Can't Help Falling

by Cara Bastone

  Via’s familiar form filled Fin’s vision. She slightly blurred her eyes until her best friend was merely a silhouette. And there was Via’s energy, mixed with and illuminated by the natural light surrounding her. Fin read the happiness there, the relaxed, eased love that Via felt on the daily. Like the tartness or sweetness of the first sip of wine, she could read, first and foremost Sebastian and Matty mixed into Via’s energy. They were always prominent these days. The very first page in Via’s book. The oak trees planted firmly in her heart.

  With just a moment more of looking, Fin located Tyler. He was as distant as he’d been for months. Still bright, like a far star, but distant.

  Almost the second she’d located him, Fin dropped her reading and turned away. “Let me just change my clothes, sister.”

  Via wandered out to the living room to wait. Fin closed herself in the bedroom and shed her clothing.

  She always felt chilled after she went digging around after Tyler. She could liken the sensation to prodding at a paper cut that she already knew was sore. So she kept doing it, because frankly, she felt guilty as hell.

  She pursed her lips. “I’m not the only reason the man is lost,” she reminded herself. “Hell. I’m not even the main reason.”

  But she was part of the reason. Her words to him at the ballpark had been as cruel as they’d been necessary.

  Him asking her out that day had been the equivalent of suddenly finding a stray dog sitting in her kitchen. She’d known the pup had been lurking around the yard, but to actually see him sitting there, blinking up at her like an expectant mongrel, waiting for some belly scratches...

  The last time she’d seen him had been at Seb’s end-of-summer barbecue. She’d stepped out into the backyard to see Tyler gunned down in a blaze of freezing water-gun water as Matty and Joy had cackled like maniacs. She’d smiled at the scene but ended up frowning when Tyler had looked up and seen her. You didn’t need to be a psychic to sense the ice that had immediately formed around him.

  Apparently she’d not only kicked the puppy out of her kitchen—she’d made an enemy.

  She shivered and dressed herself against the chill. She didn’t want Tyler as an enemy. She just didn’t want to screw up her life over a man.

  Fin pulled on leg warmers up to her hips, and over top of that, she donned a long, swishy dress that fell to her ankles. It was a deep red in color, bolstering and passionate. She took a few minutes to braid her long, dark hair. And finally, finally, her jewelry.

  She traded out a peridot ring for a silver garnet one. Amethyst earrings and finally, a hideous necklace with large wooden beads that Matty had made for her. She’d sensed, immediately, how much love he’d put into making it, and she considered it one of her strongest and most potent forms of magic.

  Dressed and ready, they made their way from Fin’s Lefferts Gardens apartment to Seb and Via’s home in Bensonhurst.

  “Auntie Fin!” Matty shouted from inside the house the second Via’s key hit the outer lock. Still on the porch, Via laughed and stepped back and let him scrabble with the locks from the inside. He flung open the door, one hand firmly on the collar of his exuberant dog, Crabby.

  Boy and dog broke the threshold of the house and immediately got tangled in her long red skirt.

  “Crap!” Matty yelled, dragged to his knees as he attempted to keep his dog from escaping into the dimming Brooklyn evening.

  Fin laughed and held still, knowing that if she moved she’d trip over the pile of excited mammals at her feet.

  Fin grinned when somehow Crabby ended up under her skirt. She lifted the hem, grateful for the intuition that’d told her to wear the long leg warmers. She lowered a calm hand to the top of the dog’s curly white-and-brown head. “Shh,” Fin murmured, concentrating hard.

  The dog stopped yanking Matty’s tightfisted hand and plunked his butt down. He still sat between Fin’s legs and his tail bongo-ed a mile a minute, but he was no longer attempting to escape.

  “Crabby, come!” Sebastian called, appearing in the hallway with a dish towel over his shoulder. The dog sprinted back inside, leaping over Matty and into the house. Sebastian strode forward and lifted Matty from the ground, dusting off his son’s trousers. “I swear Crabby is somehow gaining energy as he gets older. Hi, Fin.” He bussed her on the cheek and then pulled Via into a hug. “Hi, baby.”

  “Auntie Fin?” Matty asked a few minutes later as he sat on the steps to his upstairs and watched Fin unlace her boots. Via and Seb had disappeared into the kitchen to fix dinner.

  “Nephew Matty?” she replied, using the same questioning tone that he had, knowing it would make him smile.

  It worked. He smiled for a moment and then went back to tugging at the loose white strings at the bottom of his jeans.

  “How come Crabby is always trying to escape? He’s always trying to get off the leash in Prospect Park or get out the front door.” Matty tug-tug-tugged at his pants. “Am I doing something wrong?”

  Fin’s already tender heart went ahead and shoved itself through the meat tenderizer known as Matty Dorner.

  Fin tossed her boots into the shoe closet and turned to survey the scene in front of her with her physical eyes. Matty looked a little flushed and a little sad, one of his cheeks inched up the wall that he leaned his face against, his hands still tangled in the hem of his jeans.

  His sadness, like all children, was so bright it hurt Fin to see it, like biting down on a sour candy. Most children she knew didn’t tangle up their emotions the way adults did, they painted them in the broad, bright strokes of undiluted paint, and Matty was the most undiluted person that Fin had ever met. His feelings were large and intense, and thus, usually dealt with quite quickly. But this feeling was different.

  She answered the question at hand, because he hadn’t asked her, “Auntie Fin, why am I so sad right now?”

  If he had, she might have told him. But that wasn’t the way Matty’s brain worked.

  “Crabby wants fun, Matty. And the most fun he ever has is with you in the park. So, in his mind, any hour of the day, he wants to pull you out of the house and to the park. Even if that means he might accidentally get off leash and get away from you.”

  Matty picked a string clean off the bottom of his jeans and twisted it around his finger. “He’s not trying to get away from me?”

  “Definitely not,” Serafine answered truthfully. “He loves you more than anything. But it’s kind of like when you eat a really big slice of confetti cake at someone’s birthday party and you already ate three slices of pepperoni pizza.”

  Matty looked up with a knowing smile on his face.

  “And you get a stomach ache?”

  “Exactly,” she nodded. “He wants it all. Even if it means getting lost in the dark, Crabby still wants to drag you out to the park.” The dog in question was suddenly back from the kitchen, tongue hanging out one side of his mouth and pushing the crown of his head against Fin’s knees. She laughed as Crabby looked up, saw his boy sitting on the stairs, and bounded forward, knocking Matty backward. “The poor guy can’t even help himself.”

  Matty didn’t answer, and Fin knew that it was because he was already lost in the world that only he and Crabby knew how to enter. Gone through some magical door halfway between reality and make-believe.

  A moment later, Fin was standing in the doorway of Seb and Via’s kitchen watching quietly as Sebastian scrubbed at some crayon that had accidentally found its way to his countertops. Via was serving something from a slow cooker into bowls and slicing bread.

  “He misses Tyler,” Fin said quietly.

  Seb and Via both froze, exchanging eye contact so personal that Fin averted her eyes. Sebastian sighed and straightened, towering over the countertop and tossing the dishrag over his shoulder again. He scrubbed a hand over his face, his dry palm making a loud sound against his stubble.

 
Wow. Fin nearly took a step back from the powerful emotion that emanated off of him.

  “We all miss Tyler,” Sebastian responded gruffly, “but he’s MIA.”

  Fin bit her lip. “You haven’t seen him at all this summer?”

  “No. He’s been in and out a little bit. It’s just that he used to stick to us like glue. And now, all of a sudden, he’s ducking my phone calls. Can’t really figure it out.”

  Fin, on the other hand, could see it all quite clearly. She’d accused Tyler of clinging to Seb and Matty instead of living a life on his own and he’d taken it to heart. And now he was in the process of hurting the people who loved him best. She frowned at her own shortsightedness. She’d carried that rejection letter with her to the ball game thinking that it would fortify her. But it had been bad magic. Dangerous.

  Fin’s eyes clashed with Via’s. She’d told Via that Tyler had asked her out at the ball game, but she hadn’t given her the details on exactly what had been said. She knew she’d have to tell her the rest of the story tonight. She couldn’t keep this a secret any longer.

  Via cleared her throat and crossed the kitchen to link her arms around her boyfriend, burying herself in his chest. His big arms came around her easily and anyone, even the non-psychics of the world, could have seen just how much she melted him, like he was a stick of butter and her cheek against his sternum was a beam of heat.

  “He’s gonna be there tomorrow,” Via reminded Seb. “He promised he’d be at Matty’s first basketball game,” she informed Fin. “And Matty’s been nervous about it, so Ty said that he’d report on the game and that he’d even write a little article about it for Matty’s personal use. And that no matter what happened in the game, he’d make sure that Matty sounded really cool in the article.”

  Dimly, Fin remembered that Tyler was a sports writer; he reported on the Brooklyn Nets for one of the daily New York papers.

  A pit of something cold was yawning in her gut and she wanted to fill it up with good food and the love that emanated from this little family.

  “Salad?” Fin asked, changing the subject. “Want me to toss together a salad?”

  Wary of Fin’s cooking skills, Via bounded between her fridge and her best friend, her arms tossed out like she was protecting a baby carriage from a runaway horse. “How about you set the table, Fin dear?”

  Fin’s face instantly matched Via’s. Two wide, genuine smiles. She rolled her eyes and deviated to the kitchen table, the pit in her gut temporarily filling up.

  CHAPTER THREE

  THERE REALLY WAS nothing like an eight-thirty a.m. basketball game in some sweaty, humid gym in Bensonhurst. Surprisingly, this was not a sarcastic thought of Tyler’s. He was dead serious. He loved organized sports. He loved fancy coffee, of which he currently had one in hand, courtesy of the cute barista he’d been casually flirting with for the last few weeks. And most of all, he loved Matty, who bolted to his feet the second he saw his Uncle Ty across the gymnasium, pinwheeling both arms in the air to get his attention.

  Sebastian caught Tyler’s eye as well from where he was leading the team of eight-year-olds through some pregame stretching. The two men grinned at one another. How many early Saturday mornings had they spent just like this in their childhoods? Lackadaisically stretching before they played some intramural sport that neither of them particularly cared about.

  Tyler’s happiness at seeing Seb and Matty was slightly punctured by the realization of just how much he’d missed them this summer.

  You cling to Matty and Seb instead of living a life of your own.

  Pretty much every single letter of every single word that Serafine had spewed at Tyler at the Cyclones game had wounded him. But had anything hurt him more than that? He wasn’t sure. With one sentence she’d transformed one of the things he was the most proud of in his life to something shameful and embarrassing.

  The worst part about it? She hadn’t been wrong.

  After Seb’s wife had died, Tyler had gotten so used to letting Seb lean on him for anything and everything that he hadn’t noticed the subtle shift over the years. The shift where finally he’d been the one leaning on Seb. As soon as Fin had pointed it out, it had seemed apparent and glaring and mortifying.

  Seb was his family, would always be his family. But that didn’t mean Tyler’s daddy issues needed a seat at Seb’s dinner table.

  So, he’d taken a step back. He’d let Via get settled into her new house, let the three of them get acclimated to living with one another. They didn’t need Tyler popping in at all hours.

  But now, looking across the gym at Matty rolling into a new stretch like the floppy Great Dane puppy that he was, Tyler wondered if maybe he’d overcorrected a bit too much. Because damn. He missed that kid. He missed Seb. He missed being Uncle Tyler.

  “Ty!”

  Tyler turned toward the voice and immediately pasted on a smile to hide the wince. Via was standing in the bleachers waving him over. He waved back and quickly glanced away. Of course he’d be sitting with her. It would be super weird not to. But for some reason, he hadn’t thought she’d be at the game.

  Of course she was here. That’s what good parents and guardians did. They came to their kid’s sporting events. Just because he’d never had anyone in the bleachers for him did not mean that Via would ever miss Matty’s game.

  Tyler walked over and bounded gracefully up the bleachers to Via’s seat. He was so focused on pleasantly smiling at his best friend’s girlfriend that he didn’t notice the woman sitting beside her until he sat down.

  “Morning, Via—” The breath whooshed out of his lungs as Fin leaned around Via, her elbows resting on her knees, her dark braid swinging down over one shoulder and one eyebrow raised to the vaulted ceilings. “Fin,” he choked, with what he hoped was an aloof nod.

  What the hell was she doing here? She was spending so much time with the family that she was even attending Matty’s sporting events these days? God. He’d taken a few steps back this summer, and apparently Fin had taken a few steps forward. The thought made him panicky.

  He cleared his throat, casting about for something to say. “I would have picked up more coffee if I’d known I’d have the pleasure of seeing you two today.”

  Fin may have fishgutted him at that Cyclones game, but he could still be polite.

  Her second eyebrow raised to meet the first and he knew that she completely saw through his facade of manners and fake smiles.

  “That’s okay!” Via chirped. “We already had some and I don’t need any more. I’m too nervous.”

  “For what?” Tyler tore his attention away from the annoyingly seductive black hole of Fin’s beauty and put his eyes on Via.

  “For Matty’s game.”

  Tyler couldn’t help but laugh. “It’s just intramural basketball.”

  “I know,” Via said, looking a little sheepish. “But he was so nervous this morning. He’s really scared the ball is going to bounce off the backboard and hit him in the face. Apparently that happened during a practice and he’s yet to live it down.”

  Tyler chuckled and looked out at Matty. “I can’t believe he’s at an age where he’s finally starting to feel embarrassment. I once saw him tear the ass out of his shorts on the playground and just shrug and keep playing.”

  Via burst out laughing. “He’s an inspiration to us all.”

  The scoreboard buzzed loudly and Tyler watched as both centers missed the ball during tip-off. All ten kids on the court just sort of scrabbled after it in a big, shoe-squeaking clump. He set his coffee between his feet and pulled out his notebook from under his arm and took a few notes on the surroundings, on the other team, on Matty.

  “It’s sweet of you to do this,” Via said, nudging Tyler with her shoulder. “He’s really excited about having an article written about him. By a real sports writer.”

  “I thought I’d give him
the notebook too, along with the article.” He thumbed through it to show her. “So he can see that I’ve used it to take notes on the Nets as well. He can see his own name along with the superstars.”

  He felt a bright light on the side of his face and knew that Fin was looking at him, but he didn’t bother turning to look back at her. He was doing just fine ignoring her and he wasn’t about to deviate from that path.

  “It’s so neat!” Via crowed, looking closely at a page of his carefully handwritten notes. Even when he was scribbling as fast as he could, Tyler’s handwriting stayed scrupulously tidy. Just like the perfect wave of his blond hair, just like the collars of his shirts and the crease in his pants. Neatness was something that he’d learned at a very young age. At both his mother’s house and his father’s house, there’d been an army of employees with feather dusters and cans of furniture wax. His home life may have been trembling like it was made of matchsticks, but the homes themselves had been showcase perfect at all times.

  Even as a kid, he’d transferred the same principle to his physical appearance. Clean fingernails at dinnertime, flossed teeth, a drawer of spare shoelaces in case one broke. All things he could do to keep his life strung together. Besides, he’d figured that if he was going to be imposing himself at Seb’s parents’ house all the time then he couldn’t afford to be a sloppy houseguest. The habit had stuck. So here he was, a man in his early forties, with dress socks showing a half inch under his tidily tailored trousers, his face shaved in neat lines.

  A perfectly wrapped present with no name in the card.

  He glowered down at his own handwriting. He’d been so excited about the game. And all it had taken to turn it into a pity party was one sultry psychic who’d yet to even say hello.

  “I’m gonna run to the bathroom real quick,” Via said, stepping carefully over Tyler’s coffee. “Back in a sec.”

  No! Tyler resisted the urge to grab the tail of her long sweater, keep her from abandoning him to Fin’s chilly waters.