Page 63 of Can't Help Falling

Tyler looked down at Kylie in surprise. It was the first time he’d heard Kylie refer to their father by his first name. Tyler always called him Dad.

“Apparently.” He paused, feeling like he was revving an SUV at the edge of an ostensibly frozen lake, wondering how far he could make it across. “I don’t know your mother very well. What’s she like?”

Kylie quirked an eyebrow up at him, her lips pursed. “She’s an asshole who abandoned me.”

Tyler’s blood froze. He figured he could retreat and change the subject, or he could serve up a fresh, hot, steaming pile of platitudes. And then he remembered what he’d promised himself. Right. He was going to be himself around Kylie. Screw the obligatory small talk.

“Well, obviously,” he replied, a little smile on his face. She looked up at him in surprise, her lips quirked up. “I meant describe her the way I did my mom. Like, if you crossed two characters.”

“Oh. Okay. If I crossed two characters...” She continued to stroll, thinking, and paused in front of a burger joint that was closed for the holiday. “You ever had truffle fries? This place has great truffle fries.”

Charmed by this confident version of his sister, Tyler raised his eyebrows and nodded, like she was teaching him something new, when in fact he’d been eating truffle fries from that joint since before she was born.

“Two characters,” she mumbled to herself again and kept strolling, peeking in all the darkened store windows. “I guess she’d be a cross between Jessica Rabbit and Jabba the Hut.”

“Yikes,” Tyler said immediately and made Kylie laugh.

“Maybe that was too harsh?”

He shrugged. “I won’t tell if you don’t.”

He’d met Lorraine a handful of times, and in his opinion, that was not too harsh.

“What two characters do you think Dad would have been?” Tyler asked, hoping his voice was light as they strolled along, his gloved hands in the pockets of his coat.

“Stop calling him Dad, Tyler. I hate that.”

He was quiet for a second, trying to interpret the warring feelings within him. Old, normal Tyler wanted to push back on that. New, meek Guardian Tyler wanted to acquiesce and give her whatever she wanted. He split the difference. “You call him Arthur, and that’s cool, Ky. But I call him Dad. To me, that was his name. I...think it’s okay that it’s different for the two of us.”

“How mature.”

Her tone, dry with just a dash of venom, made Tyler wince. He suspected that he might be in the part of the horror movie where the dumbass who wanders off by himself realizes that he’s walked right into the murderer’s trap.

“It...hurts you when I call him Dad?” he floundered.

Kylie was quiet as they squished to one side of the sidewalk to let a huge, chattering family walk past, their loud voices reminiscent of a flock of geese heading south for the winter. When all was quiet again, she sighed. “He wasn’t my dad, Tyler. Never. He was only around a few weeks a year. I barely knew him.”

“I—well. Honestly, that isn’t all that different than the way that I knew him either. He wasn’t exactly present for my childhood either, Ky. He wasn’t even interested in talking to me until I started becoming successful in my profession and even then, it was never about anything that mattered, not really.”

“So, first he abandoned you and then he abandoned me, and you’re just fine with that now?”

He took a long breath. Too careful was bound to piss her off; too careless was bound to hurt her. “No, of course I’m not fine with it. But it’s been a long time. I’m kind of over it. I got over it.”

She turned her head away from him and tersely adjusted her stocking cap, but he caught a half second still frame of her face in the passing shop window. There were tears in her eyes. His insides shrank at the idea of Kylie crying, but also, he welcomed it. He preferred almost anything over her blank indifference.

“You got over it?” Her voice was quiet, but that was the only hint of emotion that remained when she finally spoke again, a block later. “The man had a secret second family that he never told you about. You didn’t find out until he fell over dead! And you’re just over it?” She snapped her fingers. “Like that?”

He bumped shoulders with her. “First of all, don’t talk about yourself as a second family. The man barely had a first family to begin with, and more importantly, you’re not my second family. You’re my primary family, Kylie. My only family when I’m really doing the math.”

She darted her eyes up to his, shiny but not brimming over. She looked like he’d just offered her a trip to Spain and she was examining the plane tickets, trying to figure out if they were real. “Your—your mom?”

“Hasn’t called me in months. Even when she knew that I’d just become your legal guardian. Even when she knew that this was bound to be one of the most challenging points of my life. Not even a phone call, Ky.” He bumped shoulders with her again. “Who eats dinner with me? Who? Who meets my friends? You, Kylie. You’re my primary family. Not just because of who you are and who your father happens to be. But because of everything you’ve done since we got tossed together. You’re a good family member.”

“Don’t,” she said in such a small voice that Tyler immediately stopped talking. If she’d yelled, he might have kept going. “Don’t say anything else.”

“Ky—”

“I helped with the window display.” She cut him off with a nod of her head.

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