by Cara Bastone
With his natural, unschooled grace, Tyler took the steps two by two, catching a vendor’s eye as he slid into his seat next to Kylie.
“Whatcha want for dinner, kid?”
She wrinkled her nose at the bags of cold popcorn the vendor was selling. “I saw burritos downstairs.”
Tyler’s eyebrows raised and he waved the vendor off. “Twenty-five-dollar burrito it is.”
“Oh. I didn’t—” To Tyler’s surprise, Kylie’s face went bright pink. “I didn’t think it would be that much. Popcorn is fine.”
He blinked at her. Not once since she’d come to live with him had she given any indication that she was aware that her presence in his life was costing him money. He would have been surprised to learn that she ever thought about money. Hell, she’d just accepted her monthly MetroCard without a word of thanks, as if the city handed them out to citizens for free. The same went for the lunch card she swiped to buy food at school. But he griped about the cost of one stadium burrito and she was suddenly Suzy Frugal?
He frowned in confusion and looked up to see Fin frowning at him. “Actually, a burrito sounds really good to me too, Kylie,” she said. “I’m sure they’re not twenty-five dollars. Either way, they’re on me. Let’s go check it out.”
The girls were up and scooting past him before he could object. He lifted up to grab his wallet, but Fin shook her head at him as they went past. “It’s fine, really.”
And then they were sweeping down the stairs and were gone before he could say another word.
Feeling like he’d just been checkmated and having no clue how or why, Tyler stared unseeing down at the crowd below him.
He grabbed his phone from his pocket and frustratedly texted the number he’d programmed in earlier that week.
You don’t have to pay for dinner just to point out that I was a dick to say that to Kylie.
A few moments passed and then his phone buzzed in his hand. An emoji with a single eyebrow raised.
What the hell did she mean by that? Could she have chosen a vaguer, more judgmental emoji??
He growled low in the back of his throat, grateful he was sitting on an aisle and there was no one next to him to get freaked out by his weirdo behavior. Seriously. I invited you to an event that is obviously not your thing. You shouldn’t pay. At least let me venmo you.
This time the text came back quickly. Oh, good grief. Cut it out with the tired, antiquated rules on who pays for stuff. I’m happy to buy dinner. This is not a date, so quit making it weird by insisting on paying for stuff.
He glared at his phone, feeling like he’d just been slapped across the hand by a nun with a ruler. He pictured Fin in a nun’s outfit and absently wondered if she was wearing her fur bikini under there.
Whatever, so she was an excruciatingly hot nun with a ruler; still, being chastised sucked. She’d even slapped him with a “good grief.” She couldn’t have had the decency to just swear at him like a normal woman?
His mood officially soured, Tyler did nothing more than stare at the court, watching the pregame commentators chatter into microphones and stare into insect-like cameras.
His phone buzzed in his hand. He looked down at it almost trepidatiously, and sure enough, another text from Fin.
And she’s got issues around money, so don’t tease her about it until you’ve actually figured out what they are.
He shook his head, reading the text again. Fin was telling him that Kylie had issues around money? What issues could she possibly have? Though their father had been an asshole while he was alive, he’d been a very rich asshole. He’d left behind plenty of money for both Tyler and Kylie. And Kylie’s mother had been left in a very nice position when he’d died. It wasn’t like she’d been keeping it from Kylie either. He’d seen the evidence of that in Columbus. Their house was spacious and well-furnished, Kylie’s clothes and belongings were all new and expensive. She had that straight-teethed, trimmed-hair look of a kid who’d had the best of everything her whole life.
He was still puzzling out what the heck her money issues could be when out of thin air, a basket with fries and an Italian sausage with peppers, onions and yellow mustard landed in his lap. He looked up to see Fin shoving a cold beer in his hand as well. Kylie followed behind with two burritos in her hands and two soft drinks pinched between her elbows and her ribs.
“I didn’t realize you were getting me food too,” he said in surprise. “I would have at least helped you carry everything!”
Feeling like a tool to the nth degree, he scrambled up and took some food from Kylie’s arms, helping them scoot past and get settled into their seats with their food and drinks. It wasn’t until they were all sat back down that Tyler really looked down at the meal he was balancing on his knee. It was the exact meal he would have scrounged up for himself. Right down to the Bud and the yellow mustard.
He glanced up at Fin, sitting on the other side of Kylie, and she instinctually turned to look back at him. “How did you know my order?”
She just raised an eyebrow at him—the same one that the emoji had—as if she were asking him if he really needed to ask.
“Right,” he grumbled. “Psychic.”
He accepted the napkins from Kylie and laughed when the lights clicked out and heavy bass rolled through the center, making both girls beside him jump. He was used to the before-game dramatics. He often even brought earplugs to drown out the din and allow himself to think. But tonight, he appreciated watching it all through new eyes. The eyes of two people who’d never seen this particular spectacle before.
“Wow,” Kylie murmured as fire shot out of cannons on either end of the court while the home team was introduced.
Tyler felt his chest puff out, knowing it was ridiculous, considering he hadn’t actually had anything to do with it. Nevertheless, he was proud to have brought Kylie here. Proud to show off one of the perks of his job. Proud that she was, finally, having a good time, and he’d been responsible for it.
After that, the game started and Tyler found himself actually relieved that Fin was there. He’d never really noticed before how insular his attention was when he was at work. He was glad that Kylie had someone to talk to while Tyler went back and forth between taking notes in his old-school notebook and muttering voice memos to himself on his phone.
He ran down to get a quick quote during halftime from an assistant coach who never told him no. The girls still seemed interested, if a little tired, by the end of the third, but they were definitely flagging in the fourth quarter.
The event was a dramatic spectacle, sure, but the game, unfortunately, was not. It had been a blowout from the beginning, and Brooklyn fans were streaming out in droves, eager to beat the rush and get on their trains home.
“Are you going to have to talk to people after the game?” Kylie asked when there were about five minutes left in the fourth.
He knew what she was really asking. How much longer am I going to have to sit through this massacre?
“Yeah,” he said ruefully. “It’ll probably take me an hour when all is said and done.”
He glanced at his watch. That would put them in a cab home at eleven. Kylie’s eyes widened with momentary dismay that she immediately couched behind her normal, blank expression.
“Oh. Okay.”
Tyler looked back at the game. In a perfect world, the event would have knocked Kylie’s socks off. She would have been so enamored by the sport, by the energy, by the buzz of Barclays, that he would have had to pry her away at the end of the evening. He’d been certain that she’d enjoyed the first half of the game and he was a man who knew when to fold ’em.
He was officially counting this as a win.
Which meant that he wasn’t going to drag his fourteen-year-old sister along while he cajoled tired, disappointed players into giving him quotes for his column.
He sighed. What a pu
shover he was.
Not two days after he’d told himself that he was never leaving Kylie alone with Fin, he was turning to the two of them. “If you guys are tired, maybe Fin could take you home?”
He almost laughed as both pairs of eyes brightened at the exact same moment. They were obviously ready to get outta Dodge.
“Kylie, why don’t you use that Lyft account I set you up with? No need to fight the trains at this hour.”
“Cool.” She ordered the car, Tyler helping her to decide which entrance to have it pick them up at, and then they were up. Fin was just scooting past him when Tyler tapped her wrist. She looked down at him.
“You mind staying at the house until I get back? Shouldn’t be later than 11:30.”
“Of course.” She couldn’t hide her obvious pleasure at the request.
“Thanks.”
She was moving past him again and he used the wrist-tapping method once more.
“And thanks for dinner.”
* * *
ON THE WAY HOME, Fin noticed Kylie messing around with the Google Maps app on her phone, tracking their blue dot of movement.
“Figuring out how it all fits together?”
“Yeah,” Kylie said, absently looking up. “The neighborhoods are still pretty confusing to me.”
Fin tapped Kylie’s phone. “I used to do that too. When I first moved here. Only I used maps I printed off from the library computers, not a phone.”
Kylie clicked her phone off. “You’re not from here?”
“You couldn’t tell by the southern accent?”
“Oh. Right.” Kylie went a little pink in the cheeks. “Duh. I guess since Via, Seb and Tyler were all born here, I just assumed.”
“Actually,” the driver cut in from the front seat, “it’s pretty rare to find born and bred Brooklynites. Most people are transplants.”
“I can tell from your accent,” Fin said with a grin, “that you are not a transplant.”
“Nah, Bed-Stuy for life, baby.”
Kylie and Fin grinned at one another at the pride in the man’s voice.
“So, where in the south are you from?”
“Louisiana. I moved up here to live with my aunt when I was about your age.”
“Ohhhhh,” Kylie said. “It’s all making sense now. I just figured you were secretly into Ty or something.”
Fin frowned. “Uh, what?”
Kylie waved her hand in the air, though her cheeks were pink, like maybe she’d said a little too much. “I just wondered why you were hanging out with us. And I guess I just thought it was because you liked Ty. But now I get it. You’re hanging out with me because our situations are kind of similar.”
“I...” Fin was a little stymied. “I like spending time with you,” she eventually said. “I guess I just figured I knew how you might be feeling, getting dropped in the middle of Brooklyn with an unexpected family member to take care of you. I had my aunt and then Via to help me figure it all out, so I wanted you to have someone too.”
Kylie looked up from her phone. “I have Tyler.”
“That’s true.”
“But he can be pretty ridiculous sometimes. The man arranges his remote controls by size. He Swiffers literally every day.”
“Neat freak?”
“The freakiest.”
They both laughed and Kylie looked out the window for a second. “I think it’s an image thing,” Kylie mused after a minute. “In order for him to feel like everything is okay, everything has to look okay.”
Fin wasn’t sure how to respond to that. But it kind of made sense.
Kylie swung her head back toward Fin, a sly, lighthearted expression on her face. “How much you wanna bet that he’s researching women’s soccer right this very minute?”
They both burst out laughing.
* * *
WHEN TYLER DRAGGED his ass into his house at 11:15, he half expected to see every drawer in his house turned over. He wouldn’t have been surprised to walk in and see Fin eating his fanciest chocolate and perusing his National Grid bills. It would serve him right for letting a woman who called herself a psychic alone in his house. No doubt she’d read every label in his medicine cabinet. Gone through his bedside drawer. Armed herself in every way for a whole new set of “insights” where he was concerned.
He was not, however, prepared, to walk in to a silent, mostly dark house to see Fin leaning quietly on his living room windowsill, looking out into dark Brooklyn.
“Hi,” he said, letting the confusion seep into his voice. He couldn’t help but glance around the room. Besides her shoes set up next to Kylie’s, there was absolutely nothing amiss.
His house looked as if she hadn’t even been there for the last hour and a half.
“Hi. Kylie went to bed about twenty minutes ago.”
“Okay. How was it?”
“Good. We chatted in the car a little, but she was pretty tired when we got back. She grabbed a snack and went to bed.”
“Cool.” He pulled off his sneakers and removed his phone and his notebook from the pocket of his coat. Both things he would need tonight if he was going to get this article down while it was all fresh in his mind. He grabbed at the zipper of his coat and the blood left his face. Not now. This zipper was always a little finicky. But please, not in front of Fin.
Whatever, it was fine. He’d just leave his jacket on until she left and cut himself out of it if he had to.
He turned back to Fin and saw that she’d risen up from where she’d been leaning. For the first time that night, he really noticed her outfit. Silver jewelry, and a big old crystal around her neck, her hair in a braid that had dried a little frizzy since it had gotten soaked in the rain. But her clothes were unusual for her. Black stretchy pants and a black tunic. How had he not noticed that before? Why was she wearing all black? It was very unlike her.
“So...did you like the game?” he asked, because apparently he was a glutton for punishment. He asked because at heart, he was just a curious little boy still. He asked because he really wanted her to say yes.
“Meh,” she said, her words splashing onto him like a shower he should have known was going to be ice-cold. “It was something to see, I guess. Kylie liked it, though. She told me.”
Oh. Well, that was good news.
Fin stepped toward his coatrack, sliding into her long red coat, not bothering to pull her braid out from under it. Tyler experienced the same jolt he always felt when he saw that braid. He couldn’t help but wonder if it would be tensile and slick, like glass, or soft and permeable, like fabric. He may not particularly like Fin, but that didn’t mean he didn’t want to poke a finger into her braid.
“Are you headed out again?” she interrupted his thoughts, cocking her head to one side as she looked at him curiously.
“What?”
“You’re still wearing your coat.”
“Oh.” He frowned down at his coat and barely refrained from blushing. Tell her the truth and look like a child who’d gotten stuck inside his coat? Or lie and risk her knowing the truth anyway?
“I...can’t get the zipper. It gets stuck sometimes.”
He put a hand in his hair and tried to scratch away the chagrin. He expected judgment, maybe even just a touch of scorn in her expression. But all he saw was a slight purse to her mouth, like she was trying to keep from laughing. Her eyes were bright with something that looked suspiciously like humor, but Tyler knew that with Serafine St. Romain, one simply never knew.
To illustrate his plight, he tugged fruitlessly at the zipper. “I need another pair of hands.”
“You know, I’ve been known to have a pair of hands.”
He looked up at her but said nothing.
She sighed, rolling her eyes. “Let’s do this.”
“Okay.” He stepped toward her and held the zipp
er pull out between them, trying not to think of his coat as a shield. “The problem is on the inside. See? Right here? All the fabric got—”
She leaned forward and peered down the front of the coat. “Got it. Okay. You yank there, keep it tight across there, and I’ll get the zipper.”
He did as she said, holding the coat taut as she pulled at the tab of the zipper. But it really was jammed. She grunted in frustration, scowling up at him like this whole thing was his master plan by design or something.
“Oh. Forget it. I’ll just cut the damn thing off.” He took a step away from her.
She tugged him back into place by the zipper of his coat. “Don’t be ridiculous. We’ll get it. Just—here—” She puffed out an annoyed breath and, to his surprise, slipped one hand inside his coat. There was a dark, warm cavity between his T-shirt and the coat where he was holding out the fabric, so she wasn’t actually touching him, but still, Tyler held his breath as he watched her slender, gorgeous hand disappear inside his clothing.
He fought the urge to clear his throat, instead just holding the coat out like she’d told him. She jiggled the zipper from the inside now and after a tense moment, the zip came free.
Fin stepped back, quickly slipping her hands into the pockets of her own coat. “There.”
“Wow. Thanks.”
By the time Tyler had peeled his coat off and hung it up, he just caught the edge of her face as she turned toward his door. Was he nuts, or were her cheeks slightly pink? Did she get embarrassed? He couldn’t picture it. Frankly, it didn’t seem possible.
“Well. Thanks for babysitting.”
He slid back into his shoes at the same time she did hers.
“What are you doing?”
He blinked at her. “Walking you down to your cab.”
“What cab?”