“AUNTIE FIN? ARE YOU named after lettuce?”
Tyler, sitting at Seb and Via’s dinner table, nearly choked on the meatball that was in his mouth at that very minute.
“What?” Fin asked, leaning around both Mary and Kylie in order to see Matty.
“Well, your last name is St. Romain, right? And isn’t this—” he waggled the bit of salad at the end of his fork “—named romaine? Just like you?”
There was a sparkle in the little boy’s eye.
Tyler reached a fist across the table toward Matty. “Good one, broski.”
“Please refrain from referring to my son as a broski,” Seb said, restraining his smile. “And, Matty, quit philosophizing about your salad and eat your salad, please.”
The conversation hummed on around him, and Tyler just kept eating, his thoughts whirring. Halfway through the meal, Fin got up and inched behind the table to get to the kitchen, the sleeve of her dress accidentally brushing the back of Tyler’s neck as she went past. He stiffened at her familiar sagey lavenderish scent. Even though he wasn’t into her anymore, that scent of hers still had a bit of a hold on him. There was just something so earthy about it.
Generally, he liked the scent of perfume on a woman. Something fancy and bottled and sophisticated. Until he’d met Fin, he’d associated the scent of essential oils with hippies, or an attempt to cover body odor. But now, he could honestly say that the scent of herbs was sexy, interesting...and just a little bit agitating. He scooted his chair in so that she could get past.
“More water, anyone?” she asked.
“Will you grab me a beer?” Sebastian asked.
Tyler couldn’t help but glance at Kylie, who raised her eyebrows sassily back at him. He rolled his eyes at her.
“Me too, Fin, please,” Tyler called.
Kylie gave Tyler a smug look.
“The store’s been swamped,” Mary said in a non sequitur, cutting off Via as she asked Matty about his day at school.
Tyler nearly groaned. Mary had this rehearsed, quasicasual look on her face that he just knew Kylie was going to see through in a hot second. Mary was the most genuine person that Tyler knew. And by nature of that, she was also the worst actress he’d ever met. Lying? Playing a part? For Mary that was like asking a farsighted person to read minuscule print casually. Her face, though attempting to play it cool, looked exactly like she was trying to recite a cue card from across the room.
“Yup,” she sighed dramatically. “The dang holiday season. I thought surely it might ease up this year. But alas...”
Alas? Alas? Kylie was going to sniff out this set-up from a mile away.
“It’s really that bad?” Via asked in confusion. “Haven’t you hired any seasonal help? You usually do, right?”
“She up and quit on me. Just like that!” Mary snapped her fingers.
When Mary had called him yesterday to complain about the unexpected quitting of her seasonal help, an idea had hit Tyler like a bread truck. The perfect solution to all of his problems.
Well. Not all of his problems considering he hadn’t gotten laid in months, and this was definitely not going to fix that. But a huge portion of his problems would be fixed, at least temporarily, if Kylie took the dang bait that Mary was ostentatiously whipping around.
“So,” Mary said, and Tyler winced as he realized that she was also now speaking in some sort of accent he couldn’t quite identify. “I really need someone who can help out on the after-scho—” She cut herself off just in time. “After-work rush. A person who is available say, five p.m. to 9:30 or 10:00 a few days a week and wouldn’t mind making a few extra bucks.”
A cold beer touched Tyler’s cheek and he jumped, twisting in his seat to see Fin holding out his drink for him, a wry expression on her face that told him she’d figured out exactly what he’d cooked up with Mary.
He gave her that raised eyebrow right back, picturing his own face as that imperiously eyebrowed emoji she loved to send, and reached up for his beer. For just half a second, his fingers overlapped with hers on the bottle, and he didn’t feel the cold glass, the condensation. He felt only the slices of heat of her slim fingers against his, smelled only lavender.
Then he felt her flinch under him and he deftly removed the bottle from her hand and turned back around without so much as another glance her way. How many times and in how many ways was she going to have to remind him that she was completely and utterly uninterested in him? They’d finally started to get friendly, even joking around over text. He didn’t need to go screwing things up by imagining electric moments between them. Tyler figured it was because he was so hard up. He hadn’t gotten laid in an entire season, and now he was pretending to feel sparks when a woman handed him a beer. Yikes. Didn’t get much sadder than that.
“Anyone know anyone who fits that description?” Mary prompted him, her eyes wide and slightly panicked.
Right. Crap. He’d missed his cue and now Mary was floundering. He had to get things back on track.
“Uh. Actually,” he said, and then cleared his throat because his voice was rusty. “Kylie, would you have any interest in an after-school job like that?”
Kylie jolted and Tyler considered it a minor miracle that the kid wasn’t rolling her eyes at the adult antics taking place. Was she actually buying this?
“A job at Mary’s shop?”
“It’s a really great space,” Fin said casually, apparently the only one among them who could actually pull off a ruse like this. “I think you’d like it. Great energy. Cute shop and in a nice part of town. Have you been to Cobble Hill yet?”
“You’d like it,” Mary prompted. Then she cocked her head to the side. “Well, actually, I don’t know you quite well enough to know what you’d like. But I like it.”
Kylie laughed at that, seemingly a little charmed by Mary. She turned to Tyler. “You think it would be all right? Legally?”
It made him sad that a fourteen-year-old thought to consider stuff like that. “Uh, we’d have to talk to your social worker.” Tyler had already done so this morning and gotten the okay. They would have to get her working papers and also the social worker was putting a strict fifteen-hour weekly cap on things in order to make sure Kylie didn’t fall behind on homework. “But the legal working age in New York is fourteen, so it should probably be fine as long as you can still get your schoolwork done.”
“I only need help maybe three days a week,” Mary rushed in, a little overhelpfully. “So, I wouldn’t be taking up all your time.”
As world-wise as Kylie sometimes seemed, this whole scheme seemed to be going straight over her head. Anyone a little older might have raised eyebrows at the fact that Mary, apparently drowning in work and in desperate need of help, would only be looking for someone to help out three days a week. The truth was, Mary was going to have to hire someone in addition to Kylie. This was a considerable favor to Tyler. Especially considering the fact that she’d already agreed to make Kylie’s work schedule line up with the Nets home game schedule and had already agreed to take Kylie home after work any night that Tyler couldn’t pick her up.
Basically, Mary had agreed to pay to be Kylie’s babysitter without Kylie having to feel condescended to. Tyler knew he should be buying Mary a diamond necklace for Christmas, a house in Vail, a car. She’d officially clawed her way to the top of the Best Friend of All Time list.
“I don’t think schoolwork would be a problem,” Kylie said slowly. “But... I’ve never worked in a shop before.”
“Maybe we could do a trial period, Mary? Try it for a day or two and see if it suits you two?” Tyler suggested.
“Perfect!” Mary chirped, a little too loud, a little too high. She looked deeply relieved that the whole thing had gone to plan. “How’s Monday?” she croaked, sagging back into her chair. Was that sweat on her brow?
Tyler bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing. “Works for me and my schedule. Ky?”
She blinked for a second. “Works for me too.”
“Great!”
“MARY, YOU SLY DOG,” Sebastian said a little while later, after dinner. The adults were reclining in the living room and Kylie, much to Tyler’s surprise, had volunteered to walk Matty and Crabby to an ice-cream shop down the block. Well, down the block by New York standards, which meant at least a twelve-minute walk.
“Oh my god. I’m still having heart palpitations.” She dramatically clutched at her heart and sagged back into the couch where she was nestled next to Fin.
“That was a pretty good idea you two had,” Via said, plopping herself down into Sebastian’s lap where he sat in an armchair.
Tyler, not having wanted to crowd the ladies on the couch, stretched out on the floor in front of the TV, his beer balanced on his chest and his head propped up by couch pillows. He watched the multicolored reflection of the blinking Christmas tree lights on the ceiling and tried hard not to think about all the ways he wasn’t prepared for a holiday of this magnitude with Kylie.
“Ty?” Seb said, nudging Tyler’s foot with his own.
“Hmm?” Tyler lifted his head and took a sip of his forgotten beer.
“Via asked if you knew that Kylie had wanted a job.”
“Oh.” He dropped his head back down and watched the red-and-green lights reflect on the ceiling again. “I wasn’t sure. But...I know she’s got some issues around money so I figured she’d jump at a chance to earn some on her own.”
He could feel Fin’s eyes on the side of his face. And it wasn’t the normal nudge of another person’s gaze. This? This was different. Her eyes were like fingertips of ice lightly tracing his profile.
She’d been the one to tell him that Kylie was sensitive about money.
“She’s got issues with money? The same kid who was pumping you for fifty bucks every single time you needed her to do anything?”
Tyler blinked. Right. He’d almost forgotten that Kylie used to do that. The extortion seemed so unlike her now.
“She hasn’t done that since...” He racked his brain. “Thanksgiving, I guess.”
Huh. Since they’d come to Brooklyn. She’d done it all the time in Columbus but here she’d pretty much cut it out immediately. He wondered why and came up empty.
“So, how are things going with her?” Via asked softly.
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.
EVEN THROUGH THE chaos 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.
“I wasn’t sure who wanted some so...”
Kylie seemed embarrassed by her gesture to the group but Tyler seemed utterly delighted. He jumped up and helped her with the ice creams.
“I got sprinkles on mine. And we chose one more with sprinkles in case someone wanted it,” Matty said authoritatively.
“Me!” Mary raised her hand in the air. Both hands on the dish, both eyes on the ice cream, Matty carefully walked it across the room to her.
“Looks like we’ve got a chocolate chocolate chip right here?” Tyler said, inspecting the one in his hand.
“Mine. Dibs. Called it.” Fin put her finger in the air. He smirked at her as he walked it over.
“Should have guessed you’d have a thing for dark chocolate.” He passed the dish to her and the same thing that happened when she’d handed him the beer earlier happened again. The heat between their fingers was unexpectedly overwhelming. Fin did her best not to touch people, because it always ended up making her feel funny. But with this moment, the chocolate passing from one hand to the other, the cold dish, the heat of the back of his hand against the pads of her fingers, it was all inexplicably delicious.
She frowned as she took the ice cream and leaned back. Delicious and Tyler Leshuski should never be in the same thought.
“Who wants pistachio?” Kylie asked. She frowned when there were no takers. “Come on. There’s always some adult at some ice-cream shop who’s ordering pistachio. I know one of you wants it.”
Sebastian laughed. “Over here, kid.”
She walked it over, and Fin began to see what a good idea this whole getting-her-a-job thing was. Kylie was a shy, insular person for the most part, but Fin had seen just how fast her energy had bloomed open when the idea of having a job had been tossed around. And even now, just having been the one to get the ice cream and to be the one passing it out, Kylie was actually standing in front of a room of adults and making jokes about pistachio ice cream.
It was clear to Fin that Kylie had been given too much responsibility at too young of an age. But that didn’t mean that she didn’t want any responsibility at all. Maybe giving her tasks was the way to her heart.
Fin instantly thought of a hundred different things she could have Kylie help her with at her house. Cleansing crystals for her jewelry, drying herbs, the works. She frowned and took a lick from her spoon. But all of that would require having Tyler trust her enough to invite Kylie over to her house.
It was with Tyler on her mind that Fin finished her ice cream and got up to start straightening the kitchen. Via was one of those cooks who cleaned up as she went, so there was never much to do after one of her dinner parties, but Fin liked to be the one to do it anyway.
She filled the sink with soapy water and was surprised when a pile of dishes appeared next to her. Tyler motioned for her to move aside and he grabbed the trash and the small compost bin from under the sink. He started scraping the plates into the bins.
Fin said nothing.
Tyler seemed lost in thought, at ease, and Fin felt strange, being the one who was a little flustered. There was a buzzing cloud of energy surrounding him, and Fin could neither get hold of it nor avoid it as he moved around the kitchen, putting away leftovers and wiping down the counters. She scrubbed up the plates and the few pots that were left and then drained the sink. She turned her back to the counter and watched him while, seemingly without thinking too much on it, he picked up the dishes from the rack and started drying them. She took them one by one from his hands and put them away.
His energy was like a forcefield that both kept her close and pushed her away. She couldn’t read his mood, nor did she want to, but she also found that she didn’t want to leave the kitchen.
She frowned and watched him as he refolded the dish towels, washed his hands.
“What?” he asked as he turned around.
She read the defensiveness on his face and purposefully dropped her crossed arms. She was sure that she was accidentally looking critical. She decided to lighten the mood.
“No comments on the fact that I did all the dishes?”
He looked confused. “You want a letter grade?”
“No. But you were the one who said I wasn’t exactly the housework type.”
A sparkle came into his eye. “Ah, of course. Where are your servants tonight? Gave them the night off from feeding you grapes and fanning you with palm leaves?”
“Even Cleopatra gives her servants a night to wash their golden underwear.”
He laughed again, but there was fatigue in it. She didn’t like that look on his face. He was supposed to look confident, amused, interested, observant. He wasn’t supposed to look utterly bemused by the state of his life.
Fin shoved her hand into her pocket and pulled out her familiar crystals, the way she had for Kylie. “Pick one,” she demanded.
He dropped his navy eyes to her hand and then swooped them back up to her face. “For what?”
“I’m going to make you something.”
For a moment he looked pleased, then skeptical, then uncomfortable. “I’m...not exactly a jewelry kind of guy.”
She couldn’t help but roll her eyes and laugh. “Don’t you think I know that? It’s not going to be jewelry.” She jiggled her hand a bit. “Come on. Pick one.”
“What’s it for?”
“Your energy is a mess. It’s distracting. And whether or not you believe it, it’s making it harder for you to connect with Kylie. So suspend your disbelief, pick one of these, whichever one draws you, and let me help you out a little bit.”
He looked for a moment like he was going to argue, but then he merely shrugged and bent over a little to look at the selection in her hand. Before she could stop him, he reached down and plucked the small, clearish pink rose quartz from her hand.
She felt its weight leave her palm as she gaped. She’d forgotten to tell him to point and not pick up. It hadn’t occurred to her that he’d pluck one right out of her hand.
It was the first time in almost a decade that someone else had touched the quartz. She’d carried it with her for years, using it, loving it, cleansing it, depending on it. And now, there it was, perfectly pressed between his thumb and forefinger as he held it up to the light.
She felt like he’d just plucked a loose tooth from her mouth.
“Does it mean something? Or protect against anything in particular?”
Still she gaped at him, trying to get her breath back.
“Fin?”
“Uh,” she said, gravel in her throat. “Rose quartz helps transform negative energy into positive energy. It promotes healing.”
“Oh. Cool.” He tossed the stone in the air and caught it, her eyes following the path the entire way. “What’ll you make out of it?”
“A key chain,” she said hoarsely, and cleared her throat. What was done was done. She knew better than to take it back now. She slipped her other stones back into her pocket, feeling the absence of the rose quartz, yet still aware of its glowing heat in Tyler’s hand. “So that whenever you have your keys with you, you’ll have the crystal with you as well.”
He frowned. “Can’t I just carry it in my pocket? The way you do?”
She still couldn’t take her eyes off the familiar planes and corners of her crystal in his hand. His hand was so much larger than hers that when he let the quartz roll to his palm, it looked minuscule.
“...Sure.”
“Great. Thanks for the gift. Not sure I totally understand it. But, uh, the gesture means a lot.” With that, he effortlessly slipped the stone in his pocket, and again Fin followed the movement with her eyes.
She could practically feel the warm safety of his pocket surrounding the crystal. Her crystal. His crystal. He nodded to her and walked out of the room, and she couldn’t escape the feeling that he was taking a part of her with him.