by Cara Bastone
But really. It had been a few weeks of him fruitlessly job-searching, and her skin got all itchy when she thought about it. She had no idea how he could possibly stand to be unemployed in a city this ready to spit you out. She would have taken a job at Crown Fried Chicken by now. Anything to pay the bills she knew he had rolling in.
He was so blasé about it that she was sure he’d ended up taking that money from his parents. It must be nice to have a safety net. And she’d never, ever begrudge somebody utilizing it. But Evan didn’t need to be using his parents’ money. He hadn’t been laid off. He’d quit. And he hadn’t found another job because he wasn’t really looking for another job.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want him to come to the game. It was just that she wanted him to prioritize. She’d said about half of what she’d wanted to, and he’d stormed out of her apartment. She’d gotten ready for softball, second-guessing every word she’d said.
Via looked around the softball fields. They were still green, even with the yellow leaves blustering along each side. She supposed it was chilly, because she could see Giles’s husband and their darling little redheaded girl dressed up like they were headed to the Arctic on the bleachers. But she’d worn a layer of Under Armour workout clothes. Plus, her temper was probably warming her from the inside out. At least Evan was good for something right now.
My very own rage furnace.
Via was both relieved and bummed that Fin wasn’t here to watch the game today. On one hand, she’d be able to see through her in a second, and Via wondered if she could handle that kind of clarity right now. She kind of felt like the only thing that was holding her together was the sticky cloud of nasty feelings. If somebody parted the curtain for her, she might just fly into a million pieces. On the other hand, Fin was good with millions of pieces. She was patient and funny and had good witchy medicine that always seemed to stitch Via right back up.
The team was stretching on the field, Giles and Sadie tossing a ball back and forth. At first, she didn’t see Sebastian, but then she noticed him sitting in the dugout, arms crossed, leaning over to hear something that Rachel Donahue, the fifth-grade teacher who’d joined them for drinks after yoga, was saying. Apparently, Sadie had talked Rachel into joining the team, too. Which wouldn’t normally have bothered Via. But she was in such a shit mood to start with. And here Rachel was, flirting when she should have been stretching. They didn’t need another member of the Sebastian Dorner fan club on this team; they needed a second baseman with sticky hands, for God’s sake!
Via tossed her softball bag on the ground and unzipped it so fast she almost took a finger off. She jammed her hat low on her head.
“Hi, Miss DeRosa.”
Via looked up to see Matty leaning against the chain-link fence, his fingers twisted high above his head and his feet lifting off the ground while he held himself up.
“Hi, Matty.” She smiled, feeling the top layer of her foul mood lift off like suds in the breeze. “How are ya?”
“Good,” he answered absently, his feet dancing over the dirt and his head lolling to one side. She looked closer; his eyes looked a little glassy.
“Are you sure?”
“Well, no. I’m mad.”
“Why?” She pulled out her mitt and a bottle of water.
“Because I wanted to bring Crabby, and Dad said no.”
“Why did he say no?”
“Because there’s a parade so he didn’t want to drive and Crabby hates the train.”
“That sounds pretty reasonable to me. You wouldn’t want to make Crabby do something he doesn’t like to do, right?”
Matty shrugged. “But now I have to do something I don’t want to do.”
Via cocked her head to one side. “You mean be at this game without Crabby?”
He nodded, sidling over to her and peeking into her bag with the curiosity of a bored kid.
“Well, did you bring something to do? A book or a game or something?”
Matty crouched and peered even farther into her bag. “Dad made me leave before I could get anything to do.”
“Actually, you pouted in your room for twenty minutes without choosing something to do. So when it was time to leave, you didn’t have anything to bring,” Sebastian corrected from over Via’s shoulder.
She jumped a little bit; she hadn’t realized that he was right there. The man was quiet as a cat.
Matty scowled up at his dad and Seb scowled right back. Via chuckled at how incredibly similar they looked. “Well, it’s a good thing you didn’t bring anything to do.”
“What?” Matty looked up at her.
“Yes.” She nodded solemnly. “I wouldn’t want anything to distract you from your mission.”
She could feel Seb’s gray-green eyes on the side of her face but she ignored them.
“What mission?”
“Do you remember my friend Fin? You sat with her a few weeks ago?”
“The pretty lady with the loud jewelry?”
Via laughed. “Exactly.” She crouched low and brought her voice down an octave. Matty leaned in to hear her better. “Don’t tell anyone. But Fin is a little bit magic. Just a little bit.”
“What do you mean? Magic isn’t real. Right?”
“Well...” Via weighed her head back and forth. “There’s lots of kinds of magic, and lots of them aren’t real. But some of them are. And Fin’s magic is real. She can’t turn you into a toad or something like that, but she can do spells.”
“What kind of spells?”
“Like, good luck spells and get well spells. She can do spells to help people who are sad or lonely or scared. That kind of thing. It’s kind of like medicine, but you have to believe it for it to work.”
Matty’s blunt little face was open and very still as he listened. There was no trace of a pout anywhere on his little mug.
“So,” Via continued. “Fin asked me if I could help her with some spells she’s working on, but I have to play this dumb softball game. Can you help me? Can you take over my mission for me?”
Matty pursed his lips but there was no confusing the look of intense interest in his eyes. “What would I have to do?”
“You’d have to collect some ingredients for one of her spells. Here.” Via dug through her bag and came up with a small towel. She pulled out her practice bat and tied the four corners of the towel to the end of the bat. She showed Matty how he could carry it over his shoulder like an old-timey drifter. “You can put everything you collect in here. You need to find two yellow leaves and two red leaves from the trees. A flower. Something shiny. And...” She racked her brain, trying to think of something that would take a long time. “Some rocks from the gravel area over there. I want you to find one rock of every color.”
“But those rocks are all gray!”
“No. Not if you look closely. Lots of those rocks have little flecks of other colors in them. You’ll see.” Then she gave him a skeptical look and held the towel carrier away from him. “Unless you don’t think you can help. Then I’ll just tell Fin that I’ll do it on my own tomorrow.”
“I can do it!” Matty insisted, reaching forward and propping the bat on his shoulder. “It might take me all day,” he grumbled a little, not wanting to seem too eager.
“Well, do the best you can. I’m sure Fin will understand if you can’t find everything.”
Matty marched away toward the tree line at the edge of the softball field and Seb let out a low whistle behind her.
“I think you’re the one who’s magic. I thought that kid was going to pout himself into an early bedtime.”
“He’s having a bad day?” She turned to Seb.
“I guess.” He squinted his eyes as he watched his son inspect a few fallen leaves, discarding them. “He’s usually not quite so ornery. Maybe he’s having a growth spurt. Anyways, thanks for distracting hi
m. That was incredible. They don’t teach stuff like that at parenting classes.”
“You take parenting classes?” Via asked, grabbing her bag and noticing that Rachel was watching the two of them talk from across the dugout.
Sebastian nodded. “Yeah. My grief counselor recommended it after Cora died. Just something to help prop me up a little bit. Some structure to lean on. But I really liked them. And they helped. Every time I think I’m an expert, he goes and grows up a little more, and then I’m lost again.” Sebastian sighed, but it was more happy than sad.
“Hi, Rachel,” Via called when the staring started to become annoying.
“Hi, Via!” Rachel called back, her eyes still bouncing between Sebastian and Via. Rachel’s brown hair was up in a high bun, and she’d chosen one of the team shirts that was just a touch too small. Maybe there’d been a shortage in sizes this late in the season. She was shy and usually pretty sweet. Via generally liked her. She couldn’t exactly say why Rachel was bothering the crap out of her right now.
“All right, people. Huddle up!” Sadie called, gesturing to everyone around her.
The game started, and their team gained a firm lead, mostly thanks to Via’s three-run triple in the bottom of the fourth. Mindful of Rachel’s watchful eyes, Via had avoided Sebastian, choosing instead to chat with Sadie and Rae. She noticed that Rachel took that opportunity to sit next to Sebastian. The two of them chatted and laughed for the majority of the game.
They were just sending their players out to the bases a few minutes later when Matty appeared on the other side of the short fence that lined one side of the field.
“Daddy,” he called in a tear-filled voice, his face white as milk. Via took a few stumbling steps toward Matty the second she realized that he had vomit on his shirt.
Sebastian whipped around just as Matty’s head lolled to the side and he hit the ground like a bag of rocks. His dad sprinted across the field and, again, Via thought of a lion. He was glinting and primal, his brown hair streaked through with gold in the sunlight. He took the fence in a graceful, one-handed hop and if Via hadn’t been so worried about Matty, she might have sucked in a breath at the competence of it. Within seconds, he had his son gathered up in his arms.
“Matty. Matty, buddy. Wake up, Matty.”
Via was at their side a second later, just in time to see Matty’s eyes clench closed; he wouldn’t open them. “I’m cold, Daddy,” he whispered and it was music to every adult’s ears in the vicinity. He wasn’t unconscious.
“There’s an urgent care three blocks over from here,” Sadie huffed out as she hurried up. “They take walk-ins.”
“Right, I know where it is,” Sebastian said faintly, cradling his shivering little boy in his arms.
“I’ll get your softball stuff and bring it to school, okay?” Sadie continued. “Just go.”
“Right.”
And then he was striding away, toward the street. He shifted Matty in his arms so that he could do that two-fingered whistle that quite literally stopped traffic. A cab pulled up to the curb. Via was at his elbow, brushing the hair off Matty’s forehead and surreptitiously taking his temperature. The poor kid was burning up. “Do you want me to go with you?”
She felt like she was asking Matty as much as she was asking Sebastian, but it was the father who replied. “No, we’re fine.”
He kicked open the door of the cab and told the cabbie the intersection of the urgent care. He barely glanced back at Via. “We’re fine just the two of us.”
He pulled the door closed and the cab drove away.
* * *
TYLER TURNED FROM the fridge and thrust a beer into Seb’s hand. “I’m resisting the urge to give you a real crisp slap across the face right now, my dude.”
Seb chuckled humorlessly and took a long swallow of beer. “Because you think I’m overreacting?”
Tyler pulled out a barstool and sat down. “Because Matty is fine. And because you did EVERYTHING you were supposed to do. You were a great dad. You’re taking great care of him and still you’re beating yourself up.”
“I know. I think I’m having flashbacks to when Cora died or something. Blink of an eye, you know? I keep replaying the moment he fainted. He’s never fainted before. I keep thinking how big he looks these days, but he was so fucking small when I picked him up.” Seb squeezed his eyes closed, as if he could keep out the memory. He scraped the back of his hand against his wet eyes.
“Is he out for the night, you think?”
“You never can quite tell with a sick kid, but he’s sleeping soundly.”
“All right. Let’s watch a movie or something.”
“You don’t have to stay, Ty.”
“Shuddup. Matty’s sick. You look like you stuck your finger in an electrical socket. I’m staying.”
Sebastian laughed. “You know, this is why we became friends in kindergarten.”
Tyler looked up from his phone. “Because of my loyalty? Sense of right and wrong? You sensed my future devotion to your big-ass kid?”
“Because you just wouldn’t leave.”
Tyler rolled his eyes and laughed. “Hey, overstaying your welcome is actually a very tried-and-true strategy. Pretty soon, you don’t have to wait for a welcome anymore.”
They chose one of the endless iterations of the Jason Bourne franchise but ten minutes in, Seb’s mind was already miles away. He took out his phone and scrolled through his text messages. He found one, a number he hadn’t programmed into his phone yet. It was the text that had sent him Fin’s contact info. Via’s number. He didn’t think too hard on it.
Just an FYI, Matty’s all right. Took him to urgent care and then his general practitioner. It’s just strep. He’s on medicine and sleeping.
He didn’t sign the text or tell her who he was. He wasn’t about to participate in whatever fancy footwork was required for texting a twenty-seven-year-old crush on a Saturday night when she was probably out clubbing with her model boyfriend. He didn’t have the energy. If his text was dumb or stilted or weird, so be it. He just wanted her to have the information. It was less than thirty seconds later that he got a reply.
I’m so relieved. Strep is no fun, but I’m sure he’ll be feeling better when he wakes up.
Seb was just contemplating a reply when the thought bubbles popped up and he whipped his thumbs off the keyboard. She was typing. He pictured her in a bar, that bartender from Cider slinging an arm around her. Even though he knew that Via would never let a man put his arm around her when she had a boyfriend. His phone made that swooping sound, and her text popped up.
How are you, though? That was really scary.
He chuffed a little laugh. Scary was understating it. Heart-stopping was what it was. He looked up and saw Tyler’s eyes on him. Tyler gave a pointed look at his cell phone and raised his hands up, like, don’t mind me. Seb didn’t think Tyler would be quite so gung ho about this if he knew Seb was texting someone who had absolutely no interest in him.
My hair’s gone completely white. You’ll barely recognize me the next time you see me. I look almost as old as your hot bartender.
He smiled at his phone as he sent the text and turned back to the movie. He watched a gunfight, barely even seeing it as he replayed his own words back in his head. The smile melted off his face. Shit. That had been way too flirty. See? This was why he was supposed to fling his phone across the room when engaged in a texting conversation with a beautiful woman. He always, always ended up putting his foot in his mouth.
“I’m such a fucking idiot,” he told Tyler.
Tyler turned the volume down on the movie. “Yes. Absolutely. What are we talking about?”
Seb wagged his phone through the air. “You should just take this away from me. I’m so not good at digital crap with women. I swear. Me texting is the same thing as your skinny jeans phase. You’re just like, dude
, no. Can’t pull it off.”
Tyler laughed. “To be fair, I think I could have rocked the skinny jeans if they hadn’t been quite so...skinny.”
“Pretty sure you’re missing the point.”
They both laughed again and Tyler rolled his head to look at Seb. “Are you texting or sexting?”
“Sexting?” Seb tried to pick his jaw up off the floor. “You think I’d sit next to you on the couch and sext some woman, you perv?”
Tyler shrugged. “I’ve sexted a woman while I was sitting next to you before. It’s only weird if you make it weird.”
“Oh for fuck’s sake. That’s ALWAYS weird, Ty.” He side-eyed his friend. “No, I’m not sexting. I’m just texting. But I accidentally made it flirty when it shouldn’t be.”
“Accidentally?” Now Tyler was side-eyeing him right back. “There is no accidental flirting. It might not have been in the plan. But if you’re flirting, it’s because you want to be.”
“Bah.” Seb glared at his phone and considered turning it off completely. “All this shit is just way too complicated. I’m just going to turn it off—ohchristshetextedback.”
Seb ignored Tyler’s laughter and opened up her text. He stared at it for a hot second before he let out a very surprised chuckle. She’d sent back a GIF of a ninety-year-old man doing quite a seductive striptease. He had a white beard down to his belt, and he helicoptered his shirt around his head.
He showed Tyler, and both men laughed again at the GIF. “If you don’t want it to be flirty,” Tyler told him, “just text her whatever you’d text me if I sent you that.”
It was good advice. Seb thought for a second and typed out his response.
Well played.
Damn. Still seemed kind of flirty.
* * *
VIA HUMMED TO herself as she cut up fruit for a fruit salad. The coffee was taking forever to brew this morning, but it didn’t matter. She was in a good mood. Energized, even.
She jumped a foot in the air when Fin’s phone vibrated on the countertop next to her. Jeez. Maybe she should have half a cup instead of her usual full. She was a little on edge.