Page 116 of Can't Help Falling

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

FINBASICALLYTUCKEDKylie 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 blurred 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.

FINKNEWTHATshe 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.

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