Flirting with Forever

by Cara Bastone

  She thought of the cuddles he gave Ruth, the patient game he’d played with Jewel. The man was a reluctant vegan because animal cruelty trumped bacon in his playbook. He worked endless hours defending the lives of people who couldn’t afford fancy lawyers. He truly believed in the system. He believed in the innocence of his clients. He saw the good in people. He’d dashed across town to hug her in her kitchen; he’d slept on his neighbor’s couch for her. He’d held her hand on the train and called his friend to fix her door. She wasn’t sure how she hadn’t seen it before. But frowny, scowly, grumpy, foot-in-mouth John was actually dangerously sweet.

  She turned to look at him and wasn’t surprised to see his eyebrows in a downward V as he looked back at her, the tips of his ears a rosy pink. He opened his mouth and closed it.

  Jack started laughing and drew Mary’s attention back to him. “I do believe you’ve struck John dumb. Not sure I’ve ever seen that happen before.”

  Mary cleared her throat, a little unsure of what to say next, off-kilter from her own realizations.

  Jack smiled that smarmy smile as their waitress finally brought their food. He waited until she’d left to toss out his next topic of conversation.

  “My son insists that the two of you are not involved,” Jack said quasi-casually. “So, tell me, Mary. Why are you single?”

  John groaned, but Mary just laughed. “Too young to be tied down,” she answered playfully, although a splinter of regret wiggled its way between each word. Actually, she was single because the opposite was true. Too old for anyone to want to tie her down. For one anyone in particular. She smiled at Jack, hoping he couldn’t see the rawness her own words had caused her. “Just a lone wolf, I guess.”

  John took the opportunity to jump in and change the subject. The rest of the breakfast, though by no means comfortable, flowed a bit easier, mostly thanks to John’s constant corralling of his father into legal subjects and away from personal ones.

  Still, by the time the two of them finally exited the restaurant, Mary couldn’t help but dramatically sag against the side of the building.

  “I warned you,” John said with a shake of his head, a little twinkle in his eye. He reached out and plucked the duffel from her shoulder.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  THE INSTALLATION OF Mary’s new door went smoothly. Despite his familiar tone with John on the phone the night before, Christo was extremely professional with Mary. And after he installed the door, he even went around to all of her other doors and windows, making sure that she would be safe to sleep there that night.

  He talked her through a quality security system to purchase and even agreed to come back and install it tomorrow if she wanted.

  With a wave and smile, he was on his way back to his wife and kids, and then it was just John and Mary there alone again.

  Though she’d slept well the night before, and it was only five o’clock, Mary felt fatigue starting to descend. The detective had called her that afternoon and told her that she could start cleaning up her shop Monday morning. She was both antsy to get started and preemptively exhausted at the thought of all the work there was to do.

  “You all right?” John asked as he stood in the doorway between Mary’s kitchen and living room, his hands in his pockets, his sleeves rolled to his elbows, concern in every line of his face.

  “I’m fine. Just...overwhelmed.”

  She poured two glasses of lemonade and put one in John’s hand as she walked past him to go sit on her couch. John followed her and set himself down in the armchair. He leaned forward, his elbows on his knees. “Do you, ah, feel safe enough to sleep here tonight? I mean, without the security system installed yet?”

  “No,” she answered with a humorless laugh, figuring that John most likely knew her well enough at this point to know whether she was telling the truth or not.

  “Do you want to sleep at my place again?” he asked in a voice that was much lower than his usual tone.

  Yes.

  “Oh, no, that’s okay,” Mary said in a rush. She didn’t want him to ask her that. Couldn’t handle him asking her that. Not when the answer was such a big fat, sparkling God, yes. Not when she was one hundred percent certain that in order to get herself to fall asleep in her big bed tonight, she was going to be pretending that she was in John’s bed. One night had been an experiment. Two nights was suicide.

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’ve been texting with Tyler and Fin. Kylie’s at a sleepover tonight, so they agreed to come sleep in my guest room. I’ll have plenty of company.”

  “Right.” John took a long drink from his lemonade, his eyes avoiding hers. “Great. That makes sense.”

  “They should be here in half an hour or so. Will you stay and have dinner with us?”

  His eyes finally landed on hers again, and she was both warmed and shaken by how familiar his gaze had become to her. Those icy blues no longer seemed cold and distant to her; they seemed bright and defined by their almost unknowable depth.

  “No,” he said resolutely. “No, I think that if you’re all right, then it’s time for me to get back to reality.”

  He finished the rest of his lemonade in one huge gulp and rose to put his glass in the dishwasher. Mary was still sitting on the couch and sipping her drink, mulling over his definition of reality. The last day and a half certainly had an unreal quality to them, defined by pulsing, uncommon emotions. Everything from the fear during the break-in to the giddy euphoria of John’s proximity had made her heart race. Maybe he was right. Maybe none of this was how real life was supposed to be. Real life was predictable and even.

  Mary’s real life didn’t involve Ruth and it certainly didn’t involve John’s bed.

  Maybe he was right. Maybe it was time to at least attempt to go back to normal.

  She sighed and stood and met him at her front door. She refused to linger over the cheek kiss she gave as a goodbye to everyone special in her life. It was brief.

  “Thank you, John, for everything.” She opened her mouth to say more, but he shocked her by pulling her to him in one fierce, firm hug. It didn’t last any longer than her cheek kiss had.

  “There’s no thanks necessary, Mary. Truly.”

  And then he was down her stairs and gone.

  * * *

  A FEW MORNINGS LATER, while Mary was vacuuming out broken glass from the rug at the front of the store, she heard a loud banging on the back door. Her fingers went cold and sweat popped down her spine. She scurried immediately to the counter where the register lived. John’s friend Christo had installed security cameras on the exterior of the store, something she’d never had before, and the feeds fed directly to a small screen below the register. Mary let out a shaky, relieved breath when she saw it was just Estrella standing there, a picnic basket over one arm.

  “I’m sorry I knocked so loud,” Estrella said when Mary swung open the door for her. “I’ve never used this big metal door before.”

  Mary grimaced. “The front door is still out of commission, as you saw.”

  She didn’t like thinking about the white spiderweb of cracks that rendered the glass door unusable.

  Estrella stepped into the back room, her eyes on Mary, not on the mess that had been only partially cleaned up. She set down the picnic basket and simply held her arms out.

  Mary went into the embrace without a second thought.

  Estrella stroked Mary’s hair and called her a sweet love while Mary cried. It didn’t last for long, but it was one of those surprisingly potent cries, where each tear felt like it released a gallon of pent-up emotion. She’d barely realized how much she’d needed that, hadn’t even hoped for that kind of release. When she stepped back from Estrella, she felt a hundred pounds lighter.

  “I’ve missed you, Estrella.”

  “I’ve been keeping my distance over the last few weeks,” Estrella said
, smoothing her jean skirt. “I think I owe you an apology for the blind date situation.”

  Mary smiled. “It’s okay. You were just trying to find a happy ending for people you love.”

  “I was being nosy and hopeful and we both know it.” She glared at Mary.

  Mary burst out laughing. “It’s really okay.”

  “Are you sure?” Estrella’s eyes searched hers. “Because you didn’t call me when all of this happened.” Estrella looked around at the store, and Mary was actually comforted by the pain that she saw on Estrella’s face. The woman loved this shop almost as much as Mary did.

  “It was a really crazy few days. I didn’t really call anyone.”

  “You’ve handled all of it on your own?”

  “Actually...” Mary kicked some broken glass away from her feet. “John was here. He helped me through most of it.”

  There was a telling beat of silence, but Estrella seemed to be committed to butting out of the situation. “Ah. I see. All right, well, I brought you good wine and good cheese and good bread. Let’s have a picnic.”

  Mary laughed. “It’s 10:00 a.m.!”

  “All the better. If you can’t drink wine in the morning when you sit in the wreckage of your beautiful shop, then when can you?”

  Mary considered that a very good point. A few minutes later, they were arranged on the floor on a blanket Estrella had brought, spreading goat cheese over baguettes and sipping wine from plastic cups. Mary used the food and drink as an excuse for why she wasn’t adding to the conversation, but really, it was because it was soothing to hear Estrella chatter about the future of the shop. She had all sorts of big ideas for how they could use the break-in to start fresh, changing this or that, refocusing on certain areas. Mary didn’t agree with half of Estrella’s vision, but it was just so good to hear someone else dreaming and planning and TLCing her shop.

  It was a stark contrast to her parents’ reaction. They’d been horrified, of course, and Mary had had to talk them out of coming in from Connecticut. But their reaction had also been—surprise, surprise—judgmental. As if they weren’t shocked that it had happened because, after all, Mary had been the one to choose to move to the big city, where things like this happened every day. She had told herself that they just hadn’t understood the context.

  John was lucky.

  His mother fed Mary bread and fruit and cheese and wine and then packed up the picnic and set herself to work. The two women worked side by side for a few hours before Sebastian and Tyler showed up as they had yesterday as well. A few hours after that, Kylie was there, her bag tossed to the floor and determination on her face. She loved this shop as much as Mary and Estrella did, and the girl had seemed to take an almost personal offense to the destruction of it.

  An hour after that, Via and Fin showed up, dinner in hand for all the workers. And after that, John. As they all had the day before, the group worked until well after the sun went down.

  Mary fell into bed that night, exhausted, aware that she was going to have to do the whole thing again tomorrow. But not hopeless. Not the least bit hopeless.

  * * *

  IF SHE HADN’T been in the middle of a crisis, John might have truly considered going on another Mary fast. The first one hadn’t worked well enough. The crush he’d been so deftly attempting to two-step around had finally sunk its claws in. Good and deep. A full-time dance partner.

  It took Mary five straight days to get her shop back in order. And John was there five nights in a row, after work, Monday through Friday, to help. It relieved him to see that though she hadn’t initially called any of her friends to come be with her the day after the break-in, they all showed up in spades to help with the reno of her shop. Sebastian and Tyler spent the most time, followed closely by Via and Fin. Kylie and Matty did their fair share as well.

  But there was only so much that people who weren’t Mary could really do. The actual cleanup of the shop wasn’t going to take nearly as long as the paperwork that came with it all. John watched as Mary slowly got buried in the particulars of her insurance company. It was all made even more complicated by the fact that so much of what had been destroyed had been original pieces of artwork. Insurance would cover a lot of the damages, but not all. Mary was going to take a financial hit for this act of random cruelty.

  It was the following Sunday night when John and Mary found themselves sitting at her kitchen table, wading through booklets of paperwork she’d printed out, John working from her laptop as well.

  He figured that he probably had the highest tolerance for desk jockeying out of all of her friends, so he’d been the one to take on this particular aspect of aid. Meanwhile, down below, her shop was generally put back together. Just that morning Sebastian had overseen the installation of her new plate glass window in the front and Mary had started fresh with her late summer window display that afternoon. She’d reopen the store on Monday morning. Only a week and a half after the break-in. She’d be on quite a limited inventory for some time, but she’d be back to work at the very least.

  John took another forkful of the room-temperature spaghetti and vegan meatballs in a glass casserole dish that sat on the table between them. A gift from Via, it had been heated up an hour ago, and he and Mary hadn’t even bothered with dishes, just him eating from his end and her eating from hers.

  John studied Mary for a long moment, her sunny head bent toward her phone as she looked something up on the insurance company’s website, her face in repose. She’d worn a sundress again today. John wondered what she wore come wintertime. He hoped he’d be around to see it.

  “Beer?” he asked her, knowing that Tyler had fully stocked her fridge that afternoon.

  “Hmm? Oh, sure. I think I need a break, to be honest.”

  He’d been hoping she’d say that. John cleared the paperwork to one side and grabbed two beers from her fridge.

  Mary looked absently out the window as she set her phone aside. He realized that there’d been no notifications barking from her phone all day. She hadn’t texted anyone or taken any calls. He wondered if she was still searching for the right dating app. He’d been with her every night of the last week, but maybe she was waiting until things died down with her shop before she got back on the dating horse.

  “You’ve been so sweet, John,” she told him, breaking his reverie as she accepted the beer he held out to her. “Coming over here after work. Helping me with all this. So sweet.”

  He frowned. She’d never called him sweet before. Honestly, no one but Estrella had ever called him sweet in his entire life. He thought back to the brunch with his father that she’d endured last weekend. She’d said he had a huge, bleeding heart. She’d said it with absolute certainty, like she’d bushwhacked into the land where John’s heart reigned and seen it with her own two eyes. He’d been mulling it over ever since then.

  “I just want to make sure you’re okay,” he said, clearing his throat.

  “I know you do.” She seemed almost sad about that, looking out the window. After a minute, she looked back at him. “So, why did you choose to become a public defender?”

  His eyebrows rose when he realized that she too had been thinking about that brunch with his dad. He lowered his eyes to his beer, took a long, thoughtful drink and leaned back in his chair. “Because the people who can’t afford their own lawyers are disproportionately charged, sentenced and imprisoned.” He paused. “I saw a map once, of New York City, and it marked areas based on wealth disparity and rate of incarceration. Lot of big old red zones in Brooklyn.” He sighed. “I was in high school when I saw that. And, of course, I knew who my father was, even if he wasn’t acknowledging me yet. He was already the DA of Manhattan at that point. The only interactions I had with him were watching him on the television giving half answers to reporters outside of courthouses about the black and brown people he’d just put behind bars.”

  H
er eyebrows were the ones rising now. “So, he was right? You did become a public defender to spite him?”

  He laughed and shook his head. “No, but I felt the weight of my bloodline on my back. I...believe in karma and I guess I wanted to somehow balance out some of what I’d seen my dad do. Even then I’d already gone to see him in court, even though I didn’t introduce myself. And he’s good at what he does. Really good. I just knew that I could be that good too, but that I could be on the team of the little guy. But it bothers me when he claims that I did it for him, because really, I made that decision for Estrella more than anyone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “My mother was the one who taught me to care about justice. About doing the most you possibly could for the people around you. To care about what was right or wrong. To never give up in the face of some all-powerful issue that you might never have a chance at correcting. It wasn’t just my dad leaving us that made her that way. She was always taking me to marches and town hall meetings and protests. She was always petitioning the city for this or that. And meanwhile, making dinner for the people on our block who’d just gotten back from the hospital or had relatives visiting. You know, Cormac really did start out as our tenant. He’d just gotten out of rehab and his life was a mess. He’d had a fair amount of legal trouble himself, which, now that I’m thinking about it, probably motivated me toward becoming a public defender as well. He needed people on his team, just like so many people who’d reached a low point. He had next to no money and no real family to speak of. He once told me that my mother had let him live with us rent free for six months until he got back on his feet. Just to help him out.”

  “Wow.”

  “And then, once he’d started paying rent and had a good job working construction, they fell in love. A lifetime kind of love. But she wouldn’t have ever had the opportunity for that kind of love if she hadn’t taken a chance and opened her door to him in the first place. Those were all things that I learned just from being her son.”