Just a Heartbeat Away

by Cara Bastone

  “I do. I brought a salad from home. I’ll be fine.”

  Her office door flung open and Principal Grim strode back in, bushy hair flying. “Via, darling, that was quite the show, now, wasn’t it? How’s the hand?”

  “I’m fine,” she said to Seb, a steely look in her eye. “It’s fine,” she said to Principal Grim.

  Seb nodded, took one last look at her and ducked out to do his job.

  * * *

  IF THE BASKET of fries he’d dropped off at her office without a word right after lunch had been considered hovering, then Seb was straight-up helicoptering as he waited outside her office after the final bell.

  The thing with Via, though, was that he was pretty sure she’d tell him if he was overstepping.

  The point ended up being moot because the second she stepped out of her office and saw what waited for her, she cracked into an eye-rolling smile. Matty stood there on one side of Seb, sucking on a juice box and crunching on some peanut butter crackers. Crabby stood on the other side, wagwagwagging, that pink tongue lolling every which way.

  “Well, if it isn’t the brute squad.” She laughed.

  “You’re getting an armed escort home whether you want one or not, my dear.”

  “Armed?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “Yeah. Matty’s packing.”

  She burst out laughing and Matty looked back and forth between the grown-ups. “Packing what, Daddy? Are we going somewhere?”

  “Just to Via’s house.”

  “Why do I need a bag for that?”

  “You don’t, twerp. I’m just being annoying on purpose.”

  “Why?”

  “Because it makes Miss DeRosa smile.”

  The smile wobbled off her face, and he could have kicked himself. Was he flirting with her right now? His off-limits friend who’d been accosted earlier in the day? Could he be any denser?

  “Well,” she recovered quickly. “I suppose I wouldn’t mind the company.”

  They walked home, three people and one happy dog, Matty filling the silence with school chatter and snack crunching. Seb was kind of shocked at how close their houses were, not more than a ten-minute walk. That was practically living together by New York standards.

  She lived in a boxy apartment building on Eighty-sixth Street, next to the aboveground trains and so close to the drink you could smell the salt on the air.

  “Sometimes I think Brooklyn has microclimates like San Francisco,” Seb remarked as they strolled up to the front of her building.

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah, here you are only ten blocks from me but you can smell the ocean from your spot.”

  “I know. And the chebureki.” She nodded to where two stooped Russian men sat across from one another at a makeshift chessboard. One of them had a little steaming cart next to him, selling the savory Russian pastries for a dollar apiece.

  “Oh yeah, I guess this is almost Bath Beach. I heard the Russian population was moving out this way.”

  She nodded. “Another Italian neighborhood with no more Italians.”

  “I guess we’re all just Brooklynites in Brooklyn.”

  She nodded and he wondered if she was thinking about her parents. “Want to come up and see the place?”

  She’s nervous to go up alone. The thought struck him like a jolt from a toaster, and he felt warm and weird all at once. God, he didn’t like thinking about her being scared. He sort of hated her boyfriend right about now, this Evan guy. Why hadn’t she called him? He surely had a key. Shouldn’t he be waiting up there with a glass of wine and a fresh-baked lasagna? Bubble bath and a foot rub? Something to soothe her after the horrible day she’d had.

  The other half of Seb, the half that he wasn’t as proud of, was glad that he got to be the one to go up there with her. Some ancient, testosterone-pumping part of his chemical makeup pictured himself peeking in her closets with a Maglite, kicking at a misshapen lump in her curtains, making sure the place was safe for her.

  “Sure.” He rocked back on his heels, answering immediately. “You don’t mind the dog?”

  She looked at him like he’d gone crackers. “Crabby? No. I don’t mind Crabby.”

  Via took Matty by the hand and led him through the front lobby of her building. It was one of those old, decrepit buildings that had gotten a bad facelift sometime in the last decade. There were sheets of frosted green glass dividing the entryway in two and a skinny purple carpet leading toward the elevator. But the granite floors were spiderwebbed with cracks, and the pleather armchairs that sat next to a fake fern in the corner were layered over with dust. Such typical Brooklyn.

  She walked straight past the row of little metal cubbies and didn’t check her mail. He wondered if that was because she didn’t usually get any or if those mailboxes didn’t open, a problem he’d had at an old place.

  The elevator was brass and reflective, old-world. There was even a gate that had to be yanked to one side to get it to start. Matty did the honors, delighting in the smudgy fingerprints he left on the shiny brass handle.

  Via led them to the dark wood door of her apartment. All the other doors had crooked, rusty numbers, but hers had a perfectly shiny, aligned number 5C. He knew, without a doubt, that she’d done that herself and it made him want to bury his nose behind her ear. Kiss both eyelids.

  He was such a goner. Such a dumbass for doing this to himself.

  Her hand shook, just a touch, as she scrabbled the key into the lock.

  “Violetta.” He stilled her with just his fingertips to her wrist. “I’m just coming up to see your apartment; you know that there is nothing wrong in there. There’s no way that...” He could be in there.

  “I know.” She nodded resolutely. Her lips were white from pressing them together. But then she tossed her hair back and attempted a smile. “But what’s the point in being friends with Thor if you don’t get to watch him throw a little muscle around?”

  That caught him off guard. He laughed. And then laughed harder at the expression on Matty’s face.

  “Did Miss DeRosa just call you Thor?”

  “You’d have to ask her.”

  Seb put one hand in between Matty’s shoulder blades, a silent reminder to be good in our friend’s house. He tightened his grip on Crabby’s leash.

  She swung the door open and led them inside. Sebastian immediately realized that he was holding his breath and shook his head at himself.

  “Don’t worry about your shoes,” she called, though she kicked her own small heels into a basket.

  Seb looked meaningfully down at Matty and they followed suit, no matter what she said. She dumped her bag onto her couch and sidled into her kitchen. “Matty, you want a snack?”

  His little boy padding after Via and Crabby behaving for once, Seb took the opportunity to really look around. It was spick-and-span. Not obnoxiously so, but still, she obviously was a cleaner. Her furniture all matched, though it was as horrible as she’d warned him. Cheap particleboard crap that you couldn’t even have the satisfaction of burning due to all the chemicals. But her space was nice. Maybe a little plain, with a pop of color here and there.

  He liked it. But it was...lonely.

  He couldn’t exactly explain why, but the loneliness was palpable in this house, like a scent on the air or a reflection in a distant mirror.

  Seb hated himself for doing it, but he looked around for evidence of the boyfriend. A baseball cap was slung crooked on her coatrack, but he recognized that as hers from softball. Beyond that, everything looked decidedly girly. Even the books on her very packed shelves were organized in a rainbow based on the color of their spines. He didn’t know any guy who would do that.

  “Matty’s having pretzels and hummus. Do you want some?” She appeared in the doorway of her kitchen, one foot balancing on the top of the other.

  “Sure.
” He paused. “Are we overstaying our welcome? Your radar for that goes completely out of whack once you have a kid.”

  “Let me rephrase. I’m inviting you to come have pretzels and hummus.”

  He nodded and walked with Crabby into the kitchen. He stopped in his tracks. The living room had been lonely. But this room right here? This was downright crowded. There was a riot of color in two different fruit baskets, with plenty of vegetables thrown in as well. She’d taken the door off her pantry and every can on her shelves was again arranged by rainbow color. And she had a lot of cans. There was a lumpy, lopsided bouquet of every color on her windowsill, currently backlit by the afternoon sun. Her dishes on the drying rack were mismatched and bright, and she had a wall lined with hooks where every kitchen utensil imaginable dangled.

  He was no expert, but he could recognize the good stuff when he saw it. Copper ladles and sharp, heavy knives with pearl inlaid in the handles. There was something mouthwatering percolating in a slow cooker, and when she opened the fridge to get the hummus, Seb’s jaw dropped straight open.

  “Good Lord!” His hand landed on hers as she started closing the fridge door. He yanked it back open. “What, are you running your own farmers market or something?” There was every green thing imaginable, roots curling akimbo, three different shades of every vegetable. “You have two different kinds of beets. Who in God’s name needs two different kinds of beets?”

  She laughed, but there was a very healthy blush working its way up her cheeks. “I like cooking, okay?”

  “Apparently.” He knew his eyes were as big as pancakes, but he seriously had never seen this much produce outside of a grocery store. “You really cook with all this?”

  “Of course. I’m usually cooking for two.”

  He felt some of his rising giddiness pinprick away into the air. Of course. She cooked for Evan the Supermodel. Ponytail-having bastard.

  “Fin comes over most nights to eat with me. And most mornings, now that I think about it.”

  Hmm. What the hell did that mean? That she didn’t cook for her boyfriend? It was a stupid mystery to try to be solving when he could just be enjoying her company.

  “This doesn’t look like our hummus,” Matty said dubiously as he eyed the Tupperware she’d just cracked open. He’d slid up onto one of the chairs at the small breakfast table and was drumming skeptical fingers on the linoleum top.

  “It’s homemade,” she replied absently as she fished in one cabinet for pretzels.

  Seb’s heart sank. This was where his picky-ass kid was going to turn up his nose at a beautiful woman’s homemade food and make Seb feel like an inept father who stuffed his kid full of mac and cheese.

  But then Via did something amazing. At the same second she was selecting a pear from her fruit basket, Via dipped a pretzel in the hummus and just jammed it right in Matty’s mouth. His eyes widened in surprise as much as Seb’s did. And then Matty’s eyes widened even more.

  “It’s good.”

  “I know,” Via replied from the kitchen sink where she was washing the pear.

  Seb slid down next to Matty and tried it. Damn. It was better than good. This Evan asshole better marry Via DeRosa, or he deserved a punch straight in the dick.

  Via brought a plate of sliced pears and slid down across from Matty and Seb. Crabby’s tail thumped under the table and she reached down to give him some pets.

  Seb watched her while he crunched his pretzels. He saw the toll the day had taken on her. Her wrinkled silk shirt, her lipstick chewed off, the eye makeup slightly smudged over one eye. And that hand, already tipping from dark pink into purple. He wanted to speak to her but didn’t want Matty to overhear. Seb pulled out his phone.

  I’m so sorry for what happened today, Via.

  She jolted just a little as the text vibrated in her pocket but she ignored it, obviously too polite to answer a text while she had company.

  Seb made eyes at her until she got his message and opened her phone. He asked Matty questions about his day at school while she pecked out a one-handed response.

  I’m okay, Sebastian. It wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t anyone’s fault but his.

  He took a deep breath. She was right of course. But still...

  I wish I would have intervened sooner. And then you wouldn’t be hurt. Don’t console me. You’re not supposed to console me when you’re the one who left that room with a bruise.

  She smirked at him as she read his text.

  Then what do you want? Tough love?

  God. He wanted any type of love that she would throw his way. If he were a different man, maybe he would have typed that out. But he had a kid chomping pretzels next to him and a dog sleeping on his foot. And she had a boyfriend. And was twenty-seven years old, for fuck’s sake. How many times had he been through this with himself?

  Anything to make you feel better.

  She frowned down at his text. She sighed and took a big bite of pretzel and hummus, looking out the window. She was tweaking her nose one way and then the other when she finally responded.

  Yeah. Worst birthday ever.

  “It’s your birthday?” He hadn’t meant to speak it out loud but there it was. His stomach gave an almighty flop, like a sea lion on a wet dock. In all his musings over Via DeRosa’s age, it simply hadn’t occurred to him that the woman had birthdays. Dumb but true.

  Just because she’s older doesn’t mean she’s old enough, he reminded himself. He’d been clinging so tightly to the number twenty-seven that twenty-eight felt strangely slippery in his mind, like he couldn’t quite pin it to the same bulletin board that her former age had been fastened to.

  “Really?” Matty straightened like he’d been electrocuted. At six years old, birthdays were far from routine. In fact, they were pretty much as special as dinosaur sightings.

  “Really,” she admitted, pursing her lips together.

  “Oh God.” Sebastian face-palmed. “Matty, finish up. We’ve gotta get out of here. I’m sure Miss DeRosa has a fancy dinner or a party or something to go to.”

  Via shrugged. “You can stay for a bit. Fin is coming over for dinner, but beyond that, nothing too special. You’re not crashing.”

  Matty was doing his best electric-shock-part-two impression. “Dad, can we stay for dinner?” He leaned in very close to Seb’s face, all hummus breath and bits of pretzel flying everywhere. “There’s usually cake on a birthday,” he whispered loud enough to make Via burst out laughing.

  Seb was glad that someone was laughing. Because to him? This was mortifying. “We’re having dinner with Tyler and Mary, remember? To celebrate your grandparents leav—because we haven’t gotten to see them in a while.”

  “They can come,” Via said, in that quiet, calm, easy way that just slayed Seb. “I obviously have plenty of food.”

  “Oh. Are you sure? You’re going to cook for all of us on your birthday?”

  She leaned forward, her voice low and conspiratorial. “Don’t you kind of want to see Fin and Tyler in the same room again?”

  Seb grinned. Well, she made a good point.

  She turned and let Matty capture her attention as they chatted about the hummus and the potential for birthday cake. Seb just watched her. Her color was back and the dullness in her eyes had faded almost completely. Maybe they were overstaying their welcome, he wasn’t sure. He was just glad they got to stay.

  * * *

  FIN ARRIVED AT 5:30 with a backpack full of cheap wine and fancy grape juice for Matty. She’d kissed both Seb and Matty full on the mouth, smelling like sage and lavender, and whisked through the house in a skirt that went to the floor.

  She was blindingly beautiful, but Seb found himself completely comfortable around her now that she was simply his friend.

  Mary and Tyler arrived together at six, when they would have arrived at Seb’s. Mary had a small gift in tow,
and Tyler had delighted Via with a handful of pink carnations. Seb wished he had something to give to Via that would make her whole face go long and open and lit up like that.

  He’d settled for being her sous chef while she cooked for everyone. Though he had to admit that it was probably more of a gift for himself than it was for her, standing hip-to-hip at the counter, his elbow brushing hers every so often. Seb held his breath and butchered some tomatoes he was supposed to be dicing when she laid one hand on his shoulder to boost herself up to an overhead cabinet.

  He studied his handiwork. “I really can’t tell if I’m making this easier or harder on you by offering my cooking skills.”

  She gave up on reaching the spice she’d been grappling for and bit her smile back as she peered at his gelatinous mess of tomato on the cutting board. She looked up at Seb, her eyebrows raised and her bottom lip between her teeth.

  “Well, it’ll still taste the same, won’t it?” he asked anxiously.

  Via burst out laughing. Seb couldn’t help but drop his eyes to her mouth. “You’re doing fine, Seb.”

  He laughed with her but a truth had just come crashing down around his ears. He liked her so much he was willing to torture himself by being around her. His mother-in-law’s advice echoed in his head. Her voice was spooky and ominous, and he knew Muriel would have rolled her eyes at how melodramatic he was being. But he wondered if she was right. He wondered if maybe, just maybe, the adult thing to do here would be to respectfully tell Via of his feelings. No pressure, just information.

  He nearly jolted at that treacherous line of thought. So what if she dumped Evan? Would that matter, really? Even if she fell into Seb’s arms, his arms would still be forty-two years old. With a kid and a baggage claim full of issues. He tersely reminded himself Evan wasn’t in the way of him and Via. Everything was in the way of him and Via.

  She tapped his shoulder and he turned, looking down at her.

  Didn’t mean he wouldn’t mind her kicking her boyfriend to the curb, though.