Flirting with Forever

by Cara Bastone

  Maddox didn’t see the fact that both Estrella and Cormac had worked two jobs for years. That John himself had worked since he was twelve. He didn’t see the emotional toll that took on a family. He didn’t see the nights of worry over bills, the tears in Estrella’s eyes.

  John’s work as a public defender perfectly positioned him to see what advantages those with money actually had. The kinds of advantages the rich come to view as rights. And maybe they were rights. But they were rights that the lower class had no access to. Maddox didn’t see that.

  John supposed that he couldn’t see over the wall any better than Maddox could, but he wasn’t going around wishing to switch lives either. That was just naive.

  Normally, this would be the part of the afternoon when Maddox got up angrily and said something about having plans and John would go home. John was surprised, then, when Maddox simply continued to sit there, his face drawn in lines of mutiny, but his dark eyes pinned on John.

  “I’m just saying that the money thing probably isn’t the line in the sand that you think it is, John. Not for her anyway. There’s a chance that it hasn’t even occurred to her that there’s a disparity.”

  John masked his surprise at his brother’s stolid attempt at reigniting the conversation. “At some point she’s going to notice that I only ever take her to restaurants with a single dollar sign on their Yelp pages.”

  “And if she cares, then she’s not the right person for you.”

  John’s eyebrows rose and then his eyes narrowed as he looked at his brother. His lawyerly mind started putting the pieces together. “Misogyny, wealth disparity, you didn’t storm off in anger just now... Maddox, did you meet somebody?”

  Maddox pursed his lips, but there was a small smile to hide there. “You think a woman is the reason for my sudden self-improvement?”

  John just waited.

  Maddox crossed his arms and grumbled. “Fine. Yes. I met someone. She’s great. She cares a lot about social issues. She pushes me. I’m a better man now. Blah blah blah.”

  John had mixed feelings about this. He would love for his brother to meet a good, steady woman, but Maddox had such a crappy track record with relationships that John couldn’t quite muster the mustard to get excited about it. Maddox had at least two epically dramatic and public breakups a year, the kind that catapulted him toward a bender of some kind.

  “And, just like with your girl,” Maddox continued, a genuine frown on his face now, “she won’t date me.”

  Now, that John could get behind. Women tripped over their Manolo Blahniks to date Maddox. Any woman who was lecturing him about misogyny and refusing to date him was bound to be a good influence.

  “Really?”

  “Oh, put that smug look away.” Maddox scowled.

  “Who is she?”

  Maddox winced, looking out the window instead of at John. “Sari’s new nanny.”

  “Oh, Maddox.” John’s heart fell again. Sari was Maddox’s daughter, and though they weren’t estranged, they were definitely not regular fixtures in one another’s lives. Dating her nanny was not a good idea. In fact, it was an epically bad one.

  “I know, I know. It’s terrible. And if Lauren ever found out, she’d castrate me on the spot. Apparently it took her a year to find somebody good enough with Sari that she could actually justify going back to work. If I screw this up for them...”

  Maddox’s ex wasn’t exactly the kill-’em-with-kindness type. She was more the kill-’em-by-any-means-necessary-but-preferably-with-a-rusty-shank type.

  Maddox finally turned back to John. “You think I want to be the deadbeat dad who resurfaces just long enough to date her nanny?”

  “No,” John answered honestly. “But you have to admit, this kind of thing just sort of happens to you. Enough that it’s probably not a coincidence.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “I mean that your dating life reads like bad porn scripts, Maddox. Two years ago, you were screwing a widow who you met when she came to your door literally asking to borrow sugar. Before that it was the flight attendant in various exotic locales. Somewhere in there was your secretary—which you should have gotten sued for, by the way. And then there was—”

  “I get it. My life is awesome, and you’re totally jealous.”

  John couldn’t help but laugh. “Don’t date the nanny. Spend time with your daughter. Keep it in your pants until she’s not Sari’s nanny anymore. The kid’s already in fourth grade. How long does she need a nanny for?”

  “That’s already the plan. I told her I’m going to ask her out in two years. Because that’s the length of her contract and that’s how long Lauren thinks that Sari needs someone to be around after school. And until then we can be friends.”

  Now, that was a genuine surprise. “Really?”

  “Really. Well, that was after I asked her out and she said no. Then I let her know about the two-years-from-now plan.”

  “And what’d she say?”

  “She rolled her eyes.”

  “You’re fucked.”

  They both laughed.

  John rose and gathered his things, not wanting to wear out his welcome. Maddox followed him to the door, and the brothers quickly embraced. They made a plan to see one another in a few weeks, but John knew that there was a good chance Maddox would cancel in the meantime.

  He walked to the train and thought about old money. How, like anything, if it was ever present in your life, you barely thought about it. Mary must have spent a couple hundred bucks on the food alone for her party. A party she’d thrown just because she’d wanted to have a party, celebrating nothing but summer and friends and life. He thought about the difference between Mary’s party and Estrella’s annual block party. Both parties were for the same reasons, and both were jovial and lively. And strangely enough, Mary had looked at home in both settings.

  * * *

  MARY’S HOUSE FELT empty after the Coateses left just shy of a week after they’d arrived. Their air-conditioning had taken longer to be fixed than they’d thought, and Mary hadn’t minded the company.

  She didn’t want to feel vulnerable after the conversation with her mother and John’s words at her party. She wanted it to roll off her back. But for whatever reason, her mother and John had served up a one-two punch that was still smarting five days later.

  Mary had taken the opportunity to give Jewel a million cuddles, to bring home dinners for Josh and Joanna, to laugh and fill her time with company.

  But now they were gone, and her apartment felt much too large for one person. Mary was normally a good sleeper. Good enough that even after thirty-seven years of life, 3:00 a.m. still felt like an unfamiliar and vaguely creepy betrayal of the daytime. She wasn’t ever comfortable at the witching hour.

  She rolled in her sheets and wondered whether John was a good sleeper or not. She could easily picture him as an insomniac, red eyes cracked and the sheets twisted at his hips. But then, he was so intense and focused in his waking life, maybe he was one of those people who just passed out cold the second his head hit the bed. She could also picture him dead to the world, his face finally relaxed and slack in the kind of sleep that restored a man.

  And therein was the problem. Mary didn’t know John. She didn’t know him well enough to predict his propensities or inclinations. If she’d known him well, maybe she wouldn’t have been so shocked by his words to Tyler. So appalled. So embarrassed.

  She tossed and turned for another hour before she started to drift.

  A noise brought her back, dimly, to the surface of sleep. She sifted back down, warm and soft. But then the noise came again. She opened her eyes.

  Sat up.

  That sounded like it was coming from downstairs. From her shop. There! The tinkling of glass. Scuffling.

  Mary scrambled to the end of her bed and grabbed her phon
e, tugging on her robe over her nightshirt, even though sweat had sprung up down her spine.

  She was frozen. Call the cops? Go down there by herself? She walked carefully across her bedroom floor, avoiding the creaky spots. She stopped in her tracks and listened for more sounds. Nothing.

  Then a crash so loud that she couldn’t help but yelp. She covered her mouth with her hands, staring into nothing, her heart’s fists beating against the glass pane in her chest. Oh, God. There was someone in her store and they were destroying things. She had to call the cops.

  Mary made it to the kitchen, somehow feeling unsafe in her own bedroom, and once again froze solid.

  The sound of footsteps on the stairs that led up to her apartment was unmistakable. Mary peered out toward her front door and saw that she’d pulled the chain and cocked the dead bolt before bed. They would have to break down her door in order to get in. Even so, she scampered back toward her bathroom, the only other lockable room in her apartment, and locked the door behind her. She sat down hard on the edge of the bathtub and called the police.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  IT WAS A two-shirt kind of Friday. John had fully sweated through the button-down he’d worn to court that morning and was in the bathroom across the hall from his office, shirtless, and swiping cold water over the back of his neck, when he heard Richie’s voice in the hallway.

  “Hey! What’re you doing here?”

  A woman’s voice, more muffled than Richie’s, echoed back and then faded away as they stepped into the office.

  Wondering who it was, John dried off with paper towels, reapplied some of the deodorant he kept in his bag and quickly buttoned himself into his clean shirt. Now he had to get out of this sweltering bathroom before he melted again.

  He shouldered into his office, absurdly grateful for the measly five-degree differential provided by their wheezing, ancient window unit.

  “Beth!” He was surprised. He’d never known Beth Herari to pay a house call before and he rarely saw her in her dress blues. He wondered if she was here in an official capacity. It was exceedingly rare to see a cop in a public defender’s office. They didn’t, in general, play nice. After all, public defenders built their careers around their abilities to pick holes in a cop’s procedure and even, occasionally, their character and credibility.

  John’s eyes bounced to Richie, who wore an expression that John had rarely seen him wear before. Shock and chagrin.

  “What’s up?” John asked Beth.

  “I’ve been calling you all morning,” Beth told him.

  “I had court. My phone’s off.” He pulled it out of the pocket of his black slacks as if to prove his point. He turned it on. “Seriously, what’s going on?”

  “Your girl’s shop got broken into last night. Trashed pretty bad.”

  His mind stuttered on the word girl. Whose girl? His? And then his thoughts tripped over to the word shop. He knew only one person who owned a shop.

  “Mary?” John croaked, his eyes wide, his voice splitting in two different directions.

  Richie and Beth nodded at the same time.

  “Jesus.” He took a step forward and then an immediate step backward. “Is she all right?”

  “She’s holding it together...” Beth said, one hand on the back of her neck and her eyes on the floor. “But it’s pretty bad, and she didn’t call anyone. No friends or anything.”

  John thought helplessly of all the friends she’d had over at her beautiful house just last weekend. She hadn’t called a single one of them. Why?

  “She’s alone?”

  “Yeah. The cops are going to wrap things up for the day pretty soon, but it’s a crime scene.”

  And then Mary would be alone at a crime scene, unable to even clean things up. She’d have to leave everything the way it was.

  “God. She lives above the shop.”

  “Yeah. They broke through her front door, but the cops got there in time and the perps fled. She wasn’t harmed. Just freaked out.”

  “Were they apprehended?” he asked in a voice that didn’t quite sound like his own.

  Beth pursed her lips. “No. They went out the back while the cops came in the front. They gave chase but lost them. They saw enough to do a rough identification, though, and the vandalism matches a few others that happened up in Williamsburg last month.”

  John nodded, trying to absorb the information in a clinical, practiced way, the way he did the details of any case. But he found that he couldn’t. Mary, alone, scared, her shop wrecked.

  “Shit. Maybe I should call Estrella.” He pinched his eyes closed.

  “John.” Richie’s sharp, rarely used tone had John startling. “Beth didn’t come down here to tell you to call your mother. You need to go.”

  Beth nodded.

  John didn’t think this was the best time to point out that he and Mary were just friends. Her shop had been broken into badly enough that Beth was here, in his office, and Mary was there, alone.

  “Yeah. Yeah, all right.” He turned a circle and grabbed his bag.

  “Do you have appointments this afternoon?” Richie asked. “Court?”

  John pressed heavy fingers to his forehead. “No court. But I’m supposed to meet with Sarah about that sex trafficking case and then Weathers asked me to consult with him on a B and E. And the rest of the day was going to be prep for court next week.”

  “I’ll let Sarah know you had a family emergency, and I’ll take over the B and E consult. The rest you’re just going to have to catch up on this weekend.”

  One of the main differences between being a public defender and working for a private defense firm was the hours. John and Richie generally worked a tight eight to four schedule, occasionally coming in early or leaving a bit late. But for the most part, they had their weekends. John would gladly give up his weekend to cut out early and make it to Mary.

  “All right.” John nodded dimly at Richie, grateful for the clear instructions, and followed Beth out of the office. She gave him a ride in the squad car down Court Street. John and Mary’s places of work were only a five-minute drive away from one another. A fifteen-minute brisk walk. So close and yet so far.

  He jumped out of the squad car and just stared at the outside of Mary’s shop. The security gate was still pulled down, but her large front window was a spiderweb of white cracks. He could see from the scattered glass on the ground that the impact had come from the inside of the shop.

  Though it usually glowed, today the lights seemed to be mostly off inside. The shop looked dull and listless, a normally vibrant soul asleep in a sickbed.

  “They came in through the back,” Beth told him. “We can access it through this alley.”

  She led him through to where the back entrance of Mary’s shop was propped open. There were two cops smoking back there and yellow crime scene tape that Beth pulled up to let John duck under.

  He stepped into Mary’s storeroom and groaned. Boxes and boxes of goods were toppled and torn. There was a thin covering of down feathers over almost everything. Glass crunched under his feet. Not a thing had gone untouched. He couldn’t even begin to estimate the cost of these kinds of damages. He hoped to God she had insurance.

  “She’s upstairs,” Beth told him. She pointed the way through the decimated shop to the interior access door to the stairs that led to her apartment. John winced when he saw the damage to the inside of the shop. It was even worse than the storeroom. Every bit of upholstery sliced open, shelves yanked off the walls, leaving gaping, ragged holes in the drywall.

  John walked up the same stairs he had last weekend, a bag of beer and lemonade in his hand at the time, his stupid heart beating nervously at the idea of seeing Mary in her natural habitat. Now his stupid heart was beating nervously at the idea of seeing Mary dejected and frightened.

  Her front door was propped open as well. He f
rowned at the signs of forced entry against the locks. She’d have to get a new door.

  That was when he heard it. Her sparkly laugh. It sent a shiver down his spine. He jumped, pleasantly surprised, like looking down at his hand and seeing an unexpected butterfly resting there.

  He moved toward her kitchen, noting that nothing looked out of place or destroyed in her actual home. Good.

  He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting. Mary with the lights out. Tears on her cheeks. Her shoulders hunched. Maybe even, indulgently, he’d imagined her hair a shade or two darker than normal. Everything dimmed by her shock and fear.

  But no. Of course not. Mary sat at her kitchen table with a detective, her head thrown back in laughter, her sunny hair in a high pile on her head and a fancy, decorated T-shirt splashing color across John’s eyes. She was not huddling in a corner, jumping at shadows. She was radiant light itself, and John should have known. He just should have known. Why did he keep expecting himself to be able to handle being around her? He should know by now that there was no immunizing himself to her. This pull was elemental, expansive.

  She looked up, saw him there in the doorway and immediately rose up. Her jaw dropped open for a second and something flashed in her eyes. “John!”

  “Beth—Officer Herari—told me what happened. I came to make sure—”

  John cut off because Mary was across her kitchen in half a blink of an eye. She fit herself perfectly under John’s chin, her hair like warm satin against his throat. Her arms came hard around his ribs in a single, solid band. She was pressed to him in a long, fierce line, only his messenger bag keeping their hips from lining up.

  He dropped his arms around her, holding her closer than he’d ever thought he might be allowed to. He couldn’t help but drop the weight of his cheek against her hair. He flattened his hands on her back and gave her a quick squeeze, and then another, when her nose turned in toward his sternum.

  Her breath stuttered just a little bit, and when she pulled back from him, John saw it. Just a split second of fear and pain that she couldn’t hold back anymore.