by Cara Bastone
He wondered if that had been her subtle way of telling him the date was ending too early.
He let himself into his house and locked the door quietly, immediately crouching to pat Crabby’s sleepily wagging behind. He clicked his tongue and had the dog at his heels as he grabbed a beer from his fridge. Sebastian cocked his head and followed the noise of his television.
“What the hell?” Tyler gaped at him from one end of the couch. “Dude, it’s like 9:25. I didn’t tank my Saturday night to babysit for a date where you don’t even score.”
“How do you know I didn’t score?” Seb raised an eyebrow as he plunked down on the couch. Crabby hopped up beside him and curled into a little doggy doughnut. Seb kicked off his shoes and stripped off one sock and then the other, stuffing them in his sneakers. He leaned his head back and rolled it to look over at Tyler.
“Because you’re as well ironed now as you were when you left, and you’ve only been gone for like an hour and a half. And even Seb ten years ago needed more time than that to close the deal.”
Seb laughed into his palm as he scraped it over his face. “I got a good-night kiss outside the F train. Does that count?”
“Depends.” Ty weighed his head back and forth. “Tongue?”
Seb raised both eyebrows and didn’t answer.
Tyler lowered the volume on the TV and eyed his best friend. “You all right, man?”
“Yeah. It was just weird was all. Being with her was fine. But kissing her was weird.”
“Because of Cora?”
“Sort of. I mean, Emma’s the first person I’ve kissed since Cora. But it really just felt weird to kiss someone I had no interest in. Pointless, I guess.” Seb started peeling the label off his beer bottle. “The whole night I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know. Like the person she messaged for a date and the guy who actually showed up were two different people.” He laughed humorlessly. “I felt like my own imposter.”
Tyler recrossed his feet on the coffee table. “You mean like right after Cora died?” Seb could hear the very careful tone in his friend’s voice.
Seb didn’t have to ask what he meant. Tyler had been there. Seb hadn’t just felt debilitating grief, he’d felt like everything in his life was...off. Greens weren’t the same green. His regular coffee cup was heavier and wider. Old familiar songs had new, unexpected lyrics. Even his body had felt different. He’d looked in the mirror and seen someone else, a sad, shell-shocked brother, maybe. Sebastian hadn’t felt like he was in the right life, or the right body, for a year after Cora had died. It had taken that long.
“No, not like that.” He glanced up at Tyler and finished peeling the label off his beer. “You don’t have to worry about me going back to that place. Really. It wasn’t like that.” He gathered his thoughts. “The whole time I just felt like I was an actor in a play or something. She’d be like, ‘tell me about yourself, Sebastian,’ and I’d look into the wings like, ‘line.’ You know?”
“No, I don’t really know. I’m always effortlessly charming and perfectly self-assured on dates.” Tyler grinned when Seb blew a farting noise. “Was she boring or something?”
“No.” Yes, a little. “She was totally fine. I just don’t know about this whole dating-for-the-sake-of-dating thing.”
“Trust me, dude. It’s good for you.”
“Daddy?” Matty was in the doorway, knuckling one eye and looking like someone had run a vacuum cleaner over his hair.
“Hey, buddy.” Seb set his beer down and opened his arms to his son. “What’s up?”
Matty climbed into Seb’s lap and rested his head on his shoulder. Seb relished it. Only when Matty was very, very tired was he this snuggly anymore. His kid was growing up. Losing those chubby cheeks. Seb knew that Daddy was on its last legs. He was only ever Dad when Matty was around friends. It plucked a bittersweet chord in his heart. Of course he wanted his kid to grow up. And of course he wanted his kid to stay a baby forever.
“I’m thirsty.” Matty reached down and tangled one hand in Crabby’s fur.
“Why didn’t you drink the water in your water bottle?” Seb always left water there for him. He had somehow ended up with the thirstiest child on the planet.
“I wanted some of your water.” Matty’s sleepy words were mostly just hot kid-breath into Seb’s face, and he couldn’t help but chuckle. Matty always insisted that whatever water Seb was drinking tasted better than any other water. So, for Matty’s entire life, Seb had been drinking water with kid backwash in it.
Planting one arm around his son, Seb leaned toward one of the side tables and grabbed a glass from earlier in the day. “Here you go.” He turned to Tyler. “You can head out if you want.”
“Nah, I’ll stay for the game.” Ty nodded toward the baseball game he’d been watching.
“Can I watch some of the game, too?” Matty asked, blinking those sleepy gray-green eyes up at his dad. His sucker dad.
“Sure.” Matty would be asleep again in about three minutes anyways. With his kid on his chest, his dog snoring into his thigh and his best friend across the room, Seb didn’t feel alone. He let his mind drift back to the date. The pretty woman and the warm good-night kiss.
He sighed. It might be strange, but he preferred the second half of his night to the first.
* * *
SEBASTIAN PLUNKED DOWN next to Shelly and Grace, two of his favorite staff members at the school. They were straight shooters. And both of them had lost their husbands so when they’d found out he was a widower, they’d sort of adopted him into their group of two. He sat with them at most of the staff meetings.
“And that hair!” Shelly was whispering to Grace. “My God, silkier than a woman’s!”
“I was too busy trying to pry my eyes off his face,” Grace whispered back.
“What’re we discussing?” Seb asked as he handed each of them a stick of gum, their usual routine before one of these meetings.
“The new counselor, Via DeRosa, brought her boyfriend to the end of our happy hour on Friday.”
“Oh.” Seb was surprised. Usually Grace and Shelly were gossiping about someone they’d seen on The Voice or Dancing with the Stars. Not an actual person.
“And let me tell you,” Shelly continued, “that boy could be on television with that hair.”
“I’ve met him, actually. At the farmers market at Grand Army Plaza a few weeks ago.”
“So you agree then?” Grace asked.
“Oh sure. Totally. Great hair.” He grinned at his two friends and leaned back, letting them continue gossiping without him.
His eyes wandered around the room and he did a double take when he realized that Via was looking at him. Studying him, actually. She jumped a little when he caught her eye. He sent her a little salute and instantly rolled his eyes at himself.
A salute? What the hell was that?
She apparently didn’t think it was the dumbest thing a man had ever done in the history of the world, though, because she sent a wave back his way.
The meeting was more of the same. Updates and policy reminders and handouts and the prerequisite get-up-and-jiggle-around as a full staff. This time, Seb found himself catching Via’s eye and grinning when Principal Grim had them bending forward into a shoulder shimmy, apparently to gear them up for the week. Via just grinned right back.
After the meeting, Seb picked up Matty from the after-school program and started digging through his backpack the second they hit the sidewalk. “You didn’t eat a single one of these apples I cut for you?”
“I tried one!”
Seb identified a single green apple slice with approximately three tooth marks in it. “Right. Well, it doesn’t count as your green thing for the day if you don’t actually eat it.”
“I’ll have my green thing at dinner.” Matty let his d
ad strap his backpack onto him as he leaned forward. “Wait! Is that Miss DeRosa?”
Seb looked up and sure enough, Via was walking half a block ahead of them. “Yeah. Didn’t I tell you she works at your school now?”
“No way?! Can I run and say hi?”
“Sure.”
Seb crunched into the apples his son hadn’t eaten as he watched him sprint up the block to Via, his backpack bouncing wildly with each step.
“Miss DeRosa! Miss DeRosa!”
Via turned and, when she saw it was Matty, smiled so brightly that Seb coughed on the apple he was swallowing. Damn. Packed a punch.
Right. A twenty-four-year-old punch, he reminded himself.
He swallowed his apple and sauntered up to them as she finally unhanded Matty from the hug she’d wrapped him up into.
“It’s so good to see you, Matty. I heard that you’re in Mrs. Foster’s class this year?”
“Yup. And I just got bumped from the red reading group to the blue one.”
“Wow! Matty, that’s so great.”
“Really?” Seb butted in. It was news to him. “Knuckles, my dude.”
Matty absently knocked fists with his dad, something they often did when one of them had a small victory, before he turned back to Miss DeRosa. “Yeah, the books were easier in the red group, but Joy is in the blue group.”
Via smiled at Seb before she looked back down at Matty. “Is Joy your friend?”
“Best friend.” Matty frowned. “But she’s never allowed to come over.”
“But you get to play with her at the park all the time.” Seb reminded Matty, brushing a hand over his son’s hair. The Chois had moved from South Korea to Brooklyn about three years ago, and the language barrier had made it hard to make playdates with them. But through clumsy charades, lots of smiles and mutual unspoken agreement, they usually met at the park at 4:00 on Sundays and Wednesdays to give Matty and Joy time to hang out together.
“Right. Do you walk home from school, too?” Matty asked, tugging gently on Via’s hand.
“Yup. I’m only a few blocks that way.”
“Us, too! Right, Dad?”
Seb smiled at his son. He was a brilliant reader and could already draw a respectable self-portrait, but Seb feared directional skills were not his son’s forte. “Sort of. We’re more in that direction.”
“You’re looking limber after our staff meeting today,” Via said as the three of them fell into step together.
“Oh yeah.” Seb grinned at her. “Principal Grim likes those shoulders to stay loose.” He glanced at the necklace on her golden-skinned chest, his eyes ricocheting away. “What’s the blue one for?”
“I’m sorry?” Her brow furrowed in confusion and a little line appeared between her eyebrows. Seb told himself that the little line wasn’t cute.
“You said your red necklace was for luck. What’s the blue one for?”
She looked down at the light blue crystal on her chest, her fingers absently twirling it. “Oh. Apparently it’s for, uh, making friends. Fin thinks I need help in that department.”
“Your best friend thinks you need more friends?”
“She’s more like my sister than my friend.” Via shrugged. “We grew up in the same foster home. Though my foster mom was her aunt.”
“Ah,” Sebastian said as a memory swirled through his brain.
I don’t know what you’re going through, Mr. Dorner, no one can. But I’ve lost people in my family and... I know what it feels like to spin off into nothing.
She’d grown up in a foster home. Had she lost her parents? Seb swallowed through the worst of the humiliation that came whenever he remembered that day.
Neglect.
He ran his hand over his son’s clean hair and took a bite of one of those apple slices in his hand, all to remind himself that he wasn’t neglecting his boy. He was doing the checklist. More than the checklist, in fact.
He cleared his throat. “I heard you went to the staff happy hour, though. That’s pretty social.”
She nodded. “Very social. Those ladies know how to cut loose.”
He laughed. “Yeah, I tried my hand at a few and then decided I preferred my rear end to remain un-pinched by my colleagues.”
Via laughed but her mouth opened in horror. “No! They didn’t!”
“Oh yes, they very much did.” He shrugged. “I didn’t really mind. It was kind of like an initiation onto the staff. They all loosened up around me after that. I think before that there was kind of a fox in the henhouse vibe.”
“Lion among the flamingos.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh.” Via waved her hand through the air as her slashing cheekbones washed over with a light pink blush. “Nothing. It’s just what I thought at that very first staff meeting.”
“That I looked like a lion surrounded by a bunch of flamingos?”
She blushed harder and switched her bag to the other shoulder.
“Daddy, can Miss DeRosa come over for dinner?”
He pulled his eyes away from the pleasantly pink Miss Via DeRosa and looked down at his son, who was grinning like he did when he wanted an extra half hour of TV.
“Ah...” He glanced back at Via.
“Oh, I can’t tonight, Matty.”
Matty’s face fell as he looked up to his dad for the assist.
“You really are invited, Via, if you wanted. And I know Matty wants you to come. He only pulls out the ‘Daddy’ big guns when he really wants something.”
She smiled but her eyes skittered away. “I’ve got plans with Evan. You remember? My boyfriend.”
“Okay. Maybe another time then.”
Another time? The poor woman had already said no twice. Why the hell was he setting himself up for her to say no a third? AND she’d just taken the opportunity to remind him that she had a boyfriend.
She nodded in a noncommittal way.
They walked in silence for three sidewalk squares before Seb broke the silence again. “You and Evan live together?”
What? Abort! Seb, you dumbass. Quit asking personal questions about her boyfriend!
She shook her head but didn’t say more.
He knew when it was time for a quick exit. “All right, well, this is where the Dorner family turns off. We’ve got lima bean soup and broccoli pie waiting for us at home.”
Matty looked up at him with exactly the horrified and disgusted expression that Seb had expected. It made Via laugh. Just like Seb had been hoping it would.
“Well, you fellas have a good night.”
“Bye, Miss DeRosa.”
“Bye, Matty. You can come see me in my office whenever you want. It’s next to the art room.”
“On the third floor?”
She nodded.
“Okay! I will.”
She waved and walked on, and Seb tugged Matty on down the block.
“Dad, we’re not actually eating that for dinner, are we?”
CHAPTER FIVE
“ARE YOU SURE?” Via asked for the fourth time. She knew that what she was doing could probably be classified as nagging, but she couldn’t stop herself. This was a really big decision that Evan was making. And considering how serious they were about one another, it was going to inevitably affect her as well. The thought had her fingers trembling where she pressed them into her lap.
“I’m sure, babe. One hundred percent. I hate my boss. I can’t stand to look at him for another fucking second. I gotta get out of there.”
They sat at Via’s small breakfast table. They spent most of their time at her place these days. He shared with two roommates, and none of them ever did the dishes. It turned Via off.
She leaned over and fiddled with the small bouquet of purple flowers at one end of the table. Evan had brought them as a way to soften the
news he’d also brought.
“Okay, I get that you hate your job. And they definitely haven’t treated you very well recently.” It seemed like every day Evan had some story about how unfair his job as a paralegal was. “But quitting is a really extreme way of dealing with it.”
She couldn’t believe that anyone would prefer the potential drama of an unexpected quitting to the infinitely more respectful two weeks’ notice.
Though he’d still been doing a lot of visual art when they’d first met, Evan’s job as a paralegal was one of the first things that had attracted Via to him. Still a student at the time, she had admired the nine-to-five dependability of his schedule and his paycheck. She’d thrilled at what she’d seen as his work ethic. It had seemed so grown-up to her. So reliable.
As a twelve-year-old foster kid, grieving her parents and lost in a whirlpool of a new life she didn’t want, Via had just been getting comfortable at her first foster home when she’d been unceremoniously ousted. The couple’s birth daughter, Megan, hadn’t liked Via for one reason or another, and just like that, Via was tossed into another home. A group home that time. She’d slept on a metal bunk bed in a room with a glowing red exit sign over the door that kept her awake at night. Even at thirteen, she’d found that painfully ironic. Because there was no exit from this life she’d found herself in.
She’d gotten booted from that home when two of the other girls became convinced that she was stealing from them. She hadn’t been, but it hadn’t mattered. Within months of arriving, she’d been on the doorstep of a new foster home, her permanent one at that point. Jetty’s home. Fin’s home. But she’d learned her lesson.
Blend in. No waves. No drama.
In her mind, life was a car, speeding down the highway with a blindfolded driver. Everyone crashed at some point. Whether you survived or not just depended on what kind of car you had.
She’d spent every minute since she left Jetty’s house making sure she had the safest model of car she could find. A good education. A good job. A little money in the bank. A lease on a nice apartment. Every day that she worked hard was like one more seat belt over her chest, keeping her safe.