Flirting with Forever

by Cara Bastone

  John and Mary rode the Metro-North with Tyler, Fin, Kylie, Via, Sebastian, Matty and his dog, Crabby. Sebastian’s truck was apparently in the shop, otherwise some of them would have driven with him, but John, a native New Yorker to his bones, was infinitely more comfortable on a train than he was in someone else’s pickup truck.

  They hadn’t all been able to get seats together, but they were scattered in twos and threes up and down the train car, and John had to admit, that just like other times he’d spent with this group, he felt like he was part of a scrum of chattering middle schoolers on a field trip. They were laughing at one another’s jokes, giddy at fleeing the hot city, at traveling in a flock. It was fun.

  Matty was pretty much the mayor of the train car. He walked up and down the aisle, checking on all the members of his group, even talking with some people he’d never met before. He obviously considered himself to be Crabby’s ambassador, explaining to anyone within earshot that Crabby was a good dog who’d never bite anyone and they’d had to pay extra for him to get a ticket on the train car. Also, that no matter how good a dog he was, his dad had insisted that Crabby had to stay parked between his feet the entire time, otherwise Matty would have brought him around to meet people.

  John was just as charmed as the rest of the train car, and he finally fully understood why this trip had been so important to Mary. As much as each couple was separate from one another, they were also all meshed and bonded in a hundred different ways. Seb and Tyler had grown up best friends. Same with Via and Fin. Kylie was closest to her brother, but now that he and Fin were together, they seemed to be a real family unit. Kylie and Matty both loved Mary to distraction, obviously as comfortable with her as they were with their guardians. The most obvious part was how much each and every person in this group loved Mary. They were protective and indulgent, lighting up when she was near. She did that to people. Lit them up.

  Of course they would want Mary near at a time like this. Who wouldn’t?

  They got off the train in the White Plains station and the group split up. Matty, Via, Seb and Crabby waved goodbye and hopped in a car with Matty’s grandparents. The rest of the group walked the quarter mile to their Airbnb, chosen for its proximity to the train station. All of them had had work on Friday, so it was Saturday midmorning that they settled into their rooms at the Airbnb, the commute having been about only two hours total. The cemetery visit was set for tomorrow, so all of Saturday stretched out before them.

  An hour after they arrived, John found himself in a hammock, a beer in his hand and Mary plastered along his side.

  “Why are you frowning?” she asked him, her fingers tracing his eyebrows.

  “It’s so quiet,” he complained. He was made nervous by the rolling stretch of green grass below them, by the lack of traffic noise. It was probably his imagination, but he thought the sky to be a disconcerting blue out here in the suburbs.

  Mary laughed. “Would it make you feel better if I slammed a few car doors and shouted at some passerby?”

  He laughed too. “Infinitely.”

  John fiddled with Mary’s golden hair, took a long sip of his beer and decided to tell her the real truth about why he was frowning. “I was supposed to go on vacation with my dad this weekend.”

  Mary stiffened. “What? Oh, my gosh, John. I didn’t mean to mess up your plans!”

  “You didn’t,” he reassured her. “I’d already said no a couple of weeks ago. It’s just funny, knowing that he and Maddox are off somewhere bonding, and I’m not there. Not that it’s the first time it’s ever happened. They vacation together every year or so, and have since Maddox was a kid. But it’s the first time since we reconnected that I’ve been on vacation somewhere else at the same time. Usually I’m too busy working myself into the ground to give it much thought.”

  “Why did you say no to the trip?”

  John was quiet for a while, gathering his thoughts. “Honestly, there were a lot of reasons. Wanting to spend time with you was probably the most obvious one.” He paused. “Mary, I’m sure it’s quite clear to you, but I don’t have a ton of money. Don’t get me wrong. I’m good with money. I’m responsible. But New York is expensive, and public defenders don’t get loan forgiveness until the ten-year mark. I’ve got a ways to go yet.”

  She snuggled closer to him, but he could feel her tension. “I know that.”

  “Right. Well. My dad is very rich. And whenever he invites me to do something with him, it’s way too expensive for me to ever pay my own way.”

  “So you have to decide if you’re gonna skip it or let him pay for you.”

  He squeezed her close, unsurprised that she’d instantly understood. She was smart like that. “Exactly. Can you guess how many times I’ve ever let him pay for me?”

  “Zero?”

  “Yup.” John sighed, long and hard. “I’m starting to rethink my stance on that, however. You’re helping me.”

  “Me?”

  “Yeah. Our differences. What you can afford versus what I can afford. I thought I might never be able to get over it. But with you, I don’t take it as personally as I do with my dad. I don’t know. I’m finding myself less and less threatened with the whole thing. You don’t measure my worth by my bank account. So, I’ve been starting to wonder why I do, you know?” His hand sifted through her hair. “For a long time, I figured that my dad was trying to buy my forgiveness with his gifts and trips and trust funds. But now I think he’s just trying to figure out a way to spend some time with me.”

  Mary smoothed his T-shirt down. He’d planned on wearing his usual slacks and button-down, but she’d recently started talking him into more casual clothes on the weekend. She’d shown him how to do something called a French tuck with his shirts that supposedly made his plain clothing look a little more fashionable. John cared about that just about as far as he could drop-kick it, but still, it made Mary happy.

  “Have you thought about inviting him to do something you could afford to do? I dunno, a baseball game? Or even, like, a weekend out on Far Rockaway? Something like that?”

  He kissed her forehead. “Yeah, actually, when I told him I wasn’t coming out to Colorado this week, that’s exactly what I did. I floated the idea of a weekend in Toms River. Whale watching from the ferries. Something we both like.”

  Mary cranked her head back, a smile on her face. “You’re into whale watching?”

  “Not that I’ve done a ton of it, but yeah. Whales are cool.”

  She laughed and buried her face against his shoulder. “You’re cool.”

  He was the one laughing now. “We both know I’m a dork.”

  “You’re a hot dork. Which makes you cool.”

  “Whatever you say.”

  “Lawn bowling?” Tyler shouted from the back porch over to the lovebirds in the hammock. “Just found a kit in the garage!”

  “What the hell is lawn bowling?” John asked.

  “I’ll teach you, city boy,” Mary said, rolling from the hammock and tugging him upward.

  They passed the rest of the day in lazy luxury, playing lawn games, going for a walk around the neighborhood, grilling their early dinner on the back patio.

  John was just trying to decide whether or not an after-dinner nap would disturb his sleep cycle when Mary slid onto his lap. She was biting her bottom lip, looking nervous about something.

  “If we were going to go, now would probably be the time.”

  “Go...” A light flicked on in his head. “To Connecticut?”

  “Yeah. I just looked it up. It’s only a thirty-minute cab ride from here. Which would put us at my parents’ house in time for their nightly Downton Abbey slash glass-of-brandy ritual.”

  John blinked at her. “That’s a thing?”

  “They’re in their early sixties and live in suburban Connecticut, John. It’s not like they have a hopping nightlife.�
�

  He stood up, setting her on her feet. “Yes. Let’s go. If you’re inviting me, I’m accepting.”

  He wasn’t sure why her reconciliation with her mother was so important to him. He just knew that it was clear how much it had been weighing on Mary, and he wanted to do anything he could to help lift that weight off of her.

  They were in a cab and on the highway when Mary turned to him. “I kind of feel like I’m copping out, being the one to reach out to them. Show up on their doorstep.”

  “Because you laid down an ultimatum?”

  She bit her lip and nodded. “Yeah. And then I had all these fantasies about my mother showing up in Brooklyn and saying she was wrong.”

  John didn’t know Mary’s mother, but he knew people, and he figured that the odds of that panning out the way she’d hoped had been vanishingly slim. “Whether or not she admits she was wrong, you know the truth. I know the truth. She can’t take that from us.”

  Mary studied him. “Something you’ve learned as a public defender?”

  John sighed. “Unfortunately, yes. But also as my father’s son. You know, he never apologized to Estrella? Even after he finally acknowledged me as his kid?”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah. Estrella says it’s because she was the love of his life, and to apologize is to recognize everything he lost when he walked out the door.”

  Mary burst out laughing. “Jeez. To have Estrella’s confidence.”

  John chuckled as well. “I think she might be right. But either way, she’s taught me not to wait around for apologies or for closure. No one can validate your story but you, Mary.”

  He thought of the morning she’d shown up at his house in red shorts, the morning they’d put everything on the table. He picked up her hand and positioned her fingers so that her thumb and pointer were only a centimeter apart from one another.

  “You once told me that your mother had you this close to scrapping everything you knew to be true about the world, about yourself.”

  Mary nodded solemnly.

  “But just remember,” John continued. “That she never got you to here.” He pressed her fingers together. “She might have brought you to the edge, Mary, but you never went all the way to her side. You never let her take it all. You held strong. Holding strong at a centimeter is just as admirable as holding strong at a mile.”

  Mary’s eyes were glazed with tears when they pulled up in front of a neat, suburban lawn. The house was brick and squat and smaller than John had been expecting. The yard was well kept, the garage door closed, the blinds drawn. Everything perfectly tucked in for the night. He looked up and down the block at each house and saw more of the same. It was a nice neighborhood. He could picture Mary growing up there. Her sunny head bouncing as she hopscotched down the sidewalk. Her grinding the gears of her father’s car as she learned how to drive in that cul-de-sac.

  Mary took a deep breath as they stood on the front porch and reached for John’s hand. He was about to tell her that they didn’t have to do this, that they could just turn around and head back to White Plains, when she reached forward and rang the bell.

  A few moments later, the porch light flicked on, there was some scuffling behind the door and then there was an older man, his white hair in a low ring from ear to ear, a small snifter in one hand, his plaid pajamas a strange juxtaposition to the balmy summer evening.

  “Mary!” Her father’s glasses winked in the porch light as he stepped barefoot onto the porch and gathered his daughter up in a huge hug, gripping her so tightly his brandy snifter almost tumbled from his hand. “Oh, my girl, I didn’t think—I wasn’t sure—Oh, Mary, I’m so glad you’re here.”

  When he stepped back from her, John got the distinct impression that her father was swallowing down tears as fast as he was his surprise.

  “Come in, come in.” He shuffled both of them into the house, his gaze barely even flicking over to John, as if he didn’t care who the strange man in his foyer was, he only had eyes for his daughter. “Naomi!”

  “Dad!” Mary jumped, as if him shouting across the house for his wife had shocked her.

  “Naomi!” he shouted again, agitated and excited and still clutching Mary’s shoulders with one arm. He obviously didn’t want to let her go. “I didn’t know she was going to do that, Mary. The blind date thing. I didn’t think she was going to spring that on you. And then when she told me what you’d said, that you weren’t going to come around here anymore, well, I didn’t blame you. I’ve spent the last month trying to figure out if I should go to Brooklyn, but I didn’t want to invade your space. But I’ve been so scared that everything was ruined. I didn’t know when I’d see you next.”

  The man’s eyes filled with tears as he hugged his daughter again. John might have felt out of place or uncomfortable at witnessing this show of obvious vulnerability, but he truly didn’t even think his presence had registered for Mary’s father.

  “Mary!” And then there she was, the infamous Naomi Trace. She was beautiful, of course, even more beautiful than John had pictured her. She had short, stylishly cut and dyed blond hair, and a surprisingly colorful silk robe that she clutched around her neck and covered her down to her toes. He’d never seen so much silk in one place before outside of old Hollywood films. “What are you doing here? At this hour?”

  Naomi’s eyes flicked to John, and she patted self-consciously at her hair.

  “You told Dad that I wasn’t going to come around anymore? That’s it? That’s all you told him?”

  Naomi’s eyes bounced away from John, over to Mary, and then back to John. “I—”

  “Was there more?” Mary’s dad asked, one hand still on Mary’s shoulder.

  “Yes, there was more!” Mary threw her hands up in the air. “I said I wasn’t coming back here unless she apologized to me. But I made sure to tell her that I would always answer a phone call from you two. That I would never turn you away. I wasn’t cutting you out! Either of you!”

  Mary’s father turned to his wife, his face as white as chalk. Without another word, he turned and walked out of the foyer.

  Naomi took half a step after him, stopped, patted her hair again and turned back to Mary. “You might have called.”

  “Well, I’m glad I didn’t, so you didn’t have time to reframe your story for Dad!”

  “Mary!” Naomi admonished with a surprising amount of self-righteousness, considering she’d just gotten caught in a rather egregious lie by omission. “Can we not do this in front of a guest?”

  Mary pinched the bridge of her nose in a rare show of frustration and pain. It snapped something inside of John. Nobody got to make Mary cave in on herself. Not Dud Doug and not her mother. He was at her side in a second, his arm around her waist and his lips at her temple.

  Mary breathed deeply through her nose, leaning into John. “Mom, meet John Modesto-Whitford. John, meet my mother, Naomi. He’s not a guest, for the record. He’s my boyfriend.”

  “You brought a man to meet us?” Naomi asked carefully, a strange light in her eyes as she looked back and forth between John and Mary.

  “She’s torn between celebrating the fact that I won’t die a spinster and reaming me out for bringing you over when she’s wearing her after-dinner robe,” Mary translated, turning to John.

  Naomi pinched her lips together before she stepped forward for a handshake. “Well, I have to admit this isn’t exactly how I pictured meeting Mary’s beau.”

  “Well, I pictured you calling me to apologize for your behavior, so I guess we can’t all get what we want, can we, Mom?”

  Naomi blanched and took a step back. “I’m going to change my clothes and get your father. Mary, why don’t you bring John into the sitting room?”

  Mary grabbed John’s hand and dragged him through a dining room, the kitchen and then back to a darkened living room area, where an episode o
f a television show was paused on the screen.

  Mary collapsed onto the couch and dragged John down with her. “Holy crap,” John muttered.

  “Yeah.” Mary pinched the bridge of her nose again. “I never imagined she would lie to my dad like that. I mean, I was starting to wonder why he wasn’t texting or calling, but I never thought...”

  “Okay.” John rubbed at his forehead for a moment, then dropped his hand, realizing that Mary knew his tell and not wanting to imply that any of this was too stressful for him. He organized his thoughts in his brain. “Mary, I want to be whatever you need right now. If you need me to sit stoically by your side, I’m there. If you need me to hold your hand and laugh at their jokes and pretend everything is just dandy, I’ll do it. It’ll be really hard for me not to defend you, because that’s kind of my knee-jerk reaction, but for you, I’ll—”

  “Are you nuts? Defend me! It’s been six years since I had Tiff defend me to my mother’s face. I’m dying out here. What’s the point of dating a public defender if he won’t even defend you to your mother?”

  John burst out laughing. “Fair enough. Defending you it is. And then we leave.”

  “Perfect.”

  Mary sagged onto John’s shoulder, her palm pressing against his sternum for just a moment in that absent way of hers, seeking his heartbeat out. God, he loved that.

  They both straightened, however, when a few moments later her parents came into the room. Her father plunking hard into an armchair on one side of Mary, and Naomi perching prettily on the edge of the chair next to John. They’d both changed out of their pajamas, and Naomi looked as if she’d taken the time to gather herself together, but Mary’s father looked like he was about ten seconds from bursting into tears.

  “John, I didn’t get a chance to introduce you before, but this is my father, Trevor Trace. Dad, this is my boyfriend, John Modesto-Whitford.”

  Trevor leaned across Mary and gave John a brisk handshake. “I’m sorry that you have to be introduced to Mary’s family in such dramatic fashion.”

  Naomi laughed uncomfortably from her chair. “It doesn’t have to be dramatic,” she said in a stilted, singsongy tone of voice, as if she were warning her husband and daughter not to embarrass her.