Page 78 of Flirting with Forever

That was exactly right. The biggest “thing” looking different was namely her.

“Sort of?” she said. His eyes were tracking around her bedroom, catching on this and that. After a moment, his gaze landed on her face and skittered away. He sat up and rolled to the other side of the bed, dragging a hand over his face.

“Right,” he muttered. “Right.”

He stood up and went to the bathroom. Mary sat up as well. She wanted to change her clothes, but God forbid he come back midchange. It would be just her luck if he caught her pulling the underwear out of her ass right about now. No, thank you.

She sat on the edge of her bed and cupped her elbows, feeling utterly wretched.

“I just want to make sure I’m clear on this, all right?” He spoke from the doorway and she stood and turned, the bed in between them.

His eyes, for the first time ever, cast down her body and back up. She’d been waiting and waiting for him to do that to her, to be the recipient of that appraisal, but now that it was happening, she hated it. With the morning light beaming in on her, her hair in a rat’s nest and last night’s dress wrinkled and loose, she didn’t feel sexy and desired. She felt diminished and exposed.

“You’re saying,” he said slowly, as if he were painstakingly gathering each word, “that you wanted to sleep with me last night, while we were drunk. But now, in the morning light, you’re feeling differently?”

That was exactly how she was feeling. She didn’t answer aloud; apparently her face did that for her.

His eyes widened as he took in her expression. “Wow,” he whispered, taking a step back from her. “Wow. I’m such an idiot.”

He turned on his heel and disappeared from the doorway.

Mary stood there for a moment, a frown on her face. Wait. Why had he just called himself an idiot?

She strode after him, even though she wanted to pull her bedcovers over her head and not come out until the next day.

“What do you mean?” she called after him, seeing that he was already at her front door, toeing into his wingtips. “What do you mean you’re an idiot?”

“I—You—Shit.” John tried and failed to get a sentence out. “I’m an idiot for thinking that dancing at your party...sharing a chair with you...that those things were a green light. That it was all an indicator that maybe you wanted...Shit.”

He bent and tied one shoe and the next, his fingers as dexterous as his words apparently weren’t. He stood when his shoelaces were in a crisp knot, his hands jammed in his pockets.

“Mary, it is totally fine, more than fine, for you to change your mind about who you want to sleep with. I’m sorry if I’m guilting you. I’m trying not to. I’m being a dick. I’m just mad at myself for thinking... Shit. I’m gonna go.”

“Wait.” She held a hand out in a stop sign as her world tilted and his words filtered into her brain in a seemingly random order. He thought she’d changed her mind abouthim?! Oh, God. He thought that the “morning light” had shown poorly uponhim? “Wait, John.”

“No, I’d rather go. It’s okay, Mary. I understand. Beer goggles happen to the best of us.” He gave her a grim look that was probably an understanding smile in his mind. “You don’t have to apologize. And frankly, I don’t think I can handle you being sweet to me right now. So. Yeah. I’m gonna go. I have to go.”

He undid her locks, pulled open the door and pounded down her stairs. She heard her bottom door close, and then all was silent in her apartment.

“Beer goggles?” she said aloud, to no one. The thought was so ridiculous she laughed, but the sound was incredulous, bitter, horrified. “He thinks I had beer goggles for him? He is an idiot. He’s an idiotic, sweet, sexy, perfect...Shit.” She replayed their conversation in her head and realized how it all would have sounded to someone who was dealing with his own insecurities. She had just figured that how she’d been feeling about herself was so loud and insistent that there was no way in hell he’d been misinterpreting her meaning.

And now John was getting on the train thinking that she regretted kissing him, being with him, cuddling him on the barstool.

She glanced at the wall clock—5:10 a.m. If she left now, she could still catch him before work.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

WELL,HEWASback in Ruthlandia.

Not that bad a place to be, if he was being honest.

He wanted to curl in on himself, to look around his studio apartment and take it apart piece by piece in his head, comparison by comparison. Rejecting Mary’s judgment of him was difficult, like deep breathing through a charley horse. Part of him wanted nothing more than to admit that she was right. That he was a broke, shabby public defender, and she was right for changing her mind about him.

But no.

He scratched Ruth under the chin and balanced his cup of coffee on his knee.

Succumbing to that kind of self-hatred was a disservice to Estrella, to the way he’d been raised. It was admitting that his father was right. That money mattered more than anything else. John hadn’t let his self-worth be bought by his father, and he wouldn’t let it be sold by Mary.

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