Page 50 of Flirting with Forever

“You’re not allergic, are you?” he asked immediately. “Crap, I should have mentioned.”

“No! I like cats.” To prove it, Mary leaned forward and scratched the kitty under the chin. To her delight, the cat tipped its head back, luxuriating.

“Oh, good.” John kicked the door closed behind them and then set the cat on the ground. “Well, this is Ruth. She’s a little...forward, so feel free to ignore her if she’s getting on your nerves.”

Ruth? He’d named his catRuth? For some reason, this information made helium rise inside of Mary. She wanted to laugh hysterically, hug John again, cry a little.

She needed to eat and crash out.

“Well,” he said again, stepping over Ruth carefully. “This is it.”

Mary finally took a look around, trying not to appear overeager to finally see John’s home. It was small. Just one room with a bed along the far wall and a kitchenette tucked in the opposite corner. There was a kitchen table and, under one window, a love seat with a coffee table in front.

Her first impressions were homey, clean, man-space. She immediately loved all the touches of Estrella around the apartment. There was a colorful, mismatched afghan she’d obviously crocheted for John. And a series of paintings along the wall, some of her earlier work that Mary had never seen before. The bottom half of one of his windows was covered over in a stained-glass windowpane that Estrella had obviously worked hard on. The overall effect was nice. It wasn’t a curated space by any means, but it wasn’t depressing either. It was neat and intentional. Very John. She liked it.

“So, uh, make yourself at home. Gah! Ruth!” He did a quick little dance step to avoid his cat.

She covered her mouth with one hand so he wouldn’t think she was laughing at him, even though she kind of was.

John’s phone dinged in his pocket, and as he set their food on the table and unwound himself from his messenger bag, he checked the text.

“Oh, good. My neighbors texted me back. I’m gonna run over there and get things squared away.”

What he was getting squared away, she had no idea. She was still standing on his front mat, taking in his apartment.

“Here,” he said, striding over and lifting her bag off her shoulder. He set it on the love seat. “I probably should have mentioned that I don’t have air-conditioning.”

She saw his look of chagrin for only a moment before he turned to the window in the kitchen and propped it open with a box fan, flicking it on. He strode to the window above the bed, put one knee in the middle of the comforter and did the same with another box fan.

“But it’s actually pretty comfortable at night with the airflow. You should be all right. Okay. Um. Bathroom’s there, let me just...” He strode to the bathroom and poked his head inside, obviously checking to make sure it was clean. He nodded his head. “Yeah. So. I’ll be right back.”

And then he was scooting around her, out his front door. Mary heard him knock on the next door down and then the sound of his voice and another voice from the other side of the far wall. Thin walls in this building.

Mary looked longingly at the bathroom. She wanted nothing more than an icy shower and her pajamas and a place to rest her head. But she figured that she’d wait until after she’d eaten. She washed her hands and set out their dinner. She found only four place settings of dishes in his cupboard, all clean, though a little chipped. She set the table with two of them, folding paper towels neatly underneath the silverware. She fished two beers out of the fridge. There was a small, stubby candle in the drawer next to the bottle opener, so she lit it, setting it in the middle of the table. She wished there was a flower she could set out, but this would have to do. She smiled as Ruth twined around her feet, roughly rubbing her little furry face against Mary’s bare ankles.

He was right about the cross-breeze from the fans. The cool air felt heavenly and the white noise from the rushing breeze made Mary feel as if John’s home were safely tucked into a cloud, floating above Brooklyn, high above any intruders or ruined shops.

Oh, God. Her beautiful shop. All that waste. The meaningless destruction of something so beautiful.

She felt a crack deep within her and knew that her tears weren’t done. But she didn’t want to cry right now. She wanted food and rest. So she went to her knees and scooped Ruth onto her lap.

Ruth made an alarmingly loud sound that Mary supposed was a purr. She laughed and poked at Ruth’s flicking tail, scratched at her ears, absorbed the animal’s warm, weighted comfort.

The voices on the other side of the wall stopped, and a moment later, John was back through his front door. “Everything’s good over there. They said I can head over whenever you want to crash. I see that Ruth wasted no time in seducing you.” His lips softened into a half smile at the sight of Mary on the floor with his goofy cat. Then his gaze flicked to the table and the smile tightened back into his usual expression of lined consternation.

He cleared his throat. “Table looks nice.”

They sat down together, John filling up waters for them and cracking both beers open.

“What did you have to get figured out with the neighbors?” she asked.

“Oh. Just wanted to make sure I could sleep on their couch.”

“Oh.” She furrowed her brow and looked around. John had a small sofa and just the one bed. Of course there wasn’t room for two in here. She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t picked out that detail immediately. “John, you don’t have to do that. I could sleep on the sofa—”

“Mary.” He frowned. “That thing is only three feet long. Just take the bed. The neighbors have let me sleep over before. They like me. I gave some free legal advice to their boy a few years back.”

She glanced uneasily toward the bed, uncomfortable with booting him out of his own home. But he was thumbing through his cell phone, either oblivious to or ignoring her reaction.

---