Flirting with Forever

Mary Trace is bright, bubbly, and back in the dating pool in her mid-thirties, refusing to let her friends' happy relationships leave her behind. When a regular customer at her Brooklyn boutique wants to set her up with her son, Mary agrees — and the date is derailed almost immediately by an offhand comment about her age.

Public defender John Modesto-Whitford is trying hard not to become his politician father: he values honesty over charm, which means his filter-free comments keep landing wrong. His mother's continued matchmaking keeps throwing him and Mary together all summer, until the two agree to fake-date just to get her off their backs.

What starts as pretense turns into real friendship, and then into chemistry neither of them planned for — testing whether two stubborn, mismatched people can build something lasting out of a rocky start.