumbled. “Life is scary, Mom.”

“Don’t patronize me! Like you know so much more than I do. When I’m the one who watched it happen to my own sister!”

And that was Mary’s hard limit. She rose up and cleared the plates into a tall stack, then marched everything into the kitchen. She wasn’t going to be ungrateful. She’d still clean the kitchen. But the minute her mother started reducing Aunt Tiff’s life to something lonely and frail and sick was when Mary couldn’t sit at the table a second longer.

“Mary,” her mother called. “You can’t just—”

Mary heard the quiet tone of her father interrupting. She knew what she would see were she to poke her head back into the dining room. Her father would be whispering in her ear, and Naomi would be pressing her hands to her brow bones, careful not to wrinkle her skin, even while upset.

As she set the plates in the dishwasher and slid the leftovers into containers, she heard her parents leave the dining room. She knew that her father would be depositing her mother into her favorite after-dinner spot on the couch. She knew that he would press a glass of brandy into her mother’s hand and turn on an episode ofDownton Abbeyfor her. If it had been the wintertime, he would have flicked on the gas fireplace as well.

Just a few moments later, he was there, in the kitchen with Mary and silently taking over at the sink with the pots and pans. Mary wordlessly did the rest, wiping down the countertops and brewing two cups of ginger tea for her and her father. It was something he did every night after dinner, and when Mary was there, she did as well. She knew that he’d always liked the tradition, and she liked the fact that something so small could make her father happy.

When the kitchen was set to rights, the two of them held their steaming mugs in their hands and eyed one another.

“Is it even worth it for me to try to explain her behavior?” her father eventually asked with a sad smile.

“Do you understand it?” Mary asked glibly.

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