Can't Help Falling

by Cara Bastone

  He stared bemusedly between the two mismatched socks in his hands. “I guess.”

  She leaned back and grinned at him, taking a swig of her beer and wiggling her feet against his knee. “Well? Do what you gotta do to be able to sleep at night, you psycho.”

  Still kinda shocked that she hadn’t slapped the shit out of him and stormed out of his house for putting his hands up the legs of her pants, Tyler carefully folded up her mismatched socks and grabbed his matching pair from where he’d set them on the coffee table.

  He picked up one of her feet and was starting to put the sock on when he paused, staring down, utterly delighted by what he was looking at.

  “What?” she asked, wiggling her toes again.

  “You have ugly feet,” he said in complete amazement, incapable of tearing his eyes away.

  She made a noise of outrage and attempted to yank her feet away from him, but he held them fast.

  “No, no! Don’t misunderstand,” he said with a laugh he couldn’t stop. “I don’t mean ugly.”

  “You said ugly.” She continued to yank her feet back.

  He kept her feet firmly against his knee. “Well, I meant to say, ah, charmingly imperfect.”

  A smile twitched at the corners of her mouth even as her eyes shot daggers at him.

  She yanked her feet once more but he held fast.

  “Seriously,” he said. “Ugly things are cute. Your feet are cute.”

  He looked down at her cute-ass feet, the knobby, irregular toes and bony ankles. She had chipped toenail polish and the tiniest little pinky-toe nail he’d ever seen in his life.

  He held up one of her feet like she was wearing Cinderella’s glass slipper and fully inspected it.

  “Why are you getting such a kick out of this?” she demanded. Then she squinted her eyes at him, her head cocked to one side. “Didn’t have you pegged for a foot fetishist.”

  He laughed. “I’m not a foot fetishist. I’m an everything-in-its-right-place fetishist. And that includes matching socks.” He set her foot down and slid one of his socks on and then picked up the other foot, inspected that one too. “Funny feet. Who’d have known? The rest of you is so gorgeous. You know, undeniable perfection.” He tried to say it matter-of-factly, so that she wouldn’t mistake his honesty for a come-on. “I guess I just like that you have normal human feet.”

  He quickly slid the other sock onto her foot and gave his handiwork a quick pat. He set her feet back on the coffee table and rose up to walk back around to the armchair. He really didn’t want her to think he’d been taking the opportunity to snuggle up on her.

  She still had yet to say anything and he let five seconds pass before he chanced a glance at her.

  He’d been expecting the ice of her usual gaze. He’d expected her to look all-knowing and disdainful. Maybe even to give him another healthy dose of the emoji eyebrow. But instead she’d folded her knees up under her chin, and she stared down at his socks on her feet. As he watched, she straightened her pant legs, traced her fingers over the pair of wool socks he’d just given her. He could only see part of her face, turned down as her head was, but confusingly, the part he could see looked...soft. And a little befuddled.

  “They’re too big,” she told him, looking up after a minute, a begrudging smile on her face. “But you’re right. Matching socks definitely feel better.”

  Holding his beer bottle in one hand, he gave her a little hand-rolling bow before turning back to the television.

  They watched to the end of the program before Fin rose up and stretched.

  “I’ll get you a car,” Tyler said, crossing the room to unplug his phone.

  “Do you want these back?” Fin asked, one foot poised over her winter boots, pointing to the socks.

  “No! No. They’re yours. Consider them a tip for working the late shift tonight.”

  “Thanks.” She shrugged into her coat and didn’t question him when he put his coat on. He guessed that she knew him well enough at this point not to argue about him walking her down to the cab.

  They were in the elevator when something occurred to him. “You have a guest bedroom at your place, right?”

  She looked surprised by his question. “Yeah.”

  “Well, if this kind of thing happens again, feel free to just bring Ky back to your place for the night, and I’ll come get her in the morning.”

  She stared at him blankly, her long hair squashed between her winter hat and the collar of her coat. He wasn’t a parenting expert by any means and he racked his brain for what he could have said wrong. Maybe he was being presumptuous?

  “I mean, only if you wanted to,” he hurried to say. “And Kylie wants to. I just thought you might prefer that to having to stay late at my house and then schlep all the way over to your place at one a.m.”

  That blank look was still on Fin’s face, even as the elevator doors slid open, and it was starting to unnerve Tyler.

  “You’d let her come spend the night at my house?” she said as they walked across the lobby.

  “Sure, I trust you and—”

  He cut off immediately, feeling like he’d just been socked in the gut when she turned to him and put her palm on his shoulder, giving him a tight, friendly squeeze over his coat.

  Though he’d just manhandled her bare feet not twenty minutes ago, Tyler couldn’t think of a single time when she’d purposefully touched him, besides shaking his hand when they met. It was something he’d noticed about her. Though quite affectionate with Via and Matty, and occasionally Mary, Fin was by no means a toucher. She wasn’t even a toucher of things. Tonight was the first night he’d ever even seen her sit on his couch.

  But there she was, hand firmly clamped over his shoulder, her eyes, once again bright, lit by the white Christmas lights in the lobby. Her gaze searing and potent. Tyler felt strangely like her hand was pinning him to some sort of interrogation chair while her eyes went ahead and saw straight through to the flipside of his heart. Weirdly, he liked it.

  “Thank you,” she said simply before unhanding him.

  He let out a breath as he strode to catch up to her, realizing that he hadn’t even been breathing during that moment.

  Dangerous, he thought for the thousandth time.

  But this time, he wondered at just how many different meanings a word like dangerous could have.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHRISTMAS WAS EXACTLY the nonmonumental affair that both Tyler and Kylie had been hoping it would be. They both slept in, and Tyler made bacon and a kitchen-sink omelet for them around eleven. Over breakfast, Tyler slid a blank envelope across the table and experienced a stab of joy when her eyes lit up over the Sky Blue soccer tickets he’d bought for her. They were the professional women’s team that played in New Jersey.

  “There are three tickets here,” she said.

  “Yeah, well, one is for me and one is for you and the third is for whoever else you want to invite. Someone from school or—”

  “Fin,” Kylie said decisively.

  Well. That was that.

  She got up and left the room and came back a second later with a wrapped gift. Tyler gaped at it in her hands. It hadn’t occurred to him that she’d buy something for him for Christmas. “Thanks for the tickets,” she said, somewhat awkwardly. “I got you this. But I didn’t wrap it.”

  “Obviously Mary did,” Tyler said, observing the rectangular box from one angle and then the other. No one could wrap a sharp corner like Mary.

  “Right,” Kylie said, sounding quite nervous.

  Tyler put her out of her misery and tore open the present. He was stymied by what it was, however. It was obviously something from Mary’s shop. It was a type of small wrought iron stand painted a dark blue. Was it a decoration? He had no clue.

  Determined to love it no matter what, Tyler held it up. “Ah, thanks, Ky.
It’s great.”

  She laughed. “I knew you’d have no clue what it is.”

  He tried not to look too sheepish. “Busted.”

  She stood and took it from him, walking over to his kitchen counter and standing it up. She selected a recipe book and opened it, sliding it into the stand.

  “It holds the pages open while you cook!” Tyler crowed as understanding dawned.

  She shrugged, embarrassed. “I thought you could use it.”

  “It’s genius!” He couldn’t help but rise up and try it out himself, flipping the pages of the book and setting it back in the stand. He probably wouldn’t have bought it himself, but he was definitely gonna use it. And it even matched his kitchen decor.

  Unable to help himself, Tyler grabbed Kylie in a gruff hug. “Thanks, sis.”

  She hugged him back, harder than he’d thought she would. “Merry Christmas.”

  After they showered and got cleaned up, Tyler suggested they go see a movie.

  “Can we go to the Cobble Hill theater?” Kylie asked, and Tyler was loath to say no to that.

  They took the train and rolled their eyes through a cheesy Christmas movie. On a bolt of inspiration, Tyler tugged the back of Kylie’s coat as she was walking out and motioned her into the theater next door to theirs.

  “Doubleheader?” he whispered to her as the beginning of an action flick played on the screen.

  “Sure!” she said in surprise.

  They slinked into two seats and ducked down, not wanting to be seen. The movie was terrible, but made all the more sweet by the fact that they hadn’t paid for it.

  “Triple-header?” Kylie asked, a sparkle in her eye as they left the second movie.

  He laughed. “Your Christmas wish is my command.”

  They ducked into the third movie, this one a self-serious Oscar contender already fifteen minutes in when they sat down. It wasn’t four more minutes when a flashlight splashed across their eyes.

  “Sir,” an employee said. “Can I see your tickets, please?”

  “Sure,” Tyler said smoothly, handing him their tickets from the first movie they’d seen. He gave the man an easy grin.

  The employee, unamused, pursed his lips. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  “Got it,” Tyler said, tugging Kylie along with him. They waited until they got to the sidewalk to burst out laughing.

  “Seb and I used to do that all the time,” he laughed. “We used to spend whole days at the movies.”

  “I assume you used to be better at the sneaking part,” Kylie said as she started strolling down Court Street.

  Tyler followed after her, realizing that she was walking so confidently because she knew this area now. They were only a few blocks from Mary’s shop. “Actually, we got caught as often as we didn’t.”

  “Was it this theater?”

  “Nah.” Tyler shook his head. “Different ones around the city. We weren’t in this part of Brooklyn very often.”

  “Which neighborhood did you grow up in again?”

  “We grew up around the corner from one another in Sheepshead Bay.”

  “I haven’t been there yet.”

  “It’s a little like Midwood in parts.” Tyler paused. They were having such a good time together, he didn’t want to ruin it. But still, avoiding mentioning their father at all costs couldn’t be healthy either. “Dad actually lived in Midwood. So, I spent a little time there as a kid.”

  A very little time. Basically, whenever his mother had wanted a vacation and the housekeeper couldn’t stay with him, he’d be trucked off to Midwood to stay with his inattentive father, who barely remembered which grade he was in. Tyler inwardly winced as he remembered the phone calls that he and Kylie used to have before she’d come to Brooklyn. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but it had been exactly the way his father used to talk to him. Obligatory small talk.

  She was quiet for a second, as she usually was when he brought up their father. “Your mom lived in Sheepshead Bay?”

  He nodded. “Just long enough to see me through high school and then she was long gone.”

  “To where?”

  “Ah, let’s see. At that point she was living in Long Beach.”

  “That’s California, right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Is that why you moved out there for college?”

  Tyler laughed immediately, because the idea was kind of ludicrous, but he reined in the laughter when he saw the confused expression on Kylie’s face. “Um. No. No, I just went where I got accepted to school. It didn’t have to do with where my mom lived.”

  “You’re...not close?”

  Tyler tried to think of a way to explain this as they strolled.

  “Not really. My mother is, well, you know the mom from Mary Poppins?”

  “The votes-for-women lady?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Sure.”

  “Okay, now cross that lady with Meryl Streep from The Devil Wears Prada and you have my mom.”

  Kylie furrowed her brow. “That makes no sense. Those characters are opposites, pretty much.”

  “Exactly.” Tyler laughed again. “My mom is super flighty, but also extremely opinionated. And I guess you could say judgy. Of everyone but herself. She has this perception of how life is and should be, and it’s really far from reality.”

  Kylie was quiet for a minute, hopping over someone’s pizza slice that had landed facedown on the sidewalk. “Arthur sure knew how to pick them.”

  Tyler looked down at Kylie in surprise. It was the first time he’d heard Kylie refer to their father by his first name. Tyler always called him Dad.

  “Apparently.” He paused, feeling like he was revving an SUV at the edge of an ostensibly frozen lake, wondering how far he could make it across. “I don’t know your mother very well. What’s she like?”

  Kylie quirked an eyebrow up at him, her lips pursed. “She’s an asshole who abandoned me.”

  Tyler’s blood froze. He figured he could retreat and change the subject, or he could serve up a fresh, hot, steaming pile of platitudes. And then he remembered what he’d promised himself. Right. He was going to be himself around Kylie. Screw the obligatory small talk.

  “Well, obviously,” he replied, a little smile on his face. She looked up at him in surprise, her lips quirked up. “I meant describe her the way I did my mom. Like, if you crossed two characters.”

  “Oh. Okay. If I crossed two characters...” She continued to stroll, thinking, and paused in front of a burger joint that was closed for the holiday. “You ever had truffle fries? This place has great truffle fries.”

  Charmed by this confident version of his sister, Tyler raised his eyebrows and nodded, like she was teaching him something new, when in fact he’d been eating truffle fries from that joint since before she was born.

  “Two characters,” she mumbled to herself again and kept strolling, peeking in all the darkened store windows. “I guess she’d be a cross between Jessica Rabbit and Jabba the Hut.”

  “Yikes,” Tyler said immediately and made Kylie laugh.

  “Maybe that was too harsh?”

  He shrugged. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

  He’d met Lorraine a handful of times, and in his opinion, that was not too harsh.

  “What two characters do you think Dad would have been?” Tyler asked, hoping his voice was light as they strolled along, his gloved hands in the pockets of his coat.

  “Stop calling him Dad, Tyler. I hate that.”

  He was quiet for a second, trying to interpret the warring feelings within him. Old, normal Tyler wanted to push back on that. New, meek Guardian Tyler wanted to acquiesce and give her whatever she wanted. He split the difference. “You call him Arthur, and that’s cool, Ky. But I call him Dad. To me, that was his name. I.
..think it’s okay that it’s different for the two of us.”

  “How mature.”

  Her tone, dry with just a dash of venom, made Tyler wince. He suspected that he might be in the part of the horror movie where the dumbass who wanders off by himself realizes that he’s walked right into the murderer’s trap.

  “It...hurts you when I call him Dad?” he floundered.

  Kylie was quiet as they squished to one side of the sidewalk to let a huge, chattering family walk past, their loud voices reminiscent of a flock of geese heading south for the winter. When all was quiet again, she sighed. “He wasn’t my dad, Tyler. Never. He was only around a few weeks a year. I barely knew him.”

  “I—well. Honestly, that isn’t all that different than the way that I knew him either. He wasn’t exactly present for my childhood either, Ky. He wasn’t even interested in talking to me until I started becoming successful in my profession and even then, it was never about anything that mattered, not really.”

  “So, first he abandoned you and then he abandoned me, and you’re just fine with that now?”

  He took a long breath. Too careful was bound to piss her off; too careless was bound to hurt her. “No, of course I’m not fine with it. But it’s been a long time. I’m kind of over it. I got over it.”

  She turned her head away from him and tersely adjusted her stocking cap, but he caught a half second still frame of her face in the passing shop window. There were tears in her eyes. His insides shrank at the idea of Kylie crying, but also, he welcomed it. He preferred almost anything over her blank indifference.

  “You got over it?” Her voice was quiet, but that was the only hint of emotion that remained when she finally spoke again, a block later. “The man had a secret second family that he never told you about. You didn’t find out until he fell over dead! And you’re just over it?” She snapped her fingers. “Like that?”

  He bumped shoulders with her. “First of all, don’t talk about yourself as a second family. The man barely had a first family to begin with, and more importantly, you’re not my second family. You’re my primary family, Kylie. My only family when I’m really doing the math.”