by Cara Bastone
John nearly rolled his eyes. As far as he was concerned, she’d already embarrassed herself with the way she’d been treating her daughter.
“So,” Trevor said as he cleared his throat, apparently determined to make the most of Mary’s visit. “How did you two meet?”
John took his opportunity, lacing his fingers with Mary’s. “My mother is a good friend of Mary’s, and an artisan who works with Mary’s shop.”
“She set you up?” Naomi asked pointedly, and John was sure she was thinking of her own attempt to set Mary up.
“No,” John said, shaking his head. “She tried, but those things never work out. Mary and I found our way to one another on our own eventually, without any meddling.”
Naomi pursed her lips and sat back. “How long have you been together?”
“Just a month or so,” Mary said casually. “But we had feelings for a while before we got together.”
John couldn’t help but turn to Mary and smile, unfolding her fingers to kiss her palm.
“Have you thought about what the future holds for you two?” Of course this was Naomi’s next question. John should have guessed.
“Naomi,” Trevor warned. “Don’t go there.”
“It’s an innocent question!”
John defended the innocent on a regular basis and he knew, in every molecule of his being, that there was absolutely nothing innocent about the question she’d just asked.
“What the future holds for us?” John mused. Prospect Park to watch the leaves change colors. Thanksgiving at Estrella’s house—and hopefully not here. Sweating over what to get Mary for Christmas. The joy of watching Mary bundle herself into winter gear. Rejoicing when spring comes again because then summer will be around the corner and we will be able to celebrate our one-year anniversary. “Oh, just being together, mostly.”
It was a dumb answer, obtusely evasive, and he doubted it would hold Naomi at bay. But he refused to give her what she was fishing for.
Naomi cleared her throat. “Are your parents together, John?”
“Translation,” Mary said, propping her chin on her hand, “what are your thoughts on marriage?”
Naomi glared at her daughter but didn’t refute the claim.
Now John was the one clearing his throat. “No, my parents aren’t together. But maybe it would help answer some of your questions, Naomi, if I just came clean about something. I’m crazy about Mary. I think she’s the most wonderful person on planet Earth. And the idea of getting to spend time with her, grow with her, fills me with nothing but happiness. That’s what I see for our future. Us. Together.”
He said most of that right into Mary’s eyes. She went pink in the cheeks and bit her bottom lip.
“And children?” Naomi asked, her hands clenched together so tightly they were white at the knuckles, as if she already knew the blowback she’d get for this question.
“Mom!”
“Naomi!”
Naomi winced at both Mary’s and Trevor’s admonishments, but her eye contact remained steadily linked with John’s. He’d never felt more grateful to have been raised by Estrella than he was in that particular moment. Maybe his mother was a bit too nosy for her own good, but she’d never have subjected anyone to a conversation this blatantly intrusive.
And that was what ultimately got John. That Naomi felt she had the right to invade into Mary’s life like this. This was so much worse than Estrella pulling strings behind the scenes, even though it sounded like Naomi had done some of that as well. It never failed to amaze John what some people would do ostensibly in the name of their children. Looking at Naomi right now, her back stiff, her hands clenched, her face set and lined, he realized that she truly believed she was right for asking these questions. That she was doing this for Mary’s own good.
“Wow, personal question,” he said, holding her eye contact, hoping to get her to at least acknowledge with a facial expression that she was vastly overstepping. But nothing. She was completely stoic. He decided to go another route and mildly shock her. “Mary and I haven’t talked about kids yet. We’re pretty new. But knowing us, if we did decide to have a kid, I think we’d just, you know, try pretty hard to make one.”
Mary made a snorting noise and covered the bottom half of her face with her hand. Naomi flushed and pressed her lips together. John felt that he might have won that round. He’d illustrated how inappropriate her question was by providing her with an inappropriate answer.
But apparently Naomi was not to be outdone. “And if the natural way doesn’t work? She’s almost forty, you know. Are you opposed to medical intervention for pregnancy, John? It can be a long, painful slog.”
John’s mouth dropped open. He hadn’t met this woman twenty minutes ago, and she was already pumping him for information on whether or not he’d be willing to jack off into a cup? Was there no line she wouldn’t cross?
“Mom!” Mary jumped to her feet. “For the love of God!”
“You have to have a plan for this kind of thing, Mary,” Naomi said, though she was starting to lose her cool. She looked far less confident than she had just moments before. “That’s just reality.”
John was about to jump in, but Mary got there first. “You’re saying the word reality, Mom. But what you really mean to say is fear. You’re terrified of me turning into Tiff. Of me making the same choices that she did.”
Naomi’s face went ash white. “Don’t even say that out loud.”
“I’m not trying to be melodramatic here. But don’t you get it, Mom? You can’t bully me into living my life on your terms. That doesn’t make me any safer from the boogeyman. Tiff made a hard choice at the end of her life. One I admire, not because it glorifies dying single, Mom, the way you seem to think it does. But because it was a full, independent choice she made, free from outside influence.”
Mary took a deep breath and John just gaped at her. Apparently she didn’t need defending in the least. She was doing just fine on her own.
Naomi’s mouth opened and closed. She looked utterly gobsmacked.
“You don’t want me to live in regret, I get that. You don’t want me to miss my chance at having a fulfilled life. I get that too. But you don’t get to decide what fulfills me. And, newsflash, having a kid out of fear of not having a kid never made anybody very happy. Maybe you know something about that?”
“That is not why we had you, pumpkin!” Trevor spoke up finally, reaching forward and taking Mary’s hand, guiding her back down to the couch. “We had you because we wanted a child. We wanted you. The day you were born was the happiest day of either of our lives.”
Mary blinked at her father, then turned and blinked at her mother. “Then why don’t either of you treat me with respect?”
Her words sucked the oxygen out of the room.
“Mom, you’ve belittled me and ragged on me for as long as I can remember. In my twenties, I wasn’t accepting enough dates, you didn’t like Cora, you wished I wouldn’t spend so much time with Tiff. In my thirties, you wanted me to get over their deaths like that.” She snapped her fingers. “You demanded that I date, but men who were too old were not family material, men who were too young were embarrassing. You beat me down on every occasion you could, hoping to break me into wanting exactly what you want. But neither of you stopped to see what I wanted. You’ve only been to my shop four times in six years. And I built it from scratch. You know how hard that is? You haven’t been there since the break-in. You barely offered any support to me at all on that front. And, Dad, you never stand up for me. Maybe once a year you’ll say one little thing on my behalf, but you never actually stand between me and Mom. How am I supposed to interpret that? These behaviors, they are not respectful. And I was right to tell you that I won’t be coming back until you apologize. Because even now, Mom, I finally bring a man home and you’re still not happy. It’s so clear to me now. If I ge
t married, you’ll be telling me I’m too old to wear white or a certain cut of wedding dress. If I have a kid, you’ll always be reminding me that I’m older than the other mothers and what a shame that is. There’s no way to please you! And shame on me for thinking that there ever was! Because either you accept me, love me for who I am, Mary Freaking Trace, or you don’t get to have me in your life anymore. The end!”
Mary stood up, took one wobbly step toward the middle of the room, and John was instantly at her side, steadying her.
“Mary!” her mother called after her.
But Mary didn’t stop. She went all the way to the front hall, where she shoved her feet into her sandals and flung open the front door. John didn’t even have time to tie his shoes before he was out, after her, into the night.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THE RIDE BACK from Connecticut went by in a blur. Mary was quiet as she watched the darkened highway speed past her windows. John held her hand across the back seat, but he could apparently sense her need for quiet.
She didn’t speak at all until they were latched behind the door of their Airbnb bedroom, across the house from Ty and Fin and Kylie.
“Do you see why my age has been a sensitive subject for me?” she asked, finally breaking the quiet between them.
John let out a breath that sounded like a tire being popped. “Good God, yes. I totally understand. That was awful. She’s an undeniably hard person, Mare. I think it’s gonna take me a year to process everything that just happened.” He flopped backward onto the bed, his arms flung out above him. Rolling his head to eye her across the dim room, he squinted. “I think I need to apologize even more for saying—”
She laughed and held up a hand. “We’re past that, sweetheart. You’ve made it exceedingly clear how you actually feel about my age. How you feel about me.”
Mary bit her lip and turned away from John, taking out one earring and then the other, slicking her dress over her head and staring at herself in the dim light. She looked shadowed and mature and confident. She replayed certain parts of the evening in her head.
“Did you mean what you said tonight?” She turned to him in just her bra and underwear and watched his eyes get stuck on many interesting parts of her body.
“Yes,” he answered huskily. “I’m not sure which part you’re referring to, but I meant everything. Every word.”
She stalked toward him, threw a knee over his hips and pinned his hands next to his ears. His lips quirked and his eyes heated. “What about the part about having kids?” she asked, her heart tripping against her ribs. “Did you mean that too?”
John’s brow pulled down into a V, and she knew him well enough now to know that he was thinking, not judging. “Mare, what will be, will be. If kids are in the stars for us, I’m not worried about making a family with you. It’ll pan out somehow.”
“That’s how I feel.” She cocked her head to one side. “I’ve never been too worried about it. Which I think worries my mother most of all. As a woman, apparently it’s my God-given duty to worry myself into a raisin over my own fertility.”
“Don’t do that,” he said with a smile. “I’ll love you when you’re a raisin, but I don’t want you to worry yourself into one.”
Their eyes got stuck on each other as John’s words sank in. It was the first time either of them had said the word love to one another. But the moment wasn’t scary. The moment felt good. The moment felt warm. There was central air pumping through the room, but Mary felt the heat rise between them. She felt lit from within, churning with a glowing heat that she wanted nothing more than to share with him.
“I’ll love you when you’re a raisin too,” she said in a low voice. She still pinned his hands to the mattress, and she gave them a little extra push to let him know that she wanted him to keep them there as she unbuttoned his shirt.
He was breathing fast, flexing his hands, looking like he wanted to touch her every single place he could. But he didn’t lift his arms except to help her peel his shirt off. “Mary,” he whispered.
She slid down his body and worked him free of his pants next, roughly shoving his boxers away like they were a personal offense to her. John moved his hands but only to clutch at his own hair, the strands of black spiking up between his fingers.
Mary tossed her bra and underwear away, planted her knees on the bed and bent over him. She loved this man, and her body demanded that she show him. She took his hardness in one hand and swallowed him down in one big gulp, holding him against the back of her throat and drawing his eyes to hers.
He said something that she didn’t hear before she kept at him, working him in and out of her mouth, again and again. He spoke again and grunted. Suddenly, she set him free and let every inch of her skin slick across his as she crawled up his body.
“You have to be quiet,” she admonished him with a smile on her face as she pressed in for a kiss, giving him all her weight. “There’s other people in the house.”
“Quiet,” he agreed, almost nonsensically, his eyes on her mouth.
She slid against him again, opening her legs and pinning him with a hug, her mouth pressed to his. He made a small, almost restrained noise, and she reveled in the fact that she was definitely peeling him apart little by little.
The conversation with her parents tonight had been emotional and intense, but also freeing. She’d understood, for the first time ever, that there was no use changing herself for them. Either they were going to figure out how to love her or they weren’t. She couldn’t make them. And in the meantime, she had this big, broad-shouldered, mean-faced, sweet-hearted man who wanted to leave with her. Would go anywhere with her, she knew. This man who was clutching at every part of her he could, who was trying to get his bleary eyes to focus as he gasped for air.
Mary reared up and spread her legs over his hips, teasing him with her wetness. They’d decided to forego condoms just last week, and she couldn’t have been more grateful for the decision than she was at that very moment. When she sat herself down, took him in one inch at a time, the look on his face was worth it. It was worth every moment, every misunderstanding, every bit of doubt she’d had to wade through. Because here she was, right now, fully seated on a man who, she just knew, had decided she was everything he’d ever wanted.
She started to ride him, but he grunted and she fell forward, her palm over his lips and her mouth at his ear. “Quiet,” she demanded. She reveled in the role reversal. Usually she was the one screaming her head off during sex.
They rolled halfway, a tangle of limbs, no clear position, and the bed started to squeak. John stood, arms banded around her, keeping her linked to him, and cast around for a quiet place to keep this party going. Mary looked too. There was nothing. Not even a dresser. Just a director’s chair under the window that was not going to hold them.
“Bed,” she demanded. “We’ll be quiet.”
He fell back onto the bed, and she ground herself against him, attempting to fuse them. Her fingers and hands everywhere and the same with his. They twisted onto their sides, and then him on top. They got a little too vigorous, the bed squeaked and they brought it back to a frantic, grasping glide against one another. Somehow the lack of a thrusting plunge was even hotter than if they’d been able to have sex the way their bodies were screaming at them to do. Mary felt that every inch of her was consumed with him. His quiet, restrained breath, his teeth clamping onto her shoulder, his heavy fingers in her hair, clasping her hip.
She tightened her legs over his back and held him in place, working herself against him barely a half inch at a time, the pressure unbelievable, his flavor in her mouth, his whispered name on her lips as she catapulted herself over the edge.
She tightened hard onto him, against him, and moments later, he was rigid against her, pulsing within her, their bodies slick and aching from how tightly they’d gripped one another.
H
e let himself sag, full weight onto her, but when he lifted his head, the kiss was surprisingly light. Intense, but light. It was all flavor. All loose. The kind of kiss that can only happen after sex. No anticipation to speed it up, all connection, just long, slow tasting.
After a few long moments, John pulled himself off of her and padded to their attached bathroom. He came back with a warm washcloth that he pressed between Mary’s legs. She stretched and smiled with her eyes closed.
“Just in case it wasn’t clear,” she said, opening her eyes again, “I’m in—”
“I’m in love with you,” he interrupted her, his brows down in that V. “Big-time. Sorry to interrupt. I just would always kick myself if I wasn’t the one to say it first. I just want you to know that even before you loved me back, I was in love with you. I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to know you and not be in love with you.”
Mary lunged up and wiggled her way onto his lap. “Did you just tell me that you loved me big-time?”
He laughed. “Guess so.”
“Couldn’t have said it better myself,” she decided, kissing him one more time. “Love you. Big-time.”
He laughed at himself. “Told you I was a dork.”
“You’re not a dork any more than I’m a snob.”
John flopped next to her and sifted her hair through his fingers. “Who would have thought that we’d fit together so well?”
“Your mother.”
They both groaned and laughed. “And me,” Mary whispered after a moment. “I had a sneaking suspicion we might be a good fit.”
“So did I.” He paused. “I wanted to tell you about my suspicion that night of the fake date, when I walked you home. But then you said that you’d crossed me off your list, and I figured I’d save myself the heartache.”
Mary groaned again and clutched him close. “I can’t believe I said that. Especially when I was, like, four seconds away from catching feelings for you.”