Page 40 of Can't Help Falling

“All right, kiddies,” he said. “Enjoy your burned grilled cheeses.”

“Scram,” Sebastian said darkly. “And don’t forget basketball tomorrow.”

Tyler waved at the rest and then was gone, out the front door as soon as his shoes were on.

Fin could feel Via’s eyes on the side of her face but suddenly found shuffling the cards took up all of her attention. She focused her eyes on the cards, the blurring red and black dividing, slapping together, stacked neatly, newly combined in a fresh pattern. She thought about the rightness of that. Those cards all mixed up together. That was the way they were supposed to be, the only way you could fairly play the game.

FINHADTO admit that the chicken curry was good. Not grand, but good enough to have seconds. She’d been surprised to get the invite from Tyler for dinner, a few days after seeing him at Seb’s. She’d been under the impression that she’d only be invited to do things that took place outside of the house.

She was thrilled to hang out with Kylie in her natural habitat.

But on the other hand, that meant spending more time in Tyler’s home. Which was kind of a minefield. His energy, though not the preppy, entitled, douchey energy she’d originally expected, was just so freaking loud.

It overwhelmed everything in the room. Swallowed everything down. Including Kylie. Serafine hadn’t seen her room, but there was very little trace of Kylie having made this place her home.

Looking around, Fin didn’t even see Kylie’s school bag. Or her shoes, for God’s sake.

After dinner, which had been largely a quiet affair, Fin would have normally volunteered to do the dishes. But she wanted to avoid touching too many of Tyler’s belongings. It was the same idea as folding a lot of heavily perfumed scarves. If she did the task, she’d go home with the scent of perfume on her hands. And she really didn’t want to take Tyler home with her.

So, bad manners and all, she thanked Tyler for dinner and then left him to the dishes and wandered after Kylie, who was making a beeline for her room.

“Nice room,” Fin said, standing in the hallway and peeking in.

“Oh. Thanks.” Kylie, realizing that she had a visitor, opened the door wider and stepped back to sit on the bed. “You can come in if you want.”

Fin sidled in and sat on a leather desk chair that looked out of place in the room. She realized her mistake immediately. This wasn’t Kylie’s chair. This was definitely Tyler’s chair. A chair that he’d spent a great deal of time in. A strange electricity jolted through Fin, almost like the tingling in her arms and legs before she’d passed out when she’d been sick with the flu that one time. She stood and instead wandered over to the windowsill. But...her body still tingling from having sat in Tyler’s chair, all Fin could see as she looked around was Tyler. He was everywhere in this room too.

She blocked him from her mind and turned her focus onto Kylie. “So. How’re you getting used to Brooklyn? I know it can be a lot.”

Fin thought of the first time she’d ever ridden over the Manhattan Bridge, her eyes on the East River so far below. It had looked far less muddy than the Mississippi. Her eyes had tracked to the side, to what had to be the Brooklyn Bridge on their right, disorienting in its instantly recognizable familiarity. Beyond that, shockingly green and shockingly small in the distance, had been the Statue of Liberty winking in the sun. She’d just gotten off the plane from New Orleans, barreling through a new city with Aunt Jetty, whom she barely knew, at her side.

She hadn’t expected New York, so overbearing and rude and closed off, to give up one of its secrets for free like that. She’d expected to have to pry every beautiful thing from its clawed-off, East Coast fist. But there she was, Lady Liberty, standing at attention, a lovely shade of sage. It was fitting to Fin that she was facing away.

“Brooklyn,” Aunt Jetty had said, still watching her niece with all-seeing eyes that Fin had wished she’d point somewhere else for a while. “There’s psychics there too, if you’re curious. And good food. Where we live there’s lots of Italian food. Some Russian too.”

We.

The word had hurt.

Fin’s mother spoke Cajun where the word oui translated to mean yes. But over the years that yes had often disintegrated into a no. Just as Fin’s we with her mother had slowly disintegrated into an I.

It had been a terribly long time since Fin had been a part of a we with someone. But that we, with Jetty, came with an entire, terrible city. It came with winters and no more NOLA. That we had not included her mother.

Kylie sighed, and it brought Fin back to the present. Kylie looked slightly bored, like she was resigning herself to having this tired conversation with yet another adult. “It’s fine. I don’t mind the city.”

Fin nodded, reaching into her pocket, her fingers brushing against the small, loose crystals she carried there like pocket change. An idea struck. “Do you like jewelry?”

Kylie, surprised at the conversation shift, raised her eyebrows. Today, her hair, curling at the temples, was still flattened from where she’d worn her winter cap. “I guess. My mom has a lot of it. I don’t really.”

“I make jewelry. Like this.” Fin pulled her crystal necklace out from under the collar of her shirt. It was a milky orange crystal affixed to a silver chain.

“Pretty,” Kylie said, her eyes flitting back up to Serafine’s face.

“Thanks. I make a lot of it. I sell it too.”

“But I thought Tyler said you were a fortune-teller.”

Fin rolled her eyes. “Of course he’d describe it that way.”

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