Just a Heartbeat Away

by Cara Bastone

“Yeah. Those are the chills from your fever.” Seb’s heart broke a little as he reached into the closet and pulled out another blanket to tuck around his son. When he turned back around, Matty had his hands tucked under his chin and a tear was leaking from the corner of his eye. Matty had always had teary eyes. Just like his daddy. But Seb knew, instinctively, that this was a real tear.

  He crouched next to the bed and slung a heavy arm over his son, holding him close for a second. Matty’s familiar scent washed over him. His kid had always smelled like dinner rolls. Weird but true.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I wish Grandma was here.”

  “Grandma Sullivan?” Seb tried not to sound quite so astonished. Muriel was competent and confident and...harsh as hell. She was the last person on Earth that Seb would have wanted around while he was sick. She wasn’t nurturing in the least, and it surprised the heck out of him that Matty would want her right now.

  But then the reason sifted down and gently landed on Seb. It started out light and became heavier and heavier as it settled over him. Muriel was exactly like her daughter. Matty didn’t want Muriel. Not really. He wanted Cora. He was sick and wanted his mommy.

  Fuck. Seb squeezed his eyes shut and pressed his forehead against Matty’s shoulder. Pain, acute and old at the same time, washed right through him. Right after Cora had died, he’d naively waited for the day that he wouldn’t feel this excruciating sadness over the loss of her. It was far less frequent, but he knew now that it would never be gone. Not really.

  “I’m gonna send my friends home, and you and me will watch a movie, okay?” He paused. “And I’ll call Grandma Sullivan and see if she wants to come stay for a day or two this week.”

  “No, Daddy. Don’t send them home. I like having them here. One of them is a witch. They can stay. But can I watch a movie still?”

  Seb laughed a little at his breathless little boy. At everything the kid wanted. His yo-yo of emotions. He planted a kiss on Matty’s hair, smelling like familiar shampoo and sick kid. “Of course.”

  He set up the movie, and by the time he got back out to the main room, they’d mostly cleared up breakfast. The group sat with their coffee cups in the living room, and Seb was relieved to see that they looked a bit more relaxed.

  “Seb,” Mary called. “Via wanted to see your workshop, remember?”

  “Oh right. Now?” He wondered if he should ask if Fin also wanted a tour, but she seemed comfortable where she was.

  “Sure.” Via rose and took her coffee cup with her as he led her out the back door and through the postage stamp–size backyard.

  He caught Via smiling at the swing set he’d installed for Matty. “It’s nice that you have an actual house. For Matty to grow up in, I mean.”

  “Yeah. We were both done living in an apartment building. Here we are.”

  They strolled up to a converted garage with an old elm tree shooting yellow sprays of color from every branch and grass a month past a necessary trim. Sebastian bent and unlocked a padlock before rolling up the aluminum garage door and flicking on a few lamps in various corners.

  “Sebastian!” Via gasped as she walked into the garage and turned a slow circle on the spot. “Good Lord! How many pieces are you working on at one time?”

  He couldn’t tell if she was impressed or put off by the organized chaos that bore down on them from every side. He chuckled and scraped a worn palm over his beard, as much in need of a trim as the grass in his yard. When you were a single father, you had to learn to let some things slide. The noise of his stubble against his dry skin was loud in the sudden quiet. He chuckled to himself, because he was seeing the garage workshop from her eyes and because he was nervous. Good and nervous. Like a damned teenager.

  “Yeah, I swear there’s a method to my madness.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t accusing you of being messy. It’s just a lot more...stuff than I imagined.”

  She wasn’t wrong. There were shelves and shelves of slabs of wood that he’d benched for the time being. There were copper pipes lashed together in the corner, and barrels of more copper scraps and fittings that he usually melted down for ornamentation. There were wood scraps and castoffs of all shapes and sizes organized loosely by imagined project. And along one wall were his projects, all in various stages of completeness. In the middle of the garage were his huge, dinosaur-like machines. His band saw and table saw. His router and drill press. The last wall was covered in tools of every shape and size, some of them shiny and new and others looking damn near ancient. A thin layer of sawdust covered everything. But it was just that—thin. He might be a little messy, but he kept a clean shop.

  “Well, once I start a project, I usually see it straight through to the end. But I’ve been a little harebrained lately. And my deadlines aren’t so rigid. So I’ve been alternating a few projects, working on whatever strikes my fancy that day. That dining room set is my favorite. With the Shaker chairs and the table with the beveled edge. But I like that coffee table, too. The mirror over there is giving me gray hairs. Everything has to be so exact with it.”

  She had wandered over and was examining each item as he listed it. She was very quiet. So quiet he struggled not to clear his throat.

  “The mirror isn’t exactly your style, is it? The metalwork is so industrial and the angles of the wood are so exacting. Most of your other stuff has a more organic, freeform style to it.”

  She turned to him, a thoughtful look on her face, one hand tucked under her chin and the light catching on one of her small earrings. But as soon as she saw him, her expression morphed. Something in his face had her blushing.

  “Or am I just dead wrong?”

  He laughed. “No, no. You’re dead right. That piece was contracted by a very particular client. One who I will not be working with again. But I’m not exactly gonna turn away a paying customer. I just don’t like his taste. I agree. It’s too architectural for me. There are no surprises.” He walked over and whisked a hand over the top and side of the mirror, almost dismissively. “It looks exactly like the drawings I made up for him. It’s boring.”

  “Surprises?” she asked as she walked over to the table with the beveled edge. “You mean like the way you sanded this beveled edge into the cut of the live edge?”

  Sebastian raised his eyebrows. He was surprised she caught that. Most people wouldn’t have noticed the detail, they just would have sensed the overall tamed wildness of the piece.

  “Exactly. The whole thing was supposed to be live edge. But the damn thing snapped off at the grain when I was planing it. I was devastated at first. And angry. But then I realized I could just do something a little bit different than I usually do. Give the table two sides. A polite side.” He pointed toward the side with the smooth beveled edge. “And the go-fuck-yourself side.” He pointed at the wild, knotty side.

  To his delight, Via grinned at his choice of words, her dark eyes sparking and her hands jamming in her pockets. “Do you have a client in mind for that one? I feel like it would have to be a very special person who could handle all that...personality in one piece of furniture.”

  He shrugged. “It was commissioned by an old friend of mine, but once the wood cracked, I knew he wouldn’t want it. I’ll work on something else for him. I think this one is meant for my house.”

  He slicked a hand over the top of the table, like it was a prized stallion. It was far from finished, rough and blond in places.

  “Well, it suits you. The two sides of it, I mean.”

  “Lion among flamingos?” he teased her, straightening up and dusting his hands off.

  She blushed, but this time there was less joy in it. She changed the subject. “I always like seeing an artist’s studio.”

  “Have you seen a lot of them?”

  She nodded. “Evan is an artist. Or...was. I guess I’m not sure anymore. He says he’s done with it, but he had
so much talent. And a lot of passion.”

  Seb picked up a stray chisel and hung it in its place on the wall, straightened a can of tung oil and tossed some dirty rags in the hamper he kept in the corner. “Oh? What kind of work does he do?”

  “Mixed media. But mostly painting. Occasionally photography. He used to share a studio with a bunch of other artist friends. I spent a lot of time there and was always fascinated at how artists choose to organize their spaces. It says a lot about a person.”

  He watched as she sidled around the garage, peeking in a small set of drawers, lightly touching a loose screw on the countertop, squinting at the labels on all the different glues he kept.

  Sebastian followed after her, tossing the screw into its bowl, closing the drawers and chucking out one of the glue bottles that he saw was empty. “You think so? The studio says something about the artist?”

  “Oh, definitely.” She nodded resolutely. “It’s almost more interesting to me than the art itself. No, no way. I take that back. But I think it sheds light on the art. I like a little window into the artist’s process.” She turned and took her lip between her teeth, her dark eyes staring at the ceiling of the garage, searching for the words. “I’ve been to MOMA, to the Met, places like that, but I’ve never really responded as much to art when it’s perfectly curated. You know, the right lighting with the right blurb, all of it lined up in perfect sequential order.”

  “No?” He was intrigued. “How do you like it then?”

  “Well.” She squinted, the toes of one shoe resting on the tops of the other. “My foster mother, Jetty, she had such an eye for art. And she could talk about it for days. She had a Picasso.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. A real Picasso. It was a sketch on newsprint paper. Not a painting or anything. Just two messy figures and a haphazard sun all done in orange crayon. She had it framed, of course, but she never hung it.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not,” she repeated. “She said it was a gift from an old, rich boyfriend, and she never liked it that much. It sat on the floor, leaning against the wall in the guest bedroom for years. And yet, she had three different O’Keeffe prints carefully framed and displayed in the kitchen. She had a Picasso original that no one ever saw and she could talk your ear off about Georgia O’Keeffe. I don’t know.” Via shrugged and seemed to come back from her memories. Back into the here and now. “It taught me something about art, I think. Not to have reverence for something that doesn’t move you.”

  She strolled to the other side of the workshop and looked at one of the lamps he’d flicked on. It was the beta version of the one she claimed to have admired at Mary’s shop.

  “I guess that I just like art that fits into somebody’s life, you know? I’ve seen Georgia O’Keeffe exhibitions before, but I still prefer the way those paintings looked on the old peeling wallpaper of Jetty’s kitchen.”

  She turned back and caught his eye. After a second, those dark eyes of hers dropped and she shrugged her slim shoulders.

  “I feel exactly the same way.”

  Her eyes swooped back up to him and she stopped shifting around on her feet. “Yeah?”

  “Definitely. When I finish a piece, it’s in the best shape it will ever be in. Sanded, polished to a nice glow, the works. But as soon as I send it home with somebody, I know it’s only a matter of time before there’s fingerprints on the copper, scratches on the wood, crayon or a hot coffee cup ring or whatever it is. This is art, sure, for me. The process of it is creative. And I love that. But in the end, I want people to use this furniture, you know?”

  She nodded and turned away. “You can never come over to my place.”

  “I’m sorry?” He pushed his meaty hands into his pockets and froze. Had he said something offensive? Or—God—could she tell that he was one second away from blushing like a schoolboy just being alone with her? That would be humiliating.

  “I think we’re becoming friends, but I’m pretty sure you’d drop me like a hot potato if you saw the furniture in my house.” She was grinning at him and it soothed his worry at the same time it made his stomach turn over. She had quite the smile, this Miss DeRosa. White, white teeth, that crooked one in the front catching the light. When she lit up like that, lines beside those dark eyes fanned out and made her look a little older. In a good way. Too good of a way.

  She’s twenty-seven years old.

  What was he doing? This was utterly ridiculous. This woman was in a completely different stage of life than Seb was. She was just starting out. She was living in her first apartment without a roommate, for God’s sake. Seb was shooting himself in the foot spending time alone with her.

  He should have insisted Fin join them for the tour. All he was doing was wasting time on someone who was just not right for him. Sure, she was cute as hell and her personality made his heart race, but honestly, he was just torturing himself. He needed to politely send her packing. Via and her pretty friend, who was practically just as young as Via was. What had he been thinking of? Sure, intergenerational friendships existed. And sure, they could be great. But he shouldn’t have agreed to a date with Fin, and he sure shouldn’t have invited them over.

  Joking around with her at school was one thing. But listening to her tuck in a sick Matty? Sebastian meet cliff, cliff meet Sebastian. Don’t worry, I sprinkled glass bottles at the bottom just in case the fall doesn’t kill you.

  Maybe Valerie the dog walker had been a little bit of a dick, but Seb realized that she hadn’t been completely wrong. Dating a widower with a kid was just different than dating a regular single guy. There was no way that Seb wanted to put that kind of pressure on any woman who wasn’t completely ready for it. Especially not one who was barely out of undergrad. Her age had nothing to do with it, Seb told himself. Her life was too young for his. And his life was too old for hers.

  And, duh, boyfriend yada yada.

  Seb started clicking lights off as he responded, showing her that the tour was over. “I wouldn’t feel bad about having IKEA furniture; most kids do in their first places. You’re young. You’ve still got time to get your space the way you want it.”

  He clicked off the last light and braced a hand under the garage door as she ducked under it. He could feel her eyes on the side of his face, but he didn’t look up as he padlocked his shop.

  * * *

  “GOOD GOD,” FIN muttered once they were far enough away from the house not to be heard. “That was one of the most intense energies of any room I’ve ever been in.”

  “I know,” Via groaned. “So weird.”

  “Sexual tension sundae topped off with politeness whipped cream.”

  “Totally! I’ve never seen something like that before. I’m exhausted just from watching it. Did you get his number?”

  Fin’s brow furrowed and she switched the half-full grocery bag from one hand to the other. “Whose number?”

  “Tyler’s.” Now Via was confused, too.

  “Oh.” Fin cleared her throat as she took an uncharacteristic amount of time to answer the question. “Right. Me and Tyler. No, I didn’t get his number.”

  “Why not?” Via looked supremely confused. “That man looked like he would have kissed the ground you walked on. How could you have left without his number?”

  Fin waved a hand through the air. “Ah, you know how I feel about red auras.”

  Via shrugged. “All right. You know best. But what I just saw? That was really special.”

  “I agree.”

  Via got the strange feeling that they weren’t exactly talking about the same thing.

  * * *

  “HOLY GUA-CA-MO-LE,” MARY SQUEALED as she danced across the room and grabbed Seb into her arms. “She is SO cute, you lucky dog! Seb, I’m so excited for you!”

  “Oh. Yeah. Totally. Although I wouldn’t really describe he
r as cute.” Seb thought of Fin’s fall of long, black hair, her spooky eyes and her loads of intricate jewelry.

  “Are you kidding? She’s cute as a button. I just wanted to put her in my pocket. When she read Matty that story, I almost died.”

  “Wait.” Seb was putting the pieces together. “Are you talking about Via?”

  Tyler stopped typing on his phone across the room.

  “Of course.” Mary looked confused. “The one you were supposed to go on a date with.”

  “No, Mary, I was supposed to be on a date with Serafine this morning.”

  Mary’s face scrunched down in even more confusion. Her eyes flicked to Tyler for a second. “Hold on. The one who you obviously have a major crush on was NOT the woman who you had a date with? And the woman whose mere presence gave Tyler a lust-induced brain aneurysm—”

  “Hey now!”

  “—was the one you were actually supposed to be feeling things out with?”

  Neither Seb nor Tyler said anything.

  It wasn’t uncommon for Mary to be this honest. But damn.

  “I didn’t have a lust-induced brain aneurysm,” Tyler insisted sulkily.

  “Then what the hell would you call it, Ty?” Mary asked, completely comfortable holding her friend’s feet to the fire. She and Tyler had become close after Cora died. There was nothing like dragging a friend out of the wreckage of his life to bond two people. And they’d been equally present in Matty and Seb’s life ever since.

  “I was just surprised was all. She’s really hot.”

  “She’s too young for you,” Seb snapped, falling back onto the couch and scraping his hand over his face. Mary and Ty looked at one another in surprise. Seb’s temper rarely reared its head. Even in his darkest place, after Cora had died, he never snapped. “They both are. They’re too young for us.”

  Seb lifted his head and stared Tyler in the eye as if challenging him to say different.

  Tyler didn’t disappoint. He tossed his phone on the coffee table and crossed one ankle over the other. Mary settled in on the far side of the couch, looking like she was wishing for popcorn.