by Cara Bastone
She gasped when his thumb made a firm line at the underside of her breast. She wore a silk bra, but even that liquid fabric felt too coarse against her nipples; they were tall and begging to meet Sebastian. His hand was so big that she felt like he was touching her everywhere at once, and she shivered when his mouth fell to the hollow between her collarbones.
Seb slid backward, planting both knees on the floor. His hands rested on her hips as he eyed her, spread across his bed, her shins pressing into his chest. With his eyes on hers, he slowly lifted her shirt, an inch, another inch, until the golden expanse of her stomach was exposed, her hip bones jutting out above the waist of her pants.
Finally, Seb let his eyes drop.
“MotherFUCKER,” he groaned as his eyes fell to the tattoo at her hip. A stylized line drawing of a rosebud. One of his rough fingers outlined it. “DeRosa,” he whispered, tracing the rose.
She nodded. He’d understood immediately. Even though it was perhaps an overdone thing to get tattooed on one’s body, Via had done it for personal reasons. It was her family’s name in that tattoo. Her heritage. An image to remind her who she was and where she came from.
His lips were the next thing to touch the tattoo, followed by his tongue along her hip bone.
“This was here the entire time,” he muttered, almost to himself. “Your trim little pantsuits. Classy gold studs. Perfect hair, polite little face. And the whole time a tattoo on this fuckable little hip. Jesus.”
He kissed his way across her stomach to her other hip, pressing his stubble into her softness. Via tried to open her legs; she wanted to wrap herself around him. But he firmly kept her knees together.
“Dark chocolate, Via,” he reminded her, biting her hip bone and making her jolt.
She let out a long breath. “Right. Yeah. Okay. Dark chocolate.”
She gasped when he planted his hands at her hips and flipped her over onto her stomach. “I can’t look at that tattoo anymore or I’m going to have us both naked in about six seconds.”
But he didn’t stop either. Seb kissed his way up her spine, pushing her shirt out of the way as he went. She couldn’t stop tightening and flexing as his stubble scraped her everywhere. She made a breathy, desperate sound when she felt his teeth close over the clasp of her bra. He lifted it up off her back and pressed it back down. She could swear he was smelling her, rubbing his face into the smooth skin of her back.
And then—there was a God—he laid his weight down over her. Via tipped her head to one side, her cheek flat on the mattress as she felt his hardness press into her ass. She was completely covered by him, pressed down flat on the bed. Her lungs struggled to get in air, and she loved it. She completely loved it.
Seb rolled off of her and breathed hard, scraping his hands over his face. Via let her eyes wander down his gorgeous body, long and wide. She could practically see the heat squigglies rising up off of him like in the cartoons. Her eyes stuttered to a stop when she saw the ridge in his jeans.
The view was impeded by the jeans and the shadowy lighting. But Lord. She forgot about breathing. Who cared about it? It was a waste of time anyway. She watched her own hand creep across the bedspread. She marveled at her own boldness, and at how tiny she felt next to his big body.
Seb, his hands still pressing into his eyes, had no idea she was coming for him. She passed her hand over the ridge in his pants, and he hissed, like he was in pain, immediately leaning up onto his elbows. His eyes were on her, bright and wide. She didn’t look up from what she was doing.
She outlined him through his pants. Up one side, pausing at the head and making him curse again, and then back down the other side. She laid the heat of her palm flat against him and then, finally, met his gaze.
“Violetta,” he said, and she wasn’t sure if it was a warning or a plea.
She let her hand drift to his hip as she lifted herself, crawling over him.
It was an hour before they tore themselves away from one another. They were both unbuttoned and hot. Messy and breathing very hard. Via felt like a high schooler, all fired up and nowhere to go. Touching and kissing Seb was pretty much the hottest thing to ever happen to her, but they both seemed to tacitly agree that it wasn’t the time to get naked together yet. Their sweaty makeout on top of Seb’s covers was enough.
“I have to put you in a cab,” Seb growled into the palm of his hand, his eyes, lionlike, on hers.
“Okay,” Via agreed shakily. Matty was down the hall. This was getting out of hand. “I have Uber on my phone.”
Seb shook his head, pulled out his own phone and dialed a number. “Hi, Rico, it’s Sebastian Dorner. I need a cab at my house. All right. Just around the corner—she’s in Bensonhurst, too.” Seb’s eyes shot up to Via’s. “Yes, she’s a she. Five minutes? Great. Just charge it to the card I have on file.”
He was paying for her cab home. And he knew his car service dispatcher by name. Ugh. She really did have to get out of here before she did something insane like take a nap in his dirty laundry like the lunatic she was beginning to suspect she was.
Seb dragged her up from the bed and bustled her down the hall, like having her in the bedroom was too dang dangerous. When he got her to the front door, he sat her down on the stairs that led to the second floor of his house. He grabbed one boot and then the other, shoved her feet inside them. Next came her coat. He paused halfway through zipping it and pressed a kiss, over her shirt, to the plumpest part of her breast. He’d never done that before, and it had her jumping, her legs spreading at the knee. He pushed her knees back together and zipped her the rest of the way. Next, he found her hat and mittens in the pockets of her coat and put those on, too. Her messenger bag from school was slung across one of her shoulders before he brought her to standing and dragged her forward.
“I’ll miss you when I’m in White Plains,” he told her, leaning down.
“I’ll miss you, too. Eat something green for me.”
He smiled against her mouth. “I really will miss you, Via. I wish we weren’t going for the whole week.”
“It’ll be good for Matty to be with his grandparents. And you and I can talk on the phone. And when you get back, it’ll just be the best.”
And she would try very, very hard, not to make her loneliness his problem while he was gone. A week did seem like a very long time when it stretched out, imminent and ominous.
He kissed her again and walked her out to the cab that was idling in his driveway. Seb leaned down, sized up the driver and apparently deemed him acceptable. One more kiss and then she was in the cab, waving bye and trying not to be a baby.
* * *
“IF YOU SIGH one more time, I’m going to send you out in the backyard with your son.”
Muriel’s voice snapped Seb out of his reverie.
“And you’ve promised that you’d stop moping.”
“Right. Sorry, Muriel.”
Sebastian was on his back on her kitchen floor, fixing the garbage disposal on Sunday morning. He and Matty had been in White Plains for a day, and Seb thought he was going out of his mind. He couldn’t stop wondering how Via was spending her time. He knew that she and Fin had their own Thanksgiving traditions together, but there were a long few days rolling out before Thursday. He thought of her lonely apartment. How alone she’d looked at the softball field after her breakup. Over the week leading up to the holiday, there were bound to be lengthy, silent stretches of solitude for Via. Not that solitude was a bad thing, but he couldn’t help but think that she needed more noise in her life. Noise that he and Matty and Crabby were more than happy to provide.
He really wanted to be in Brooklyn. He wanted to spend this week with Via. But he wasn’t going to deprive Matty of time with his grandparents, and he damn sure wasn’t going to subject Via to time with Matty’s grandparents. Everything in him wanted to hit the gas, but he didn’t want anyone he cared about t
o get trampled in the process. So here he was, lying on the kitchen floor, sighing.
“Don’t be sorry.” Just do better. The subtext had all the subtlety of the broad side of a bus.
Sebastian could see Muriel’s neat white tennis shoes standing next to him. At first, he’d thought she was just overseeing his work, but he was pretty sure she was taking notes up there, trying to learn how to do it on her own if she had to.
“Right.”
Things were quiet for a while, and he was impressed when she passed down a wrench without him having to ask.
“So, things aren’t better with your woman?”
Involuntarily, Friday night passed through Seb’s mind like a high-speed movie. He coughed. “Ah.”
He wasn’t sure what to say. He was talking with his late wife’s mother about his new woman. He cleared his throat.
“Oh, come on, Sebastian. I deserve to know about things that affect my grandson.”
“That logic is a little wonky, Muriel. If you’re in the market for gossip, just ask.”
She made a little outraged noise from above him that made Seb laugh.
“No, things are good, I think,” he divulged, to soothe her. “I’m just in my own way.”
She was quiet and he could hear her organizing tools. “In your own way how?”
He considered her question. “Do you think I’m too old to be doing this? Trying to start something new with a woman?”
“Old?” She scoffed. “Don’t be idiotic, it doesn’t suit you.”
“I’m forty-two, Muriel.”
“Yes, and...?”
“She’s twenty-eight.”
She was quiet for a second. “That’s hardly a scandal. As long as she’s presentable. Oh Lord on high, tell me she doesn’t wear those horrid midriff shirts.”
Seb laughed. “Cora wore those midriff shirts.”
“And I thought they were horrid then, too.”
He could have sworn she laughed.
“Well, no. She’s very professional. And put together. She’s sweet. You actually know her or might remember her. She was Matty’s pre-K teacher.”
“Oh. Yes, I vaguely remember her. She was good with Matty, if I recall correctly?”
“She was good with him then, and she’s great with him now. It comes naturally to her, I think. But they also have a genuine connection. They’re...friends.” There wasn’t really a better word for it, but it felt strangely inadequate.
“His pre-K teacher,” Muriel repeated, and seemed to be racking her memory. “She was very small? Dark hair? I can’t quite picture her. That year is...foggy for me.” She sounded like admitting it was a real weakness.
Seb scooted out from under the sink and leaned forward on his knees. “Yeah, me, too.” He slanted a quick look up at her. “She was at that softball game, too. I wasn’t sure if you’d recognize her.”
“I knew it!” Muriel crowed before quickly regaining her composure. “I thought for sure you were attracted to that woman. Though, I didn’t realize who she was. Or that we’d already met.”
“Did you interact with her much when Matty was in her class?”
Muriel lifted one shoulder. “A bit. I remember thinking she was good for Matty.”
“Yeah. She actually did this one thing that really helped me after Cora passed. Do you remember that checklist I used to keep up on the fridge?”
“Yes.”
“Yeah, she made that for me. And that was really helpful, in a logistical way. But the real thing she did for me was to kindly, gently, tell me that I was neglecting my son.”
Muriel made a sound that Seb would never be able to interpret if he lived a hundred years. She sounded outraged and in agreement at the same time.
“She was right.” Seb wiped his forearm against his eyes. “I was lost and spinning and a bad father. And she just firmly told me to do better. I clung to that for months. The idea that I could do better. And all I had to do was follow that little roadmap she gave me. And every day, I got a little bit better at it.”
“It simplifies it to say it was all because of her.”
“I know. It was a little thing that she did, in the long run. Compared to everyone else. Tyler moved back from Cali. Mary was over at the house every other day. You and Arthur have been Matty’s other parents. No question. And there’s no way I could thank you all for what you’ve done.”
“And you shouldn’t. We’re family.”
“Yeah. Well, Via wasn’t. And there was something about what she said and the way she said it, it just woke something up inside me. Something that wasn’t even awake before Cora died. She woke up this thing that had me wanting to try. No, not even wanting. Needing. I knew that I needed to try. And that there was no room to be scared. Or for disintegrating. All I could do was try to make things work for Matty.”
He stood and washed his hands at the sink. Muriel handed him a clean dishtowel.
“And you found your way back to her?”
He nodded. “She works at PS 128 now.” He paused. “I know she’s young. But I’ve gone on a few other dates and they...weren’t right. I just felt bad after them. I felt like I was better off alone than trying to make something like that work.”
Muriel turned away from Seb, and he was shocked when her shoulders wilted once and then rocked. She was crying.
“Muriel.” He put a hand on her shoulder. He was utterly aghast. God, had he told her too much? He hadn’t seen her cry since that horrible night in the hospital. She’d been waiting for Seb when he’d come out of the morgue. He’d identified Cora. And the two of them had utterly broken in two separate chairs. Unable to even look at one another.
“I’m sorry,” Muriel said, and Seb handed the dishtowel right back to her. She brushed tears from her face in a businesslike way. “I just got overwhelmed for a second. I was thinking about how Cora would feel if she knew you were dating. And at first it made me laugh and then I just...” She gestured at her teary eyes.
Seb teared up a little more, laughing through it. “She was very territorial. Even with someone she wasn’t all that jazzed about being married to.”
Muriel didn’t deny that he and her daughter hadn’t been the perfect match. And he was glad she didn’t. He could always count on her for her honesty. “Regardless. She wanted the best for Matty. Think about that, Sebastian. That was truly what she wanted. The best for Matty.”
“Of course.”
“Don’t you realize that she would have divorced you if she didn’t think you had it in you to be a good father?”
He whipped back, his shoulders contracting like a snail into its shell. The thought had never occurred to him before. “I—”
“A woman like Cora. So definite. So sure. Everything black and white and loud. She married you like that.” She snapped her fingers. “Don’t you think she would have left you in exactly the same manner if she hadn’t known you’d be good for Matty?”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m saying that if this woman is right for you, then you owe it to Cora, to Matty, to make it work. Get out of your own way, Seb.”
It was the first time she’d ever shortened his name and it hit him almost as hard as her earlier proclamation had. “Muriel.”
“You are going to give that boy a good life. You had one woman who gave you a son, and now, apparently, you have another who’s going to help you raise him. Figure it out.”
With that, she was marching out of the kitchen and Seb was left behind, his mouth open like a fish.
* * *
VIA SET HER dishes to dry in the rack and sighed. Friday evening had been on constant replay in her head the entire weekend. She’d thought she would toss and turn with Sebastian gone, heated and uncomfortable. But she’d fallen into a deep sleep when she’d gotten home and woken up starving. She was attempting to d
istract herself with work.
And even now, Sunday late afternoon, the weak sun rolling sideways in the sky, she had files spread out on the breakfast table in her kitchen.
She’d just eaten a light dinner and was going to settle down to some paperwork. She had work tomorrow, but it wasn’t a full day. Just professional development from twelve to four. It wasn’t so bad.
But she couldn’t stop the sigh as she sat down at the table. She was lonely. It wasn’t a new feeling; it was something she’d lived with ever since her parents had died. The second she was alone, she got incredibly lonely. Time with Fin made it subside, time with Evan used to. And time with Seb and Matty damn near demolished it. But they were in White Plains for the week, and Via was here, with nothing to do but work and make a menu for her and Fin’s annual Thanksgiving.
Her phone gave a buzz and skittered sideways on the table. Via leaped forward and nearly threw it on the floor in her haste to answer it. She tried not to feel guilty at the little bursting bubble of disappointment in her gut when she saw that it wasn’t Sebastian.
“Hi, Fin.”
“I’m gonna pretend you’re actually happy to be talking to me.”
Via couldn’t help but laugh at her friend’s intuition and candor. “I’m not unhappy. I was just...”
“Hoping to flirt with your man?” Fin’s smile was very clear in her tone. “I don’t blame you. How’d this week go?”
Via knew, without having to ask, what Fin was referring to. The Sunday night after the wedding, when Via was staring down the barrel of a week with her nosy colleagues, she and Fin had come up with a game plan for how she was going to deal with any of the possibly impending gossip: she was going to tell the damn truth.
We like each other, we’re seeing what happens. What’s new with you? That was Via’s line. To anyone who asked. Via had practiced it in her head forty times on the walk to school and had still had to change into her backup shirt when she’d gotten to her office. She’d been a sweaty, nervous mess the whole day.