Page 57 of Just a Heartbeat Away

This time, Sebastian didn’t squeeze his eyes closed. He looked her square in the face while two feverish, determined rivers carved their way down his face.

A tight, tense feeling rose up in Via’s throat, and her lips pursed at the same second a track of tears spilled out of her own eyes. They just stared at one another, dim gold in the lamplight, two people who’d been broken and were learning to live all patched up.

She knew that he might look at her and realize, terribly, that it never ended, the patching yourself up after you get so viscerally destroyed. But she also hoped that he’d look at her and realize that it was worth it. Every dirty, ugly, scraping step forward was worth it.

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

“WELL,AREYOUgoing to tell me what’s wrong, or are you going to continue making everyone in this house ten minutes late for everything?”

Seb had to close his eyes and laugh at his mother-in-law’s question. Muriel Sullivan, the least nurturing woman on Earth. And yet? She was still asking. She could have been ignoring his long stares out the kitchen window, his deep, unfortunate sighs, his losing track of his car keys four times in a row.

Seb had been that way since last week. Since Via had come over when he’d been sick. He’d been feverish and dozy and emotional, and she’d drawn his pain out of him like a long, thin splinter that he wasn’t sure he’d even known was there. He’d felt like shit that night. Delirious and hot. He wasn’t even positive what time she’d left, he’d passed out on the couch so hard. He’d woken up the next morning with his fever broken and a Post-it note on the coffee table with instructions to call her if he needed help getting Matty to school.

He’d lain there on the couch, stinking of sickness and broken fever, the afghan kicked off onto the floor, his face pressed into his arm. He’d waited for the wave of shame and humiliation to drag him down to the bottom of the ocean. Because,oh God, all that truth he’d told the night before. Just bomb after bomb. He’d said things out loud that he hadn’t even let himself think in the privacy of his own mind. And of course, the person he’d chosen to tell it all to was someone he’d told himself he was going to STOP growing closer to.

He could blame it on the fever. Sure, he’d been loopy and hot and his vision had been all wobbly. He was lucky he hadn’t confessed feelings for her.

He’d felt chagrin that he’d unloaded so unexpectedly and so fully. But the humiliation and shame never quite showed their faces. As he’d gotten up to shower and rouse Matty for school, Sebastian had slowly realized that as intense as the experience had been, he really felt like she understood what he’d been saying. Sometimes she seemed so delicate, with her sweet face and quiet voice, that tiny little stature, but she’d been strong and unfazed the night before. He’d slowly realized that not only did he not regret that conversation, getting it off his chest made him feel weightless, free, relieved.

He’d been well enough to walk Matty to school that morning, but not well enough to work in his shop. So he’d cleaned the house instead, taking a few rest breaks and a nap after lunch. It had been a day for the record books. He’d been weirdly energized, stripping his house of any remnants of sickness. He’d scrubbed every surface, and as he got used to this ethereal, cosmic lightness in his soul, he felt as if he were scrubbing away the last poisonous dregs of his unresolved grief over Cora’s death.

He knew he wouldn’t stop mourning her—that would probably never end—but he was prepared for it, it felt healthy. The twisted, shameful grief he’d kept hidden deep in his gut had been extracted from him the night before, removed with the precision of a surgeon.

It was only toward the end of that day, when he knew he’d have to head over to the school to get Matty, that Seb allowed himself to think, really think, about the woman who’d performed this emotional exorcism on him. He felt his floating lightness toss down a rope. And another. And another. Soon, he was tethered to the ground again and slowly lowering.

He knew he should be simply grateful that she’d taken care of his son. Made dinner. Provided one hell of a therapy session. But instead he’d felt the leaden weight of disappointment slowly descend over him from head to toe. She was such a wildly incredible person. So competent and kind and fierce and sweet.

And she couldn’t be his.

He wanted so badly to feel only friendship for her. To just call her up, the way he would Tyler or Mary. Say,Thanks, buddy. I really needed that talk last night.

He knew he wouldn’t call her. There was too much risk of saying,Hey, come over again. Sit with me on my back porch after my boy goes to sleep. Let me kiss your shoulder and untangle your hair from your earring. I’ll make mediocre dinner, and you can sit on my lap the whole time.

He’d never risk that. And so he found himself coming to the exact same conclusion he’d come to when he’d shown her his workshop. She was cute as hell and was his perfect match in another world. But in this world, she was too young, attached to someone else, and someone that Seb needed to start distancing himself from.

He’d walked to pick up Matty, every other step filled with hope and relief and the others weighed down by disappointment and what-ifs. It was with this strange accordion of feelings, sandwiched somewhere between catharsis and fresh hurt, that he’d gotten to school five minutes early. He’d strode purposefully toward her office, popped his head in. He was just going to say thank-you. A quick, heartfelt thanks, and then he was going to grab Matty and head home.

But she wasn’t there. Even the lights were out.

She hadn’t been there the next day, Friday, either. Seb hadn’t asked anyone where she was. He also didn’t ask when she didn’t show up for softball either. Between Via’s absence and Seb’s recovery mode, they’d barely scraped by with a tie game, and Seb and Matty had gone home grumpy and exhausted.

That’s when he’d called his in-laws. Would they like to come down for a few days? And in typical Sullivan fashion, as if the invitation wasn’t out of the blue or a secret delight to them, Muriel had emailed him their brisk, businesslike itinerary about four minutes after he hung up the phone.

Art and Muriel Sullivan had arrived Sunday morning and the following Wednesday they were still there. Both of them inserted themselves into the house without fear of being told to butt out. Seb was as grateful as he was annoyed. When his own parents visited—which was for about two solid months every summer—they were true houseguests, all the way down to dishes left in the sink and casual reminders that he needed to pick up more toilet paper. The Sullivans arrived, set their bags down and started running every aspect of the house with military precision. It was, and had always been, as relieving as it was condescending.

He didn’tneedthe help. But it sure was nice.

Now, Wednesday late afternoon, after he’d picked up Matty from school, Seb sat at the kitchen counter, rocking his barstool back on two legs while he attempted to pay a few bills on his laptop. Muriel was putting the finishing touches on dinner and disinfecting his toaster, of all things.

He smiled at her question, which was somehow rude and kind all at once.Well, are you going to tell me what’s wrong, or are you going to continue making everyone in this house ten minutes late for everything?

“You know, Muriel, sometimes you remind me so much of Cora it makes my chest ache.”

Her head snapped up with the speed and intensity of a sniper finding a target in the scope of a rifle. Her rubber-gloved hand stilled for just a second before she resumed denuding the toaster with a round of steel wool. She ignored the compliment. “So, that’s why you’re sighing and leaving your keys every place but your pocket? Because of Cora?”

There wasn’t censure in her voice, exactly, but Muriel was the queen of compartmentalization. And she’d never understood that Seb hadn’t been able to put Cora’s death in a box where it had belonged.

Seb typed a few keystrokes and paid Con Ed, then navigated to his National Grid bill. “No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

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