Can't Help Falling

by Cara Bastone

  “Do you want to be the one to tell Kylie?” Myra asked.

  “God, no,” he answered on instinct, then grimaced. “Sorry. But maybe it would be better if you did.”

  Myra nodded that weathered face of hers. “That’s fine. I’ll be in touch in the next few days when I know more. Send Kylie in on your way out.”

  Tyler rose, was halfway to the door when he remembered to turn around and shake Myra’s hand. “Thank you.”

  “Tyler, I know this is...confusing news at best.”

  “I want what’s best for Kylie.” He meant that. Even if he had no freaking clue what it actually meant.

  “I know you do. And so do I. It’s human nature. But when you’ve been doing this as long as I have, you learn that ‘best’ isn’t a destination. It’s something you have to make, over and over again.”

  Tyler nodded and made his way back into the hallway where Kylie was fiddling with her phone, her feet up on the bench beside her. She was smiling down at the screen but that smile dropped cartoonishly fast the second she saw Tyler’s face.

  “Myra wants to see you.”

  Kylie brushed past him. And that was it. He waited in the hallway. They said nothing to one another on the car ride home.

  He was just turning to say something to Kylie, anything, when she slammed into the house and up to her room, sealing herself off from him. They had about three hours until they had to leave for the airport. They’d gotten everything packed last night and all there was left to do was throw out anything that would go bad. Lock up and leave.

  Tyler decided that he’d do himself a solid and take a quick run. Something to settle his nerves.

  While he’d waited for the okay to take her home, the only thing that had been keeping him sane was his five a.m. jogs through Kylie’s suburb. Misty autumn runs with no one around, sleeping houses on either side, garage doors haphazardly open, occasionally an early-morning dog walker, but mostly just dawn-blue solitude.

  Now, as he ran on this unusually sunny November afternoon, Tyler had to admit that there were perks to the Midwest. But that didn’t mean he wanted to live there.

  He ran hard, unforgivingly, feeling like if he went fast enough, he could propel himself right back into his normal life.

  Half an hour after he’d set out for his run, T-shirt sticking to him, aching for an afternoon cup of coffee, Tyler stood again on the front step of this weird, vacuous house.

  It was like it sucked the essence of him right out of his chest the second he walked in. He stood on the threshold as Tyler Leshuski and then he entered and became just some primate who barely knew what to do with his two thumbs.

  He’d had a similar reaction the first time he’d ever been here just a few years before. It had been a strange time in his life. Only days after their father’s funeral and a week after his unexpected death. But that hadn’t been the strangest part of it. The first time Tyler had stepped foot in this house had been less than seventy-two hours after he’d found out that Kylie even existed.

  Apparently his father had had a second family, for over a decade, and had chosen not to even mention it to Tyler. He’d first heard the name Kylie Leshuski out of the lips of his father’s lawyer, in a bright office, during the reading of the will.

  Less than three days after that, he’d been here. In Columbus, meeting his little sister who was almost three decades younger than he was. He hadn’t felt like himself then either. He hadn’t been able to think of a single thing to say to an eleven-year-old girl. Much less a joke to make. She’d been just as weirded out as he’d been.

  The whole thing had been even worse because of Lorraine’s behavior. Seemingly unaffected by her ex-husband’s death, she’d preened for Tyler. Basically hitting on him the entire time and straight-up ignoring Kylie. He’d only visited one more time before he realized that his presence was simply painful for Kylie. She obviously hated seeing her mother press her boobs against Tyler’s arm, whispering in his ear, and it wasn’t like Kylie and Tyler had had some sort of preternatural sibling connection. They were just a forty-year-old guy and an eleven-year-old with very little to talk about. Genetics be damned. Since then their contact had mostly been limited to a weekly phone call and the occasional text message.

  And now this. Shoving Kylie into a tin can in the sky and taking her to a place she’d never been before. All so that he could take a crack at figuring out guardianing her.

  He had to believe that things would be better in Brooklyn. Brooklyn, where he knew the way around his kitchen. Where his best friends were only forty blocks away. Where the silence at night didn’t threaten to eat him alive.

  Speaking of silence, Tyler stepped inside the house to find it eerily silent, except for the sound of quiet crying coming from the downstairs bathroom.

  He proceeded with caution. “Kylie?” he called.

  There were a few seconds of strained silence and then the lock on the downstairs bathroom turned and she slammed out, her arms crossed over her chest, raw anger cindered in her reddened eyes.

  “Where were you?”

  “A run.” He pointed to his sweaty clothes and running shoes.

  She glared at him accusatorially but didn’t say anything, just let her anger singe his edges.

  He almost, almost asked her what the problem was. But then it hit him. The deal with her shutting herself in a room with no windows and a lock on the door. He thought of the nest of blankets he’d found in the bathroom upstairs when he’d first arrived. She’d been sleeping up there the whole time her mother had been gone. Because she’d been afraid to be alone and wanted a lock on the door between her and the world.

  He’d already loaded his bags into the car. She must have come downstairs, seen that he wasn’t there, panicked and thought he’d left. She thought he’d left her just like her mother had.

  Pain, sympathy, anger, tenderness, all of it swelled within him so quickly he almost gasped against the feeling. He wouldn’t have thought there was enough room in his chest for this much emotion. His eyes zeroed in on his little sister’s face, screwed into a knot, her hair messy and making her look like she was about ten years old.

  She was just a kid.

  “Kylie—”

  “I’m not going to New York.”

  “Kylie,” he repeated, but in a very different tone this time. “Please don’t do this.”

  “There’s no reason for me to go,” she said, arms still crossed.

  Feeling the same way he had watching her pour the rest of the cereal into her own bowl, he gritted his teeth. It was not the time to let his ego get in the way. “Actually, there’s lots of reasons.”

  “Mom is back.” Her face was stubborn but her voice quavered, just enough to have that tenderness swelling in his chest again. It was the first time that either of them were acknowledging that Myra had dropped a total bomb on them. “She left for a while, but now she’s back. This doesn’t have to be such a big deal. It’s nothing I can’t handle.”

  Or haven’t handled before, Tyler finished the thought for her.

  He knew that she didn’t know him from Elvis, not really. Up to now, the extent of their relationship had been ten-minute phone calls on Thursday nights in which he methodically asked her questions about school, the seasons, and then prattled on a bit about his life before he hung up. But anything had to be better than Lorraine. Couldn’t she see that? “Kylie, hate to break it to you, but you have no idea what you can or can’t handle. You’re a kid. You literally can’t comprehend it yet.”

  It was the wrong thing to say.

  “Oh, and just because you’re an adult, you understand the entire situation? You know exactly what’s best for me, Tyler? Is that right? Just because you’re old you can magically see the future and know exactly what I should or shouldn’t do, even though you don’t even know me at all?”

  He winced. Yikes. W
ay to find his weak spot and press a scalpel to it. “No, Kylie, I’m not saying I looked into a crystal ball and figured out that taking you to Brooklyn is the best bet. But I definitely know what the lawyer and social worker and judge all told me. Which is that it is going to be at least months, maybe a year, maybe even years, plural, before your mother gets custody of you again. And that’s if absolutely everything goes her way. That’s if she doesn’t get jail time for neglect and abandonment.”

  The words jail time were a pin to a balloon. Tyler watched as her anger puffed out of her all at once. Her face went white behind her freckles, her arms fell limp at her sides.

  He felt like dirt. No, worse than that. He felt like dirt after it had been run through an earthworm. He shouldn’t have said that. Even if it was true.

  “Fine,” Kylie said in a low, quavering voice. “Then why can’t we wait for all of that to get sorted out here? From Columbus?”

  It was a young, vulnerable question. And because of that, Tyler only gave her part of the answer. He didn’t say that the judge had thought it would be a good idea to give Kylie a clean start in a place where not everyone knew her mother had abandoned her. Where her grades weren’t skimming the bottom of a week-old garbage can. Where there weren’t people pumping the brakes in front of their McMansion just dying to get a glimpse of the kid who’d made the local news for living on her own for a few months.

  Determined not to prick any more balloons, Tyler took a deep breath. “Ky, part of being charged with taking care of you is supporting you. And to support you, I have to work. My work is in Brooklyn. There’s no getting around it. Dad’s gone. I’m your next of kin. I live in Brooklyn. We have to go.”

  “I have no choice?” It was a question with a web of knives sewed into its lining.

  He sighed. “On this particular part of it, yeah, you have no choice. I have no choice either. I’m as much at the whim of this judge as you are.”

  That much was true. Tyler had all but bowed and scraped at the feet of this judge for weeks. If the judge said, “Blow me a bubble,” Tyler would say, “What flavor bubble gum?” His pride had not mattered one whit. He’d do anything if it meant keeping Kylie out of foster care, if it meant getting her out of Columbus and to Brooklyn where he could actually figure out how to do this.

  He hadn’t thought of his words as cruel, but the minute he said them, her face blanched and she gave him a look that could only be described as utterly wretched. She just...looked so miserable.

  “Kylie—”

  “Whatever, Tyler.”

  She turned on her heel and stomped up the stairs to her room. He winced when he heard the door slam.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  TYLER, FEELING LIKE he now knew very little about anything, had just been grateful to get off the plane at JFK that night.

  He felt like an uneasy sailor who’d finally been allowed to get his feet back on dry land. He still might face-plant from disorientation, but at least he wasn’t going to drown in the ocean.

  He hadn’t accounted for the fact, however, that Kylie’s second day in Brooklyn was Thanksgiving. That morning he’d blinked into the judgmental cavern of his freezer and had never felt more like a sad bachelor. He was actually quite good at feeding himself normally, and though Via had stocked their fridge when she’d come over to decorate Kylie’s new bedroom, he stared at all the food in hopelessness.

  When he made dinner for himself, he did it with a beer in his hand and sports on the TV. He ate whatever he felt like eating, did it quickly, washed up and then usually went out for the night.

  But with Kylie, he should probably at least attempt to make Thanksgiving meaningful for her.

  God. Why did it have to be tonight?

  Why did their very first dinner together in Brooklyn have to be the most symbolic meal of the year?

  He picked up his phone to call Sebastian and was surprised to see a text from Via already waiting there.

  Why don’t you two come over around two p.m. for Thanksgiving dinner? We’ll eat around four.

  He closed the fridge door and sagged against the countertop. Right now, with a sullen, distant, unhappy little sister locked away in her bedroom, Seb and Via’s house seemed like Valhalla.

  Yes. God yes. Have I ever told you that you’re a brilliant, generous, incredible woman?

  Too much? Maybe.

  Did he care? No.

  She sent him the emoji of an eye roll next to a laughing emoji and a thumbs-up. Fair warning, the Sullivans are going to be here as well. And Fin.

  The Sullivans, Seb’s late wife’s parents, were old hat to Tyler. He knew how to rub elbows with Art and flirt with Muriel; they both liked him. Fin, however, was another story.

  It was almost like her cruel words to him at the game had been the surgeon’s scalpel that had slit him clean open. Everything he’d ever felt for her, every heart-racing, warm, hot, slippery smooth feeling he’d ever had had leaked right out of him. The wound had healed adequately, if not perfectly, leaving a tough scar where she’d cut him.

  He didn’t like seeing her even on the few occasions he had; it prodded at the scar. But honestly, when faced with a sad little Thanksgiving alone with Kylie, Tyler would have stripped himself nude in front of Fin if Via had asked him to.

  Great. What should I bring?

  *

  WHICH WAS HOW Tyler found himself standing on Seb’s front porch with flowers in one hand and paper towels in the other, because he’d felt like a tool showing up with just the paper products Via had requested.

  Behind him, Kylie scowled as she looked cynically around at Seb’s quaint little street with its postage-stamp-sized front yards and copious Christmas lights already looped around every front window.

  There was a crisp fifty folded in her pocket, which was exactly what it had taken to get her onto the train with him.

  The door swung open and Tyler braced himself, knowing exactly what was about to come barreling out the door. With the dexterity of a man with quite a bit of practice, Tyler set down the flowers and paper towel, dived for Crabby’s collar and swung Matty up under his arm, like the kid was a rolled-up sleeping bag.

  “Long time, no see, Mickey Rooney.” Tyler leaned down and kissed Matty’s hair. He set him down and shooed Crabby into the house. Matty gave Kylie a shy look and then scampered down the hall.

  “Dad! Tyler and Kylie are here!”

  “That kid’s name is Mickey Rooney?” Kylie asked as she followed Tyler’s lead and kicked her shoes into the shoe closet.

  Taken off guard, Tyler laughed, something he just now realized he’d done very little of with Kylie. “Ah, no. It’s Matty. But let’s see. I started off calling him Punky Brewster when he was going through a particularly, well, punky phase. And then Punky Brewster became Brew-Brew. Which eventually became Roo-Roo, which turned into Rooney-Dooney. And then Mickey Rooney-Dooney. And now just—”

  “Mickey Rooney. Got it.”

  He studied his little sister for a second, and though he could have sworn there was the hint of humor at the corners of her serious eyes, it was gone in a flash and her sullen expression returned.

  She’d brought very little with her to Brooklyn. Just two suitcases, and Tyler had been really surprised when Kylie had emerged from her bedroom that afternoon, a scowl on her fox-like face but her red hair straightened and braided. She’d worn a jean dress with plaid tights and boots.

  He was as confused by it as he was impressed. He’d thought for a minute that maybe they had more in common than he’d thought, as he liked to dress up for nice occasions too, but he’d started to wonder if maybe her nice clothes were something more akin to a tiger’s stripes. Camouflage. Armor. War paint, of sorts.

  Her frown intensified as she looked over his shoulder down the hall and suddenly there were Sebastian and Via standing there, holding hands and smiling.

&nbs
p; “Via, Sebastian, this is Kylie.”

  Kylie looked nervous and uncomfortable and shy. “You’re the one who set up the room for me?”

  Via nodded. “Yup. I hope you like it. I guessed on pretty much everything.”

  “I was just glad it wasn’t pink and purple.”

  For some mystifying reason, that made both Via and Kylie laugh. Tyler didn’t get the joke. Especially because he’d been surprised to see that Via had left his former office the same deep blue he’d painted it a few years ago. He definitely would have repainted it to a light color. Maybe not pink. But most likely lavender or something.

  “If there’s anything you don’t like in your room, we can change it,” Tyler cut in. And then, for another completely mystifying reason, his words made Kylie abruptly stop laughing, her sullen look immediately returning.

  Via cleared her throat. “I suppose you’re wondering who the spy is?” she said to Kylie.

  “The spy?”

  Via widened her eyes in a conspiratorial look and tipped her head in the direction of the living room. Sure enough, peeking around the corner was Matty in a Sherlock Holmes hat, using a pair of binoculars to spy on the newcomers, one in particular.

  Kylie laughed again.

  “Come on out, Matty, and meet our guest.” Sebastian’s voice was firm, the way it always was when he was insisting on manners.

  Matty ducked away for a moment and when he came back, the hat was gone, as were the binoculars, and there was quite the look of blushing chagrin on his face. “I met her at the door, Dad,” Matty said in an exasperated voice that made Tyler’s blood freeze to hear.

  One attitudinally challenged kid at a time, Universe.

  “Well, we’re very glad you’re here with us, Kylie. There’s more people in the kitchen. This is a new kind of Thanksgiving for all of us because Sebastian and Matty usually drive up to White Plains to spend it with Matty’s grandparents. And Fin, my foster sister, and I usually spend ours together. But this year we decided to combine everybody, and every recipe, and see how it all goes. So, I’m glad you’re here to see the beginning of a new tradition.”