Page 57 of Can't Help Falling

For a moment, Kylie didn’t look like a kid. In the dim back seat, streetlamps rhythmically splashing light across her face, Fin saw just what Kylie was going to look like in a decade. Her deep red hair twisted over one shoulder, those freckles on her nose bringing out the color of her eyes, her intelligent gaze always tinged with humor. And then, just like that, every illusion of adulthood melted away as Kylie leaned toward her window, her eyes round and childlike, her mouth opened wide enough to parallel park a Chevrolet in there.

“Oh. My. GAWD. This is what we’re going to see?”

Fin laughed. “This is how they do Christmas in Dyker Heights.”

She paid the cab driver, thanking him, and then they scooted out of the cab. Fin felt oddly overinflated, like if she pushed off the ground she’d take Neil Armstrong steps along the sidewalk, but she didn’t want to waste these moments with Kylie being stuck in her own head. So she pushed her revelations aside and concentrated on the girl standing beside her. “Are you warm enough? Or do you want to find a place to get hot chocolate before we walk around?”

“Yes,” Kylie answered dimly, her eyes still rounded as she took in the sight before her.

Fin was thrilled to have wowed Kylie so soundly.

And this was just the edge of the neighborhood.

Fin steered Kylie through the crowds of tourists, which were nothing compared to the crowds at Rockefeller Center, but were quite sizable for this rarely visited BK neighborhood. They found a hot chocolate vendor and Fin bought a hot pretzel with mustard and hot sauce for good measure as well.

The houses in this part of Dyker Heights were more mansions than houses, four-story old-money monstrosities that sat thirty feet back from the street and had century-old trees in their yards. And if anyone had any questions about just how old the money was in this neighborhood, the incredibly elaborate Christmas-light displays answered the question.

Each house, obviously in competition with one another, was more grand than the last. These were not your uncle Ted’s strings of tangled lights that stayed up on the house until Fourth of July. These displays were professionally orchestrated, sheer walls of color and light. There were more lights than there were houses visible in most places. The neighborhood was as bright as noon even though the sky overhead was as close to black as it ever got in New York. And it wasn’t just the lights. There were animatronic Santas that sang Christmas carols and skated on tracks around the yards, reindeer on pulleys that landed gracefully on roofs over and over again. Entire lawns were piled with white lights to make them look like they were covered in drifts of glowing snow.

“I was reading that some of these people spend around twenty thousand dollars to decorate each year.”

Kylie mouthed the words twenty thousand dollars and kept looking, the lights turning her face a blinking rainbow of surprise as she turned from house to house. “You think that includes their electricity bills?”

Fin laughed. “I hope they do something during the year to offset the carbon footprint of this.”

Kylie gave her an arch look. “If you’re willing to spend twenty thousand dollars on Christmas decorations, don’t you think you’re probably flying in private jets and eating endangered animal canapés for dinner?”

“Yes, but they probably drive Teslas. That’s sort of green.”

“That sort of happens to be green,” Kylie corrected, making both of them laugh again. They strolled on, chatting and sharing the pretzel and re-upping on hot chocolate when they started to get chilly. And Fin saw that neither assessment of Kylie tonight had been right. Kylie wasn’t grown up yet, and she wasn’t a child. She was in that amazing time right smack-dab in between. Teenagerhood was so often defined as a transition from one thing to the next. But it wasn’t, not really. It was an age as valid as any other, Fin reflected. And Kylie wore it well.

A FEWDAYSbefore Christmas Tyler grimaced at the sound of his own key in the lock. At midnight, everything seemed too loud. He was late as hell, though Mary, who’d agreed to babysit, had assured him a hundred times that day that she would just be snoozing on his couch so whenever he got home would be fine.

He heard noises on the other side of the door and was surprised to hear his television on. Mary was not a TV watcher.

He stepped inside and froze, door open, when he realized that it was not Mary sprawled out on his couch but Fin. His first clue was the river of black hair that fell in a waterfall over the arm of his couch. She rustled when she heard him come in and sat up, her hair resuming its place around her shoulders and down her back.

“Hi,” she said, stretching her arms over her head, though her eyes looked alert. She hadn’t been sleeping.

“What are you doing here?”

Her eyes narrowed. “Mary had an early morning and I was helping her out at the shop tonight so I volunteered to take Ky home. I sent you a text about it.”

His shoulders sagged as he locked the front door behind him and put his shoes and coat in the closet. He emptied his pockets into the loose change dish he kept by the door, saw his crystal in the mix and repocketed it. “Phone’s dead.”

“Ah.”

“I guess I should get one of those portable battery packs to carry around with me now that I have a kid to care of.”

“Maybe so.”

Too exhausted to really say much of anything else, Tyler disappeared into his room and quickly changed into sweats. They were fashionable and euro-cut, but all the same, they were the closest he’d ever come to slouch-wear. He diverted back through the kitchen. “You want a beer?” he called.

There was a pause from the other room. He winced internally. No, she didn’t want a beer. She wanted him to say goodbye and order her a cab so that she could get home before one o’clock in the freaking mor—

“Sure. Sounds good.”

...Or she wanted to drink a beer.

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