Can't Help Falling

by Cara Bastone

  Today, however, was different. “Actually, yeah. Got a call from our lawyer with an update.”

  “And?”

  “And she’s not going to get jail time.” Tyler took a shot; it banked off the rim and went wide. Seb caught the rebound and popped it in the hoop, chest-passing the ball to Ty when he caught it again.

  “I...have no idea how to feel about that,” Seb said after a minute.

  Tyler laughed, because it was the only thing he could do. “Join the club. Part of me wanted the judge to lock her up and throw away the key. After what she did to Kylie? Jesus. It’ll be years before Kylie can fully sort through all this crap.”

  “But another part of you was relieved?”

  “Yeah. I mean, she’s Kylie’s mom. I don’t want her to go to jail.”

  “So, what was her sentencing?”

  Tyler sighed, shot a three-pointer that sailed gracefully through the net. “Time served, three years’ probation and six months of mandatory rehab.”

  “Oh, the wonders of what having a little money in your pocket can do for you.”

  “I know. If only my dad knew that all his money was going toward keeping Lorraine out of jail...” Tyler paused, stared at nothing for a minute. “Actually, I have no idea how he’d feel about that.”

  “What does it all mean for Kylie? For custody?”

  “Well, that’s the good news. It’ll be at least a year and a half before Lorraine can appeal the courts for custody. Under the judge’s orders, she has to ace rehab, get a job and keep her nose clean for at least that long. Sounds like once she’s out of rehab, we’ll have to do mandatory visits to Columbus once a month so that they can see one another. But beyond that?” He shrugged. “Pretty good news, I guess.”

  Seb was quiet for a minute, jogged to one side of the court, peered down the hallway for Matty and jogged back, shaking his head. “Kid’s stuck in, like, a ten-person line.” He held his hands out for the ball. “So, you have her for at least eighteen more months.”

  “Thank God.”

  “Thank God,” Sebastian echoed, studying Tyler closely. “I’m glad you think that’s a good thing.”

  “A good thing? Oh, jeez. I know I was freaked out before, Seb, but I always knew I was a safer place for Kylie than Lorraine. I don’t care if it’s been hard. If worst comes to worst and I lose custody of her in eighteen months, I’ll move to Columbus until she’s eighteen. I’ll, I dunno, rent the house next door. Be there for her and hope to God she wants to go to college in New York.”

  Tyler suddenly found himself the recipient of a disgustingly sweaty hug from his best friend.

  “Dude. Space.” He shoved away and then got a look at Seb’s face. “Are you crying?”

  “It’s just cool is all,” Seb said, brushing a tear or two off his face with the inside of his elbow. “You used to have such distance between you two. All those stilted phone calls, neither of you knowing what to say to the other. She seemed like such an obligation to you. I guess I’m just saying that it’s good to see you care this much, Ty. It looks good on you.”

  Speechless, Tyler just sort of stared at his best friend. “I—Okay.”

  Sebastian glanced back at the hallway where Matty was waiting.

  “Okay, quick. Tell the truth, dude. Are you pining after Fin again, or what?”

  Apparently now that the little pitchers with big ears had gone to get fancy water, the dad could ask whatever the hell he wanted to ask.

  Tyler frowned. “I never pined after her.”

  “You were tongue-tied around her for so long. Then you asked her out, got rejected and could barely even be in the same room after that.”

  “That is not what happened.”

  “Ty, you basically ghosted me and Matty because you were so torn up over her!”

  Tyler stepped back from Sebastian. “You think I ghosted you?”

  “Ty,” Seb said gently right before he took a shot. “You were barely answering my calls. I spent the first forty years of my life barely able to peel you away for a day or two and then suddenly I can’t even get you to text me back.”

  “I—It wasn’t—That wasn’t because of Fin.” Tyler rebounded the ball and took his own shot, frowning at his best friend. “That wasn’t exclusively because of Fin. And I wasn’t torn up over her, exactly. More like, I was torn up over what she said to me.”

  “What did she say? I mean, Via told me that the conversation was pretty harsh, but I never got the details, really.”

  Tyler rebounded the ball again, not wanting to repeat it but also knowing it would be good for him. It was important that he remember exactly what she’d said to definitively end his crush on her.

  “She basically told me I was a pathetic man-child who clung to you guys instead of growing up. That my proclivity toward the single life was abhorrent and that I was the last man on earth she would ever be interested in.”

  “And you believed her,” Seb said flatly.

  “For a while at least.” Ty paused.

  “Ty,” Seb said, just staring at him. “I know she’s all mystical and clairvoyant and spooky, but you’re honestly telling me that it didn’t occur to you to tell her to shove her idiotic theory where the sun don’t shine? I mean, I love the woman, but she shouldn’t have spoken to you like that!”

  “I hate to admit it, but a lot of what she said really stuck with me. Maybe it wasn’t all exactly right, but the truth is, if I hadn’t been quite so haunted by it, I might not have risen to the occasion with Kylie so much, you know?” He dribbled thoughtfully, putting the pieces together as he went. “I spent the summer trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t a hanger-on to your life and, yeah, it kind of made me want a life of my own. I didn’t think that would come in the form of guardianship over my little sister, but when it did...” He shrugged.

  “When it did, you took the chance.” Seb was quiet, took a shot. He paced away and back, his hands on his hips. “I never thought that maybe your relationship with me and Matty was holding you back in some ways.”

  “My relationship with you guys has been one of the brightest spots of my life.”

  Sebastian grabbed the ball, dribbled it and then held it against his hip. He eyed Tyler. “But has it kept you from doing your own thing? I mean, I’m never going to complain about the years you helped me raise Matty. But I never really thought that maybe it was at your own expense.”

  “Nah, come on, I wouldn’t change it.”

  “But those were years you could have been starting your own family. And instead you were—”

  “Seb, we both know that I don’t want my own family. Kylie is as close to my own kid as I’m ever going to want. And helping you and Matty during that time, moving home, didn’t keep me from growing up, it forced me to grow up. I’m a better person because of that. I don’t want Fin’s words to belittle one of my proudest accomplishments.”

  “All right, all right,” Seb said, passing him the ball. “No need to get your panties in a twist.”

  Tyler dribbled the ball for a minute. “What she said, it bothered me a lot. And, yeah, it killed my crush on her.”

  Seb watched him for another long minute and then rushed to rebound the shot. “Fair enough.” He took a shot. “Want to come over for dinner tonight? Via’s making some stew thingy.”

  Tyler laughed, letting some of the tension seep out of him. “As much as I love stew thingies, we’re gonna eat at home tonight. Kylie has some kid from her class coming over to work on a project.”

  “Strawberry-kiwi for dad, peach for Uncle Ty and cherry for me.”

  Matty came running up victoriously, almost bobbling the three plastic water bottles in his arms.

  “Nuh-uh,” Tyler said. “I want the cherry.”

  “No way!”

  “You take the peach. No one likes peach.”

 
“You said you didn’t want strawberry. Not peach.”

  “Let’s split both, then.”

  Matty narrowed his eyes and put his hands on his hips, one of them encumbered by the bottle of flavored water. “No deal. I don’t want your germs.”

  Tyler laughed and cracked the top on the disgusting peach water. “You drive a hard bargain, kid.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “RACHEL,” FIN SCOLDED in a stern voice through the thin door that separated her client’s living room from the bedroom. She knew that Rachel was listening at the door instead of folding the laundry the way she’d claimed she would.

  “Sorry!” Rachel shouted. “It just sounded like you two were really getting somewhere!”

  Enzo, where he was sitting on an armchair, hands crossed over his gut and his feet propped up on his coffee table, laughed, low and guttural. “See what I mean?” He raised his voice to call through the door. “Woman can’t mind her business!”

  “And that’s one of the things you love about her the most,” Fin gathered, from the way his energy had swelled toward the sound of Rachel’s voice.

  Her sessions with Enzo had relocated out of the sterile office space to his fiancée’s homey brownstone in Red Hook when they’d moved in together last month. The setting change had made a big difference in Fin and Enzo’s sessions. They were really starting to trust one another, something that so rarely happened with her male clients.

  Today, after a long session talking about Enzo’s relationship to his work and to the uncle who was his boss, the two of them stood up and stretched.

  She felt energized.

  She knew it wasn’t only her prowess as a spiritual counselor that was making this happen. She knew that at least some of the credit was due to the changes in her own life. Being around Tyler so much lately had...softened her.

  “Your phone is buzzing,” Enzo said as he stretched.

  “Oh.” She dug through her purse, her stomach giving that familiar electric jolt when she saw it was a text from Tyler.

  SOS, was all it said. Her stomach went from jolting to dropping.

  What’s wrong? she texted back immediately, her bottom lip caught between her teeth and a line of worry between her brows.

  She’d never stared harder at a set of thinking bubbles in her entire God-given life.

  “Something wrong?” Enzo asked, making Fin jump. She realized that she was only halfway into her coat, clutching her phone and scowling like a crazy person.

  “I’m not sure. My friend just texted—” Her phone buzzed in her hand and she cut off, devouring the text. Immediately, her face relaxed, her eyes rolled and a groan, part annoyance and part relief, left her chest. “About something that is absolutely not a crisis.”

  Kylie has a boy over and I need backup. I have tacos. Bring beer.

  You’re ridiculous, she texted back. This is not an SOS situation.

  I’m about ten seconds from going out there to sit between them on the couch. So for the love of God, come over here and stop me.

  “Rachel totally called it,” Enzo asked, a smile on his face. “You’ve got a new man.”

  “What? No.” She shoved her phone in her pocket and pulled her coat the rest of the way on, grabbing her messenger bag. “He’s just a friend.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Enzo said skeptically at the exact same time that Rachel did from through the door.

  “In my professional opinion, you two need to get a life,” Fin called. She left them both laughing as she exited their apartment with a wave and jogged down their front steps to the train.

  On my way, she texted and then paused. To save Kylie from the humiliation of having her older brother ruin a first date.

  She came aboveground forty-five minutes later and gave the weekend doorman at Ty’s building a friendly wave.

  She only got in one knock on Tyler’s door when it flung open. She hated the fact that her breath caught at the sight of his normally floppy hair that was standing on end from where he’d been tugging at it. It was ridiculous to find someone’s nervous side so freaking cute. “What took you so long? Bad weekend trains?”

  “I was coming all the way from Red Hook.”

  She stepped inside and tried not to freeze up when he reached for her messenger bag to help her out of her things. “What were you doing in Red Hook? Shit, I didn’t screw up Saturday-night plans for you, did I? Holy God, what do you have in this bag, rocks?”

  She laughed at his rapid-fire questions, trying to let mirth dispel some of the tension from his nearness. “I was working with a client. And to answer your question,” she said as she flipped open the flap of her messenger bag to show him the ten rather large crystals she had inside, “Yes, I do have rocks in that bag.”

  He laughed and carefully set the bag in his coat closet, eyeing the crystals with interest. She was kicking off her boots when he stepped back to her and, in a move she’d only seen him execute with Mary and Via, helped her off with her coat. It was a gentlemanly thing, something she wasn’t sure anyone had ever done for her before. It was brisk and practiced, there was no lingering, no crowding, no brushing against her neck and shoulders. He merely helped her peel her coat off and then hung it on a hook.

  Feeling both flushed and a little silly, Fin crossed her arms over her chest and turned toward the living room.

  “Where are they?” she whispered.

  “Finishing dinner in the kitchen,” he whispered back, leaning in just a bit and causing even more color to rush to her cheeks. “They’ll be back out when they’re done.”

  He nodded his head toward the coffee table in between the couch and TV and Fin did a double take. “Tyler. There are textbooks on the table.”

  “Right.”

  “They’ve been studying?” she asked, giving him a dry look.

  “Yeah. They’re working on a project together.”

  Fin groaned and dropped her head into her hands. “You sent me an SOS because Kylie has a school project with a boy?”

  “What?” he asked obstinately, his hands raised. “Half the making out I ever did in high school was thanks to school projects. Besides, I’m not completely nuts. They’ve been...vibing.”

  Fin burst out laughing. “Vibing? Is that energy lingo you’re using? Am I rubbing off on you, Ty?”

  He scowled at her. “Did you bring the beers or not?”

  She walked to her coat and pulled two beers out of the deep inside pockets, wagging them at him.

  His scowl softened into humor. “Couldn’t spring for a whole sixer? Had to just grab two loosies like a guy on a street corner?”

  “Hey, I was already carrying a bag of rocks. You expected me to carry an entire six-pack as well?”

  They walked back to the kitchen in time to see Kylie and her study partner clearing up their plates.

  “Thank you for dinner, Mr. Leshuski.”

  “You can call me Tyler, Anthony,” Ty said, pulling himself up to his full height.

  But even though Tyler was tall, over six feet, Anthony towered over him. At least six five, at maybe fifteen years old, the kid had that bowed look of someone who’d grown too fast. But he had a wide, crinkly smile, and lots of black, curly hair that fell into his face and perfectly set off his ochre skin.

  “Fin!” Kylie said as she turned around. “I didn’t know you were coming over tonight.”

  “Just thought I’d stop by.”

  “Uh-huh,” Kylie said suspiciously, her eyes dancing back and forth between Anthony and Tyler. “Come on, Tony. Let’s try and finish that project.”

  She tugged at Anthony’s hand and Fin felt a familiar wave of heat-ice radiate off the boy. He was having a big internal reaction to Kylie touching him and it was just about all he could do to hide it.

  With chagrin, she had to admit that the exact same thing had just happened to her when
Tyler had taken off her coat.

  Tyler watched them go with narrowed eyes and then, with a shake of his head, started opening up the remaining takeout containers. He’d ordered enough food for a Thanksgiving feast and Fin was grateful. She hadn’t eaten since lunch and it was almost nine o’clock now.

  She sat down quickly, before he could do something swoony, like pull out her chair. He sat down too, and held up both of the beers she’d chosen, peering at the labels. “Which do you want?”

  “Either. I went with Mexican beer because you said tacos.”

  “Perfect. Oh, this one needs a bottle opener.”

  She grabbed the bottles from him before he could stand again and used one to leverage the cap off the other. Then she twisted the cap off the first and held them both out, letting him choose which one he wanted.

  He just gaped at her. “I...have never seen a woman do that before.”

  “Little something I learned growing up in Louisiana.”

  He shook his head, like she’d totally befuddled him, and selected a beer. “You never cease to amaze me, Fin St. Romain.”

  She already had a mouthful of an hongos taco, so luckily, she didn’t have to respond.

  “So,” he continued on. “I didn’t realize you worked on Saturday nights. Actually.” He paused to consider. “I pretty much don’t know anything about your job.”

  She took a drink. “I have about twenty clients who I see on a regular basis. Most of them once a month, a few of them twice.”

  “Holy shit. That’s a lot of clients.”

  She nodded. “Yeah. The business has grown a lot over the last two years especially. After Via moved out, I wanted to keep living in my apartment, but that meant having to pay the rent on my own, so I really kicked things into gear.”

  “How’d you find all the clients?”

  “The first few I found through the internet. I have a website. They reached out to me. I got a handful of clients I really trusted. And from there, it’s all been referrals.”

  “That makes sense.” He considered. “You meet these people in their homes, right? You’d want to make sure you could trust them.”