Page 11 of Can't Help Falling

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.

---