Just a Heartbeat Away

by Cara Bastone

  Hi Valerie. Had a great time with you last week, and I like you a lot. But we want different things. Good luck with everything—Sebastian

  He felt like a dinosaur signing a text with his name at the end, but come on, you couldn’t sever ties with someone through a text message and not even have the courtesy to sign your own name.

  He sighed and turned the phone over on the counter. He swooped in on his son, ripping him up off the barstool and tossing him straight in the air.

  “Gah! Dad! What the heck! I didn’t finish my book or my ice cream!” But he was giggling like a madman when Seb scraped his five o’clock shadow on the kid’s exposed belly.

  “Well, grab your stuff then. You can finish it in bed. It’s past 8:30.” He held his son upside down so that Matty could grab the book and bowl of ice cream. Which he did with a blinding grin on his face.

  Seb hauled them down the hall and straight into his son’s room, where he got to experience the acute joy of having his kid read a book to him. And he didn’t even think about the phone he’d left in the kitchen.

  CHAPTER NINE

  “HEY!” VIA ALMOST winced at how chipper her voice sounded as Sebastian slid into the seat next to her at the staff meeting. Tone it down, Violetta. She sounded like a fourth grader. And she would know. She spent pretty much her entire day with fourth graders.

  “Hey.” He winced as he stretched his legs out in front of him.

  “You all right?” She frowned down at his legs. His very long legs. How had she never noticed how crazy long his legs were before?

  “Yeah.” He paused and greeted Shelly and Grace, who were sitting in the seats in front of them. He passed around his usual gum, peeling his own slice and popping it into his mouth. He turned back to Via. “I’m still sore from the game on Saturday.”

  “Really?” She furrowed her brow. “Did you not stretch or something?”

  “Oh, I stretched. There’s just this delightful little thing called age. It starts to bite you in the ass around thirty-five and, you know what? I won’t spoil the surprise for you.”

  She grinned at him, her head tilted. “You know, I’ve heard of it. Have you ever tried yoga? It helps with aches and pains.”

  “Oh Lord, I knew you’d be a yoga person.” He shook his head.

  Via laughed again and straightened the cuff of her blue silk shirt. Blue like her boring, lonely aura. She swallowed down her frown. “Are you one of those men who insist that yoga is only for women?”

  He looked affronted. “Definitely not. I just think yoga is for...bendy people. And trust me, I’m not one of the blessed.”

  “You might surprise yourself. I go to this great community yoga class in Crown Heights. There’s plenty of...un-bendy men. You might like it.”

  “Are you inviting me?” His blunt face looked more confused than intrigued, and Via found her stomach was suddenly trying to lurch in two different directions.

  “Oh. Well, it’s open to the public of course.” She turned back awkwardly to face front.

  “You know, I’m kind of surprised that Principal Grim has never had us do yoga before.”

  Her shoulders loosened just a touch when she realized that he wasn’t weirded out by her basket-case quasi-invite. “Actually, that’s a really good idea.”

  “Wait! No.” He looked utterly horrified. His mouth dropped open and his hands rose in front of him. “That’s not what I was saying. Not at all. I definitely don’t want to do yoga at these meetings. I was just saying—”

  “Don’t be modest, Sebastian,” she teased. “That was a great idea. I can’t wait to run it past Principal Grim. I’ll bet she’ll have us wear yoga clothes to the next meeting.”

  “What the hell are yoga clothes?” If possible, he looked even more horrified.

  She bit the inside of her cheek. “You know, leggings, tank tops, that sort of thing.”

  He lowered his chin and pinned her with a stare. Via realized, with a tight little tap to her heart, that his light eyes were somewhere between gray and green. She hadn’t noticed before. “You’re telling me that you want me to wear leggings and a tank top to a staff meeting at the school my child attends?”

  “You’d have a problem with that?” she deadpanned.

  He broke first, chuckling. “Me? No. Although I think some of these ladies would have to burn out their retinas to get rid of the image of me downward dogging in a pair of leggings.”

  Via laughed again. “Seb, I think some of these ladies dream about you downward dogging in a pair of leggings.”

  His eyebrows shot up at the same time as her cheeks caught on fire.

  She had not just said that. Nope. No, she didn’t. That was someone else. Some passing idiot who was on her way to move to Alaska and stick her head in a snowdrift for the rest of her life.

  She was flirting with him, she realized with something close to shock rocking through her. She couldn’t remember the last man she’d flirted with, besides Evan of course. It was...not the right path to walk down. In fact, her eyes danced around the room quickly, trying to see if anyone was looking at them. Had anyone noticed the pink she was sure was in her cheeks? The breathy way she’d just been laughing? Oh God. She was at a staff meeting populated with women panting for Mr. Dorner gossip. She needed to ice-bucket this moment. Stat. And she knew the perfect way to do it. She straightened in her seat and pulled her phone out of her pocket.

  “Before I forget, Serafine wanted me to give this to you.” She held out her phone with Serafine’s contact info pulled up.

  “Oh.” Sebastian’s brow furrowed as he realized what Via was handing him. “Ah. She wants me to reach out about furniture making?”

  Via cocked her head to the side, back on even footing. He was flustered. “No, I think she wanted you to have it for social reasons. A date? It’s okay if you don’t want to take it.”

  “Right.” He stared down at the phone, just a touch of color in his cheeks. “Mind if I ask you how, uh, old she is?”

  Via cocked her head to one side. “She’s thirty.”

  “Right,” Sebastian repeated and seemed to be weighing something in his mind. He cleared his throat and waggled the phone. “You mind if I text the info to myself?”

  “Sure, that’s fine.” That way I’ll have your number, too. She didn’t say it out loud, of course. She paused and tried very hard not to ask. “You think you’ll call her? Just curious.” She shrugged and hoped it looked casual.

  “I don’t know,” Sebastian replied as he handed the phone back. “How does she feel about kids?”

  “What do you mean?” It was cute that that was the first thing he thought of when considering calling up a woman. Very cute.

  “I just mean that I’ve recently had some...miscommunications with women about Matty. And I’m not really interested in connecting with somebody if they aren’t cool with his place in my life.”

  “Ah.” Via frowned. Who the hell were the women he was dating if they disapproved of Matty? Matty, the sweetest kid of all time. And anyone with eyes could see how important he was to Sebastian. “Fin would never hold that against you. If that’s what you mean. We both grew up in nontraditional homes, so she definitely understands the importance of family in a kid’s life.”

  “Cool.” He shrugged and looked forward. Suddenly a small blush rose up out of the collar of his worn green button-down. He shifted. “Uh. You mind if I ask just how psychic she really is?”

  Via laughed in delight. Jeez. He really was cute. All masculine and nervous at the same time. He and Fin would make a cute couple, she told herself. “Not as much as you’re probably imagining. She can’t touch your hand and know your bank pin or something. More, she’s just intuitive. And she’s usually right about everything. Annoyingly so.”

  He chuckled, but he still seemed a little nervous. “All right.” He cleared his throat and sudde
nly looked very, very uncomfortable. “She doesn’t talk to the dead, does she?”

  Oh.

  The air turned to ice in Via’s lungs. She understood what he was really getting at now. His wife. Of course. She was sure he’d come to have certain beliefs about the afterlife after his wife had died. Most people did. It was a coping mechanism. But it had only been two and a half years or so, by her calculations. She was sure that he wasn’t completely over it. And he certainly wouldn’t want some spooky psychic attempting to make contact with his deceased wife over a Friday night date.

  “No,” Via answered resolutely. “She doesn’t do that.”

  “Cool,” he repeated, then turned his attention to the front of the room where Principal Grim was clinking her ring against her water glass.

  Via missed the first ten minutes of the meeting. She couldn’t explain it. Her mind was just elsewhere.

  * * *

  HER MIND WAS still elsewhere, when, later that night, she pulled a lasagna out of her oven and set it, steaming, on the table just under Evan’s nose.

  “Damn,” he murmured. “That smells great, babe.”

  He finished slicing the bread he’d brought over from his house and slid it into a bread basket. Next, he gave the salad he’d made one more fluff with the tongs and then he gestured outward with his hands like a magician.

  “Dinner is served.”

  Via laughed and brought over silverware and plates and slid into the seat across from him. One of the things that she’d first loved about Evan was how willing he always was to help cook. She’d given him a breadmaker for Christmas last year and had been pleased to see that he actually used it.

  She served herself some salad while he sliced up the lasagna, trying to wipe the frown from her face before he looked up and saw it.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, already sounding a little exasperated. But that might have just been her imagination.

  “Nothing!” she said brightly. She felt it would be petty, after he’d made the bread and assembled the salad, to remind him that she really didn’t care for raw onion in her salad. She’d told him before that she felt the strong flavor ruined the entire salad, but either he kept forgetting or he simply didn’t care. She held in a sigh. She’d just eat around it.

  He served her some lasagna, took a mondo bite of his own and dropped his head back. “Holy God, V. That is pretty much the best thing I’ve ever tasted.”

  Her annoyance with him waned just a little. “I’m glad.”

  “So, how was your day at work?”

  Pleased that he’d asked, Via opened her mouth to answer but closed it again immediately when it wasn’t her students’ faces who flashed through her mind’s eye, but Sebastian’s. More specifically, it was the concerned look on his face he’d had when he’d asked about Serafine’s psychic abilities. She frowned down at her plate.

  “That bad?” Evan asked in surprise, attempting to interpret her expression.

  “What? No.” She looked up at him, chewing too much food in his mouth, his movie star hair falling across his forehead, and a strangely familiar feeling opened up in her chest. It was like a cold draft against a window that wasn’t sitting correctly in its jamb. The feeling disconcerted her. She hadn’t had it in years, but it had been happening a lot lately. Somewhere around the beginning of the school year, the feeling had been making itself at home again.

  Why in God’s name would she be feeling this chilly, drafty feeling right now? She used to have it when she was younger and completely alone and spinning from one untethered situation to the next. There was no reason for her to be having it now. She loved Evan. He’d helped her make dinner, he was asking about her day and looking so handsome it hurt, with his dark eyes and angular face.

  She watched him reach out for seconds of the lasagna as he waited for her to gather her thoughts. She frowned. She knew from experience that in his second serving, he’d take too much, wouldn’t be able to finish it and would throw the remaining bites into the trash. She literally had to turn away when he did it. Even the sound of that much food falling heavily into the trash made her wince.

  “My day was actually pretty good,” she said after a minute. “I made some progress with that boy Agwe I was telling you about.”

  “The Haitian one?”

  She nodded. “Yup. He and his dad arrived in Brooklyn about three days before school started. I think it helps our relationship that I’m as new at that school as he is.”

  Evan pushed his plate away from him, still half full with lasagna he wouldn’t eat but would claim was too unsanitary to put away now that it had been on his plate and touched by his fork. “What’s wrong then? I can tell something is wrong.”

  That drafty feeling whistled through her chest again and Via almost made herself ignore it. But she remembered something that a social worker had once told her. That bad feelings were like monsters in the closet at night. If you got a friend, opened the closet and shined a light in there, the monster would up and disappear, nowhere to be found. The point being that bad feelings often subsided if you told someone about them. It was a tenet that Via had tried to live her life by, and it was a testament to how tumultuous her childhood had been that she could no longer even remember the face of the social worker who’d let her in on that particular secret.

  “I... I guess I’ve just been thinking about my foster homes a lot over the last few weeks. Something is reminding me of my experiences there and I’m not sure what.”

  “Oh. Really?” Evan cleared his throat and reached for another slice of bread. He had a polite look affixed to his face. The one he always wore when she talked about her experience in the system, or even about her parents. At the beginning, when they’d first been falling in love, she’d sensed his genuine interest in her childhood. But when it had started to become clear that the stories were not very Oliver Twist, he’d sort of stopped asking about it. “Are there any foster kids that you’re working with at school?”

  “Two, actually. But I don’t think that’s what...” she trailed off in frustration. She wished she hadn’t brought it up. She felt like she’d walked into a hallway only to find the far door was locked, and now she’d doubled back to find the original door was locked as well. Shine a light on the feeling, she urged herself. “I think it’s just that I’m kind of having this feeling I used to have when I was a kid. And I don’t know why I’m having it.”

  “What feeling?”

  She couldn’t name it. “It’s, well, it’s kind of like that feeling when there’s a storm outside and all the lights flicker out. You know?”

  He squinted one beautiful eye at her and shrugged. “I mean, yeah, that’s happened to me before.”

  “Well,” she soldiered on. “When that happens, everything goes quiet and dark. And you realize just how much noise your life usually makes. Like, with the refrigerator humming and the buzz of an old lamp, that kind of thing. And for a second, you just sit in the dark and the quiet, and listen to the storm outside and think, this is what life is actually like. And the lamp and the refrigerator, all they do is just cover it up.”

  The other eye was now squinting at her as well. “That’s how you felt as a foster kid?” he asked slowly.

  “I guess I just felt like I realized that the world was a naturally lonely place, only I hadn’t known because I had my parents there to protect me. But when they were gone, I realized the natural state of things.”

  Evan’s eyes had stopped squinting but now, much worse, they were wide and filled with what she was certain was pity. “Oh, babe, loneliness isn’t the natural state of things.” He paused and the pity in his eyes intensified. She could practically hear him thinking the words poor little orphan girl. “You just need to make friends at school is all. You’ll feel less lonely then.”

  She bristled. And she wasn’t sure if it was because this very affluent man with his enti
re family intact was telling her a thing or two about the world, or if it was because he was accusing her of not having made friends yet. Either way, she felt hot pokers of irritation rise out of her skin like the spines of a hedgehog.

  “That’s not what I’m saying,” she insisted bullishly. “I’m not saying I’m lonely.” Or at least she wasn’t admitting it. “I’m just trying to describe this feeling I used to have that I’ve been having again. Like déjà vu. It’s a cold feeling. Drafty—”

  She cut off when his warm hands slid across the table and laced fingers with hers. “If you’re cold, V, I’ll warm you up. I promise.”

  She looked down at their linked hands. She had to admit that being held by this beautiful man, even just holding hands, did infuse a bit of warmth back into her body.

  She looked at the lasagna on his plate and considered all the words she hadn’t been able to say just now. It was ridiculous and unfair to think that Evan would know some magic words that would cure her of this feeling. The warmth between their palms, the bread in the basket, the sunny little salad, a person to share lasagna with, those were all things to be grateful for. Evan certainly didn’t demand for her to be perfect. It would be the height of hypocrisy if she demanded that of him. She took a deep breath and tuned out everything but the feel of their hands pressed together.

  And as for that drafty feeling? Well, it was her fault if she let herself sulk around and listen to the wind whipping through her.

  * * *

  “YOU DIDN’T.”

  Sebastian’s large hand slapped a flyer down on Via’s very tidy desk. She slid the flyer out from his paw and read it, her grin widening with each word she read. “I see that Principal Grim took my suggestion for a mandatory yoga session for the staff. At—would you look at that—next week’s staff meeting.”

  “Traitor.”

  “It’ll be good for you.” She waved her hand through the air, and he snatched the flyer back, glaring at it.

  “It wasn’t enough for you to smoke me in softball, you have to rub my nose in your yoga prowess as well, huh?”