TYLER WAS IN the best mood he’d been in in over a year. Kylie had gotten her grades back recently for the first semester, all Bs and a lone, glorious A. He’d take it. She’d started studying at the desk he’d set up in the living room. She almost always called him Ty now, she was holding down a job, singing to herself when she folded her laundry and had even started clearing the dishes after dinner.
That wasn’t the only area where Ty’s life was going swimmingly. He had a meeting coming up with his editor next week to convince him to let him take his column in a new direction, which might in turn free up some of his nights and weekends. He was currently on his way to play basketball at the Y with Seb and Matty. And best of all, he’d gotten asked out by the cutie behind the counter at his coffee shop this morning.
He bounced the basketball on the sidewalk as he jogged around the corner toward the Y, earning some dirty looks from a group of older ladies in large hats, stepping out of a church. He picked up the ball and tipped an imaginary hat to them. “Excuse me, ladies.”
Two of them smiled at him, but one just frowned even more, rolling her eyes at the floppy-haired goofball grinning at them. That made Ty grin even harder. When he was far enough away from them, he started dribbling the ball again.
“What are you grinning at?” Sebastian called from where he and Matty were waiting in front of the Y.
“Got asked out by a hottie at the coffee shop this morning.” He held his hand out to Matty. “Slap me some skin.”
Matty gave him a whopping good high five and then jumped in a 180, facing away from Ty, holding one hand in the air. “No-look high five!”
Laughing, Tyler slapped hands with Matty again. That wasn’t exactly what people meant by a no-look high five, but still, the kid had flair.
“So, when’s the date?” Seb asked as he checked in at the front desk, handing over a few bucks to bring Tyler in as a guest.
“What date?” Ty asked, peeking in at the courts on the way to the locker room, seeing if there was enough room for them to just shoot around or if they were going to have to join a pickup game.
“Your date with the coffee shop hottie.”
“Oh. I didn’t say yes.”
Tyler had his coat already locked into a locker by the time he turned around and saw his best friend gaping at him. “You...said no to a date. With a hottie.”
Tyler grimaced. “You make it sound like it’s a sign of terminal illness or something. You know I haven’t been dating for a while.”
“Sure, but things are finally evening out with Ky, I just figured...”
“I’d wanna get back in the saddle?”
“You ride horses, Uncle Ty?”
Tyler looked down at Matty’s blunt face, his innocent expression, and swallowed down his own laughter. “No. I do not. It’s an expression. It means to try something again even if you’re out of practice.”
“Thank you for the PG explanation,” Seb muttered once Matty had scampered forward, out of the locker room and onto the courts.
“Mickey Rooney, think fast!” Tyler launched the ball over to the kid, nearly smacking him in the face with rubber, but Matty dodged at the last second, laughing like a maniac and chasing the ball down. “I’m not going to corrupt your kid by explaining that it’s not horses I ride.”
“Gross. Done. We’re done with that topic.”
Tyler laughed. He’d always known how to push Seb’s buttons.
“So, that’s really it? You said no because you’re just not dating right now?”
“I guess.” She’d asked him out before but had seemed unavailable since he’d gotten back from Columbus. Apparently she was available again. Honestly, Tyler hadn’t really thought twice about saying no to the date. It had just sort of happened and he’d moved on.
“Because of Kylie?”
“Yeah. And—” Tyler cut himself off immediately when, to his confusion and horror, it was Fin’s face that popped into his mind. The image of her laughing and sitting on the closed lid of her toilet while she handed over tools for him to fix the drain in her tub last weekend. He’d been happy to help; he’d done something similar with his own tub a couple years before. And maybe, just maybe, due to the smiley, blushy mood she’d happened to be in, he’d taken a skosh longer with the task than was strictly necessary. Maybe, just maybe, he’d fiddled around for an extra half hour because it had been nice to joke with her about nothing, her sagey smell filling the small bathroom around them, her cute-ass feet perfectly wrapped up in the socks he’d bought for her.
But that wasn’t the reason he’d refused the date.
It couldn’t be. He’d gone down that road before. That feelings-for-Fin road that led to nowhere but humiliated at a baseball game. How many times had she made it clear that she wasn’t interested in him? Hell, the last month she’d obviously been making arrangements so that she could hang with Kylie without having to see him as well. If that wasn’t a hint, then he didn’t know what was. It was extremely dangerous to let himself start this silly crush up again.
“And...” Seb prompted.
“I don’t know. Things are going well. I just don’t want to rock the boat.”
A court opened up, and the conversation stopped as the play started. The game alternated back and forth between Seb and Ty attempting to shove the ball down each other’s throats and lifting Matty up onto their shoulders so that he could dunk. Ty was thrilled to see that Matty’s ball handling had improved a lot since the last time they’d played together.
“Hey, Dad, can I have money for water?”
“Water is free.”
“Not the kind I want.”
Sebastian rolled his eyes and peeled a five-dollar bill out of his pocket. “Get one for me and Uncle Ty too.”
“No strawberry flavor for me!” Ty called at Matty’s retreating back.
Seb turned to Ty and passed the ball to him. “Any news?”
Ty didn’t have to ask what kind of news Seb was prying after.
Ever since Kylie had come to Brooklyn, there’d been pretty much crickets on what the hell was happening with Lorraine. As much as he’d called his lawyer, Kylie’s social worker, they always said the same thing: nothing to report yet.
Today, however, was different. “Actually, yeah. Got a call from our lawyer with an update.”
“And?”
“And she’s not going to get jail time.” Tyler took a shot; it banked off the rim and went wide. Seb caught the rebound and popped it in the hoop, chest-passing the ball to Ty when he caught it again.
“I...have no idea how to feel about that,” Seb said after a minute.
Tyler laughed, because it was the only thing he could do. “Join the club. Part of me wanted the judge to lock her up and throw away the key. After what she did to Kylie? Jesus. It’ll be years before Kylie can fully sort through all this crap.”
“But another part of you was relieved?”
“Yeah. I mean, she’s Kylie’s mom. I don’t want her to go to jail.”
“So, what was her sentencing?”
Tyler sighed, shot a three-pointer that sailed gracefully through the net. “Time served, three years’ probation and six months of mandatory rehab.”
“Oh, the wonders of what having a little money in your pocket can do for you.”
“I know. If only my dad knew that all his money was going toward keeping Lorraine out of jail...” Tyler paused, stared at nothing for a minute. “Actually, I have no idea how he’d feel about that.”
“What does it all mean for Kylie? For custody?”
“Well, that’s the good news. It’ll be at least a year and a half before Lorraine can appeal the courts for custody. Under the judge’s orders, she has to ace rehab, get a job and keep her nose clean for at least that long. Sounds like once she’s out of rehab, we’ll have to do mandatory visits to Columbus once a month so that they can see one another. But beyond that?” He shrugged. “Pretty good news, I guess.”
Seb was quiet for a minute, jogged to one side of the court, peered down the hallway for Matty and jogged back, shaking his head. “Kid’s stuck in, like, a ten-person line.” He held his hands out for the ball. “So, you have her for at least eighteen more months.”
“Thank God.”
“Thank God,” Sebastian echoed, studying Tyler closely. “I’m glad you think that’s a good thing.”
“A good thing? Oh, jeez. I know I was freaked out before, Seb, but I always knew I was a safer place for Kylie than Lorraine. I don’t care if it’s been hard. If worst comes to worst and I lose custody of her in eighteen months, I’ll move to Columbus until she’s eighteen. I’ll, I dunno, rent the house next door. Be there for her and hope to God she wants to go to college in New York.”
Tyler suddenly found himself the recipient of a disgustingly sweaty hug from his best friend.
“Dude. Space.” He shoved away and then got a look at Seb’s face. “Are you crying?”
“It’s just cool is all,” Seb said, brushing a tear or two off his face with the inside of his elbow. “You used to have such distance between you two. All those stilted phone calls, neither of you knowing what to say to the other. She seemed like such an obligation to you. I guess I’m just saying that it’s good to see you care this much, Ty. It looks good on you.”
Speechless, Tyler just sort of stared at his best friend. “I—Okay.”
Sebastian glanced back at the hallway where Matty was waiting.
“Okay, quick. Tell the truth, dude. Are you pining after Fin again, or what?”
Apparently now that the little pitchers with big ears had gone to get fancy water, the dad could ask whatever the hell he wanted to ask.
Tyler frowned. “I never pined after her.”
“You were tongue-tied around her for so long. Then you asked her out, got rejected and could barely even be in the same room after that.”
“That is not what happened.”
“Ty, you basically ghosted me and Matty because you were so torn up over her!”
Tyler stepped back from Sebastian. “You think I ghosted you?”
“Ty,” Seb said gently right before he took a shot. “You were barely answering my calls. I spent the first forty years of my life barely able to peel you away for a day or two and then suddenly I can’t even get you to text me back.”
“I—It wasn’t—That wasn’t because of Fin.” Tyler rebounded the ball and took his own shot, frowning at his best friend. “That wasn’t exclusively because of Fin. And I wasn’t torn up over her, exactly. More like, I was torn up over what she said to me.”
“What did she say? I mean, Via told me that the conversation was pretty harsh, but I never got the details, really.”
Tyler rebounded the ball again, not wanting to repeat it but also knowing it would be good for him. It was important that he remember exactly what she’d said to definitively end his crush on her.
“She basically told me I was a pathetic man-child who clung to you guys instead of growing up. That my proclivity toward the single life was abhorrent and that I was the last man on earth she would ever be interested in.”
“And you believed her,” Seb said flatly.
“For a while at least.” Ty paused.
“Ty,” Seb said, just staring at him. “I know she’s all mystical and clairvoyant and spooky, but you’re honestly telling me that it didn’t occur to you to tell her to shove her idiotic theory where the sun don’t shine? I mean, I love the woman, but she shouldn’t have spoken to you like that!”
“I hate to admit it, but a lot of what she said really stuck with me. Maybe it wasn’t all exactly right, but the truth is, if I hadn’t been quite so haunted by it, I might not have risen to the occasion with Kylie so much, you know?” He dribbled thoughtfully, putting the pieces together as he went. “I spent the summer trying to prove to myself that I wasn’t a hanger-on to your life and, yeah, it kind of made me want a life of my own. I didn’t think that would come in the form of guardianship over my little sister, but when it did...” He shrugged.
“When it did, you took the chance.” Seb was quiet, took a shot. He paced away and back, his hands on his hips. “I never thought that maybe your relationship with me and Matty was holding you back in some ways.”
“My relationship with you guys has been one of the brightest spots of my life.”
Sebastian grabbed the ball, dribbled it and then held it against his hip. He eyed Tyler. “But has it kept you from doing your own thing? I mean, I’m never going to complain about the years you helped me raise Matty. But I never really thought that maybe it was at your own expense.”
“Nah, come on, I wouldn’t change it.”
“But those were years you could have been starting your own family. And instead you were—”
“Seb, we both know that I don’t want my own family. Kylie is as close to my own kid as I’m ever going to want. And helping you and Matty during that time, moving home, didn’t keep me from growing up, it forced me to grow up. I’m a better person because of that. I don’t want Fin’s words to belittle one of my proudest accomplishments.”
“All right, all right,” Seb said, passing him the ball. “No need to get your panties in a twist.”
Tyler dribbled the ball for a minute. “What she said, it bothered me a lot. And, yeah, it killed my crush on her.”
Seb watched him for another long minute and then rushed to rebound the shot. “Fair enough.” He took a shot. “Want to come over for dinner tonight? Via’s making some stew thingy.”
Tyler laughed, letting some of the tension seep out of him. “As much as I love stew thingies, we’re gonna eat at home tonight. Kylie has some kid from her class coming over to work on a project.”
“Strawberry-kiwi for dad, peach for Uncle Ty and cherry for me.”
Matty came running up victoriously, almost bobbling the three plastic water bottles in his arms.
“Nuh-uh,” Tyler said. “I want the cherry.”
“No way!”
“You take the peach. No one likes peach.”
“You said you didn’t want strawberry. Not peach.”
“Let’s split both, then.”
Matty narrowed his eyes and put his hands on his hips, one of them encumbered by the bottle of flavored water. “No deal. I don’t want your germs.”
Tyler laughed and cracked the top on the disgusting peach water. “You drive a hard bargain, kid.”