His face collapsed into a soft chagrin. “Busted. You’re right. It’s an asshole move to judge where you live.”

“I’d never judge where you live.”

His eyes bounced back and forth between hers. “You really wouldn’t, would you?”

“Nope.”

“Even if I told you I live in a studio in a crappy building above a bus stop?”

“I hope I get to see it someday.”

He did that choppy exhalation of a laugh and shook his head, his eyes on his shoes again. “You’re something else, Mary.”

“Something good, I hope.”

“The best.”

CHAPTER EIGHT

JOHN TOOK A break from Mary for the next two weeks. It was necessary. A matter of survival, he felt. Two things had become extremely clear the night of the fake date. John wanted something more with Mary, and she, decidedly, did not.

He figured it wouldn’t take too long to get over her, as long as he wasn’t forced to see and interact with her in the meantime. Which meant that John had to clear things up with his mother. The morning after the fake date, he called Estrella.

“John? Is everything all right?” she asked as she answered the phone. “You’re calling so early.”

He blinked in confusion at the clock on his microwave. “It’s 9:00 a.m., Ma.”

“Yes, but I thought you might...be sleeping in this morning.”

John groaned, her meaning so clear it stung. Despite her public stance on premarital sex, she’d apparently hoped he’d spend the night and morning with Mary. “Ma, enough. Enough.”

“What?”

He’d have to remember to have her come in and coach his clients on how to affect innocence so effectively.

“You know exactly what. You have to stop trying to push me and Mary together.”

“John—”

“No. Ma, we both know what you’re doing, with the dates, with the terrible guys and getting me to walk her home and the tacos. We tried it out. It didn’t work. And now you pushing us like this is just getting—”

He cut himself off because he wasn’t sure he wanted to say the word painful out loud right now.

“Oh,” Estrella said after a quiet moment. “Oh, John, I hadn’t realized...”

With a mother’s twenty-twenty vision, Estrella had seen to the heart of his words immediately. John sighed.

“You have feelings for her,” Estrella guessed after a moment.

“It doesn’t matter.”

“And you don’t think there’s any chance that she...”

“We’re friends, Ma.”

“Right.” There was a long pause. “Cormac wanted to know if you’d come help with the backyard this weekend.”

Cormac was a strapping beast of a man, but he was getting on in years and had had trouble with sciatica recently.

“Of course. Why didn’t he text me himself?”

“Because he doesn’t think he needs the help,” Estrella said sharply.