Page 53 of Can't Help Falling

“Will you answer the question?”

Tyler leaned against the hallway wall, the phone to his ear and an embarrassingly large smile on his face.

She sighed after a long, obstinate moment of silence. “I’m bottling some tinctures that I made.”

He laughed, loud and cathartic. “Damn, it feels good to be right.”

“Tinctures aren’t witchcraft!”

He let his silence speak for itself.

“Tinctures aren’t necessarily witchcraft,” she amended.

“Uh-huh,” he said skeptically, utterly unconvinced. “Whatever you say, Cleopatra.” He paused, eyeing Kylie’s closed door. “Hey, quick question.”

“Shoot.”

“If a kid says they don’t want to do anything for Christmas, like anything at all, do you listen or do you ignore it and do something special anyway?”

Fin paused. “I think Kylie is the kind of person that doesn’t really want to do other people’s traditions.”

“But she wouldn’t be opposed to traditions of her own?”

“I don’t think she really has any traditions of her own.”

Tyler paused, frowning. “That is...supremely unhelpful advice.”

Fin burst out laughing on the other line and the sound of it raised the hairs on the back of his neck. He smoothed a hand over his goose bumps.

“Seriously,” he groused. “What’s the point of having a psychic as a friend if she can’t even tell you what to do?”

Fin laughed again. He could practically hear the eye roll he was positive she was executing. “I only give the really good advice to paying customers. Will you put the kid on the line already?”

A smile on his face, he knocked on Kylie’s door. “There’s a phone call for you.”

Kylie came to the door, looking as perplexed as Tyler had felt upon answering the call from Fin.

“It’s Fin.”

He held the phone out to her and watched as Kylie’s face immediately brightened.

“Hi.”

She closed the door in his face and Tyler turned on his heel. Back to the dishes. He paused in the kitchen for a moment, studying the small window above his sink. On a whim, he flicked off the overhead lights. A shaft of moonlight sliced the windowsill in two. Sighing to himself for being such a sap, he walked across the room, set Fin’s pink crystal in the moonlight and finished the dishes in the dark.

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