Page 62 of Can't Help Falling

The employee, unamused, pursed his lips. “Sir, I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

“Got it,” Tyler said, tugging Kylie along with him. They waited until they got to the sidewalk to burst out laughing.

“Seb and I used to do that all the time,” he laughed. “We used to spend whole days at the movies.”

“I assume you used to be better at the sneaking part,” Kylie said as she started strolling down Court Street.

Tyler followed after her, realizing that she was walking so confidently because she knew this area now. They were only a few blocks from Mary’s shop. “Actually, we got caught as often as we didn’t.”

“Was it this theater?”

“Nah.” Tyler shook his head. “Different ones around the city. We weren’t in this part of Brooklyn very often.”

“Which neighborhood did you grow up in again?”

“We grew up around the corner from one another in Sheepshead Bay.”

“I haven’t been there yet.”

“It’s a little like Midwood in parts.” Tyler paused. They were having such a good time together, he didn’t want to ruin it. But still, avoiding mentioning their father at all costs couldn’t be healthy either. “Dad actually lived in Midwood. So, I spent a little time there as a kid.”

A very little time. Basically, whenever his mother had wanted a vacation and the housekeeper couldn’t stay with him, he’d be trucked off to Midwood to stay with his inattentive father, who barely remembered which grade he was in. Tyler inwardly winced as he remembered the phone calls that he and Kylie used to have before she’d come to Brooklyn. He hadn’t realized it at the time, but it had been exactly the way his father used to talk to him. Obligatory small talk.

She was quiet for a second, as she usually was when he brought up their father. “Your mom lived in Sheepshead Bay?”

He nodded. “Just long enough to see me through high school and then she was long gone.”

“To where?”

“Ah, let’s see. At that point she was living in Long Beach.”

“That’s California, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Is that why you moved out there for college?”

Tyler laughed immediately, because the idea was kind of ludicrous, but he reined in the laughter when he saw the confused expression on Kylie’s face. “Um. No. No, I just went where I got accepted to school. It didn’t have to do with where my mom lived.”

“You’re...not close?”

Tyler tried to think of a way to explain this as they strolled.

“Not really. My mother is, well, you know the mom from Mary Poppins?”

“The votes-for-women lady?”

“Yeah.”

“Sure.”

“Okay, now cross that lady with Meryl Streep from The Devil Wears Prada and you have my mom.”

Kylie furrowed her brow. “That makes no sense. Those characters are opposites, pretty much.”

“Exactly.” Tyler laughed again. “My mom is super flighty, but also extremely opinionated. And I guess you could say judgy. Of everyone but herself. She has this perception of how life is and should be, and it’s really far from reality.”

Kylie was quiet for a minute, hopping over someone’s pizza slice that had landed facedown on the sidewalk. “Arthur sure knew how to pick them.”

---