Flirting with Forever

by Cara Bastone

  “Have you gone yet? I’ll go with you if you’re headed over there now. I try to go every few weeks.”

  Something in Naomi’s expression folded down, whether with disapproval or softness, Mary couldn’t tell.

  An hour later, the two women were walking the windy, paved path to Tiff’s grave. They arrived side by side, her mother as sure-footed in the path as Mary was, and Mary wondered if maybe she came more often than she was letting on. The gravesite was well cared for, as all the plots were in Green-Wood. The stone itself had lost that devastating crispness that new graves had and was starting to give way into a softer dignity. It had been six years after all.

  Mary pulled a sprig of dried lavender from one pocket and laid it atop the gravestone, removing the sodden one she’d left there two weeks ago.

  “Tiff’s favorite,” she said.

  “I know,” Naomi replied, reaching out to touch the lavender for just a moment. They stood side by side for a long while until Naomi shifted next to Mary. Mary realized, with a start, that her mother was crying, pressing a handkerchief to her face.

  “Mom.”

  “This is what you want?” Naomi asked, pointing to either side of Tiff’s grave. “Buried between two strangers?”

  Mary’s eyes grew into round coins, shock making her mother’s words move in slow motion. There was no way—it wasn’t possible—no one would drag their daughter to her beloved aunt’s grave in order to guilt her over being single.

  Mary turned on her heel immediately, striding back down the path and toward the main road. She’d catch a cab by herself, and her mother could get her own ass back to Connecticut.

  “Mary!”

  Her mother sounded more shocked than angry.

  A moment later, there was the swift clicking of sensible heels and then a strong hand at Mary’s elbow. “Where are you running off to?”

  It didn’t help that her mother still had tears gathering in her eyes.

  “I cannot believe that you’d use Tiff’s grave as a prop to guilt me for being single.”

  “I—What? No!”

  Naomi stopped walking altogether, but Mary kept on going. A moment later, she was back at Mary’s elbow.

  “Mary, stop. Mary!”

  She skidded to a stop and swung around to face her mother.

  “That is not what I was intending to do,” Naomi whispered fiercely, her eyes red, her eyelashes clinging to one another.

  “Mom, you get me all teary and then just zing me like that? Buried between two strangers? That’s not a question! That was an accusation. What do you want from me, Mom? You want me to marry someone I don’t love just so that you can sleep better at night? That’s really what you want?”

  “Mary, I felt terrible after your visit last month. Your father—It seems that I was too hard on you. I know we aren’t close. But...you bring lavender to Tiff’s grave because of how well you knew her. And I am just trying to understand you.”

  “By accusing me of wanting to be buried next to strangers?”

  “It...came out wrong.”

  “No, Mom. I think it came out exactly as you intended it to. You’re just unhappy with my reaction to it.”

  Naomi’s mouth worked open and then closed. Her eyes filled again as she half turned from Mary and looked up at the bright blue sky, as if she could make her tears dry in the sun.

  Mary stood there, breathing hard, wishing it weren’t so bright, so hot. Wishing that she weren’t fighting with her mother in a cemetery. Wishing that Tiff were here to referee.

  And most horribly, part of Mary wished that she could still be that young-twenties version of herself that her mother had so adored. The apologetic, shrinking, soft-spoken girl she’d been. The one who’d let the world walk all over her, tell her what to do. Well, that girl had met Cora. And spent time with Tiff. And now this woman, the woman that Mary was now, was all that she had left of either of the strongest women she’d ever known. She wasn’t going to let some crocodile tears make her regret who she’d become or the women who’d helped her get there.

  “Mom, I’m getting in a cab and going home. If you want to share that cab with me, then you’d better come now.” She turned on her heel and strode back toward the entrance to the cemetery. For some reason, the sedate clopping of her mother’s heels behind her made sharp tears spring into Mary’s eyes.

  * * *

  BY THE TIME her first guest arrived on Saturday afternoon, Mary figured she was as recovered as she possibly could be from her mother’s hit-and-run of a visit. She’d had no choice but to just shove the whole encounter to the back of her mind, which was where it should have been anyway, considering there was a very good chance that she’d never fully understand her mother.

  Either way, Mary swung open her apartment door and grinned at her neighbors from down the block, Josh and Joanna Coates, and their daughter, Jewel. “You made it!”

  “Wouldn’t miss it!” Josh chirped, nearly bowling Mary over in his quest to get indoors.

  “Our air-conditioning is out,” Joanna explained with a wink.

  “Gimme the baby, Jo,” Josh called from where he stood over the air vent in Mary’s floor, his shorts billowing in the breeze. “I’m just gonna post up right here.”

  “Not a baby,” Jewel grumped, a pattern of lines pressed into her cheek from where she’d obviously been sleeping not long ago. But even so, she toddled over to her dad, her arms up, wanting to be cuddled in the cool air.

  “Sorry, we’re not...” Joanna started to apologize for her family and then sort of gave up, shrugging. She laughed. “It’s been a long few days with our A/C out.”

  Mary tugged Joanna inside, took her by the shoulders and pointed her toward the kitchen. “Please, my climate control is your climate control. Plus, there are yummy drinks and snacks in the kitchen. And, I might add, a guest bedroom down the hall if you want to stay with me while your air-conditioning is out.”

  Hot on the Coateses’ heels were a handful of other neighbors, most of whom had bucked Mary’s rules and indeed brought food and drinks of their own. Next up the stairs echoed a loud-shoed clomp that Mary would recognize pretty much anywhere. She waited for him in her open doorway, her hands on her hips and a huge smile on her face.

  “My man,” she said as soon as Matty Dorner made it to the top of her staircase, a mutinously grouchy look on his blunt face. Mary knew that Sebastian and Matty were practically carbon copies of one another, everyone said so, but Mary couldn’t help but see Cora when she looked at Matty. Sebastian’s face, though just as blunt, was always open and generous, his personality showing through. Matty’s eight-year-old face was usually set in stubborn or humorous lines, just like his mother’s always had been.

  In the way of young children who teetered on the cusp between two phases of life, Matty high-fived Mary like a teenager might and then leaned his cheek against her hip, looping an arm around her leg like he used to as a toddler. “They didn’t let me eat anything on the drive over here.”

  Mary laughed at the look of affronted injustice on the kid’s face.

  “Matty,” a firm voice said from the top of the stairs. “Just because we didn’t let you pick at the chips and dips we brought doesn’t mean we were starving you.” And there Via was, holding a tray of food that Mary should have known she’d bring and giving Matty a stern eye that told him to behave himself at the party.

  Via was nothing like Cora in most ways, forgiving where Cora had been unrepentant, thoughtful where Cora had been brash, observant where Cora had been the center of attention. But when it came to handling Matty with a firm hand, Via actually really reminded Mary of how Cora had been. Loving and stern and confident with the kid who’d take a mile every single time an inch was up for grabs.

  “Is there snacks inside?” Matty asked, looking up at Mary.

  Sebastian sighed as he too came up th
e stairs, still standing two steps down but drawing level with Via all the same, such was their height difference. “Tell me he at least said hi to you, Mary.”

  “He was a perfect gentleman,” Mary lied, winking at Matty as she swatted him on the butt and pushed him inside. “Shoes off and then there are snacks in the kitchen. But put them on a plate. Don’t just eat out of the bowls.”

  She kissed Via on the cheek and then Sebastian. “So glad you’re here!”

  “Us too, Mare. And I’m so freaking glad this party is inside. It’s brutal out there.” Sebastian had the beads of sweat on his forehead to prove it. “I’m melting.”

  “Cold drinks. Air-conditioning. A cold shower in the guest room if worst comes to worst.” She beckoned her friends inside and was just closing her front door when she realized that another guest was standing on her landing already.

  “John!”

  “Hello.” His frown was in full force, his hair immaculately parted on one side and smoothed back. He wore the party version of his typical outfit, meaning no tie and his shirtsleeves rolled to the elbows. Mary glanced down at his wingtips and suddenly felt a rising, unexplainable glee that John was going to take those ridiculous shoes off. It would be her first time seeing him without them.

  “I brought you this.” He shoved a paper bag into her hand. “You said not to bring food or drinks, but Estrella would keel over if she ever found out I came empty-handed.”

  Mary looked into the bag and felt that glee rise a few more inches. He’d brought her crappy beer and expensive lemonade, presumably to mix together. “It’s perfect! Thank you so much. Here, come in, come in.”

  As he was stepping through her front door, though, Mary stepped in front of him and reached forward, pressing two fingers to his eyebrows the way she’d done once before, changing his expression from judgmental to neutral. “I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself while you look around my fancy Cobble Hill house for the first time.”

  Color rose to his cheeks as he looked down at her. For the first time, she caught a familiarly masculine scent from John. Aftershave. The old-school kind. She thought of barbershops and shaving strops. Her eyes dropped from his pink cheeks to his freshly shaved jaw, smooth but shadowed blue by his dark hair. “I’m not going to judge you, Mary.”

  They were standing a bit closer than she’d previously realized and Mary’s fingertips sort of buzzed where she’d just touched his brow. “Richie’s not here yet,” she told him, just to say anything at all.

  John smirked. “I don’t expect him for at least another hour. He’s only on time for court.”

  His eyes flicked over Mary’s shoulder and his frown came back. It was then that Mary saw something else in those ever-present lines in John’s face. It wasn’t just his job and his past that he wore there. It was nerves as well.

  He was nervous to meet new people at a party.

  Cute.

  John carefully took off his shoes and set them aside. Mary surreptitiously glanced down at his feet and almost rolled her eyes when she saw his crisp, predictable, perfectly black dress socks. She should have known.

  She closed the door behind him and immediately swept him along to her kitchen, fixing him a drink and then herself one as well. She parked John next to Sebastian and Via, where she knew he’d be in safekeeping, and then went to answer the door, where Fin, Tyler and Kylie all waited, laughing. Richie stood on the landing with them as well.

  She greeted them all with hugs and kisses and closed the door behind them.

  “This has got to be some sort of New York City record,” Mary said to Richie as they walked into the kitchen together. “One hundred percent attendance at a party in the first hour?”

  Mary looked around for John, wanting to check and see if he was still nervous, and not finding him where she’d left him. She craned her neck and found him in the living room, sitting on an ottoman, but hunched forward over the coffee table, where he and Matty were chatting over a puzzle that Matty had just started. Matty loved jigsaw puzzles more than anything and Mary always kept a few for him at her house. Apparently he’d been able to rope a grown-up into helping him. Matty’s signature move.

  “Don’t worry about him,” Richie said over Mary’s shoulder. “John generally finds the kids’ table pretty fast at a party.”

  “Really?” Mary laughed.

  “Oh, yeah. You should see him at his family’s Thanksgiving celebration. He spends an hour or two coloring with a billion of his little cousins. Does a requisite half an hour playing hide-and-seek. Eats dinner, does a few dishes and waves at the grown-ups on his way out.”

  Mary looked back at John, a little mystified at this new information. “Why?”

  Richie shrugged. “Family is really important to John, but small talk is not his thing.”

  “You two have been friends for a long time?”

  Richie’s hand toggled back and forth in the air. “A few years.”

  “Really?” Mary said in surprise. “It seems like you’ve known each other your whole lives.”

  Richie grinned. “That’s just John. Once he decides to get to know somebody, he really gets to know them. When I first got assigned to be his officemate, I thought, Great, of course they pair me with this buzzkill. But not three months later, I realized he’d become one of my closest friends.”

  One of her neighbors caught Mary’s attention and the party unfolded from there. She loved the energy of a party. She loved watching the web of her life become more intricate and stronger as the people in it spoke and laughed and got to know one another.

  A few hours later, a group of them sat in Mary’s living room, Mary perched on the arm of the chair where Fin was sitting.

  Jewel was playing with some toys her parents had brought for her, piling plastic scoops of ice cream on top of one another and bringing them around for the adults.

  “Yum yum,” Mary said, pretending to take a bite of the strawberry ice cream. Jewel smiled and nodded and prepared some for her mother, and then for Via.

  She brought a pair of chocolate scoops over for John to try, where he sat on the floor, his legs stretched out and his drink in his hand.

  She held out the ice cream to John, who leaned forward and pretended to take a bite. A moment passed before he screwed his face up into a look of scowling disgust. “That is the worst ice cream I’ve ever had in my life,” he informed Jewel. He stuck his tongue out. “Yuck.”

  At first quite shocked, the little girl glanced back at her mother, who was chuckling. Jewel turned around and started giggling at John’s disgusted face.

  “Bring me a different flavor,” John demanded.

  “Say pease.”

  “Please bring me a different flavor at once.” John knocked a fist firmly against the floor beside him, making Jewel jump and laugh a little hysterically.

  She ran back to her pile of ice creams and came back with a strawberry and a vanilla. Again, John pretended to sample them, his face smoothing into almost a smile before he screwed it up in disgust once more. “Blech. That is terrible! Just awful! Who makes this ice cream?!”

  By now Jewel was fully belly laughing, which made everyone who was watching the exchange laugh as well.

  She came back with pistachio in a bowl with a spoon. He sampled the ice cream, gave her a full smile and then let his face dissolve into horror and disgust. “That’s the worst one yet! I want a refund! I demand to speak to the manager!”

  Jewel was beside herself with giggles.

  “You’re catching flies,” Fin muttered to Mary.

  “What’s that?” Mary tore her attention from John and Jewel and looked down at her friend who was peering, almost smugly, up at Mary.

  “I said, you’re catching flies in your wide-open mouth while you stare at John.”

  Mary pursed her lips. “I was watching, not staring.”

 
“Sure.” Fin tucked her smile into her drink.

  Mary glanced back at John. His black hair, white shirt, black pants, black socks. Everything black and white. Except for the man himself, who was turning out to be quite a complicated pattern of color.

  She wrinkled her nose and looked down at Fin again. “So, maybe I was staring,” she admitted.

  Fin laughed. “You catching feelings for him?”

  “No,” Mary said resolutely, shaking her head. Then she thought of his aftershave. How happy she’d been to unexpectedly see him in the bar the other night. “Maybe.”

  Fin laughed again. “He’s cute. In an unexpected way. Not your usual style.”

  That was true enough. Doug, Mary’s last serious boyfriend, had been as quick to smile as she was. He was social and gregarious and a blur of sound and motion.

  “We’re not going to date. He thinks I’m too old,” Mary reminded Fin.

  Fin glanced back and forth between Mary and John. “Maybe you should check on that, Mary. Because I’m not getting many she’s-too-old vibes from that one.”

  Then why would he have said it in the first place? Mary watched John continue to play with Jewel for a while and then rose up to check on the levels of food and drink in the kitchen.

  Ten or so minutes later, John himself appeared at her side, refilling his glass, this time with just lemonade and ice. She peered at his cup, realizing she hadn’t yet seen him with a plate.

  “You haven’t eaten yet, have you?”

  Interestingly, the tips of John’s ears went pink. “Uh. No.”

  “Nothing looks good?” She turned to cast an eye over the extensive spread of platters she’d gotten from the deli.

  “It all looks delicious.”

  And when Mary turned around, it was to see John practically licking his chops at the food.

  “But I ate before I came,” he said as he cleared his throat and turned away.

  “You’ve been here for a few hours already. Aren’t you hungry again?” She wasn’t sure why she was pushing him, other than the fact that she was almost certain he was hiding something and she wanted to know what it was.