Flirting with Forever

by Cara Bastone

  Mary was quiet for a long moment. “I can see why it would bother you that your dad assumes the public defender choice was in reaction to him. Kind of a conceited assumption.”

  John chuckled. “Well, my dad is kind of a conceited guy. He has a lot of trouble seeing an issue for anything beyond what it means for him.”

  “You don’t have that problem.” She lowered her chin to her palm and smiled. Her face was friendly, but John felt pinned in place by her expression.

  “Not usually. No.” His voice was slightly hoarse. He cleared his throat. He wanted to change the subject. “You know, Mary, I’ve been wondering about something my dad brought up at that brunch.”

  “Oh, yeah?” She straightened and dropped her eyes to her beer, as if she already knew what he was going to ask.

  “Yeah.” He cleared his throat again. Okay, he was just going to ask it. He’d been wanting to know pretty much since the day that he’d met her, and he hadn’t been able to figure it out just from getting to know her. He was going to have to flat out ask at some point, so why not now? He ignored the hollow banging of his heart and just jumped right in.

  “Mary, why are you single?” John cleared his throat again. “I mean, I know my dad is an asshole for asking that the other day, but it actually sparked a curiosity in me. It doesn’t, ah, really make sense to me that you haven’t met someone.”

  He could only imagine that her answer would be laden with someones she’d dumped for some reason or another. He couldn’t imagine reality being any other way. Because once a man actually got a chance with Mary Trace, John couldn’t imagine him doing anything but holding on to it with both hands. And superglue. A nail gun, if necessary.

  Mary twisted her mouth to one side and stared out the window again. “I kinda thought that Estrella would have laid it all out for you already.”

  “Hmm? You’ve talked to Estrella about it?”

  Mary blushed a little and nodded, twisting her beer one way and another. “Remember at the block party? When you asked if I was desperate?”

  John groaned and knocked his forehead against the table with a comical whack, making Mary burst out laughing. “Please don’t remind me of that,” he pleaded. “That was the second worst thing I ever said to you.”

  He looked up just in time to see a vulnerable expression flit across her face, but then she sequestered it immediately behind a smile. “It’s okay, John. You wanted to know why your mother was pushing the issue so much. If I wasn’t totally desperate for dates, then why the heck was she foisting every man in Brooklyn into my lineup, right?”

  He nodded, still feeling an uneasy, humiliated chagrin at his own clumsy rudeness.

  “Well, the answer is that about two weeks before that, Estrella came over to my shop around closing time and we ended up having dinner together up here in my apartment. She asked me the same question that you just did. And though we’ve been casual friends for a long time, it was the first time we’d ever had a real heart-to-heart like that. It...affected her, I guess.”

  Mary twiddled with her beer some more and John stayed quiet.

  “I told you that I came back to Brooklyn after my aunt died. I didn’t mention that it was right after my best friend died as well.”

  Her eyes met his, and John’s heart constricted. He leaned forward across the table, wanting to take her hand but scared to break the spell. “Oh, Mary,” he whispered.

  “It was terrible. She was killed in a car accident. Drunk driver hit her. She was Matty’s mom. Sebastian’s wife.”

  “Oh.” John blinked. “I guess I didn’t realize that Via wasn’t Matty’s mom.”

  “They make a good family,” Mary agreed. “The three of them. But yeah, Cora and Seb were married. When Aunt Tiff died, Cora wanted me to come to Brooklyn, but I wasn’t sure if I could handle coming here and taking on the store. I was working at an interior decorating company in Connecticut, still trying to make my mother happy in at least one regard.” Mary smirked. “But after Cora died, I realized that here was where I needed to be. Sebastian and Matty were so lost without her, and I had an apartment and a shop just waiting for me. I just had to come and do the hard work and claim it. So, I did. I threw myself into getting the shop off the ground, and I threw myself into their lives. Both Tyler and I did. That’s how he and I became friends. And for a long time, it was just Tyler, Sebastian and I. A trio.”

  She smiled fondly, and John had to ask. “Were you ever, ah, with either of them?”

  Mary laughed and rolled her eyes. “That would be a no. Sebastian had been my best friend’s husband and a total mess besides. And Tyler is...not quite my style. Lovely, wonderful, perfect for Fin, but not for me. I don’t think either of us ever even entertained the idea.”

  John nodded, feeling foolish for the swamping relief of knowing that she’d never been kissed by either of her stupidly good-looking best friends. “So, you’re saying that for a long time dating just wasn’t on your radar?”

  “Yeah. I was just too hurt. Losing Aunt Tiff was like losing a parent and a best friend all in one. And losing Cora was like losing a best friend and a sister all in one. I felt friendless and family-less.”

  “Even with your parents?”

  She made a face as she weighed her answer, tipping her head from side to side. “I’m the odd one out with my parents. If anything, my relationship with my mom got even worse after Tiff died. Tiff was really the referee between us. Even more than that, she was the translator. She understood us both so well that she could explain us to the other one. We’ve never quite gotten back to that point, my mother and I, being able to understand one another.”

  Mary sighed. “So, yeah. I had the shop to tend to and Sebastian and Matty to take care of. And then when things started getting better with them, I had Tyler and Sebastian to keep me company. A few years after Cora died, I did start dating again. This guy named Doug.”

  Doug. What kind of shit-stupid name was Doug? Doug sounded like a telemarketer. He sounded like he wore dirty socks too many days in a row. Doug sounded like a boring, lifeless prick.

  John cleared his throat, a little surprised at his own internal vehemence. “Ah, what was Doug like?” He didn’t give a shit what Doug was like, but he had to say something.

  Mary cocked her head to one side and thought for a minute. “The life of every party. Gregarious. Friendly. Great first impression.”

  Oh. Great. Literally everything that John wasn’t. “Uh-huh.”

  “Cora would have sniffed him out immediately.”

  “Sniffed him out for what?”

  “For being disingenuous. She had a bloodhound nose for that kind of thing. And a zero-tolerance policy. She would have known right away that I shouldn’t have wasted my time on him.” Mary sighed. “I thought he was great, however. He was just so fun. And it had been a long time since I’d had any fun. And it had been a long time since I’d had somebody who thought I was the most special, out of everybody else. Cora and Tiff, they were both such persistent cheerleaders. They both thought I was the crème de la crème. They gave me such confidence on a daily basis. I hadn’t realized I’d missed that until I had Doug in my corner.”

  John took a long drink of beer. “So, what ended up happening?”

  Mary sighed. “He was sleeping with someone else.” Her eyes dropped. “A woman in her young twenties. Though he’s my age. They’re still together. I see them around Cobble Hill sometimes and... You know, I wish it didn’t bother me. I really do. But it just does.” Her eyes stayed down. “I’m not naive. I know that it’s considered weird in our culture to be a woman and thirty-seven and childless and never been married. But I wasn’t interested in either of those things in my twenties. A lot in part because of how much my mother pressured me to get interested.” She laughed, somewhere between humor and disdain. “Cora had Matty, so I had my baby fix whenever I wanted it. And then, out o
f nowhere, both Tiff and Cora were gone, and life happened, and grief happened, and then Doug happened, and here we are, six years later, and I’m finally starting to think about wanting a partner and find out I’m over the hill.”

  I was expecting someone younger.

  If there’d been a dagger sticking out of her kitchen floor, John would have gladly tossed himself onto it. What an absolute asshole he’d been. He hadn’t realized, until this second, how personal that comment must have felt to Mary. He’d known it was a stupid thing to say, but she was just so gorgeous, so undeniably perfect in his eyes, that he hadn’t thought there was even a chance that a comment like that might actually stick to her. But there, with the first words he’d ever said to her, he’d shredded through one of her most tender insecurities. She’d been left by her boyfriend for a younger woman, and John’s words had made her feel as if there was something wrong with her for looking for love in the latter half of her thirties. Which, honestly, he didn’t think there was anything wrong with that no matter what the reason. But certainly not when the reason was dealing with the deaths of the two most important people in one’s life.

  God. No wonder she’d left the restaurant. No wonder Tyler had given him a hard time at the party. No wonder she’d crossed John off her list. He considered it a holy miracle that she’d even let him back into her life as a friend.

  But that was just who Mary was. She was not a grudge-holder. And less than two months after he’d told her she was too old and stabbed her straight through the heart of her self-consciousness, she’d defended him to his father, asserted the existence of John’s apparently huge heart.

  She was the one with the heart. Even after everything she’d been through, she was still handing that heart out in handfuls, welcoming people into her life, smiling at block parties and cheek-kissing her friends.

  Shit. John felt a crack run down the center of his chest, like the first telltale sign of an earthquake. He pressed the heel of his hand to his heart, trying to hold himself in one piece. This couldn’t be happening to him. He couldn’t crack open for Mary. He couldn’t fork over his entire heart to her right at that moment, over spaghetti and paperwork. Not at the exact same moment he’d realized just how badly he’d screwed everything up.

  He’d known that he’d been rude enough for her to lose interest in him immediately. He hadn’t realized that he’d deeply wounded her. So, what was he supposed to do now, his stupid, beating heart in one hand and Mary’s in the other?

  He couldn’t fall in love with her right now. He just couldn’t. It was insanity. It was a road to nowhere.

  It was unstoppable.

  John took a deep breath he hoped didn’t sound as shaky as it felt. He still held the heel of one hand over his breastbone, trying to keep his heart where it belonged, in his own chest. “Mary, I just want to be clear here. I should never have said—”

  She held up a hand, stopping him. She’d never done that before. It was a forceful gesture that belied the seemingly easy smile on her face. “Let’s not talk about that. Yeah. It’s been a rough week and a half. And my brain is fried from all the paperwork and the conversation. Let’s just not rehash the night we met. Okay?”

  He closed his mouth, opened it, let his eyes slide from her face to the hand she still held up. That hand was certain, steady and telling him in no uncertain terms that what was done was done. Of course it was. How many chances did John expect to get with the world’s most lovely creature? He’d had it, and he’d blown it. And now all he could do was staple his chest closed and keep his heart in its home. All he could do was try not to hurt her again.

  He nodded and cleared his throat. “All right.”

  She dropped her hand. “I think I’m done with paperwork for the night. I was thinking of watching a movie,” she said brightly. “You’re welcome to stay if you want.”

  “No,” he said gently as he shook his head. “No, I should go.” Always he was telling her no when he just wanted to say yes, yes, yes. But just as when she’d invited him to stay and have dinner with Tyler and Fin last weekend, he’d known that it was time for him to go home and remember who he really was. What his life really was. To refamiliarize himself with the constraints on his actual world. So much of the time he spent with Mary had a Technicolor, dreamlike quality to it. It wasn’t good to stay there too long. It made his real life seem too drab and harsh by comparison.

  He wanted nothing more than to sit next to Mary and watch a movie on her couch. Which was why he dragged himself up, said a quick goodbye and hauled his ass back to Bed-Stuy. An hour later, his hair wet from the shower and Ruth on his lap, John finally let out a deep breath, the one he hadn’t quite been able to catch sitting at her kitchen table with her. And it was then, in the safety of his own solitude, that he let his chest fully crack open. That he let himself feel it. Truly feel it.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  THE NEXT FRIDAY, Richie and John packed up a little bit earlier than they might have normally done and walked to Cobble Hill from the public defender’s office. They’d been invited, by Tyler of all people, to an impromptu party at a bar around the corner from Mary’s shop. They were going to celebrate her shop’s return to glory and all the hard work that Mary had put in over the last few weeks.

  Richie had jumped on the invitation surprisingly fast. “I’m sick of seeing Hogan at Fellow’s every Friday night,” he explained to John as they weaved their way through the traffic on Court Street, ignoring the honking horns. It was the height of summer, but New York was rewarding good behavior with a surprisingly fresh night. There was a breeze and low humidity, but John knew that by next week, this would only be a fond memory. Even the sidewalks would sweat while the city baked from the inside out the way it did every August.

  “I thought people generally liked being in the proximity of their crushes.”

  Richie rolled his eyes and stepped aside to let a flock of pretty women in high heels scuttle past. “That’s only if there’s a possibility of the crush being requited. It’s hopeless in my case. And Hogan gets a kick out of winding me up.”

  John frowned. “You think he knows how you feel?”

  “I know that he knows. It’s an ego boost for him.”

  John frowned, disliking Hogan even more than before. “That’s screwed up. You’re a person. He shouldn’t treat you like that.”

  Richie shook his head and tossed his arm around John’s shoulders. “If only all the straight boys were as nice as you, John.”

  John cocked his head to one side. “Must be something in the water lately. You’re calling me nice, last week Mary called me sweet and the week before that she said I had a big heart.”

  Richie’s eyebrows rose. “And this surprises you?”

  “I’m more used to being categorized as a dick, to be honest.”

  “Yeah, but that’s only how you come off, John. It’s not who you really are. Anyone who really knows you figures that out pretty quickly. Hey, Beth!” Richie called suddenly, waving as he spotted their friend across the street, two blocks down from the bar.

  She waved and waited for them to cross the street to her. “You guys headed to Mary’s party too?”

  “Are you?” John asked in surprise.

  “Yeah.” Beth bounced on her toes. “I’ve been stopping into her shop since the break-in to make sure she’s doing all right, and she invited me to come along.”

  John couldn’t stop his incredulous chuckle, the shake of his head. “Jeez, is there anyone that woman can’t charm?”

  Beth gave him a funny look. “She’s good people.”

  “Yeah.”

  For some reason this put John in a sour mood as they stepped through the door of the bar. Everyone loved Mary. It was almost unavoidable. He’d never even stood a chance, apparently. The fact that the bar was sexily lit and serving up sixteen-dollar cocktails and the dance floor was filled to the gills
with Brooklyn’s version of glitterati made him even more sour. Seeing Beth Herari, a cop whom he deeply respected, buying expensive drinks on a cop’s salary all because Mary was so damn lovable somehow just pissed John off.

  The woman was a siren. John was sick of smashing on the rocks.

  He wished he could fall in love with someone who stirred tolerable, manageable feelings in him. He didn’t want this nervous-boisterous-hysterical-more-more-more desire for Mary. He didn’t want his stomach to swoop down to his pockets when he caught a flash of her sunny hair across the bar. He didn’t want the bass of the music to fade away as he let himself be drawn toward that sunny flash. He didn’t want to immediately lose track of Richie and Beth as he shouldered his way through one corner of the dance floor. He didn’t want the fastest route to Mary to be a straight line. He wanted to be detached enough to float over to her eventually, cool as a cucumber. Instead, he was suddenly standing in front of her, not seconds after he’d entered the bar, his breath in his chest, looking down at her while she looked up at him.

  “Hi!” She tossed her arms around his neck and didn’t kiss his cheek. Instead she pressed her cheek to his, and his nose somehow found its way into her hair.

  She must have come up on her toes to hug him because a second later she was back to her normal height and beaming up at him.

  “Whatcha drinkin’?” she asked.

  “Oh.” John frowned and squinted at the bar. He happened to catch the eyes of both Sebastian and Tyler, who were leaning against the bar and watching his interaction with Mary. “I haven’t decided yet.”

  “Whatever it is, put it on my tab, okay?”

  He frowned harder. “Uh—”

  “Seriously, John. I couldn’t have gotten through this without you. Let me at least buy you a drink.”

  “Okay,” he agreed, knowing there was no point in arguing with her. And knowing that there was less than zero chance that he was going to put anything on Mary’s tab.