“So you have to decide if you’re gonna skip it or let him pay for you.”

He squeezed her close, unsurprised that she’d instantly understood. She was smart like that. “Exactly. Can you guess how many times I’ve ever let him pay for me?”

“Zero?”

“Yup.” John sighed, long and hard. “I’m starting to rethink my stance on that, however. You’re helping me.”

“Me?”

“Yeah. Our differences. What you can afford versus what I can afford. I thought I might never be able to get over it. But with you, I don’t take it as personally as I do with my dad. I don’t know. I’m finding myself less and less threatened with the whole thing. You don’t measure my worth by my bank account. So, I’ve been starting to wonder why I do, you know?” His hand sifted through her hair. “For a long time, I figured that my dad was trying to buy my forgiveness with his gifts and trips and trust funds. But now I think he’s just trying to figure out a way to spend some time with me.”

Mary smoothed his T-shirt down. He’d planned on wearing his usual slacks and button-down, but she’d recently started talking him into more casual clothes on the weekend. She’d shown him how to do something called a French tuck with his shirts that supposedly made his plain clothing look a little more fashionable. John cared about that just about as far as he could drop-kick it, but still, it made Mary happy.

“Have you thought about inviting him to do something you could afford to do? I dunno, a baseball game? Or even, like, a weekend out on Far Rockaway? Something like that?”

He kissed her forehead. “Yeah, actually, when I told him I wasn’t coming out to Colorado this week, that’s exactly what I did. I floated the idea of a weekend in Toms River. Whale watching from the ferries. Something we both like.”

Mary cranked her head back, a smile on her face. “You’re into whale watching?”

“Not that I’ve done a ton of it, but yeah. Whales are cool.”

She laughed and buried her face against his shoulder. “You’re cool.”

He was the one laughing now. “We both know I’m a dork.”

“You’re a hot dork. Which makes you cool.”

“Whatever you say.”

“Lawn bowling?” Tyler shouted from the back porch over to the lovebirds in the hammock. “Just found a kit in the garage!”

“What the hell is lawn bowling?” John asked.

“I’ll teach you, city boy,” Mary said, rolling from the hammock and tugging him upward.

They passed the rest of the day in lazy luxury, playing lawn games, going for a walk around the neighborhood, grilling their early dinner on the back patio.