Page 51 of Can't Help Falling

“To love?” If her tone got any drier she’d have to serve it with a side of butter.

“I know you think of yourself as a hard nut to crack. I know you’re happy enough on your own. But that doesn’t mean you don’t need love in your life, Finny. Come on! Even you have to admit, your whole life has been in pursuit of love. What is being a foster parent if it’s not a search for people to love and care for?”

“That’s different. That’s familial love. Of course I’m looking for that.”

“News flash,” Via said, rolling onto her side and yanking the blankets clear up to her ears. “Romantic love, the lasting kind, has a very healthy dose of familial love twisted up in it. Seb is my boyfriend, sure. But he’s also my family. The same way you are, the same way Matty is.”

Fin frowned. She could feel the truth in Via’s words. It was just extremely inconvenient to her. It was much, much easier to think that romance and familial love lived in two completely different countries, and Fin could just go ahead and stay on one side of the border and never have to bother with exploring the other side.

“And,” Via continued, “I know you probably don’t want to hear this, but you can’t just put a stopper in one kind of love and expect the others to flow freely. It all comes from the same place, Fin. If you close off part of your heart, you might just be closing off the rest of it by accident.”

“HOWWASYOURfirst day of work?” Tyler asked, nudging a reheated plate of pasta over to Kylie. Mary had dropped her off at the house about ten minutes before. Tyler had spent an evening blissfully working, losing himself in his writing. It had felt good. Natural.

He’d waited to eat his dinner with Kylie, so he dug in to his own mountain of pasta with gusto.

“Actually, pretty cool. I helped Mary rearrange part of the store and then she had me work the register while she helped customers.”

She made a face that Tyler couldn’t interpret.

“What’s that face?”

“I like Mary’s store, but there’s just so much Christmas everywhere.”

He laughed at her caustic tone. “Well, you were hired to help out with the holiday rush. That might have been your first clue that you were going to be dealing with Christmas crap.”

Kylie shoved some pasta in her mouth and spoke through it. “I hope you don’t have big plans for Christmas.”

He frowned at her. Actually, he’d been stalling and had yet to make a single plan for Christmas, but he sensed that wasn’t the right answer either, so he kept his trap shut. “What do you mean?”

“I mean...if you have really important traditions or whatever, that’s cool. I guess we can do them. But other than that, would you mind if we kept it low-key?”

“I don’t have any traditions. And define low-key.”

She pushed her food around for a second and then ate another monumental bite. He couldn’t look away from the half-masticated food rolling around in her mouth. Was she doing this on purpose? “I mean that I really like Via and Seb and Matty, but I don’t think I can handle another awkward holiday over there. Holidays are obviously so special to their family but I just don’t need everything to be so meaningful.”

He laughed again. “I guess I see what you mean.”

“Let’s just not make a big deal out of it. It doesn’t have to be a Lifetime special around here.”

“So, no decorations?”

She grimaced. “There’s more than enough of that at Mary’s shop.”

“No Christmas music, no advent calendars, no letters to Santa?”

She gave him a dull look. “I think he’s catching on.”

“Seriously, I’m going to have start eating dinner with an eye mask on if you keep talking with your mouth full.”

Her eyes on his, she thoroughly chewed every bite of her food and then showed him her tongue. “Bettah?” she asked, tongue still out.

He rolled his eyes at her, trying to hide his giddiness that she was actually joking around with him. He didn’t want to seem like an overeager dork and blow it.

“So, really,” he clarified. “You want Christmas to just be a normal day?”

She shrugged. “Nothing special.”

He wondered for a moment if this was a test that he was bound to fail. If this was one of those things where she said “nothing special” but she really meant, “Throw a huge Christmas bash. Get me a pony, bake a thousand Christmas cookies, enter us into a brother-sister gingerbread house contest.”

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