Just a Heartbeat Away

by Cara Bastone

  She quickly unzipped her coat and let it loll off the back of her chair. Seb immediately, deeply, regretted prompting her to remove it because her warmed scent lifted off her skin and into the air. She smelled herby and sweet at the same time. Had he ever really noticed that before? Like rosemary mixed with almond. And maybe, yeah, just the sexiest little touch of girl-sweat in there, too.

  Christ. He needed to scream into a pillow. Preferably Via’s pillow. That smelled exactly like her. Did he say scream? He meant huff into it while he dreamed of every dirty-sexy sex position on the planet.

  Was this the longest staff meeting in the history of all time or was it just him? He shifted his hips in his chair and glared at the clock on the wall. Good God, they were only fifteen minutes in. He didn’t know what the hell was going on with Via, but he didn’t know how much more of this superheated charge he could endure.

  She seemed horny.

  Fuck. He realized what it was. Evan, the dumbass-shiniest-hair-having, luckiest-SOB-in-all-of-history, was probably still upstate with his family. She probably was horny.

  And Seb had to endure the sweet torture of her wiggly nearness, and then whenever she saw her boyfriend next, Evan got to reap every single benefit of a hot little Via DeRosa. Great. Just great.

  He couldn’t think of a single other reason why she would be damn near combustion in the middle of a staff meeting.

  Her knee started to toggle up and down, jostling his chair slightly, and Seb prayed for sanity. His hand sliced out and pressed her knee into stillness. He felt her eyes snap to the side of his face, but he didn’t look at her as he took that hand back and jammed it into his pocket. He pretended to be riveted to whatever the hell Principal Grim was yammering on about.

  Finally, finally, the meeting was over, and Sebastian stood up so fast his seat scooted back a few inches. “I’m gonna run and check your heating real quick before I grab Matty from aftercare.”

  “Sure,” she said faintly, looking as dazed as Seb felt. “I’ll come with.”

  Seb said a few goodbyes and then they strode together toward her office. They were walking fast and far apart from one another. It felt weird. She held her coat in front of her like a Roman Catholic nun with her hands in her sleeves. That was weird, too. Seb felt very much like he was playing a game and no one had bothered to explain the rules, or even to tell him that the starting gun had gone off.

  They turned in to her office, and Seb immediately got to his knees in front of her heating unit. Luckily, the ornate iron gate lifted neatly off. He started inspecting it, trying very hard to ignore her heated, glowing presence behind him.

  “You, uh, got a haircut,” she said quietly.

  “Oh. Yeah. Yesterday. It was time.”

  “It makes your hair look darker.”

  “Yeah. Both Matty and I have hair that can’t make up its mind. Dark when it’s short and blonder when it’s long or in the sun.” He attempted to twist a few knobs on the piping and realized he needed a better angle.

  “It looks nice.”

  “Thanks,” he grunted, lying on his back and trying like hell to twist the rust off a handle that wouldn’t budge.

  “And you’re wearing a new shirt.”

  She sounded nervous as hell. He glanced up at her and realized that she was standing just about as far away as the room allowed. She’d also put her coat back on and zipped it clear to her throat. “Nah. It’s an oldie. I just bring it out when the weather gets cold.”

  “Well.” She cleared her throat. “Regardless, you look handsome.”

  “Thanks,” he repeated, his brow furrowing. Some puzzle pieces started to click down into place, and Seb was immediately terrified that he was going to break this foggy, warm haze that had fallen over her. He moved slowly as he messed around with the pipes, unwilling to startle her.

  “I thought for sure that you must have a date tonight, because you look so nice.”

  Was she fishing?

  “Nope.” He finally got the knob to twist and he heard the telltale hiss of hot water, unblocked and starting to fill the pipes of the heating register. He dusted off his hands and rolled up to his knees. “No date.”

  Free as a bird, something inside him wanted to add. But Seb clamped down on that. He wasn’t free as a bird. He had a kid and a dog, and she was in her twenties with a boyfriend—as far as he knew. Even if she was biting her lip and looking at him like she wanted to go behind the jungle gym and kiss at recess, that still didn’t make Seb free as a bird.

  “That oughta do it,” he told her, setting the iron gating back into place and putting his hands on his hips, mostly so he didn’t reach out and test the puffiness of that coat.

  “Wow!” She looked surprised, like she’d barely remembered what he’d come into her office to do in the first place. “Thanks!”

  “You got it. I’m gonna jet and grab Matty. I’ll see you tomorrow?”

  She nodded absently and moved over to her desk to gather up a few papers.

  Sebastian gave her a quick wave and melted out the door of her office. He was both intensely relieved and wildly disappointed to be free of her.

  * * *

  SOFTBALL GOT RAINED OUT, so it wasn’t until the next staff meeting that Seb really got to see Via again. He was painfully curious if it would be back to normal, or if it would be anything like last week. Sexy, tense last week.

  “I see you left your sleeping bag at home today,” Seb said, grinning at her as he slid into the seat next to her. He greeted Grace and Shelly and passed out gum.

  “If you’re referring to my very fashionable winter coat—” she shot him a look “—yes, I left it at home. Some guy fixed the heating in my office.”

  “Sounds like a great guy.”

  “Meh, he’s fine. A little full of himself.”

  They both laughed and only stopped when they found a hot pink envelope being wagged in each of their faces.

  Seb saw his name scrawled carefully across the front. “What’s this?” he asked Sadie, who was the person doing the wagging.

  “Open it and see!” she squealed, practically bouncing on the spot.

  “You set the date!” Via said, her voice delighted. “Oh, Sade, I’m so happy for you guys.”

  “It’s the weekend after next,” Sebastian said, frowning down at the invite, assuming it was a typo.

  “Yup. We wanted to give people as little notice as possible. Rae’s family is huge, but they won’t all be able to make it on such a tight time frame.” She whispered the last part out of the side of her mouth.

  “Wow.” Via stared down at the invite. “Okay. Cool.”

  “So, please fill them out during the meeting and then hand them back to me by the end, because I don’t have the time for tardy RSVPs, ’kay?” She air-kissed and then moved on to pass the next row their invites.

  Via pulled a pen from her bag and neatly wrote her name on the line. She checked fish instead of chicken and then put a 1 in the box for number of guests attending.

  Seb felt the light scratch of her pen rattle him like Godzilla’s footsteps. He could almost hear the echoing reverberation of that number one rolling around his thick skull.

  “Evan still upstate?” he asked, not even caring that she’d know he’d been peeking at her response card.

  “Hmm?” she asked, handing the pen to him.

  Seb nodded at her invitation. “Your boyfriend will still be out of town next week?”

  “Oh.” She dropped her gaze immediately to the invitation, flipping the incriminating information over. “Ah. No, he’s back in Brooklyn. I heard.”

  She heard. SHE HEARD.

  That had to mean one thing. That could only mean one thing. Was he breathing? He commanded himself to breathe. It would be the geekiest move of all time if he passed out right now. Seb forced himself to write his name down on his i
nvite.

  “But he’s not my boyfriend anymore,” she said softly, her eyes looking everywhere but at him.

  Seb felt like spiking the save-the-date in the end zone. Like tap dancing down the hallway of the school. Like tipping her back in her chair and kissing the hell out of her.

  But then the look on her face at that softball game flashed through his eyes. The way she’d wiped tears with her wrist, looking so small and lonely.

  He found he didn’t have to lie when he replied with, “I’m sorry, Via. Breakups are hell.”

  “Yeah.” She nodded.

  “How long ago?” he asked, sort of hating himself for fishing.

  “Um, when I took that trip upstate last month? You remember, right after...you were sick.”

  Right after he’d spilled his guts out to her. After she’d taken care of his sick ass. After she’d put Matty to bed and sat with Seb on the couch. Did the timing of it mean anything? Was it all coincidence?

  He had no idea what to ask next. How to ask what he so desperately wanted to know. Was I in your heart when you left your boyfriend? “Was it messy?”

  She nodded, something that looked like guilt in those brown eyes she still wouldn’t turn in his direction. “He was pretty blindsided. It took a while to convince him that I meant it.”

  Seb tried to imagine what it would feel like to have Via DeRosa leave you. Suddenly, months of pent-up resentment toward this Evan kid just kind of dried up. He felt sympathy. Seb was sure she’d been sweet as pie during the breakup. And fuck if that wouldn’t have made it even worse.

  “Damn.”

  “Yeah. I’d never broken up with someone before,” she said, almost thoughtfully.

  “Never? You’re twenty-eight years old. You must have had lots of boyfriends.”

  She smiled a little. “I’ve had a few.”

  Seb wanted to punch a wall, and then himself in the face for bringing up this line of conversation. He didn’t want to hear this shit.

  “But they all broke up with me.”

  “Not possible.” The words were out of his mouth before he could even consider not saying them. They were sharp and high resolution. The kind of words that said a million other words. He was practically telling her I wouldn’t break up with you.

  She started at his tight tone, but otherwise didn’t indicate that he was being a total psycho. “No, seriously. Like clockwork. Bing, bang, boom. It was sort of weird to be the one ending it this time. But...” She shrugged. “It wasn’t fair to stay with him when—” Suddenly her eyes were on his, brown and clear and making the air crackle with static all around them. “When I wasn’t being honest with myself.”

  What the fuck does that mean?

  Principal Grim started the staff meeting and Sebastian swallowed down his growl of frustration. His mind was in about eight different places all at once, and he’d never in his life felt more aware of another person as he was of Via DeRosa. She crossed one leg over the other, and Seb held his breath. When she tapped her capped pen on the back of the hot pink invitation, Seb felt insane, like she was trying to tap out a message to him. And when she leaned forward to whisper something in Shelly’s ear, he caught that scent again. Almond and rosemary.

  So many things hit him at once. He hadn’t realized quite how constrained he’d felt that she’d had a boyfriend. He’d convinced himself that it didn’t matter either way. But here he was, considering the fact that he could now flirt with her, guilt-free, and the idea was swelling up like a piece of ripening fruit.

  She was single. She was available. She was free.

  He held back a groan.

  She was single and free. Which meant she was probably going to get on Tinder like everyone else her age. She was going to date and hook up and party. She was free, but that didn’t mean she was available to Seb and all the baggage that came with him.

  She was in her twenties. Just like yesterday and just like tomorrow. She was single, and it changed so much.

  But it didn’t change everything.

  Fuck.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “SO,” GRACE SAID matter-of-factly as she heated up leftovers in the microwave. “You broke up with your man?”

  The penny finally dropped. Via had been utterly bemused after the staff meeting to find Grace and Shelly practically zipping her into her coat and dragging her back to Grace’s house. Grace only lived a few blocks away from Via, so it wasn’t a huge imposition. But Via had had no idea why she’d been ushered into an unexpected dinner of leftovers in Grace’s snug little one-bedroom on Eighty-first Street.

  “We couldn’t help overhearing at the meeting,” Shelly said with just the slightest bit of pink on her cheeks.

  Via wondered with chagrin exactly what else they’d overheard over the last few weeks. She knew that her feelings for Sebastian couldn’t exactly have been considered covert.

  “Oh. Yes. Evan and I broke up.”

  “What a shame,” Grace said as she took out the container of chicken stew from the microwave, stirred it and put it back in. “Shell, would you mind slicing that bread? Via, are you the kind of girl that requires a salad at every meal?”

  “Um.” She wasn’t sure how to respond to that.

  “If you are, go ahead and fix yourself one.”

  Via laughed at the judgment in Grace’s tone, as if eating salad at dinner was something she wanted very little to do with. “I’ll be fine with whatever we’re having. Uh, thank you for inviting me for dinner.”

  She was really stretching the meaning of the word invite, considering they’d basically frog-marched her to the house.

  “Whenever we hear that one of our colleagues is going through a hard time, we try to have a sit-down with them,” Shelly explained, putting the bread on the table and coming back to sit next to Via.

  Was that what was happening to Via? Was she going through a hard time? Via thought of the way breakups were depicted in movies. Pints of Häagen-Dazs and tears over rom-coms. She was sad over ending things with Evan, sure, but she had to admit, she hadn’t had that drafty feeling since she’d come back from upstate and packed up all his things from her apartment. She chewed her bottom lip.

  “Actually, this is how we became such good friends with Sebastian,” Grace said, groaning a little as she lowered herself into the chair across from Shelly and Via. The stew steamed on the table and Via did the honors of serving up a bowl for each person. She was glad for the task because she could feel each woman’s eyes on her face and she knew that they were looking for a reaction to Sebastian’s name. “When we found out he was a widower, we had him over for dinner, told him about our husbands, and we all just sort of bonded from there.”

  “He mentioned that you’d both lost your husbands. I’m so sorry about that. Was it recent?”

  To Via’s dismay, Shelly’s eyes filled with tears. “Richard passed about five years ago, but it feels recent for me.”

  Grace leaned across the table and squeezed Shelly’s hand, and then she pointed to a picture hanging on her kitchen wall. It was of a very young Grace and an equally young Latino man who stood behind her with his arms crossed over her chest. “Esteban died about thirty years ago. My kids are starting to get after me to date.”

  Via hid her surprise. It had never occurred to her that Grace had been in an interracial marriage. But that was probably because Grace was an older white lady and Via had just made assumptions. She suddenly thought back to her lunch with Sadie when Sadie had been so surprised to hear that Via was a foster kid. It made sense in a new way now. You never could tell who someone really was unless you broke bread with them, actually stopped to listen to what they were trying to tell you.

  “Thirty years is a long time,” Via mused. Unbidden, a question popped up and out of her. She didn’t mean to ask it, but maybe her conversation with Sebastian about grief had greased some inte
rnal wheels because Via didn’t feel uncomfortable asking. “Do you ever get over it?” She cleared her throat. “I lost my parents when I was twelve. And some days it feels just as hard as it was back then.”

  Grace raised her eyebrows in a knowing way. “Get over it? No. Not if what you actually mean is forget about it.”

  “In my experience,” Shelly chimed in, “the way I feel has changed a lot, but I can’t imagine ever getting over it. My sister wants me to date, too, just like Grace’s kids.” In an uncharacteristic show of temper, Shelly let her spoon clatter back to her bowl of stew. “What is it with people’s fascination with other people’s dating lives?”

  “Shell,” Grace said in a dry tone, “what do you think we’re doing with Via right this very moment? Sticking our noses where they don’t belong.”

  Via laughed. Now that Grace had actually said it out loud, any suspicions Via had had about their motives just sort of evaporated away. These were two well-meaning new friends, who were trying to support her. Could she really blame them if they wanted a little gossip as a side dish?

  For some reason, she got the impression that whatever she said tonight was not going to be repeated. Her confessions were protected by these two women who’d been through plenty in their own lives. Even so, she resolved not to let on anything about how she was feeling for Sebastian.

  “You don’t seem so nosy,” Via assured them.

  “So...” Shelly started, laying a hand on Via’s forearm. “You’re all right, then? Not too torn up about the breakup?”

  Via thought back on her last month, wanting to give an honest answer. “The first few days were really hard. You know, picking up your phone and realizing that you don’t have anyone to call.”

  And realizing that you invested two years in someone who did not fit into your life. Who didn’t even want to fit into your life.

  She gulped. “But I had my foster sister there with me for most of it, force-feeding me popcorn and tea and making me talk about my feelings.”

  Grace and Shelly both laughed, exchanging eye contact. Via instantly understood that their bond was one of friendship and sisterhood just like hers and Fin’s.