Page 47 of Can't Help Falling

This time, Tyler couldn’t help but glance at Fin. She was watching him still and Tyler thought of the bejeweled tiger again. Her eyes, so eerily light in color, glittered like two aquamarines set against the twisted perfection of her braid. No. She wasn’t a tiger, he corrected himself. He’d gotten it right the other night. She was Cleopatra. An imperious, untouchable queen who couldn’t help but surveil her kingdom with the confidence of the most powerful woman on earth.

He sighed, his eyes bouncing back to Via. “Good,” he answered vaguely. He glanced back at Fin’s bright gaze and caught the almost imperceptible eye roll there. He sighed. She was right. There was no reason to hide behind machismo right now. He was among friends. Well, he was among Sebastian and Mary, true friends. There was also Via, who he had to admit had homemade-lasagna-ed herself right into friendship territory. And Fin, who was decidedly not a friend, but also wasn’t an enemy anymore either.

“Hard,” he amended a moment later, his eyes still on Fin’s.

“Has the social worker helped you at all?” Sebastian asked, drawing Tyler’s attention.

Tyler shrugged, taking a sip of his beer. “She’s technically Kylie’s social worker, so she pawned me off to this counselor, who put me through a ten-hour course a few weeks ago. It was pretty much useless. A bunch of pamphlets and shit like that. They all say do stuff with her, talk to her, follow through on your commitments.”

“That doesn’t sound so useless,” Via said gently.

“I mean, the information isn’t terrible, but none of them tell me how to do any of that shit.”

“What do you mean you don’t know how?” Seb asked incredulously. “You’re the most tenacious person I’ve ever met. Ty, when we first were becoming friends, I had to uninvite you from my house because you were coming over too often. Where’s that guy in all this?”

The group laughed and Tyler grinned. It was true. Tenacity and bullheadedness were two of the main ways that he’d gotten all the things he was most proud of in his life. His friendship with Sebastian, his job with the Nets, his beautiful apartment, his—albeit currently withered—status with women. “Eh,” he grunted. “I think I left my mojo in Columbus.”

Tyler sat up and leaned his elbows on his knees. He looked at no one but could feel Fin’s icy eyes on his face.

“You’re right that my natural instinct is to push. But I’m scared of pushing her too far.” Tyler set his beer aside and scraped his palms over his face. “She did not want to leave Columbus. And here we are in Brooklyn. And I’m just tiptoeing around, holding my breath outside of her school, hoping she comes out and gets on the train with me.”

He picked up his beer and gulped at it, hoping to clear the lump that had gathered in his throat. Fin’s silence was unending, and he couldn’t help but read into it. She was the one who’d tried so hard to be a foster parent. Who would have wanted this kind of change in her life. She could probably think of a million and two ways to reach Kylie and here he was, admitting to absolutely failing at connecting with someone he was blood-related to.

“I don’t think she’s going to run away, Ty,” Mary said after a minute. “You might not notice it, but she sticks pretty close to you.”

He looked up. The distance he felt from Kylie was so tangible, so ever-present, that Mary’s words did not compute. “What do you mean?”

“Well, maybe not when you’re in your own house and she goes into her room. But when you’re out and about, I’ve noticed that she’s always right by your side. Even when you first got here tonight, she was right next to you all the way through dinner.”

“She took Matty and Crabby to get ice cream,” Tyler pointed out.

“Because you suggested it,” Fin cut in. It was the first thing that she’d said the entire conversation and Tyler tried not to make her single sentence be the most meaningful thing he’d heard all night. But it made his heart skip to hear it. He went back over the moment with Kylie. Matty had been begging his parents to take him to get ice cream, and they’d said no. Tyler had suggested that Matty and Kylie go together. He’d showed her how to get there on Google Maps. She’d nodded, looking nervous, but had done it anyway.

Huh.

Maybe Kylie didn’t think he was the biggest fuckup on the face of the planet. What a delightful thought. He’d been thinking of himself as the one that no one wanted for so long, the idea of someone wanting only him was disorienting.

“You know,” Seb said. “Not to pile on the advice here...”

Tyler leaned back against the cushions. “Go ahead and pile drive me.”

Seb laughed. “But I don’t think that the way you interact with Kylie has to be that different than the way you interact with Matty.”

Tyler pulled a face. “Poor, poor Sebastian, you sweet, innocent soul. You will be so utterly shocked and devastated when Matty reaches teenagerhood. You have absolutely no idea that children and teenagers are completely different species.”

“Obviously, but come on, teenagers are still children. I’m serious here. I’m not saying you should sit on Kylie’s back and make her eat carpet fuzz the way you do with Matty.”

Tyler laughed.

“But think about when it’s time to get Matty to do something, go to school, eat dinner, leave the park, whatever it is. Do you take no for an answer? No. You’re firm. You set boundaries. You confidently know what’s best for him, and even if he throws a fit, he does what you say in the end.”

“The difference is that with Matty, I actually know what’s best for him. With Kylie, I don’t.”

“Yes,” Fin said, her head leaning on one hand, her face lit from the side by lamplight. “You do.”

Just then, the front door opened. The kids had returned.

EVENTHROUGHTHEchaos of Crabby bounding back into the room, his tongue askew, his tail whipping every knee and shin he scrabbled past, Fin kept her eyes on Tyler. He was sitting up, turning around, smiling at Kylie as she came in, balancing extra ice creams in both hands.

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