“Not usually. No.” His voice was slightly hoarse. He cleared his throat. He wanted to change the subject. “You know, Mary, I’ve been wondering about something my dad brought up at that brunch.”

“Oh, yeah?” She straightened and dropped her eyes to her beer, as if she already knew what he was going to ask.

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat again. Okay, he was just going to ask it. He’d been wanting to know pretty much since the day that he’d met her, and he hadn’t been able to figure it out just from getting to know her. He was going to have to flat out ask at some point, so why not now? He ignored the hollow banging of his heart and just jumped right in.

“Mary, why are you single?” John cleared his throat again. “I mean, I know my dad is an asshole for asking that the other day, but it actually sparked a curiosity in me. It doesn’t, ah, really make sense to me that you haven’t met someone.”

He could only imagine that her answer would be laden with someones she’d dumped for some reason or another. He couldn’t imagine reality being any other way. Because once a man actually got a chance with Mary Trace, John couldn’t imagine him doing anything but holding on to it with both hands. And superglue. A nail gun, if necessary.

Mary twisted her mouth to one side and stared out the window again. “I kinda thought that Estrella would have laid it all out for you already.”

“Hmm? You’ve talked to Estrella about it?”

Mary blushed a little and nodded, twisting her beer one way and another. “Remember at the block party? When you asked if I was desperate?”

John groaned and knocked his forehead against the table with a comical whack, making Mary burst out laughing. “Please don’t remind me of that,” he pleaded. “That was the second worst thing I ever said to you.”

He looked up just in time to see a vulnerable expression flit across her face, but then she sequestered it immediately behind a smile. “It’s okay, John. You wanted to know why your mother was pushing the issue so much. If I wasn’t totally desperate for dates, then why the heck was she foisting every man in Brooklyn into my lineup, right?”

He nodded, still feeling an uneasy, humiliated chagrin at his own clumsy rudeness.

“Well, the answer is that about two weeks before that, Estrella came over to my shop around closing time and we ended up having dinner together up here in my apartment. She asked me the same question that you just did. And though we’ve been casual friends for a long time, it was the first time we’d ever had a real heart-to-heart like that. It...affected her, I guess.”

Mary twiddled with her beer some more and John stayed quiet.