MARY HUNG UP the phone and stared unseeingly down the cereal aisle.

“This ain’t your living room, honey,” a woman said at Mary’s shoulder, muscling past her with her grocery cart and giving Mary the stink eye for blocking the way.

Mary shook her head. Right. She was in public. Her heart was galloping, she had underboob sweat and she was in public.

The last twenty-four hours had been a mess. Mary had yo-yoed from outrage to pain to everything in between.

Mary pushed thoughts of her judgmental mother from her brain and thought instead back to Friday night. John’s confident hands at her back, her cheek over his heartbeat.

She grabbed cereal off the shelf and tossed it into her cart, moving to the next aisle. She thought of John smoothing the strap of her sundress over her shoulder, the weight of his hand at her collarbone.

“John likes me,” she told herself.

I was expecting someone younger.

Different stages of life.

Interestingly enough, when Mary heard those two phrases this time, they were in her mother’s voice in her head, not John’s. Those two simple sentences didn’t paint a very flattering picture of how John felt about her. But she was done letting those handfuls of words outweigh everything else. The way he’d smiled at her on the dance floor. His hand at her back when she’d met his father. His fingers laced with hers on the train. He’d given her his bed, for goodness’ sake.

And the hug. She could finally let herself think of the way he’d held her in her kitchen after the break-in.

It had been medicine, that hug.

Maybe she’d even known then, that things had changed between the two of them. Because those kinds of hugs were rare. And he’d given her two of them.

John liked her. Maybe, technically, she wasn’t quite sure if Thursday was a date or not. And maybe, technically, she still hadn’t seen his eyes track her up and down the way they had that waitress, but he’d danced with her like he’d wanted her. And that was enough for her. For now, that was enough.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

IT WAS WEDNESDAY night at 5:00 p.m. that John was nearly brought down to the sidewalk in a sweaty, joyful hug. Hang Nguyen’s mother, Cuc, was sobbing into John’s shoulder and leaning her whole weight on him.

“Mom!” Hang said, trying to pry her mother off of her lawyer, but it was no use. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Modesto-Whitford.”

“It’s okay,” John said, a blisteringly big smile on his face as he patted Cuc’s back. “I know exactly how she feels.”