Yeah, right. He might wake up spooning and in love. And with a knee to the nads. Crossed off the list, remember? He pulled out his phone and quickly texted his next-door neighbors. They’d let him stay over once before, when his mother’s heat had been out and she and Cormac had stayed in his place. Hopefully they could put him up again, or he’d sleep on the floor.

“Ready?” She had a small overnight bag on her hip and a sad half smile on her face as she stood in the doorway. It was the half smile that did away with his reservations and worries. If she needed company and a place to stay, John was going to serve it up to her on a silver platter. No, a golden platter.

“Ready.”

They walked to the train side by side after making sure with the cops downstairs that it was all right for her to leave and that they were going to secure her shop tonight. On the walk, Mary called her employees, gave them a quick rundown of what had happened and explained she wouldn’t be needing any help for the weekend. They sat quietly side by side as the subway screeched and accelerated and slid into stop after stop, each one accentuating just how far they actually lived from one another. Two different dimensions.

John didn’t let these thoughts get him down as the two of them jogged aboveground in his neighborhood. She was in flats, which he realized now, she rarely wore, because he could look down and see the top of her head. He felt an expanding tenderness for the fact that her hair was messily twisted into a bun. She’d managed to make it look fashionable and delicate all the same, but she’d also been frazzled and tired enough to leave parts of it messy.

This, more than anything, illustrated to him just how trying this day had been for her. “All right,” he told her. “Let’s see. We’ve got crappy pizza, mediocre burritos or insanely good Cuban.”

“I think the crappy pizza sounds good, since you sold it so well.” She crossed her eyes at him. “Just joking. I choose Cuban. Can we get it to go?”