by Cara Bastone
“I’m, ah, I’m vegan.” His ears went pinker. “I forgot to mention that on Wednesday. I should have brought my own food. It was dumb. I’m new at this.”
She blinked. She’d seen him eat fries and falafel. Street food. But technically vegan. “You’re a new vegan,” she repeated.
“Yeah. Half a year or so.”
“Why?” she asked, completely confounded. She lived for soft cheese spread on a cracker, a perfectly ripe raspberry poised on top. Paper-thin prosciutto. Ugh, eggs Florentine, extra-crispy bacon.
John laughed at whatever expression was crossing her face. “Carbon footprint, mostly. My New Year’s resolution was to see if I could cut mine in half. Lot of fossil fuels get burned in the meat industry. At first, I was just going to be vegetarian. But as I read up on it, a lot of the animal cruelty stuff started to get to me, and now, yeah, I guess my reasons are a mixed bag.”
Mary blinked at him. He was a scowly, rude-faced vegan. Somehow she couldn’t make the pieces fit together. She thought of him sitting on the floor with Jewel, making the little girl laugh. Maybe she couldn’t fit the pieces together yet because she still hadn’t seen a lot of the pieces. He seemed so simple. Judgmental man in wingtips.
He wasn’t simple.
“Well, I guess it explains your bad mood,” Mary said, making a joke to cover her confusion. “You haven’t had a decent meal in six months.”
John laughed, and it startled her the same way it had the other times. It was a deep, rich laugh, but layered and two-toned just like his voice. Some people’s laughter lingered on their faces, echoed for long moments. But John’s laughter was always brief as a meteorite and then it was gone, leaving no trace to show it had ever been there.
“Hey, Mary?”
Mary jumped, as though she’d been caught doing something much more embarrassing than simply studying John. “What’s up, Joanna?”
“Was that a real offer? To let the three of us stay in your guest room tonight? Because our A/C should be fixed by tomorrow, and it would be awesome if we could actually get Jewel to sleep tonight. She’s been miserable in our sauna of an apartment.”
“Of course!” Mary was thrilled. She loved having guests. “I’ll make sure there are sheets and towels in there. You’re welcome to stay as long as you like.”
“Thank God. Josh almost cried when I told him it was time to go home. But we’ll be back in a few hours with our overnight stuff.”
Mary laughed and said goodbye. She turned to John. “I’m gonna go get their room set up.”
She was glad for the short reprieve from the party. First Fin had planted ideas in Mary’s head, and then John had been so pink-eared and cute in the kitchen. She smoothed sheets onto the guest bed and quickly folded some towels.
Was it possible that John had changed his mind about their age difference? Was it possible that if he’d changed his mind, Mary no longer cared that he’d said that in the first place? First impressions were important, but they weren’t everything. Maybe John and Mary were outgrowing their first impressions of one another.
The thought was intriguing and made her heart gallop a little as she stopped into her own bedroom and checked her hair and makeup. She wore a blue-striped dress that swished at her knees, bare feet with a new red pedicure and her hair down her back. Mary didn’t think she looked old.
Maybe John didn’t think so anymore either. She smoothed her dress over her hips and took a deep breath.
Okay. If things were changing between them—which it kind of seemed like they were—then what happened next? Probably not anything today, because they were unlikely to get a moment alone together. Not with the Coates family staying over. But maybe she should secure a date in the calendar when they could be alone together?
A date? Her stomach took a quick tour around her midsection before settling back half an inch higher than it had been before. She pressed a hand to her gut and took a deep breath. A real date. Not one where she waited for a man who wasn’t going to show up and John waited at a dark bar. Not one that was set up by Estrella in the most awkward fancy restaurant of all time. Not one where her friends watched her watch John eat—apparently vegan—tacos.
A date with just John and just Mary and whatever this was that was growing between them.
She let out a long breath through her mouth and lifted her chin on the way out of the bedroom. The first chance she got to catch John, she was just going to ask. Would you want to go on a date with me?
Simple as that. Piece of pie. Easy as cake. Or whatever the phrase was. Her underboob sweat made itself known. So, she was nervous. It was normal to be nervous!
Mary was just about to round the corner into the kitchen when she heard Tyler and John chuckling together over something. John said something in that hoarse voice of his and Mary strained to hear it, out of sight of the men.
“So,” Tyler responded in a decidedly big-brotherly tone. “You’re interested in Mary, then?”
“Ty!” Mary whispered to herself, her hands going to her cheeks as, still hidden, she waited for John’s reply.
“Oh. Ah...”
“Because she was pretty sure you weren’t interested after your date.”
“Our date. Right.”
Silence dragged on. What the heck? That was it? He wasn’t going to actually answer the question? She was dying over here! She would have given her favorite pair of Jimmy Choos to see John’s face right now. Though, an educated guess told her that he was probably frowning, his brows in a V.
“Sorry,” John said after a minute, not sounding sorry at all. “Are you and Mary...?”
“No,” Tyler answered immediately. “She’s my best friend, though.”
Another silence descended. Mary did a frantic pantomime of an awkward, screaming melt against the wall. “Someone say something,” she mouthed to the heavens.
“I’m just looking out for her,” Tyler said after a minute. “Seb and Mary and I, we’ve been through a lot together and she’s been through some pretty miserable dating stuff in the last few years.”
She was going to shave Tyler’s eyebrows while he was sleeping. Why was he saying this to John? Why?
“And I guess I just wanted to say that she’s a great person, and she doesn’t deserve to get jerked around or negged or whatever.”
There was a long pause.
“I agree that she’s a great person,” John said. “I’ve actually never met anyone else like her.”
Long pause.
Mary was actually shocked her heart was still beating.
“So, you are trying to date her?” Tyler asked, point-blank.
“Okay,” Mary whispered to herself, “maybe I’ll only shave one eyebrow.”
“Ah...” John started. “Mary and I—I think we’re in really different stages of life.”
Stages.
Of.
Life.
Mary had never before been aware of the oxygen in her bloodstream until it all evaporated at once. She shrank an entire coat size, feeling dizzy. If it was possible for words to bludgeon a person over the head, these ones just had.
Stages of life? Stages of life? Good God, he made her sound like she was two chess moves away from a nursing home! They were both in their thirties, for shit’s sake, and he was acting like he was still a spring breaker, while she spent her weeknights knitting with the gals.
Stages of life?!
Mary turned on her heel and strode back to her bedroom, quietly closing the door behind her.
A memory came back to her. John’s eyes sweeping up and down their pretty young waitress at the restaurant. His eyes sweeping up and down Via and Fin when he’d met them the night he’d brought tacos.
Had he ever looked at her that way? Mary didn’t think so. Men weren’t slick about these things. One could always catch them in the act. But she’d never
once caught John checking her out. Always his eyes were looking squarely into hers or down at his own shoes. Never did they dip to her chest or ass or lips. Not that she really wanted him to ogle her. But still, it made something extremely clear. He wasn’t attracted to her.
Maybe he didn’t actually think she was too old, but Mary was certain that he was more attracted to younger women. Twenty-two-year-old waitresses with high ponytails. And why wouldn’t he be? He was young and hot. She was sure that he wanted to be young and hot with other young, hot people.
Mary knew she was beautiful. But she’d never felt more out of touch. More single.
This is what you want? Buried between two strangers?
Mary winced and pressed the heels of her hands to her temples.
“No,” she said aloud. “You don’t get to make me doubt myself.”
She wasn’t sure if she was talking to her mother or to John.
She gave herself one long moment to picture the hug that Cora would have given her at that moment, so tight it hurt, her chin digging into Mary’s shoulder, her voice in Mary’s ear.
Mary Freaking Trace. That was what Cora had always called her in moments like this. MFT for short. She wouldn’t let herself be cut down by the perceptions of others. She was MFT.
It would have been great if John had reciprocated. Dandy. But it hadn’t happened and, in the end, that didn’t really change anything at all. Because she’d been MFT long before she’d met John, and she was still MFT now.
Mary took one more deep breath, fixed a smile onto her face and went back out to her party.
CHAPTER TEN
“YOU KNOW, IF you hadn’t refused Dad’s money, you could be doing this disgusting little performance in your own penthouse.”
Maddox leaned lazily against his kitchen island, watching John take a bowl of preheated pasta straight to the dome. Despite the towel John had wrapped around his waist, water was pooling at his feet where it dripped from his bathing suit. He swallowed a huge bite and glugged half a glass of seltzer that Maddox had just made him in his seltzer-maker thingy.
John rolled his eyes at his brother’s words, but he didn’t deny them. When he’d first come back into his life, his father had repeatedly tried to reimburse him for the trust fund he would’ve gotten access to at age eighteen, like Maddox had. But John had refused over and over again. Maybe it was the same stubborn streak that Estrella had, the one that had kept her from marrying Cormac after all these years. But John had felt that taking the money would be too transactional. As if his father were paying to exonerate himself from the guilt of abandoning John and Estrella.
Besides, there was something symbolic about a trust fund. It was something you set up for a kid you acknowledged as your own. Like Maddox. It wasn’t just a blank check from an overstuffed bank account twenty-odd years later. The whole thing offended John.
Still, principles had limits and John’s stubborn streak didn’t stop him from coming over to his brother’s house and swimming in his saltwater pool and eating the food his housekeeper stocked the fridge with.
Finally, John finished his food and grabbed a dish towel to mop up the pool water at his feet. “Thanks, man. I needed that.”
“The food or the swim?” Maddox asked, his arms crossed lazily over his chest, his head lolled to one side.
“Both. All. It’s been a hell of a summer so far.”
“Big caseload?”
“Always. And my clients have had some shit luck with grand juries lately. Everything has been getting indicted. And I mean everything.”
“You’re seeing a lot of court time?”
“No.” John shook his head. “Lots of plea deals and kissing ADA ass to keep these kids out of court.” John sighed, suddenly feeling ten years older than he was. “Sometimes I wonder why I even do this whole Sisyphus thing.”
Maddox laughed. Now he was the one rolling his eyes. “John, are you kidding me? You’d never be happy if your job was even a smidge easier. You feel like Sisyphus rolling the boulder up the hill? Well, did you ever stop to think of what would happen if you actually got to the top of the hill?”
John opened his mouth, closed it and cocked his head to the side, looking a lot like his brother in that moment. “Good point. I guess if you get to the top of the hill, there’s nowhere else to go.”
“Or you’re like Dad, and you make yourself a new hill.” It may have sounded like a compliment, but Maddox’s face was tight when he said it.
“You’re talking about ambition.”
“You don’t become the DA of Manhattan without it.”
“Yeah, well, apparently you don’t become the mayor of NYC with it.”
The two of them cracked into a grin. It was petty that they both still got so much joy out of their father’s mayoral disappointment. But yeah. As different as their upbringings had been, Upper East Side versus Crown Heights, they were both still New Yorkers to the core and neither of them had believed that their father’s proposed changes to policy would have been good for the city.
Plus, their dad was an ass who pretty much got everything he wanted, and it had felt good to see him lose one.
“So, that’s it? That’s the whole reason for your mood? Work?”
John shrugged and strode over to the small bag of clothes he’d brought to change into after the swim. Standing in Maddox’s living room, he started changing under the towel, thoughtfully looking out at Maddox’s—literal—million-dollar view of the East River, Queens and Brooklyn.
“I always thought it was ironic that the richest people in New York are forced to have the working class in their view at all times,” he said after a minute. “All the money in the world and you still live in New York City, surrounded by all walks of life.”
Maddox grunted. “You’re feeling philosophical today.”
John tugged track pants on and his T-shirt over that. He wore his nice work clothes almost every day of the week, wanting to look respectable and put-together no matter what he was doing. But it gave him a perverse thrill to look shabby and tossed-together whenever he visited Maddox’s penthouse.
“Do you know what negging is?” John asked, sitting down on Maddox’s couch.
Maddox looked slightly surprised, whether it was because John seemed to be extending their hang or at the question itself, John wasn’t sure.
“Um. Yeah.” He took his own seltzer and spread out on the far side of the couch. “It’s when you say negative things to a woman about her appearance or her personality. Backhanded compliments. Like ‘your hair is pretty, but it would look better long.’ That kind of thing.”
John screwed up his face. “What’s the point of it?”
“Well, I think the idea is that if you’re a little bit mean to her, it intrigues her. She seeks your approval.”
“That’s—”
“The dumbest shit you’ve ever heard? I know. It’s just some stupid pickup-artist shit. Misogynistic crap.”
John’s eyebrows rose. He’d never heard Maddox refer to misogyny before. But then his stomach fell as he considered the concept of negging. “I think I accidentally negged this woman recently.”
Maddox laughed, loud and boisterous, so unlike his brother. “John, you can’t accidentally neg someone. The whole point is that it’s a calculated move to knock her off her game and get her to lean on you. If you said something negative to her, it’s not because you were negging her. It’s just because you’re a—”
“Dick, I know. I’ve been told.” John leaned his head back and looked at Maddox’s high, perfectly white ceilings. No water damage for the penthouse. “I accidentally told her I thought she was old, when what I really meant was—Ugh. God. Never mind.”
Maddox laughed again. “Well, is she old?”
“No! She’s only five or six years older than I am.”
“And I take it she di
dn’t immediately seek your approval following the negative comment?”
John raised an eyebrow at his brother. “Of course not. She left the restaurant and I spent the next few weeks trying to convince her that I’m not an utter—”
“Dick.”
“Right.”
“And?” Maddox prompted.
“And now we’re friends.”
“Ouch.”
“Yeah.” John rolled his head and looked out at the view again, but in his mind’s eye, he was back at yesterday’s party. “There are a million reasons it’d never work out. I just expedited the process. You should see her apartment. Huge two-bedroom right on Court Street. Skylights in every room. Fancy furniture. Whole bunch of copper kitchen stuff. Candles the size of my head.”
“Rich?”
“Yeah.” John messed around with the buttons at the side of his crappy track pants that he’d had for a decade.
“Money isn’t everything, John,” Maddox said after a quiet moment. “It doesn’t have to draw lines in the sand the way you think it does.”
John rolled his head to look at his brother. That’s something rich people say, John’s face told Maddox.
Maddox read his expression, and his own tightened in response. No longer was he resting easily on his gigantic couch. He was stiff and uncomfortable, looking angrily away from John.
They’d been here before, with the disparities between their upbringings sitting between them like a rock wall.
It had taken years for them to see over it even enough for John to come and swim and eat spaghetti.
Once, Maddox had shouted at John, “You think I wouldn’t choose your life over mine, John?”
It had only fortified the wall between them. The idea that Maddox had romanticized John’s life with Estrella had infuriated John. Maddox saw their rented brownstone, Estrella’s artwork, John’s determination and drive in his career, and thought that all that simply came from good old-fashioned elbow grease. Thunderbird gang members snapping their way down the cobblestone streets of a plucky upbringing.
