CHAPTER FOUR

FIVE DAYS AFTER the block party, John did a confused double take at his cell phone as he sat in his office slogging through paperwork at 6:00 p.m.

Why in God’s name was an unknown number texting him the name of his childhood bully? For one confused second, John thought that maybe Elijah Crawford was texting him and identifying himself. But from a Connecticut area code?

“Oh,” he muttered to himself once he’d entered the text and saw that he and the number already had a thread going. Well, not so much a thread, but a single other text that had just his own name. It was Mary Trace.

He blinked. Took a deep breath. He was a grown man. With a law degree. His heart should not be shivering in his chest just because he’d gotten an unexpected text from a pretty girl. A very pretty girl. Okay, the prettiest girl.

And the sweetest one. She’d have to be if she was willing to forgive him for his multiple social faux pas that he’d already committed. He hadn’t saved her number into his phone when she’d given it, simply because he hadn’t thought she’d ever actually text him. His conscience, poking at him after all the rude things he’d accidentally said to her, had made him offer up his services, but he hadn’t bothered to hope that she’d take him up on it. What woman wanted further contact with a man who’d already effectively called her desperate and old?

But there she was, sending him a text that was already two minutes old. Then the meaning of her text filtered down onto John. If she was texting him the name Elijah Crawford, then that meant that his mother was considering setting Mary up with that douchenozzle.

“What?” John whispered to himself. His mother was a reasonable woman usually. What was with this psycho matchmaking thing she was doing?

He typed his response out. Veto.

He tossed his phone back down and got through one more page of paperwork before she texted back.

John sighed and typed out, Because he intentionally spilled apple juice on the crotch of my pants in third grade, tripped me down the stairs in fifth grade and stole my prom date in high school.

He stared at his unsent words, the cursor still blinking on his screen. A flush of embarrassment rose hot out of his collar as he pictured sending those words to gorgeous Mary Trace. He immediately erased them. He’d botched his chance with her, he was very clear on that point, but that didn’t mean he needed to inform her just how much of a nerd he used to be.

He’s a bully, John texted. He thought for a second and texted another line. And not a good listener. You won’t have fun.

Okay, she texted back a minute later. I’ll tell Estrella I’m busy. Thanks!

As John was reading, one last text came through, an emoji of a shiny, smiling sun, its rays waving at him, reminding him of Mary’s sunny, wavy hair. A weird jolt went through him as he looked down at the little image. It should be meaningless. It was just something she’d absently clicked on and sent. But for some reason, for a split second, John wondered if it was personal. If she purposefully picked it and sent it his way, actively wanting to send him a little sunshine.

He found himself frowning down at his phone screen. It was nice of her to send, he supposed. But what the hell was he supposed to text back? The only person who ever texted him emojis was Richie, and John ignored each and every one of them. Was it rude to ignore Mary’s emoji?

Deciding, on principle, that he couldn’t afford to care, John turned his phone to silent and exited out of the text strand.

Juggling anywhere between thirty and forty cases at a time, John found he didn’t often have the time for indulgences like texting pretty girls. Especially not when he had two separate murder-one cases in his caseload plus that sex trafficking case that was keeping him up at night.

But none of those cases were where he needed his brain to be today. Today was all about Serge Raoul. He was a thirty-eight-year-old charged with felony assault who John had to prep for court. Normally, he’d meet with a client four or five times before the big show. He’d have clocked anywhere from ten to twenty hours of face time with them. But Raoul was rougher around the edges than most people. This would already be John’s seventh time meeting with him and lately the meetings had more the feel of a play rehearsal than they did a legal meeting. Raoul seemed almost passionately committed to perjuring himself on the stand. If he didn’t stick to the talking points that John had painstakingly prepared for him this time, John might have to go the rare route of not letting his client testify. Raoul had a motor mouth and a very twisted way of viewing the truth. There was no telling how the jury would perceive him.

He didn’t usually like to overprepare his clients, because then they could come off as rehearsed, like the truth was something they’d had to memorize. But in this case, as John carefully packed the flash cards he’d made into his messenger bag, he figured that might be the lesser of two evils. He refused to let Raoul run roughshod over the stand and get himself sent up.

John didn’t allow himself another look at his cell phone before he slipped it into the pocket of his trousers. He had work to do. A man’s freedom to salvage.

IT WAS FRIDAY NIGHT, when he was out at a bar close to the Brooklyn Supreme Court with Richie on the barstool beside him, that John got the next text from Mary.

“Oh, for fuck’s sake,” John muttered. Michael Fucking Fallon? Was his mother playing some sort of sick joke on Mary?

John gaped at the text, trying to interpret her response. Does it matter?

Well, sometimes people have good reasons for doing bad things, she texted back after a few minutes. In my opinion, there’s a difference between selling dime bags and selling heroin.

John barked a laugh into the palm of his hand. He’d expected blonde, obviously rich Mary to go screaming toward the hills at any mention of the D word. Huh. Maybe she’d gotten really into Breaking Bad or The Wire or something.

Besides, she texted again. Innocent until proven guilty.

He shook his head at his phone, feeling weird. Maybe he should stop at one beer tonight; he was already a little bit light-headed. He flagged down Marissa, their usual bartender, and ordered a basket of fries while he one-handedly texted Mary back.

“Jeez, Estrella’s got you worked up tonight, huh?” Richie, who’d been chatting up the guy on his right, finally turned his attention back to John, his eyes narrowing at the phone.

“What? Oh. I’m not texting with my mother.”

Richie’s expression fell. “Oh, Lord. What did Maddox get himself into now?”

John laughed bitterly, nodding his head at Marissa when she came back with his fries.

“He wants mustard, not ketchup, Marissa,” Richie reminded their bartender, who rolled her eyes and slid a bottle down the countertop toward them.

“You know,” John said, “I do, in fact, text people who aren’t my mother and my emotionally stunted younger brother.”

Maddox was John’s younger half brother, connected through the father that Maddox had grown up with and John hadn’t met until a decade ago. Maybe emotionally stunted was a tad harsh. But John couldn’t help but wonder if growing up with access to all their father’s money had kept Maddox from developing certain survival skills that the rest of the world seemed to have. Survival skills like caring about keeping a job and knowing how to do more in a kitchen than call up expensive delivery.

John, who’d grown up without their father, had come by those skills quite honestly.

Richie squinted his eyes into the beyond, theatrically raising his fingers one by one. “Estrella, Maddox and me. But hold on, I’m sitting right here. Who in God’s name is this mystery fourth texter?! I demand to know!”

John shook his head and stuffed some fries in his mouth, buying himself a moment. For some reason, he didn’t want to explain the arrangement with Mary to Richie. Or why he was texting with her. It was simple, innocent, but there was no telling how Richie’s perverted mind could twist it.

“Evening, girls,” a deep, borderline rude voice said from behind them, two meaty paws clapping over their shoulders.

John wasn’t often thrilled to run into Hogan Trencher around town, but right now he was relieved for the interruption. He slipped his phone back in his pocket and hoped that the appearance of Richie’s unrequited crush would squash any residual attention on who John had been texting.

“Evening, Hulk,” Richie said, a light blush washing over his cheekbones.

He called him that in reference to his first name, not because Hogan was built anything like a ripped, green monster. In truth, Hogan was a little chubby, all shoulders and spread legs and thumbs tucked into his belt. He even had the mustache to complete the picture.

John observed Richie’s bashful expression, his eyes looking everywhere but at Hogan. A gay defense attorney with the hots for a straight cop. What a hopeless situation. It wasn’t the first time that John had felt bad for the predicament Richie had found himself in.

Hogan Trencher wasn’t a crooked detective by any means, but he had a healthy disdain for the defense attorneys he felt put his collars back on the street. And John had seen too many detectives bend the truth on the stand to ever truly want to break bread with Hogan Trencher. And so had Richie. Maybe, John reflected as he polished off his beer, that was part of the appeal. People often had feelings for those on the opposite end of the opinions spectrum. It probably made the sex more combative.

Either way, this bar, only five blocks from the Brooklyn Supreme Court, had become a sort of neutral ground for defense attorneys and ADAs, and, occasionally, Hogan Trencher. Who seemed to almost get a power-trippy charge out of prodding at defense attorneys in his off time.

“Haven’t seen you around recently, John,” Hogan said after sending Marissa a wink and pointing at John’s beer to indicate he wanted one for himself. “Keeping busy?”

“Yup,” John grumbled. Talking to cops always made him feel like he was being interrogated. “Those meth labs don’t start themselves.”

Richie laughed into his beer, inhaling half of it and looking utterly mortified to be snotting foam in front of his crush.

“Just making conversation,” Hogan replied easily. “Thanks, darlin’.”

The big man slid money into Marissa’s palm and held her eye contact as he took the beer from her. Marissa tucked her lips into her mouth and ducked her chin, looking up at Hogan through her eyelashes, a slight flush on her pretty brown skin.

Hogan reached forward, stole a few of John’s fries and tipped his chin down at the two lawyers, a smirk firmly in place beneath his mustache. He sauntered away to a far corner of the bar.

“What the hell is it about that guy?” John wondered aloud.

“What?” Richie asked, his cheeks still pink, peeling the label from his beer bottle.

“Why is everyone so into him? From where I’m sitting, he’s just a cocky asshole.”

“You just answered your own question, John,” Marissa said, taking his empty beer bottle away and replacing it with a water. He’d thought that she’d preternaturally predicted his reticence to have a second beer, but then he realized that happy hour was now over and Marissa knew that John categorically refused to purchase full-price beer. “Cocky assholes are irresistible.”

“I have not found that to be true in my own experience,” John replied, comfortable with these kinds of conversations with Marissa after almost five years of coming to Fellow’s on Friday nights. “I’m a cocky asshole and women pretty much flee from me.”

Sometimes literally. The image of Mary striding out of the restaurant flashed through his mind. He’d felt like such an utter dolt standing there, watching her go. But could he blame her? He could not.

“You’re not a cocky asshole,” Richie chimed in, apparently recovered enough from his unexpected interaction with his crush to be able to speak again. “You’re a self-assured dick. Whole other animal. Highly repellant.”

“I’m a self-assured—What the hell is the difference?”

“The difference is that a cocky asshole knows he’s an asshole and uses his assholish swagger to charm and otherwise assert sexual dominance,” Marissa said, pushing her glasses up her nose. She’d once told John that she’d studied anthropology at SUNY Downstate, and John could suddenly see that aspect of her intellect sparklingly clearly. “Self-assured dicks don’t even realize they’re being dicks until after they’ve hurt everyone’s feelings.”

“Oh.” John frowned. “That...actually sounds pretty accurate.”

“It’s like the difference between watching a circus dude juggle fire and watching a dragon breathe fire,” Richie mused. “One of them is doing it for a show and one of them is doing it because he was born that way.”

“Are you telling me that I was born a dick?”

He felt his phone buzz in his pocket but ignored it.

Richie tipped his head from one side to the other. “Well, the jury’s still out on nature versus nurture. All I know is that scowl of yours isn’t there by choice. You’re a dick, John. Accept it.”

John shook his head good-naturedly and let the conversation move on to bigger and better topics.

I was expecting someone younger.

His own words played in his head and he was grateful that Richie and Marissa had one another’s attention and didn’t see the grimace his face pulled into when he remembered what he’d said to Mary when he first met her. What an idiot.

John wasn’t sure that he’d ever had reason to talk to someone like her before. Women of her caliber were rare and exotic, spotted occasionally hailing cabs in DUMBO or brunching in Park Slope. Everything from the gold of her hair to the cut of her dress had screamed money. No. Not screamed it. Screaming implied gaudiness and she was anything but gaudy. No, Mary’s appearance merely whispered money. It was the quiet, soothing melody behind her entire countenance. People as rich as Mary seemed to move through the world with their own soundtrack.

He was obviously not worthy of the brilliant gold gloriousness of someone like Mary Trace. He’d known that the second she’d walked into that restaurant. And he’d known that she would know it soon enough as well.

But he’d have liked to have lasted more than a single sentence before he’d ruined his chances. Pleasant conversation and a good-night kiss on whatever picturesque stoop led up to her home would have been nice. It wouldn’t have been long before she realized that dating a defense attorney who lived in a studio in Bed-Stuy meant weekend trips to see his aunties in the Bronx, not ones that landed them on the beach in the Hamptons. She was sharp, so it wouldn’t have been long before she realized that his desire to cook for her would have been fueled mostly by his inability to pay for fancy Brooklyn brunches. She would have no doubt tired of waxy carnations and started to wish for lilies and orchids.

His phone buzzed one more time and he ignored it again. Texting her back when he was in this mood was a bad idea. No. Better to just leave it alone.

No question the whole thing had been doomed from the beginning.

Still. He wouldn’t have minded that good-night kiss.

“GOT ANYBODY GOOD on the line?” Mary’s best friend Tyler asked from where he lay on his living room floor, a couch pillow under his blond head and his feet crossed at the ankles. He had his eyes closed, so Mary wasn’t positive how he’d even known she was texting someone.

“No. Just struck out again, actually. My friend set me up with this guy, but apparently he’s a drug dealer.”

Tyler cracked a navy blue eye. “Some friend.”

Mary laughed and waved a hand through the air. “She’s well-meaning. Just a little...out of touch. I think she’s probably late fifties and a little bit on the optimistic side. She’s one of my artisans.”

“Who are we talking about?” asked Serafine St. Romain, or Fin for short, as she sauntered in from Tyler’s kitchen. Fin was a singular presence. She was tall, spooky-eyed and blazingly beautiful. Plenty of people doubted Fin’s skills as a psychic and energy reader, but Mary wasn’t one of them. She fully believed in Fin’s clairvoyance.

Fin plunked down on the floor next to Tyler, curling up like a clumsy kitten next to him. He hummed in pleasure, eyes still closed, and absently played with Fin’s long dark braid.

Mary smiled at the sight the two of them made together. Preppy Tyler and hippie Fin. Such a strange pair, made all the more interesting by how blisteringly in love they were with one another. Mary envied them in a good-natured way. Though it might have bothered some people that her entire group of close friends had paired off together, first Sebastian and Via and now Tyler and Fin, Mary was just happy for everyone.

Mostly.

She’d originally been friends with Sebastian and Tyler. If it was unusual to have two male best friends, Mary had never thought much about it. They were good friends, caring, funny, kind. Sebastian had fallen in love with Via, a counselor at his son’s elementary school, and Fin had come along into their group as Via’s best friend and foster sister. Tyler and Fin had had a long road toward finally being together, but when it had happened a few months ago, Mary had breathed a big sigh of relief. She’d suspected all along that the gorgeous and enigmatic Serafine St. Romain had the power to truly wound her goofy, preppy, crude, generous best friend. She was glad it had worked out the way it was supposed to.

It didn’t pass her notice, however, that both of her fortysomething-year-old best friends had ended up with women a decade-plus younger than they were. It wasn’t until she’d learned that Fin and Tyler were truly together did it really hit her. She might be on the losing end of a certain social equation. Because it seemed to her that once over thirty, men rarely dated women their own age. And even less dated older women.

She’d just started toying with the idea of starting to date older men, much older men, when Estrella had come along and proposed her thirty-one-year-old son.

Mary frowned. Her thirty-one-year-old son who found her age so repellant it was literally the first thing he’d commented on. And now Mary was on this strange waterslide, where around every bend, there was Estrella shoving some young thirtysomething guy in her path. She wasn’t going to complain, but maybe she should hedge her bets a little bit and date some older guys on the side as well.

“Hmm?” Mary pulled herself from her thoughts to answer Fin. “Oh. Estrella.”

“I love that woman,” Fin said emphatically.

“Me too. I just wish she had better taste in men. She’s been trying to set me up lately to varying levels of failure.”

“Weren’t you going on a date with her son?” Kylie asked as she ambled into the room and tossed herself into the overstuffed armchair.

This was one of the many things that Mary loved about coming over to Tyler’s house these days. Used to be, in the past, his condo was homey but a little too quiet. It was one-note. Only influenced by Tyler and his presence and his choices. These days, though, since he’d gotten custody of his fourteen-year-old sister, Kylie’s backpack overflowed with textbooks in the corner, her sweatshirts hung on the coatrack. She looked utterly at home as she draped her feet over the opposite arm of the fluffy chair and shoved her face into her phone, barely waiting for the answer to the question she’d just asked.

Mary liked to see Kylie acting like a teenager. When she’d first come to Brooklyn around Thanksgiving, she’d been like a mini adult, all her corners tucked in and nothing-to-see-here-folks. But the other day, Kylie had even been five minutes late for work, and it had thrilled Mary to her core. Not that she rooted for her employees to be late, but that Kylie was comfortable enough to be a little late. That was real progress.

“What’s that?” Fin asked, bolting upright and smiling when Tyler tugged her back down into his side. “You went on a date with Estrella’s son?”

“Date is a relative term in this case.” Mary sighed. She hadn’t told anyone about her mishap with John, but she figured this was as receptive an audience as any. “I arrived at this super fancy restaurant in Greenpoint, he told me he’d hoped I’d be younger, I picked up my jaw off the floor and left. End of date. Not exactly a love story for the ages.”

“You’ve got to be freaking kidding me.” Tyler sat up, a rare anger burning in his eyes. “That’s the rudest freaking thing I’ve ever heard. Mary, I hope you shook it off immediately.”

Mary avoided Fin’s light gaze, knowing that her intuitive friend was going to see both what she did say and what she didn’t. “It got me down for a few days. But I’m back in the swing of things. Anyways, he came to the shop to apologize, and I think he really meant it.”

“Oh. That’s who that guy was?” Kylie asked, looking up from her phone. “The mean-looking one with Estrella?”

“Yup.”

“What is wrong with men these days?” Tyler groused. “If they aren’t hitting on women in the subways, they’re telling them they look old in fancy restaurants. Would it kill my species to have a little common decency?”

Fin and Mary exchanged wry eye contact. Dating a woman as beautiful as Fin had opened up Tyler’s eyes to some of the cruder ways that men treated women. Especially in a city as anonymous as New York. But Mary suspected that most of his incredulous griping had to do with the fact that Kylie had apparently announced a few days ago that she was going to homecoming with a date. A male date. Tyler had yet to recover.

“You’re a prince among men, my love,” Fin said drily, kissing her boyfriend on the cheek.

“Ty,” Kylie said, rolling to one side, “you’re telling me that you never, not even once, hit on a woman on the train?”

Tyler responded, and Mary let the noise of the bickering siblings fade fuzzily into the background. She picked up her phone and reread the text that she’d gotten a few minutes ago from John.

She pursed her lips. The part about his belief system and innocent until proven guilty, she actually liked. But it was the last line that really irked her. Date him if you want but just remember that I voted to veto.

What a grouch. The surliness rose off each word like curlicues of smoke. She frowned at his text.

She sent off the text with a twisting flourish of her pink-polished finger. There. That would show him that she could be just as snappish as he could be.

But...

The truth was that she couldn’t be that snappish. Not with any level of comfort. She flipped her phone over so that she wouldn’t have to look at it anymore. Mary smoothed her hair down and grimaced when she found one of her thumbnails between her teeth. No, no, no. She’d just gotten a manicure. She wasn’t going to give in to that old habit.

Ugh. She picked up her phone and glared at the lack of a response from him. But what had she been expecting? Him to immediately respond to a rude text from her? Just because he was naturally rude didn’t mean that he was any good at receiving rudeness from others.

Mary set the phone down again, let a few more minutes pass and then finally gave in to temptation. She opened up their thread, carefully selected a sunshine emoji and sent it off, instantly feeling a little better.