Flirting with Forever

by Cara Bastone

  John strode forward, wishing he were eating carrot sticks or a hot pretzel, anything but this messy glob of food. He felt Richie at his back still, curiosity pulsing off of him in waves.

  “Mary. Hi,” John said, scraping at his mouth with the napkin again. “What’re you doing here? Jury duty?”

  She laughed and, as usual, it freaking sparkled. Her hair was brushed to a high shine, she smelled like coconut sunscreen and there were large, bug-eyed sunglasses in her hair. She looked like a different species than the bored, irritated New Yorkers who were staring at their phones and inching up the security line.

  “No! Ha. I’m not here for jury duty. I’ve never been selected. Though I always wish I would be. Sounds like fun.”

  “Fun,” Richie said dimly, standing beside John. He was apparently as dazzled by Mary as Carlo was.

  “Hi, I’m Mary Trace.” She shook hands with Richie.

  “Richie Dear. I’m John’s officemate.”

  “Wow. That’s a great name.”

  “I get that a lot. So, if not jury duty, then...” Richie trailed off, glancing between John and Mary, shamelessly tossing logs onto the flame of his curiosity.

  “Oh! Right. John, I found this in my shop yesterday and I wanted to return it to you. I was going to leave it at your office, but when I got to the public defender’s office over on Fulton, the receptionist told me that you were here for the day, so here I am. I would have brought it up to your meeting room, but, rest assured, the security here is very good.” She grinned at Carlo, and Carlo went a shade of peach that John had never seen him go before.

  “Ah.” John reached out for his driver’s license, concluding gloomily that there was very little chance that Mary had identified its owner without looking at the photo of him. The photo where he pretty much glowered like a clean-shaven Blackbeard. Ah well. “Thanks. I hadn’t even noticed it was missing yet.”

  “Well, I’m going out of town until tomorrow night, and I wanted to make sure you had it before I left.” Mary checked her phone. “Actually, I’d better get going to Penn Station if I’m going to make my Amtrak.”

  “John,” Richie said in a voice that was decidedly not his normal speaking voice. “Aren’t you going to catch the train right now as well?”

  John swallowed, his eyes narrowing on Richie’s mischievous expression. “I’m taking the F, not the A.”

  “But the A takes you to the E, which will get you to the Q100 just as fast as the F,” Richie said helpfully, his voice as sickly sweet as a Coke stirred with a sugar straw.

  “Maybe even faster,” Carlo cut in, laughter dancing in his eyes.

  Considering himself boxed into a corner with no graceful way out, John turned to Mary. “I have to go up and get my bag and paperwork before I can head out. Do you have five minutes?”

  She checked the time again. “I have up to fifteen minutes, if I’m feeling crazy.”

  “Be right back.” He silently willed Richie to come upstairs and leave Mary alone, but of course his nosy friend started chatting her up the second John took a step away. He sighed and made his way to the elevators, scarfing down his lunch on the way up. He had just enough time to wash his hands, steal a breath mint from the front desk and grab his things before he headed back downstairs. Richie, Carlo and Mary still stood in the same formation, all three of them laughing as John approached.

  “Ready?”

  “Ready. Bye, Carlo. Bye, Richie!” Mary waved at them both and turned just in time to miss Richie sticking his fist underneath his shirt and making his heart beat like a cartoon. Carlo, a bit more subtle, merely looked at Mary’s back with the moderate wistfulness of a man who was actually very happily married.

  John rolled his eyes at both of them and headed toward the train alongside Mary. “So. Where out of town are you headed?”

  It always baffled John, who’d been born and raised in New York City, when people left the city. He knew the world was wide, but what could possibly be happening out there that wasn’t already happening in here?

  “To see my parents for the night. Which is why I’m dressed like I’m applying for a bank loan.” Mary scrunched up her nose as they swiped into the train station.

  John’s eyes skated down Mary’s form, taking in the overnight bag she had tucked against her hip and her navy shift dress and sensible heels. He hadn’t noticed when she’d been standing in the security line. He’d been too distracted by her bright hair and brighter smile. But now that he really looked at her, she did seem a little muted.

  “You dress up to see your parents?”

  She shook her head. “I dress tame to see my parents. They’re neutral-palette people.”

  He wondered briefly how neutral-palette people could have spawned such a colorful, exotic creature as Mary. He thought of the oft-stilted brunches with his own father in fancy restaurants. Once a month like rusty, resentful clockwork. He supposed lots of parents viewed their children as blocks of ice they could eventually chip into shape. “I’m not getting the vibe that you enjoy visiting them.”

  “Um. I like being in my childhood home?” Her tone of voice suggested that she was searching for something that she did actually enjoy about visiting her parents.

  “But...” John prompted.

  Mary sighed, her shoulders sagging a bit. “But my mother isn’t the most accepting person. She has lots of opinions. And no grasp on the concept that her opinions aren’t, in fact, facts.”

  John chuckled. “I know a great many people like that.”

  “As a lawyer, you probably do.”

  The train came riding into the station on a puff of stale air, and luckily there were plenty of seats available. Their conversation veered away from her parents and more toward the plan for the date on Friday. She’d told Estrella that she’d changed her mind about Elijah Crawford. So far, Estrella had not come clean, even going so far as to say that Elijah would be there at the restaurant at eight o’clock on Friday.

  John could only shake his head at his mother’s audacity, wondering if she was somehow going to track down his old classmate and talk him into showing up for the date. As they rode and talked, John became uncomfortably aware of a glowing warmth in his chest. Like an ember he wasn’t sure how to put out. There was a panicky kind of momentum attached to it. Like if he paid too much attention to the feeling, he’d end up blowing on the ember and making it burst into flames. He really, really didn’t want it to burst into flames.

  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.

  * * *

  “DO YOU HAVE to 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 of Downton Abbey for 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.

  “Yes, I do. We’ve been married for forty-odd years, and if there’s one thing in this world I understand, it’s your mother. Maze of emotions that she is.”

  “I know she’s still sad over Aunt Tiff. Scared that I’ll end up just like her.”

  “Sad? Mary, love, sad doesn’t even begin to describe it. I’m not sure she’ll ever be the same.”

  Mary frowned. But her mother had been so crisp and curt in the wake of her older sister’s death. She hadn’t even cried at the funeral. There’d been a constant air of so much to do and so little time, and not once had her mother just sat down and grieved. That Mary had seen, at least.

  “I think...” Trevor said slowly, thoughtfully, his eyes squinting behind his thick horn-rimmed glasses. “I think that she wants to honor Tiff’s memory by making sure that you don’t suffer the same things that Tiff suffered. And she’s terrified that you want to honor Tiff’s memory by being exactly like Tiff.”

  Mary flushed with pleasure. “You think I’m exactly like Tiff?”

  Trevor smirked. “Mary, if I hadn’t been in the room at your birth, I might have sworn you were Tiff’s daughter. Your looks, your manner, even your voice. Not to mention your personality. Tiff was just as upbeat as you are. The only difference is that she never let your mother get her down. She’d just laugh and hug Naomi and remind her that there was more than one way to slice an apple.”

  Mary smiled fondly, even though a sheen of tears had sprung up in her eyes. That sounded just like Tiff.

  “But the thing is, sweetheart, your mother is not naturally inclined to look at the world that way. She’s in the school of thought that there is one right way to slice an apple and all you have to do is figure out which one it is. But while Tiff was with us, your mother was more flexible, kinder about it all, more understanding. Once Tiff died, though...” Trevor sadly shook his head, rubbed his fingers underneath his glasses. “Your mother took it as a sign that Tiff had been wrong all along.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense, though! Tiff died of cancer. What does that have to do with Mom’s fears over me being single?”

  Her father gave her a brief, meaningful look. “You know that Tiff’s death was more complicated than that. It was more than just bad luck. Just because you agree with Tiff’s choices doesn’t mean your mother has to. Besides, grief rarely makes sense, sweetheart. Your mother drew her own conclusions, and to her, the only way to square all the corners was to decide that Tiff had been wrong all along. An orderly, expected life was the only way to protect oneself against the random pain of the world.”

  “But—”

  “Are you coming to watch with me?” her mother’s quiet voice cut into their conversa
tion. Mary looked over at her mother and felt an unexpected swell of affection for the woman standing there. Her hair was stylishly short, dyed dark blond at the roots and lighter at the choppy ends. She’d changed into an after-dinner housedress, long and silken like a kimono. With one manicured hand, she clutched the overlapping collar of the robe and looked nervously between Trevor and Mary.

  Mary knew that look on her mother’s face. The closest to chagrin and apology that her plastic surgeon allowed her to get. The brandy had softened her, but so had the distance from the dinner conversation. She was regretful of her vehemence, Mary was certain, though not of her message. But still, Naomi didn’t want to sit alone at night in a room watching television by herself, and who did? Mary didn’t blame her.

  Who didn’t want companionship?

  Mary sighed and gripped her cup in both hands. “On our way, Mom. Be right there.”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  AT SEVEN FIFTY-FIVE on the dot, just as they’d planned, John watched Mary stride into the Brooklyn Heights restaurant. Mellow was a relaxed, darkened establishment that had a curved, shadowed bar on one end, which was why they’d chosen it. Mary had reserved a specific table near the window where she could see John back in the corner, but Elijah, if and when he showed, wouldn’t likely notice him.

  John sighed as he watched Mary speak to the hostess, a huge smile on her face. Of course she’d worn yellow pants. And a buttoned shirt and her hair in a high bun. The outfit was stylish and ridiculous and looked utterly perfect on her. On any other woman, John would have thought it made her look sunny-side up. But Mary just looked...good.

  He groaned to himself as he watched her sit down at the table and then immediately peer through the gloom to seek John out. She shot him a little secret smile that made John groan again. Twice in about ten seconds.

  “You all right, buddy?” the bartender asked.

  “What? Oh. Yeah. Just kicking myself for something. Sorry.” John nodded back at Mary. The bartender looked between them. “There a story there? One worth groaning over?”