Just a Heartbeat Away

by Cara Bastone

  “Well, don’t you look dapper,” Shelly said to Sebastian, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

  “You look beautiful, too, Shelly,” Seb said as he studied Shelly’s face. “Is everything all right?”

  “Oh, don’t mind me. This is just the first wedding I’ve been to without Richard and—”

  Shelly cut off in surprise as Seb gathered her in close for a hug that had that force field in Via’s chest swallowing Brooklyn whole. This man was making feelings grow inside of her so fast and so hard that she didn’t even know what to direct them toward. She watched him from across the group—and she wasn’t the only one. He was like some rare form of wild beast that had somehow been convinced into a three-piece suit. Via couldn’t help but feel, for one painful second, like his presence in her life had to be temporary. Nothing this beautiful and rare could possibly last.

  “I’ll be your wedding date, Shelly,” he told her, a firm hand on each of his friend’s shoulders.

  “Oh, Sebastian.” Shelly blushed all the way to the roots of her hair. “You don’t have—”

  “I’m sad my husband’s dead, too,” Grace cut in blandly. “Be my date.”

  Seb laughed at her irreverence. “I’d never turn down two dates.”

  He held an arm out to both ladies just as the gates opened and the guests were allowed to find their seats at the outdoor wedding.

  Via followed the group, a little at odds now that Sebastian was here but hadn’t even said hi. She watched from a row back as he got the two ladies settled in.

  “Via, you really look stunning,” Cat said from beside her. “I couldn’t even staple myself into a dress that looked like that.”

  Via laughed. “Oh, Cat, you look beautiful, too. I love that style.”

  “But seriously, the color and everything, Via, it’s breathtaking.”

  “She’s right,” Grace said, turning around and eyeing Via’s dress.

  Via blushed and fussed with the program in her hands. She could feel the bright lights of Seb’s gray-greens on her, but still he didn’t say anything.

  “Oh, here we go!” Cat squealed as music started and people rushed to find seats.

  Via cried the whole dang wedding and was extremely proud of herself for remembering to bring spare makeup. Because, girl, she needed a fix up.

  Sadie looked gorgeous and radiant with her short red hair braided back and her romantic, trumpet-style dress. But it was Rae who really brought the waterworks on for Via. The short, black-haired woman wore a handsome tailored suit and the biggest smile Via had ever seen. She didn’t think she’d ever seen someone look prouder than Rae did when Sadie walked down the aisle. Maybe she was getting caught up in the moment, but Via felt like she was watching Rae come to terms with the fact that Sadie was picking her, forever.

  Their ceremony was fast and emotional and barely intelligible through all the tears. It wasn’t more than a few minutes before Sadie was bending Rae backward for the kiss of a lifetime. The two of them straightened up, threw their joined hands in the air and completely cheesed for the wildly cheering crowd.

  It was getting chilly with the sun going down, so the caterers bustled the wedding guests inside the venue. Cocktail hour was scheduled to last for a while, so the first chance she got, Via excused herself to the bathroom and fixed her makeup.

  She felt wrung out after the high emotional intensity of the wedding, like a sponge after a really great bout with a saucepan. A good cry always did that to her. But as Via eyed herself in the mirror, she realized that it was more than that. She felt like she was filling up with air and leaking it at the same time. Like her insides were somehow producing glitter and glue simultaneously. She was a glittery, sparkly, sticky mess inside her chest.

  God, had she ever felt this way before? Like, ever? About anyone?

  After all the attention she was used to getting from Sebastian, it was strange to feel the loss of it. Almost like a vacuum. She shrugged to herself in the mirror. Either she could address it head-on with him or she could let it go. But she refused to allow herself to brood. She was here to party down for Sadie and Rae. Glitter glue be damned.

  Deeming herself presentable again, she stepped out of the bathroom and into the back hallway that led to the reception area. She stopped in her tracks.

  Sebastian was leaning against the wall, apparently waiting for her, his hands in his pants pockets and his feet crossed at the ankle. The second he saw her, he pushed forward. Closer than normal, but he wasn’t touching. Her high heels brought her up to a solid five-foot-eight, but she still had to drop her head all the way back to be able to look him in the eye.

  “You’re so gorgeous it hurts,” he told her, point-blank.

  She jolted like he’d zapped her with a little kiss of electricity. She opened her mouth but couldn’t think of anything to say. His words were still absorbing into her, like beads of wine over cloth.

  “I wanted to tell you immediately, but I worried it might embarrass you in front of everyone. And I didn’t want to say, ‘you look nice’ or ‘very beautiful’ or something lame like that. Because the truth is, I can barely look at you right now. That’s how unbelievably gorgeous you are.”

  Thank you. That’s the nicest compliment anyone has ever given me. Sebastian, I have feelings for you. I want to treat this wedding like a date. And then I want to go on a real date.

  Any of that would have been acceptable in Via’s eyes. They were all words that were tripping to fall out of her mouth. Maybe it was his nearness, his size, the warm pine man-scent that was emanating from him, but Via found herself with a terrible case of brain scramble and she ended up simply blurting, “You look really hot.”

  She would have face-palmed herself right into a coma if it weren’t for the sun-shaming, earthquaking, heart-stuttering grin that exploded over his face.

  “Thanks,” he said, his earlier intensity melting into a much warmer expression. His eyes skated lazily over her face, and he reached up to touch one of the gold studs in her ear. Her breath caught at the intimate feel of his rough fingertips at her earlobe. He wasn’t being seductive, he was just toggling the earring around, almost the same way that Matty had been absently playing with her necklace the other day. “You wanna get drunk and dance and celebrate our friend?”

  “Yes,” she answered immediately. It was the perfect invitation.

  * * *

  SEBASTIAN SIPPED CHAMPAGNE and laughed his ass off with Grace and Shelly and Cat and felt like part of him was walking around outside his body. Via was chatting with some people he didn’t know on the other side of the room. She was accepting an appetizer on a toothpick from a caterer who nearly swallowed his tongue when she smiled at him. And then she was swiping a glass of champagne from the bar and settling herself in the free seat at their table, grinning over at Rachel, a dozy, loose, electric expression on her face.

  The whole time, Sebastian felt as if he were split in two. Half of him was sitting here, in this chair, chuckling as Grace and Cat narrated voices for each of Rae’s gawky cousins in the corner. And the other half? Well, the other half was over there with that little, warm, golden, wavy-haired sex perfection charming everyone she came in contact with.

  He’d felt a variation on this feeling before, with Matty. Fatherhood had a way of making a man feel like his heart had grown two stubby legs and chubby little forearms and a tiny, blunt face alternately scowling and laughing. Even though he’d had a lot of room for improvement as a father in the first three years of Matty’s life, it didn’t mean he hadn’t loved his son to distraction.

  He’d always felt better when he and Matty didn’t have much distance between them. He didn’t like the world getting in the way of his heart. In a way, that’s how he felt right now. Like he and Via were a unit, two parts to one whole and he just wanted to be next to her.

  Actually, he wanted to be a hell of a lot clos
er than next to her. Inside of her was pretty much what he had in mind. He wanted to slip his hand up that green dress and watch his paw disrupt the fabric. He bet he could span her entire stomach if he spread his fingers wide enough. He also bet she had a light little touch. He wanted her to torture him with it while he took that dress in two handfuls and just smelled it. Honestly, he kind of wanted to do disgusting things to that dress. Destroy it. Just to take the edge off before he turned around and did all those same things to her.

  When they’d come out of the bathroom area together, a woman Seb didn’t know had called over to Via. Her face had lit with recognition. And as much as Seb wanted to completely dominate her entire night, keep her all to himself like a child with a Blow Pop, he nodded her off to greet her friend. She’d taken one step and turned back, looking over her shoulder in a way that had damn near brought him to his knees. If he’d had a pencil in his mouth, he would have chattered it down to a toothpick. That look she gave him, it was a little see you later promise.

  She’d gone and mingled, and so had he. And now she was sitting much too far away.

  Her eyes glanced over at his and ricocheted away immediately, her cheeks going a deeper pink than he’d ever seen before. He realized that his heart must be in his eyes. He must look like he was thinking very dirty thoughts.

  Seb attempted to be a little more discreet. He tried to fix his face and look generically out at the crowd of people who were dancing to the cocktail hour DJ’s Motown mix. But his eyes went back to her. He dragged them away. They went back to her. Again and again.

  This went on for about fifteen minutes before Cat leaned over and nudged him hard in the shoulder.

  “You better put a condom on those eyes, Sebastian.”

  “Excuse me?” He jolted at her words.

  “Either you wear a rubber on those eyes of yours, or you’re about to get Miss DeRosa pregnant from twenty paces.”

  Sebastian, extremely aware that he was talking to his son’s second-grade teacher right now, had the humility to look pretty chagrined. He dragged a hand over his face and tried to wipe the dirty sex thoughts off of it. “That obvious, huh?”

  Cat raised an eyebrow and her glass of champagne to her lips. “About as subtle as a jackhammer.”

  “She looks really, really beautiful. I’m, ah, having trouble keeping my eyes to myself.”

  Cat clapped her mouth closed, like she was stopping herself from saying something.

  Sebastian rolled his hand through the air like, spit it out.

  Cat leaned forward. “Seb, she’s making that same face right back at you. Ah! There’s my husband. He couldn’t make it in time for the ceremony, but now that he’s here, I’m going to get horribly drunk and do illegal things to him.”

  She slapped Seb hard on the shoulder and rose. He wondered vaguely if other parents had this kind of relationship with their children’s educators. Probably not.

  Seb felt a light heat on the side of his face and looked up fast enough to catch Via unawares. Sure enough, she was watching him. And the look on her face was...very inappropriate. In fact, she was looking at him like she was trying to get him pregnant at twenty paces. He cleared his throat, took a deep breath and lifted his chin up once, as if to say, Come over here.

  Her eyes on his, she rose from her seat with all the effortless grace of a bird. God, she was beautiful. A second later, she plunked down in the seat that Cat had just vacated and leaned across Seb to say something to Grace and Shelly that Seb didn’t even hear.

  He was too busy suffocating in the nearness of her. Her bare shoulder firmly pushed into his as she leaned across him. A laugh tremored through her and shook something loose in Seb’s chest. He looked down and her fingers were in a pyramid on the seat of her chair as she held herself in a lean. He wished she’d put her hand on his leg instead.

  Seb let out a long, low breath and laid his arm along the back of her chair. Good enough for now. When she leaned back, the ends of her hair danced over his arm.

  She looked up at him, an expression on her face that he couldn’t quite interpret.

  “What?”

  “Nothing,” she replied way too quickly. She glanced at his armpit and looked away.

  “Seriously.” He nudged her warm, soft side with his free hand. “What is it?”

  She sighed, like she didn’t want to say what she was about to say. “You just smell really good is all.”

  He grinned, smug and so damn happy. “Glad you like it.”

  She grumbled something into her champagne that he didn’t quite catch, but this time, she staunchly refused to reveal it.

  The reception went into full swing after that. The happy couple was announced by the DJ, and Seb grinned when Via jumped to her feet to cheer.

  “Look at them!” Via teared up. “God, can you imagine being that happy?”

  Uh. Yeah.

  He was pretty much that happy right this very second.

  Then everybody filed back to be seated for dinner. Seb’s eyebrows rose in surprise as he glanced around the table. Rachel had brought a date to the wedding, he hadn’t noticed before.

  “Apparently, Geeky Greg has major game,” he whispered in Via’s ear, causing her to snort into her water.

  “Good for him,” Via replied, and then her eyes went thoughtful. “And good for her, too. They’ve been looking at each other like they’re the luckiest two people on the planet.”

  Via was just so sweet, always seeing the best in—

  “But frankly, I wouldn’t care either way as long as it means Rachel stops jamming your biceps between her boobs.”

  Now it was Seb’s turn to choke on his water. He coughed it out and turned to her with a little smile that he attempted to smother. “You noticed that, huh?”

  “Sebastian, the astronauts in the Space Station noticed that. She’s not exactly subtle, is she?”

  He thought about making a joke but instead erred on the side of complete and utter transparency. He didn’t want her worrying. He’d had a taste of that watching Christian the bartender fawn all over her and he wasn’t a fan. “Then you probably noticed me removing my biceps from said boobs over and over.”

  She raised an eyebrow. “I noticed.”

  “And since you’re such a careful observer, you may have noticed that I’m not a flirt.” One of his fingers, still on the back of her chair, lightly, breathlessly, played in the ends of her hair for just a moment.

  Her eyes cut to that side and then back at him. “I have quite a bit of evidence to the contrary, Seb,” she said dryly.

  He laughed. “Well, let me be clear then. I’m not a flirt with anyone I’m not completely swept away by.”

  Her face went from dry and amused to pliant and soft. Soft like warm pillows and wet lips and down comforters and snow outside and come here, let’s do that again.

  They let out twin breaths and then simultaneously turned away to gulp champagne. This was getting out of hand.

  A light tinkling of metal on a glass rang out through the hall, and all the teachers at the PS 128 table straightened up.

  “Does anyone else feel like a staff meeting is getting called to order?” Grace hissed across the table and made them all burst out laughing.

  Sadie, sitting at the head table, grinned over at her teacher buddies like she knew exactly what they were all laughing about.

  The speeches commenced, and the caterers set out food on the tables in large bowls. It was family style with about thirty dishes to choose from.

  “Jesus, this is like Thanksgiving,” Seb muttered to Via.

  A solemn look passed over her face, and he wondered what her Thanksgivings were like usually. His were rooted in Sullivan family tradition, because he and Matty always made the trek up to White Plains for the holiday. It wasn’t the most raucous day of the year, but the predictability of the tradition
s had come to be a sort of familial comfort over the years. And Matty loved it.

  Soon, the speeches were over, the music was back on, and everyone was simultaneously grinning and groaning at the humongous slices of cake being passed around.

  Sebastian couldn’t eat another bite. He also couldn’t possibly simmer in this seat for another second. He could have sworn that the air around him was shimmering with heat and lust. He wanted to collapse on the woman beside him, drag her under the table. The tablecloth could be their bedroom walls. Fuck it, he’d pay rent for that.

  He made a last-second attempt at saving his sanity in front of people he respected.

  “Wanna dance, Shell?”

  His sweet older friend blushed, took a healthy slug of champagne and daintily wiped her mouth off. “Sure!”

  Seb was a big guy, but he’d always been light on his feet. And so, apparently, was Shelly. The two of them danced their way from one side of the dance floor to the other. He two-stepped and boogied with her through an upbeat song and then twirled and guided her through a slow song. He had Shelly’s arm looped through his as they strolled back toward their table. He thought maybe he’d take Grace for a spin and then, hopefully, spend the rest of his night with Via in his arms.

  “Hold it right there!” Grace shouted as they walked up to the table. She had a chunky, retro Polaroid camera in one hand that apparently the guests were allowed to use. Seb and Shelly dutifully posed, and then Shelly rushed forward for the photo, shaking it.

  “Now, you two,” Grace demanded, hauling Via up from her chair and launching her toward Seb.

  Apparently, Grace had quite the arm because Via stumbled forward on her spiky heels, and Seb just had time to catch her. One of his hands gripped her elbow, and the other splayed across her waist. He pinned her against him to steady her.