Page 14 of Can't Help Falling

CHAPTER FOUR

TYLERSTAREDUPat the same pure white ceiling he’d woken up to stare at for the last month and a half. Out of sheer habit, he inwardly chanted the mantra that had become his best friend since he’d come to Columbus. You’ve got the all-clear to take her back to New York. You’ve got the all-clear to take her back to New York. You’ve got the all-clear to take her back to New York.

But he stopped and scrubbed a hand over his face. Because the universe had answered that mantra. And the day was here. This evening’s plane tickets were burning a hole in his email inbox. After a month of court appearances and suit coats and meetings with lawyers and social workers, he actually did have the legal all-clear to take his little sister, Kylie, back to Brooklyn with him. As her legal guardian.

And that was good news, he reminded himself. And terrifying news. And pretty much everything in between.

The call that Tyler had gotten at Matty’s basketball game had picked up Tyler by the scruff of his neck and kerplunked him directly into an active missing-person case. Apparently his little sister’s mother had up and disappeared completely.

Their father had passed a few years ago, and Kylie had no aunts or uncles. Which left Ty. Here. To figure everything out, or whatever it was that adults did in situations like this.

The cops were almost entirely certain, from the note she’d left behind, and from activity on her bank account, that Lorraine was alive. Alive but currently abandoning her daughter. Who was not a child, but was still kid-like enough to wear a matching reindeer pajama set that Tyler had put through the laundry the other day.

Kylie herself seemed completely unworried about her mother’s welfare, which led Tyler to believe that she might even know where Lorraine was. Not to mention the fact that she’d had several months to get used to her absence already.

Either way, Tyler had been stuck in midwestern limbo while the state of Ohio had figured out what the heck to do with Kylie. Apparently, the heck they’d figured was legally tying her to Tyler. And now, here he was, staring up at the ceiling, as of yesterday Kylie’s temporary guardian. Guardian. Heh. The word sounded foreign and clunky even in his own mind.

Childish, too-smooth commitmentphobe. No interest in anything beyond seeking your own comfort.

HA. He hoped the universe was laughing so loud it woke Fin up from a dead sleep every night for a year. Two years.

This childish commitmentphobe had slapped on his best suit and practically danced the Charleston to get the judge to saddle him with the biggest commitment there was. A small, almost adult. Goodbye, normal life. It had been good while it lasted.

He imagined dateless Saturday nights. A beerless fridge. Finding a—good God—babysitter for the nights he had to be out late at Nets games.

When he’d first come to Columbus, his mantra had been Please let Lorraine walk through that door. Please let Lorraine walk through that door. Please let Lorraine walk through that door. It hadn’t taken more than a week for him to realize that he couldn’t possibly wish that on Kylie. Lorraine had willingly abandoned her. And even if their father had still been alive, Tyler wouldn’t have wished his brand of passive inattention on any kid. Miraculously, Tyler had somehow become this kid’s best bet. The mantra had morphed into Gimme the all-clear to take her back to Brooklyn.

After five weeks in Ohio, Tyler was pretty much ready to walk back to Brooklyn. Hell, he’d tape a skateboard to his shoes and grab the tailpipe of a semi if it got him back to his borough. He missed home.

He missed the women in sky-high heels on the subway. He missed the symphony of garbage truck–lumbering, neighborhood-hollering, horn-honking life that had been his constant soundtrack.

Columbus had its charms. He genuinely liked the college town. He liked the grand architecture on campus, the borderline maniacal sports fandom that one encountered in almost every citizen.

He hated, however, the plastic suburban neighborhood his stepmother’s house sat firmly in the middle of. He hated the rental Toyota he’d been forced to white-knuckle all over the city. And he really, really hated the suspicious, pitying, judgmental looks of every neighbor who rubbernecked past their driveway.

They all but stopped to stare because behind this beige front door was the little girl whose mother had abandoned her. The little girl who’d hidden it for damn near four months, living alone, taking herself to school, eating Easy Mac she bought at the grocery store she took the public bus to. On her own. The little girl who slammed doors and all but refused to speak to her older brother. The little girl who’d made it completely clear that she did not want to go to Brooklyn with him.

The little girl in question was apparently awake because he could hear the heaviness of her footsteps upstairs, which reminded Tyler that she really wasn’t so little anymore. Though he still thought of her as eleven—the age she’d been when they’d first met—Kylie was, in fact, fourteen. A difference he’d thought was negligible until he’d stepped off the plane and realized that he was not going to be dealing with a little kid, but a teenager.

Tyler roused himself from “bed,” immediately forcing the pull-out couch back into its folded form and tossing the cushions back on. As uncomfortable as the accommodations were, he preferred them to sleeping in Lorraine’s bed. He yanked on a sweatshirt, shoved his feet into slippers and headed to the bathroom to wash up. When he emerged, his little sister was sitting on top of the kitchen counter, her legs crisscrossed and a frown on her face, as usual.

Tyler looked much more like their father. Navy blue eyes, blondish hair and a long, handsome face. Kylie favored her mother. She had reddish hair, curly at the temples, freckles and sharp features.

“Save some for me,” he requested as she poured herself a bowl of Mini-Wheats.

Holding his eye contact with a ruthless smirk, she poured the rest of the cereal into her own bowl, creating a mountain she couldn’t eat by herself in a million years.

Tyler swallowed down the irritation that threatened to erupt from him like fire from a dragon’s mouth. Kylie had done everything she could over the last five weeks to prove, in no uncertain terms, that she did not want or need him around. He should have known better than to go for that cereal alley-oop. She’d just stuffed the ball back down his throat right at the hoop. And she looked royally satisfied about it.

For once, Tyler was unable to restrain his sigh of disappointment. He’d really wanted some Mini-Wheats. But he said nothing as he opened up the cabinet for an instant oatmeal packet.

“Well, if you’re gonna be a baby about it,” he heard Kylie grumble from behind him. He turned to see her shoveling half the cereal from her bowl into his. She jumped off the counter, grabbed a spoon and was out of the kitchen before he could say “thank you.”

She was eating in her room. Again.

Tyler’s phone rang in his pocket and he very nearly bobbled his bowl of cereal in the mad rush to get it.

“Seb.”

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