Can't Help Falling

by Cara Bastone

  Whether he was making sense or not, Kylie didn’t answer. After a few minutes, he felt her lean back onto the desk, unfolding just a bit.

  After a long, quiet minute, more characterized by dazed exhaustion than by discomfort, Tyler bumped their shoulders together. “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘hurt people hurt people’?”

  “No,” she said after a minute, pulling herself out of whatever reverie had sucked her under and rolling her head so that she looked at Tyler.

  “It means that people who are hurt end up hurting other people. And, I mean, I don’t think it’s right a hundred percent of the time, but pretty much, if you’re ever wondering why one person hurts another, it can almost always be answered by the fact that they’re in pain of some kind. And that’s not an excuse. Plenty of parents are in pain and they don’t leave their kids. But it helped me a lot when I was trying to understand my own mom. And Dad, for that matter. I’m not trying to make excuses for Lorraine, but I’m just trying to humanize her a little bit. She is a person. With problems. And a life. And a whole past filled with who-knows-what. If she were a happy person, with no pain and no problems, she probably wouldn’t have left you, kid. It’s as simple as that. That’s why it’s not your fault.”

  She was quiet for another long stretch. “Maybe say that last part to me again in like six months, all right? My brain is dead.”

  Six months.

  It was the most rewarding thing she possibly could have said to him. It was a small acknowledgment that they would still be together in six months. That they might still be having conversations as meaningful as this one.

  “You got it.”

  There was another stretch of silence, and Tyler wondered if it was time to get up, give her some space. He stared at the mosaic of curled bills on the floor.

  Fin knocked on the doorway, and the two of them rolled their heads to look at her.

  The expression on her face told Tyler that she’d heard everything; he just hoped that was okay with Kylie.

  “Drink this.” She strode forward with two coffee mugs in her hands and shoved one at each of them. “I had to make it from the stuff in Tyler’s cabinet, so it won’t be as potent or flavorful as if I’d made it from my own herbs. But trust me. You both need it.”

  Tyler and Kylie exchanged eye contact, peered at the steaming, reddish liquid and then simultaneously sipped from the mugs.

  “Ohmygod.”

  “Shit, Fin!” Tyler yelped, coughing against the noxious flavor that threatened to resurrect the casserole he’d eaten for dinner. “What is that?”

  “It’s a trauma elixir. It helps level your adrenaline back out and calm you down. It’s terrible, I know. But drink it.”

  She put her hands on her hips and gave them both a stern look. Tyler squinted at Fin, looking fiercely beautiful in the doorway, and attempted to communicate via brainwaves: There better be a blowjob for this somewhere down the line.

  She quirked an eyebrow at him in such a knowing way that he wondered if she actually had heard his thoughts.

  Tyler took a deep breath, cheers-ed Kylie and swallowed the contents of the mug down in three great gulps. Kylie followed his lead, gasping and sagging to the side.

  “Remind me to save our next fight for after Fin goes home,” she panted, shoving the mug away from her.

  He laughed. “And please remind me to sign you up for the debate team, because, kid, I think you’ve got the chops for it.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  FIN BASICALLY TUCKED Kylie into bed that night and then, when she emerged from Kylie’s room and saw Tyler sprawled on the couch, his eyes practically spinning, she did the same for him.

  “Stay,” he murmured as she pulled a blanket up to his chin, her skin prickling at being near his neat, golden energy.

  She chuckled. “Trust me. None of us are ready for me to stay over.”

  She leaned down, kissed his mouth to shut him up and scraped the back of her hand over his stubble. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She knew he was exhausted from his talk with Kylie, because it was the first time he didn’t walk her down to get a cab. Fin took the opportunity to take the train instead. It was an easy ride, only half an hour, and she wanted to feel like herself for a little while. Like the young girl who’d learned the trains with Via at her side.

  It wasn’t until her front door was closed and locked at her back that Fin let the tears come. It wasn’t often that she cried. But tonight there was no stopping it. She hadn’t been able to keep herself from absorbing the emotions of the two people she loved. Normally, she would have gotten out of Dodge if she’d seen a fight like that happening. It was too dangerous for her. She knew that those kinds of emotions ran the risk of getting lodged inside of her, where she’d carry them until she could expel them. Tyler and Kylie almost felt trapped inside her heart, their pain and confusion, their loneliness and desperation. Fin clawed at the buttons of her coat and let it fall in a heap on the floor as great sobs collapsed and expanded her rib cage. She fell onto her couch, clutched a pillow and let the emotions come. She knew that fighting them made them worse. She had to relax into the pain; it was the only way to let it move through her unhindered.

  She cried Kylie’s tears first. And they were so familiar, because they were the same tears that Fin herself had cried as a young girl in New York City. Tears of abandonment, tears filled with questions, every tear a plea to the universe, Please don’t make me inadequate. Please don’t let them leave me.

  And then came Tyler’s tears. And these were tears of helplessness. Tears of utter disorientation, like he was plunked down in the middle of a desert and told, Find Kylie water, her life depends on it. She cried Tyler’s tears of regret and anger. She cried tears of fear and frustration. Kylie’s tears had been great wracking sobs, clear rivers down her face. Tyler’s tears were fat raindrops that seemed unending, until, of course, they ended.

  She was shocked when there was more to cry. She realized that this last batch of tears were hers and hers alone. Fin curled on her side, her knees almost to her chin, and gulped for air. Her own tears pooled in her eyes in great batches, blurring her vision before they fell away, sideways, into her hair. These were the tears of someone who was mourning the loss of a life she’d thought she wanted. A life she’d worked toward for years. A life she’d thought would always keep her connected to the woman who’d raised her. She thought of the nail-biting, hair-whitening process that she’d gone through to try to become a foster parent. She thought of how many no’s she’d gotten from the state. She thought of Kylie, inviting Fin into her life. She thought of Tyler, of partnership, how much better they were when it was both of them together. Fin cried harder. She’d wanted to be a foster parent. She’d wanted it so badly, nothing fake or posed about it. And now she cried out her grief over having to say goodbye to it. Goodbye to that life because she was saying hello to another one, a different one. And the hello made her cry as much as the goodbye had. Saying hello to this new chapter was as relieving as it was painful, like those few seconds after a Band-Aid gets ripped off. God, it hurts, but look, it’s not the wound.

  When there were no more tears, when Fin shook with exhaustion, when she was carved out like a pumpkin, Fin lay weakly on the couch and felt what remained.

  It was a swamping love. A love that had been filling up her heart for months, like water rising that she hadn’t acknowledged until she was palms against the ceiling, her lips sucking for that last inch of air. All before she realized she could breathe underwater. Maybe not all water, but this water. Tyler’s water.

  Fin, as exhausted now as Tyler and Kylie had been when she’d left them, let her eyes close, and there was Tyler in bright, almost painful Technicolor, his navy eyes sparkling as obnoxiously as the lights of the Coney Island roller coasters behind him. His dumb, smug smile as he messed with Matty’s and Joy’s baseball caps. The image b
lurred and smudged and there Tyler was in Seb’s backyard, his T-shirt sticking to him in splotches the size of eggplants as he engaged in hysterical water-gun warfare with Matty. Tyler, jaw shadowed, shirt pressed, eyes shell-shocked as he sat at Thanksgiving, Kylie looking almost identical in expression.

  Colors blended, the world tilted as a young, svelte Tyler danced shirtless and graceful across the screen of Fin’s mind. Even replaying it was potent magic. His energy undeniable, there was no going back from having seen it. Gold melted into green into navy blue, his eyes swirled out of nowhere, stern and laughing and a little insane as he stripped socks off of her, as he grinned at her from where he fixed her tub, kissed her silently in his kitchen, rose over her in the dark, scolded her about patience, made love to her with unabashed enjoyment.

  And last, the images slowing now, the colors fading to the color of the inside of Fin’s eyelids, she felt the cold wall of Tyler’s hallway against her back, her hands clenched whitely under her chin, as she listened to his voice. As she listened to him parent Kylie. As she realized, for the first time, that the water had already risen, there was nothing she could do but sink down, watch the sunlight play at the surface and breathe.

  * * *

  FIN KNEW THAT she couldn’t wait forever to tell Tyler how she was feeling, but that he’d also had a pretty intense time with Kylie and could probably use a bit of a break. Besides, it was important to Fin that Kylie get comfortable with their new arrangement. She didn’t want weirdness between her and Tyler during this transitionary period. And there was always the chance that dropping the L-bomb on someone could make ’em feel a little weird.

  So, a week turned into two, and Fin still hadn’t explained to Tyler that she was pretty sure she was apples-over-applecart in love with him.

  She came over almost every night, or Ty and Ky came to her house. Kylie was just starting to trust that Fin and Ty’s connection to one another didn’t, by nature, exclude her.

  They went to that women’s soccer match in New Jersey, the three of them. Fin was extremely charmed to learn that Tyler was a terrified, borderline incompetent driver. She’d kicked him out of the front seat of their rental car and initiated road-trip rules in order to have complete control over the music selection. He’d gritted his teeth through the showtunes that Fin had put on just to screw with him and then surprised her when he knew the lyrics to at least four of the Annie Lennox songs on the album she played next.

  The soccer game was a blurry mess that Fin could barely concentrate on because she was so freaking happy to be where she was. She couldn’t stop grinning.

  “What?” he asked her, his mouth full of hot dog.

  “Just thinking about the fact that I’ve been to a whopping three sporting events in the last decade.”

  He furrowed his brow. “But you’ve been to three of them with me.”

  “Exactly.”

  He held out his hot dog and Fin took half of it down in one bite. “Needs hot sauce.”

  “On a dog? You’re a monster.”

  Unlike at the Nets game, Kylie could barely peel her eyes from the field. She was a terrible soccer fan. As in, she was terrible to sit beside. She yelled and groaned and complained about minuscule details of the game that Fin couldn’t even begin to spot. Tyler just looked proud of his little sister.

  And when Tyler made the big reveal that he could use his press pass to get Kylie to meet a few of the players? Hoo boy, the stammering and blushing commenced. Tyler and Fin both just gaped at this starstruck version of the girl they’d come to know quite well.

  The drive home was quiet and comfortable, padded on all sides by the plush dark they drove through to get back home.

  They spent Valentine’s Day as a trio as well, with Tyler and Kylie throwing popcorn at the screen as Fin made them sit through two crappy rom-coms she’d sworn would convert them.

  Tyler and Fin had sex during the daylight hours only, when Kylie was at school. Fin had never been more grateful to have a job where she made her own hours. The hours of one to three p.m. took on a dozy, sexy, lip-biting, sheet-pulling, color-blurring quality that Fin had never before experienced.

  The end of February was surprisingly warm, and one week into March there were already tulips crowning in the tree wells. March was a notoriously cruel month in Brooklyn, known for holding out handfuls of candy to unsuspecting citizens and then snatching the candy away, only to shove six inches of snow down their pants. Or at least, that was always how it had felt to Fin.

  But the ides of March came and went, and there was no sign of ice. One Saturday morning was warm enough, in the sun at least, that Tyler texted Fin asking if she’d like to join them for a good old-fashioned Prospect Park blanket day. It was a spring tradition after all.

  Which was how Fin found herself stretched out on Tyler’s king-sized (of course) picnic blanket, a box of bagels and cream cheese at her feet, a sparkling water in one hand, watching the clouds. Every twenty seconds or so, a frisbee floated through her line of vision as Tyler and Kylie stood on either side of the blanket and tossed it back and forth.

  Snoozy from the sun, Fin watched the big cumulus clouds accumulate and puff away above her. It was one of the many things she missed about Louisiana: how tall the clouds were there. They were mile-high monstrosities that only seemed to move in one direction: up. They showed anyone who cared to look exactly the path to heaven. The clouds in New York were usually flatter, grayer, like a wool cap pressed too far down over a forehead.

  But not today.

  Today they were tooth-white and buoyant, making Fin feel just how small the earth really was.

  She took it as a sign. Today was the day.

  Who could keep love quiet on a day when the clouds flirted with the blueberry sky like that?

  A shadow crossed her vision, something bumped her shoulder rather hard and then an apple crunched in her ear.

  “Whatcha thinkin’ ’bout?” Tyler asked as he sprawled out next to her, bouncing his foot across the opposite knee like a toddler at nap time.

  She couldn’t help but laugh. Ladies and gentlemen, the man I love.

  “Hey, Ty?”

  “Yeah?” he answered Kylie, who was kneeling on one end of the picnic blanket, packing her bag up and pointedly not looking at the way Tyler’s head had decided to rest on Fin’s belly.

  Kylie generally played the blindfold game whenever Fin and Tyler were close enough to trade DNA.

  “Tony just texted me. He and some other school people are up by the Grand Army Plaza entrance. Mind if I go?”

  Play it cool. Fin tried her hardest to transmit this direct order into Tyler’s brain. Not only was she about to go hang out with friends her own age, she was willingly asking Tyler for permission to go do it. Don’t blow this.

  Tyler lifted his head. “Is it a date?”

  Fin nearly face-palmed.

  Kylie blushed all the way up to the ball cap she’d screwed onto her head that morning. “No. Anthony and I are just friends.”

  “Oh.” Tyler scratched at his stubbled chin and looked back and forth between Fin and Kylie, apparently trying to interpret the eye roll they were giving each other. “Okay. Just let me know if you leave the park.”

  “Bye.”

  Kylie turned on her heel and practically jogged up the bike path toward her friends.

  “Something tells me I should feel like a doofus right about now,” Tyler said, crunching the apple and resting back against Fin’s stomach.

  “I’m in love with you.”

  Tyler jolted, coughed up a bite of apple and rolled onto all fours. He loomed over Fin, blocking out the sun and framing himself perfectly in a crown of fluffy cumulus clouds. “Do me a solid and repeat what you just said.”

  “I’m in love with you.”

  He choked on the apple again. “You’re going to kill me,” he said dimly, si
tting back on his heels.

  “Well, quit taking bites of apple right before I tell you I’m in love with you.” She sat up too, wondering if her smile looked as dopey as it felt.

  He made a choking sound again, but this time there was no apple to make a threat on his life. “I—” His hands went to his hair. “Holy cow.”

  She raised an eyebrow at him. “I wish you could see your energy right now. Seriously, you look like an insane person.”

  Tyler laughed, a little hysterically, reached for her palm and placed it over his racing heart. The laughter fell away and left behind was unfiltered earnestness. She’d never seen truth look quite this handsome before.

  “Fin—”

  “Uncle Tyler! Auntie Fin!”

  Their heads pivoted in unison to where—“Oh, good grief,” Tyler muttered—Via, Sebastian, Matty and Crabby all made their way up the path.

  “Well, this is one way to tell them,” Fin said calmly, even though Tyler’s heart under her hand had started beating triple-time.

  “Tell them,” he choked out awkwardly, either repeating what she was saying or asking that she be the one to do the deed.

  They’d decided, a few weeks ago, to go easy on themselves. They wanted to have a relationship free of the fishbowl. Telling Kylie had been an easy decision, necessary, the right thing to do and neither of them regretted it. She’d been fine with keeping it under wraps for them, considering she was still figuring out how she felt about the whole thing.

  Telling their best friends, however, had been one that they both had wanted to wait on. This wasn’t like high school where every development with a love interest was supposed to be shared posthaste, or else go down in history as an ultimate betrayal of friendship. No. They were all adults here. Seb and Via had their own lives and—