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.

Your warning is duly noted, counselor. Consider your duties in this matter to be fulfilled.

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.

CHAPTER FIVE

“MARY, I HATE every single one of your employees besides Kylie,” Fin groaned as she leaned dramatically against the checkout counter at Fresh.

“I have to say that right now I agree,” Mary replied. Her part-time employee Sandra was currently a no-show for her shift, and Mary was stuck behind the register for the third Friday night in a row.