JOHN TOOK A break from Mary for the next two weeks. It was necessary. A matter of survival, he felt. Two things had become extremely clear the night of the fake date. John wanted something more with Mary, and she, decidedly, did not.
He figured it wouldn’t take too long to get over her, as long as he wasn’t forced to see and interact with her in the meantime. Which meant that John had to clear things up with his mother. The morning after the fake date, he called Estrella.
“John? Is everything all right?” she asked as she answered the phone. “You’re calling so early.”
He blinked in confusion at the clock on his microwave. “It’s 9:00 a.m., Ma.”
“Yes, but I thought you might...be sleeping in this morning.”
John groaned, her meaning so clear it stung. Despite her public stance on premarital sex, she’d apparently hoped he’d spend the night and morning with Mary. “Ma, enough. Enough.”
“What?”
He’d have to remember to have her come in and coach his clients on how to affect innocence so effectively.
“You know exactly what. You have to stop trying to push me and Mary together.”
“John—”
“No. Ma, we both know what you’re doing, with the dates, with the terrible guys and getting me to walk her home and the tacos. We tried it out. It didn’t work. And now you pushing us like this is just getting—”
He cut himself off because he wasn’t sure he wanted to say the word painful out loud right now.
“Oh,” Estrella said after a quiet moment. “Oh, John, I hadn’t realized...”
With a mother’s twenty-twenty vision, Estrella had seen to the heart of his words immediately. John sighed.
“You have feelings for her,” Estrella guessed after a moment.
“It doesn’t matter.”
“And you don’t think there’s any chance that she...”
“We’re friends, Ma.”
“Right.” There was a long pause. “Cormac wanted to know if you’d come help with the backyard this weekend.”
Cormac was a strapping beast of a man, but he was getting on in years and had had trouble with sciatica recently.
“Of course. Why didn’t he text me himself?”
“Because he doesn’t think he needs the help,” Estrella said sharply.
John laughed. “Is there any business you won’t stick your nose into?”
“Plenty. But you and Cormac are my business. It doesn’t count as nosy if it’s about you or Cormac.”
Even as he rolled his eyes at his mother, he enjoyed the enveloping wave of her palpable love. Mary’s parents were neutral-palette people, expecting her to wear boring navy and grit her teeth through spending time with them. Maddox’s mother hadn’t even visited him when he’d been in rehab a few years ago. John was lucky to have a mother who loved him enough to mother-hen him.
“I’ll be over this afternoon.”
“John?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s good you have feelings for her. Even if it didn’t turn out. It’s been a long time since you thought about much other than work and family.”
John grunted. “Woulda been better if she’d had ’em back.”
Estrella sighed. “Maybe so.”
AND THUS BEGAN the Mary fast. It was sort of like when, a few times a year, John allowed himself to splurge on a quart of fresh-squeezed orange juice. He would literally set his alarm fifteen minutes early on those mornings so that he could sit down with a cup and truly enjoy it. It was such a bright way to start his day. But then, inevitably, the quart would run out and he was back to his lone cup of black coffee. It wasn’t that the black coffee was bad; it was just that juice was better.
“Mary’s funny,” Richie said with a laugh one afternoon while John stabbed at a soggy salad he’d brought from home.
“Yeah. Wait, what?” John swiveled in his chair and blinked his eyes a few times. He’d been staring at his computer screen for an hour and real life was hard to bring into focus, literally and metaphorically.
“Your friend Mary,” Richie said, waving his cell phone at John. “She’s funny.”
John frowned, eyeing the cell phone. “You’re texting with Mary?”
“No, I’m chatting with her through this game we both play. She’s the only person I’ve ever played who can beat me. Which would bother me, but she also talks some pretty hilarious smack while she’s at it.”
“How the hell did you connect with her on that app?”
Richie lifted an eyebrow. “We talked about it that day she came by the Supreme Court.”
“And you’ve been playing ever since?”
“Is this a problem for you, John?” Richie asked drily.
“No.” John frowned even harder. “I just didn’t realize you two were becoming friends.”
“She’s pretty easy to like.”
With that, John swiveled toward his computer screen and gave up on his soggy salad, packing it back into his bag. Maybe he’d splurge today and get some fries from the halal cart.
“You know, you’ve been extra crabby lately.” The sound of Richie’s voice told John that he was still facing him. John knew that if he turned around, he’d see Richie with one leg crossed over the other, his foot bouncing, an expression on his face that John had once dubbed The Untrained Psychologist.
“Is that so?” John was going to play dead in the hopes that Richie would get bored and stop poking at him.
“Yeah. I think you need to get laid.”
Undoubtedly. “That’s not the issue.” Yes, it was. It was absolutely the issue.
“Oh, so you admit there’s an issue?” Richie’s voice took on a predatory, victorious edge, and John, still facing away, pressed his fingertips to his forehead to smooth away the headache.
Damn it.
“Richie...”
“All right, how about just a night out, then? I won’t even try to get you laid. Just come out for a beer.”
“It’s a Wednesday.”
“You know, in the state of New York, it’s actually legal to drink beer on Wednesdays.”
John swiveled back around, his arms crossed. “If I agree to get a drink with you tonight, will you let me get some work done?”
Richie grinned, pushing his stylish, white-blond hair up off his forehead. “I won’t make a peep for the rest of the day.”
“I have court at three, so we better make it seven to be on the safe side.”
“Perfect.”
Finally, Richie swiveled to face his own computer, and John, with a sigh, dug back into his bag for his salad. If he was paying for a full-price beer tonight, street fries were out. He winced through a wet bite of lettuce, gritting his teeth as he listened to Richie chuckle at something else Mary had messaged him.
John groaned as he looked at his notes on Hang Nguyen’s case. He was old-school. He liked to get his thoughts organized with a pen in a spiral notebook. But his cramped chicken scratch had already filled half of one, and he was no closer to clearing this young woman’s name.
Seventeen and being tried as an adult. Three different solicitation misdemeanors slapped onto her list of charges. But the doozy, the reason her case had been assigned to a hard hitter like John, was the sex trafficking charge. This young woman faced up to twenty-five years in prison—thirty-five if the misdemeanors stuck.
John had to prove that the money she accepted from various men was not, as the state claimed, in exchange for sexual favors. And, most importantly, he had to adequately show reasonable doubt that the rides that Hang Nguyen had given to various other women various other times did not amount to sex trafficking. No matter the age of those other women and what they were compelled to do once they arrived at their destinations.
For the most part, John was laser focused on his cases. He didn’t let the greater themes of the world bear down on him. The world was a complicated, messy place, but here in his cramped office, Richie scratching away at his own notepad behind him, John was being active. Inside the walls of this crumbling but noble building, he was never passive. He was doing something about that complicated world. Each hour of concentration he lent to his cases he was making the world a more just, fair place.
Normally, it soothed him.
But there was something about this case that was under his skin. Technically, in the state of New York, a seventeen-year-old could be tried as an adult. He’d long ago accepted the crazy-making nature of this idea, this assumption that a child could have the same scope and understanding as a fully formed adult. There was nothing that John could do besides defend these people with his entire intellect, determination and passion. But this case? He just wanted to take the judge by the collar and shout, “Can’t you see that she wasn’t there willingly? Can’t you see that she was scared for her life? Can’t you see that she and her mother were one step up from homeless and in no position to turn away the cash that men were throwing at Hang after they did whatever the hell they were going to do to her?”
But were those men on trial? No, they were not. Had they been tackled by cops and slammed to the ground, handcuffed and tossed in the clink while their mothers scoured hospitals, thinking they were dead, making frantic calls to 911 dispatchers in Vietnamese only to get hung up on?
John sighed. Hang and two other young girls were the only people arrested in the prostitution bust in the East New York neighborhood.
“Hey, there.” Sarah Riley, dyed brown hair and a blue pantsuit making her nondescript looks even more nondescript, poked her head into John’s office. “You left a message about a case?”
“Yeah. I’ve got a sex trafficking case that’s similar to that one you worked last year. You free this afternoon to consult with me?”
Sarah Riley was John’s direct supervisor and someone he very much cared about impressing. She offered no compliments on a job well done, expected perfection and seemingly cared absolutely diddly about morale in the workplace. She was, however, a damn good public defender and one of the few who regularly stayed after hours putting in work on other people’s cases. She was kind of his personal hero.
She nodded. “Come by in half an hour. Don’t be late.”
She was gone out the door, and the second it closed behind her, Richie pretended to shiver. “Hope you brought your snow pants to work.”
“She’s not that bad,” John replied. “And I can’t get my head on straight about this case. I need the help.”
“You better have your head on straight when you go into her office or she’ll chew you a new asshole.”
“I know. I was gonna go check with Naya about that sex trafficking case she worked last month before I went to Riley’s office.”
Richie nodded. Conferring with colleagues was commonplace and one of the best tools in a public defender’s arsenal. John had learned immediately that pride always, one hundred percent of the time, had to be shelved when it came to better serving a client. He helped absolutely no one if he didn’t ask for help when he needed it, and he wasn’t about to let his arrogance get in the way of exonerating someone.
Knowing he had only a few minutes if he wanted to catch Naya—he’d heard her say she had court that day—John quickly checked his email on his desktop and frowned. There was one personal email from his father, and it was addressed to both him and Maddox. Email threads with the three of them were historically...not great.
John opened it and groaned. His father wanted the three of them to “get out of town” at the end of August. “Just a week somewhere cooler,” the email suggested. John scrolled down the links his father had taken the time to copy and paste. There were two rentals on Martha’s Vineyard and one rental on a lake in Colorado. He did some quick pricing math.
If they were splitting a vacation like this evenly, John would owe roughly $168 a night. Just for lodging. And that wasn’t counting the amount it would cost to even get to these places.
“Why in God’s name do people like leaving New York?” he grumbled to himself.
Money sat like a stone at the heart of this email. If John had accepted money from his father, the way he’d tried to get John to do countless times, John would easily be able to afford a vacation like this. As it was, John couldn’t even afford the week off of work, let alone an ungodly expensive week off of work. Which also meant that he wouldn’t be spending a week with his father and brother. Who were doing their best to include him in their lives.
John supposed it wasn’t their fault that they had such expensive taste. Just like it wasn’t his fault that he didn’t. A beach house for a few days on Fire Island? Maybe John could swing that. He’d pay to stay for a weekend or so and maybe commute back and forth one or two other days he could take off of work. That wouldn’t run him more than five hundred dollars total. A wince-worthy sum, but doable in the name of family, he supposed.
But John Whitford Sr. was never going to go for a week on Fire Island. Nope. It just wasn’t his style. John wondered if it even occurred to his father how expensive an ask this vacation was. If he’d even paused in sending out this email, reflecting on how John would feel upon receipt.
Was it even fair to wonder that, though? Because when John had rejected the trust fund from his father, hadn’t he effectively been saying that he wanted his father to stay out of his financial life? Was it fair for John to want it both ways? For him to expect his father to take his money and shove it but also to painstakingly consider John’s finances whenever he wanted a week of vacation with his sons?
John clicked out of the email. This was hurting his brain. And he had Hang Nguyen to think about.
JOHN BLINKED AT the basket of fries that had just been slid underneath his nose. He looked up to see Richie upending a bottle of mustard into one end of the basket.
“I thought you might be hungry.”
John felt some of his crusty mood finally crumble away. He was out with his best friend, who was only trying to cheer him up. There was no reason to scowl into his beer and waste the whole evening.
“Thanks,” John said, swiping a few fries and then pushing the basket between the two of them so that they could share. “You were right, by the way. I’ve been in a bad mood.”
“Are you finally gonna tell me why?”
John twisted his beer in one direction and then the other. “Had a crush on Mary. She just wants to be friends. But I’m taking some time away from her, and that’s helping. I should be over it soon. Sorry I’ve been a dick.”
John looked up at his friend and was surprised to see that Richie had gone sheet white. Very uncharacteristic. “Shit. John. I didn’t know. I should probably tell you that—”
“Hi, guys!”
John froze on his barstool, the two friends exchanging lightning-fast eye contact.
You didn’t, John’s eyes said.
Sorry, dude, Richie’s eyes responded.
John broke the eye contact in time to turn and see Mary swing toward them on those long legs of hers, her hand still raised in a wave and the smile on her face bright enough to make a planet orbit.
He was dimly aware of almost every head in the bar turning to watch her walk past.
He was also dimly aware of every single one of those heads watching her toss her arms around him and press a kiss to his cheek. “John! Richie didn’t say you’d be here too. I’m so happy to see you!”
She pulled back and gave Richie the same treatment, a hug and a kiss, and John tried very hard not to look like she’d just smashed a water balloon over his head, even though that was kind of how he felt. He let his eyes ricochet over the other faces in the bar, and he watched as his colleagues and peers all bounced their eyes between John, Richie and the new girl.
This was an after-work bar, and Mary, in her white sundress and blue heels, her sunny hair down her back, stuck out glaringly among all the sweaty rumpled suits and pantsuits.
“How have you been? Oh, thanks!” Mary gracefully accepted the barstool he’d just vacated for her. She pointed at his beer. “Yours?”
“Yeah. I’ve been pretty good. Mostly just busy with wor—”
He cut off as he watched Mary take his ice-cold beer and bring it to her lips. He felt heat rise up along his back, making his shirt stick to his skin. That was the cheapest beer on the menu, which meant that Mary had essentially just swallowed a gulp of watered-down frat beer. Why couldn’t he have sprung for some expensive foreign beer for once in his life?
“Mmm,” she said, pressing her eyes closed for a second. “That’s so perfect for a hot day. Makes me want to go to a ball game.” She waved her hand at Marissa, who’d been pretending to wipe the counter four feet away while eavesdropping on the newcomer. “Hi! Can I have one of these?”
“Sure thing.”
“On second thought,” Mary said as she cocked her head to one side. “Do you have any lemonade back there?”
“Yeah.”
“Could I have three-quarters of this draft and one-quarter lemonade?”
“Oh.” Marissa blinked. “Sure. Totally.”
Mary handed John’s beer to him.
“Beer mixed with lemonade?” he mused.
She nodded. “It’s the perfect summer drink. You’ll see.”
Marissa came back with Mary’s drink, and John caught Marissa’s eye. He pointed at himself and Marissa’s eyes widened. John never, ever paid for other people’s drinks. Except on Richie’s birthday. John held back his sigh, knowing that he was in for a full interrogation from Marissa the next time he was in here.
“Here. Try.” Mary held out the neon-yellow concoction.
John felt a bead of sweat trace down his spine. He was positive that every person in the bar was watching him turn the back of his shirt transparent while he drank out of this beautiful woman’s glass.
The flavor burst over his tongue, and he was surprised that he actually liked it. “Wow. That’s pretty good.”
“I know. Not too sweet.” She offered a sip to Richie, who smiled and shook his head.
“Not a fan of shandies,” he told her with a wink.
John had never even heard that word before. He made a note to look it up at home.
“So,” John said in a gruff voice. “You two made plans to hang out tonight?”
Richie studiously avoided John’s eye contact. “Yup. I figured after a few weeks of getting my ass handed to me online, I should see if this girl can dish it out in person as well.”
She blushed and laughed. “I don’t make a practice of talking smack in real life. Just on that one app.” She paused. “And sometimes in the bathroom mirror if I need to pump myself up before a big date.”
John burst out laughing. He couldn’t help himself. Just picturing Mary rude-talking some confidence into herself, 8 Mile–style, was too much for him. She looked up at him in surprise, her eyes on his mouth, almost as if his laughter had startled her.
“Who’s your friend, Richie?” a low, familiar voice asked from behind John, and for a moment, he considered not moving to one side and just boxing Hogan Trencher out until he got the picture and left.
“Hulk,” Richie said, a blush on his cheeks and a miserable look in his eye. “Meet Mary Trace. Mary, meet Detective Hogan Trencher.”
John stepped aside, wanting to stand with one shoulder behind Mary, but going to stand beside Richie instead. Hogan slid into place effortlessly, one hand wrapped around Mary’s and already saying something that made her chuckle.
John and Richie made eye contact again. This time it was John’s eyes that said, Sorry, dude.
“Serves me right for inviting her without telling you,” Richie muttered so only John could hear. “Karma is a bitch.”
Richie and John both tried not to watch their crushes flirt with each other. Five minutes passed and Hogan and Mary were still chatting. John and Richie started up a conversation with Beth Herari, the one cop John actually considered a friend. Beth was Marissa’s sister-in-law and occasionally found her way into Fellow’s. Currently, she and Hogan were the only two cops with the stones to spend the evening in a lawyers’ bar. She was just showing him pictures of her new puppy when John felt a sharp kick to his shin.
He jolted and looked up at Richie, who he’d assumed had been the one to kick him, but Richie was busy texting someone. He felt another sharp kick and John’s eyes slid over to Mary, who he could see was smiling rather hollowly at Hogan. She caught his eye for half a second, and he could easily read the help-me signal.
Ignoring the balloon of pride in his chest at being the one she’d asked for help, he tapped Beth on the elbow and steered her toward Mary.
“Hey, Mary,” John interrupted whatever cocky asshole thing that Hogan was saying. “Have you met Beth Herari? She’s actually a beat cop in your neighborhood.”
Hogan scowled at John, and John had to resist the urge to smirk at him.
Mary jumped on the chance. She slid off the barstool and took a few steps toward Beth, leaving Hogan behind and jumping into conversation with the other woman. John slid back onto the barstool, leaving Hogan nowhere to go but back to his original seat. He figured it wasn’t a coincidence that the second Hogan’s overbearing presence receded, Richie dragged his nose out of his phone and took a deep breath.
They finished their round, said goodbye to Beth and left the bar as a trio. “Jeez,” Richie said glumly, once they were out on the sidewalk and headed toward the trains. “Next time I’ll have you meet me at a gay bar, Mary. That way you won’t cockblock me so hard.”
Mary burst into that sparkly laugh of hers. “Who was I cockblocking you from? Oh, not Hogan?!”
“The very same,” Richie said with a sigh.
“He reads as very straight to me,” Mary said in a careful tone.
“Straight as an arrow,” Richie agreed with an even bigger sigh. “Hence the need for a gay bar. I spend too much time with this guy—” he tossed a thumb toward John “—and not enough time with my own people.”
John bristled. “Hey! I go to gay bars with you.” He’d always been very conscious of making sure his best friend felt supported. John had no desire to stifle Richie’s identity.
“Yeah, and then you’re the one cockblocking me,” Richie griped. “They eat up the tall, dark and grumpy thing he has going on,” he informed Mary.
“Well, you should know better than to go cruising for guys with your hot friend in tow,” Mary scolded Richie. She cocked her head to one side. “Either way, I can’t imagine you have much trouble finding interested men, Richie. You’re a babe.”
Richie and Mary laughed and chatted back and forth, and John bobbed along behind them. His brain was still frozen on the moment when Mary had called him hot.
“Oh, are you free, John?” Richie’s voice pulled John out of his blurry reverie.
“Huh?”
“Mary invited us to a party at her house this weekend. Saturday afternoon. Can you make it?”
“Oh. Uh.” John made a show of pulling out his phone and looking at his calendar app when he already knew for certain that his day was glaringly, depressingly free. Richie knew him well enough to know that there was almost no way that John had plans on a Saturday and was likely asking him to give him a chance to figure out if he wanted to go, regardless of his schedule.
Hot. Hot. Hot.
Beer and lemonade. Ball games with Mary.
Crap.
“Yeah. I’m free,” John said gruffly.
Richie narrowed his eyes at John. “We’ll be there, Mary.”
“Great! I’ll see you then. You don’t have to bring a thing.”
She, again, kissed both men on the cheek. She waved her hand through the air, had a cab screeching to a halt and then was whisked away, back to her fancy Cobble Hill apartment.
John and Richie stood on the sidewalk and watched the cab disappear.
“Shit,” Richie sighed.
“Yeah,” John agreed, feeling that Richie had just pretty much perfectly summed it all up.