“That isn’t an o in Fox. It’s an asterisk.”

“So?”

“So, asterisks usually indicate the vulgar spelling of a word, right?”

Her brow furrowed. Then a look of horror transformed her face. “You think this app is pronounced Silver Fux?” She buried her face. “Oh-my-God. No wonder I’ve gotten so many dick pics. This is not a dating app. This is a hookup app.”

She might have shriveled up into a dust bunny and let herself be blown away on the breeze right then and there if John hadn’t laughed. And not that airy exhalation of a chuckle that she’d heard him do before. But a real laugh. Deep and quiet and rolling and, actually, quite charming.

When she gaped up at him, he looked like he was trying to hold it back and couldn’t. His lips were pulled over his teeth and his face tipped away, like he didn’t want to show her what he looked like unarmed and open. But there was no hiding a laugh like that. It was utterly infectious. The CDC would have rated it highly contagious.

Mary couldn’t help but laugh as well. “That’s the last time I buy an app without reading the reviews.”

He laughed harder. “It was an honest mistake.”

Her phone chose that moment to bark, and she jumped about six inches in the air, making John laugh harder.

She shoved her phone in her purse.

“You’re not going to check that notification?”

She did her best to glower at him, but she was so charmed by his laughter that she only ended up smiling. “I’ll pass.”

“You can’t leave them hanging, Mary. It’s rude. The barking dicks await.”

She burst into laughter again, and it was half a block before they’d wound down, a silence settling over them again, but this one wasn’t tense like when they’d left the restaurant.

“Mary,” John said softly after a moment, his hands in his pockets and his eyes focused dimly on the night in front of them. “Did I ruin everything?”

“Ruin everything? When?” She was taken aback by the quiet tone of his voice, the set of his shoulders. She had the almost unquellable urge to knock her shoulder into his, try to cheer him up.

“On our first—On our date. When I said that stupid shit about expecting someone younger. Did I absolutely ruin any chance of us ever being—”