“STALE POPCORN, LUKEWARM hot dogs and flat beer. What more could a man want from life?” Tyler Leshuski flung an arm around the back of Matty’s seat and tilted his face up toward the cheerful squint of the early-June sun that was belatedly trying to make up its mind between spring and summer.
Matty Dorner, freshly seven years old as of this morning, peered dubiously into Tyler’s cup. “I dunno, Uncle Ty. I think I like orange soda better than beer.”
“That’s because you’ve never had beer,” Tyler replied, knowing he was about to receive—yup, there was the sharp flick to the back of his head smartly administered by his best friend. Tyler, grinning, tipped his head backward and viewed Sebastian upside down, sitting in the row behind him. “You rang?”
“Will you kindly quit talking to my seven-year-old about beer?” Sebastian asked.
Tyler opened his mouth to respond, but the slight, pretty woman tucked under Sebastian’s arm beat him to it. “Matty knows beer is a grown-up’s drink. There’s no harm in learning about it from Uncle Tyler.”
“See? Listen to the woman.” Tyler quickly sat back up, feeling strangely deflated even though Sebastian’s girlfriend had sided with him, as she often did. Via DeRosa was sweet and thoughtful and loving. There was no arguing with the fact that she was downright good for Sebastian and Matty, who’d both endured enough loss to tide anyone over for a lifetime. After Sebastian had lost Matty’s mother, Cora, in a car accident almost five years ago, Tyler had wondered if his best friend would ever be himself again. The old Sebastian. The one who laughed easily, played rec basketball and every once in a while, hired a babysitter so that he could go out and have a beer with his oldest friend Tyler.
In the half a year since Seb and Via had gotten together, Tyler had seen more glimpses of the relaxed, open, fun-loving man Sebastian used to be than in the previous five years combined. This was a good thing, Tyler knew. He just wished that he was around for more of it.
Hell. Matty’s birthday party today was the first time he’d seen the kid in almost ten days. There used to be a time when Tyler hadn’t gone more than twenty-four hours without shoving the kid’s wiggling toes into a pair of tiny socks or cramming a waffle down his throat while they bolted out the door, late for Matty’s school.
There used to be a reason for Tyler to be around. Now? Not so much. There was more than enough supervision for Matty these days. Via was officially moving into Sebastian and Matty’s house in three weeks, when her lease ran out. And then Seb’s house, practically Tyler’s second home, would officially become a place where Tyler rang the doorbell while he waited outside on the porch for someone to answer.
“Did I miss anything, Matty?” Joy Choi asked anxiously in that high, clear voice of hers as she slid into her seat, her pigtails tucked under the Coney Island Cyclones cap that matched the one on Matty’s head.
“You’re back!” Matty practically shouted in his best friend’s face. “I was worried you’d miss the seventh-inning stretch. That’s the best part.”
“Matty, Matty, Matty.” Tyler shook his head in mock disappointment. “The best part is obviously the actual baseball. Besides, it’s only the fourth inning.”
“Right, Uncle Ty,” Matty agreed, nodding his head sagely before turning back to Joy. “Did you get any snacks?”
Tyler chuckled to himself. The kid obviously knew the best way to shut up an adult. Agree with what they say and move on.
“Thanks for taking her, Fin,” Seb said from behind Tyler. “Was it any trouble?”
“None at all,” replied the woman whose voice never failed to make Tyler’s pulse trip over its own feet. Facing away from her, toward the ball game, Tyler tried not to pay attention to the hairs rising on the back of his neck as she settled next to Sebastian. Tyler couldn’t figure out if it was better or worse that she sat behind him.
If she was in front of him, he could at least keep an eye on her, though he knew it would mean he wouldn’t watch a second of the game. But behind him, she became a disembodied voice, the sound of which practically haunted him, if he’d believed in that sort of thing. Behind him, she became all sultry Louisiana drawl—smoky cloves, lavender and sage. The woman had the kind of voice that told a man exactly how her mouth tasted.
Tyler shifted in his seat and did not turn around. The only thing more potent than her voice was her face, and he didn’t need to turn around to call it up, perfectly, in his mind. Moon-pale skin, eerily light eyes and plush lips. Gah. Baseball, baseball, baseball, he reprimanded himself.
He wasn’t here to swan around about a woman, no matter how painfully beautiful she was. No matter if it made his feet sweat in his perfectly matched Nike socks to know she sat behind him, gorgeous and dangerous, like a gemstone tiger come to life. He was here because it was his quasi-nephew’s seventh birthday and because a minor league baseball game was the second-best way to pass a warm day, preceded in Tyler’s mind only by the bike ride down Ocean Parkway that led to said baseball game. Well, he amended internally, maybe the absolute best way to pass a warm, sunny day was indoors, tussling under the covers with some warm, sunny woman.
The hairs on the back of his neck rose yet again, this time forcefully, and he wondered, uncomfortably, if the woman sitting behind him somehow knew that his thoughts had turned to sex. Serafine St. Romain claimed she was psychic, which Tyler wholeheartedly rolled his eyes at. He didn’t believe in that kind of thing, and was naturally skeptical of people who did. But every once in a while, like right now, with the bright sun warming his baseball cap, when his skin gathered into goose bumps, Tyler just sort of...wondered if parts of her claims could be true. Could she read his thoughts?
“Yes,” her voice said from behind him, low but clear and just as sexy as always.
“What?” he asked, jolting and spinning around to face her. “What did you say?”
And then he was facing her and there was no looking away from the unabashed attractiveness of that high-cheekboned, clear-eyed, plush-mouthed face. He felt like he was suddenly staring into a solar eclipse.
“Via asked if I’d texted with Mary today. I said yes,” Fin responded dryly, though she smirked as if she knew exactly the reason his stupid heart had just fallen down the stairs. But she couldn’t read minds, he reminded himself. That was ridiculous. It was just coincidence that her voice had broken through his thoughts at that particular moment.
“Right,” he said gruffly, before turning back around. Then he quickly turned to her again. “Why were you texting with Mary?”
One of Serafine’s dark eyebrows rose up her forehead, further framing her large, light eyes. “Because she’s my friend.”
“Right,” Tyler said again, just as dumbly as the first time. He turned back around and put his eyes on the game, feeling all sorts of bothered. He hadn’t known that Serafine and Mary texted each other. It was stupid that it bothered him. It was stupid to feel like Mary was his and Seb’s friend, not Via and Serafine’s friend. But, dammit! It was he and Mary who’d dragged Sebastian back to life after Cora died. It was Sebastian and Tyler and Mary who’d laughed until they’d cried and then just plain cried together all those nights. It was Tyler and Mary who’d coordinated meals for Sebastian and done the grocery shopping and traded off babysitting without Sebastian even having to ask them.
This time last year and it had just been Sebastian, Mary and Tyler at the annual Cyclones game they always went to for Matty’s birthday, riding bikes down the parkway to get there and scarfing processed meat and snow cones until the sun threatened to go down and they had to bike home.
But Tyler had to admit that things were changing. This year Matty had even ridden his own bicycle, instead of in a seat on the back of Seb’s. Mary hadn’t been able to make it, busy as she was at her shop these days, and the extra ticket had fallen to Joy. But the biggest change of all? Last fall, Via had tumbled into Sebastian’s life, and she’d plunked her best friend and foster sister, Serafine, down along with her.
Thus began the new era. Dawn of the Age of Serafine. Jurassic, Triassic, Serafinaceous. Tyler pictured mist gathering at the opening of a cave, a man discovering fire. But then the man looked up, saw Serafine St. Romain in a bikini made of mastodon fur and promptly burned the shit out of his hand.
He shook his head at himself. This was the new era where Tyler went ten days without seeing Matty or Sebastian and when he did, there was a sexy psychic making ants crawl over his skin.
Tyler attempted to relax, smiling at the coaster car of screaming Brooklynites that whirlwinded alongside one end of the outfield. The field was right on the edge of all the Coney Island roller coasters and every three minutes or so, thrill-seekers swirled over the far outfield wall on a bendy, bright red track. Beyond that was the silvery ocean with its whitecaps and thin stretch of yellow sand.
An airplane painted a skinny line of bright exhaust over the water, cutting the sky in two. As he watched, a pop fly momentarily made it into the frame of Tyler’s vision. There was nothing more New York than that view. A baseball, an airplane, a roller coaster filled with screamers, the scent of caramel corn mixing with the briny ocean.
God, he loved Brooklyn.
“We’d like to thank everyone for their attendance this fine June day,” the smarmy announcer said over the loudspeaker, slightly slurring with what was most likely one beer too many. “But as today is our yearly Parent Appreciation Game, we’d like to particularly honor all the mothers and fathers in the crowd right now.”
The crowd clapped and cheered as tepidly as they had for everything else that had happened so far.
“Stand up, Dad!” Matty said, twirling on his knees on his seat so that he could see Sebastian.
Sebastian shook his head. “I’ll just wave at the crowd.”
“Come on, Daddy!”
Sebastian pursed his lips and stood up reluctantly, jamming his hands in the pockets of his jeans. Tyler grinned down at Matty. The kid knew the exact power of the word Daddy. He used it rarely, as if appreciating the raw wattage of it, knowing it would get his dad to pretty much agree to anything these days.
“Let’s hear it for the parents! You’ll notice behind the dugout we’ve got the parents of the players. And here, we get to see the players’ appreciation.”
At that, many of the players climbed the fence between the field and the crowd, blowing kisses to their parents and tossing balls and stuffed animals to the crowd.
“Tyler...” Matty said, a question apparent in every squished-up line of his face, so much like Sebastian’s.
“Yeah?”
“You don’t have kids, right?”
“Matty!” Sebastian said in surprise from behind them. “I can’t believe you don’t know the answer to that!”
Tyler laughed. “Matty, don’t you think that if I had a kid you’d have met him by now?”
Matty turned to Joy and the two of them shared a serious look. “But sometimes parents don’t ever see their kids. Especially dads.”
“That’s true...” Tyler responded carefully. He knew better than most just how true that was. And he suddenly had the baked-potato-sized stone in his stomach to prove it.
“So, you might have a kid I’ve never met.”
He couldn’t argue with Matty’s logic. “I guess I see what you’re saying. But I don’t have any kids, Matty.” And if I did have a kid, I’d never pretend like he didn’t exist.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why don’t you have any kids?”
Because Leshuskis aren’t meant to procreate, he thought, almost matter-of-factly. Being a good father, you had to have genes like Sebastian. Patient, selfless, willing to put up with the mess and disorder of a still-developing human. Tyler was comfortable enough in his own skin to know that that wasn’t him. It hadn’t been his father either. Arthur Leshuski had been impatient and exasperated and, on the rare occasions that he actually bothered to see Tyler, apparently always right about everything. Tyler didn’t care to have a kid and find out just how like his father he really was. He preferred to leave that particular skeleton strung up in the family closet.
“What is this, a therapy session?” he joked. “I thought we were supposed to be watching baseball.” He pushed Matty’s cap down his face again, very aware of the three adults sitting behind him, likely listening to this entire conversation. He would have had this conversation in front of Sebastian no problem, but he barely knew Via and, in his mind, Fin was still in her fur bikini, sucking his awareness into the black hole of her hotness.
“Can you have kids?” Matty asked, fixing his hat and staring doggedly up at Tyler.
“Matty!” Sebastian leaned forward and took his kid by the chin. “That is a very rude question to ask someone!”
But Sebastian’s reprimand was offset by the fact that Tyler was laughing his ass off.
“Uncle Tyler always says I can ask him anything!” Matty protested indignantly.
Tyler waved his hand at Seb. “It’s fine. He’s right. The kid can ask me anything.” He focused his attention back on Matty. “But for the record, your dad is right. That’s not something you should go around asking people. And also for the record, yes, as far as I know, I’m perfectly able to have kids if I wanted. I just don’t want to.”
Matty narrowed his eyes at Tyler. “But why not?”
Tyler sighed. Matty could be like a puppy with a slice of dropped bologna. He knew it was best to just answer. “To tell you the truth, I don’t like kids very much.”
Matty’s lips pushed out indignantly. “You like me.”
“That’s true. I like you. Also, I love you. But you don’t count.”
“I don’t count? Why?”
“I don’t know. Because you’re cool. And because I knew you when you were the size of that chihuahua over there. You were just a tiny, whiny baby and so helpless that I just had to love you. It wasn’t my fault that I loved you.”
“So...you’re not ever gonna be a dad?”
“Not if I can help it, kid.” There was a beat of silence and Tyler felt the hairs on the back of his neck stand up and dance the hula. Dammit. He was too aware of her. He resisted the urge to smooth them down.
Tyler glanced back down at Matty and frowned. He wondered for a moment why the sudden font of questions. All because it was Parent Day at a Cyclones game?
“What makes you so curious all of a sudden?” Tyler asked, nudging Matty with his elbow.
Matty shrugged sullenly, pulling his own hat down this time.
This was new. The Matty that Tyler knew was always effusive and sweet and guilelessly talkative. Tyler sighed. All sorts of things were changing.
Joy leaned around Matty, looking nervous, but joining in the conversation for the first time. “We were just talking about cousins is all. I have a lot of them.”
“And I don’t have any,” Matty cut in, sounding like he’d woken up on Christmas morning to discover he’d gotten graph paper and mechanical pencils when the rest of his friends had gotten trips to Disney World.
“Ah.” The pieces fell into place. “But if I had kids, you’d consider them your cousins.”
Matty shrugged again. A little less sullen, a little more sheepish.
At a loss for what to say, Tyler would have turned around to Sebastian for the assist, but he didn’t want to face Via, the woman with all the answers when it came to kids, or Serafine, who’d laser off his manhood with one haughty glance.
“Good thing you have Joy, then,” Tyler said. “She’s as good as family.” He nudged Matty again and then leaned toward Joy. “And for the record, Joy, Matty’s not the only kid I like. You’re pretty cool too. And my little sister. She’s older than you guys by a few years, but I like her too.”
“Okay,” she said, nodding solemnly and looking relieved.
“Besides,” Tyler continued, looking down at Matty, “you’re as close to a kid as I’ll ever get, Matlock. So, in a way, you’re kind of like your own cousin.”
Matty pursed his lips, but this time Tyler saw that it was to hide a smile he wasn’t quite ready to give up. “That’s weird, Uncle Ty.”
Tyler shrugged. “Life is weird, my friend. The sooner you learn the better.”
They fell back into the rhythm of the game, Matty’s good mood restoring, especially when a pop fly landed three rows in front of them, the kids scrambling down to get it and missing it by a hair.
Tyler rolled his eyes at the middle-aged man who snatched it up for himself and held it up to the booing crowd.
But the near miss didn’t damper Matty’s spirits; he was back and buoyed by the joy of the game.
Tyler, however, was bothered. He was bothered by the conversation between him and Matty, by Serafine’s gnawingly hot presence behind him. By the fact that he hadn’t gotten a minute alone to chat with Sebastian the entire day. The sun was pleasantly warm and the breeze was refreshing, but still, Tyler felt itchy and hot, like he was wearing a Tyler Leshuski bodysuit, like he’d had to put on a Him costume to join this family outing and it wasn’t fitting right.
Antsy, his leg jumped in his seat.
“I’m grabbing more snacks,” Tyler said, rising up. “Anyone need anything?”
“Popcorn?” Via asked, smiling at him and digging in her pocket for cash.
He waved away the money. “On me.” He had to fight with his face not to frown at her. She really thought he’d make her pay for her own popcorn? “Anyone else?”
“Ice cream?” Matty requested, blinking innocently, as if this was everyone’s first rodeo.
“Ix-nay,” Tyler said with the ease of someone completely accustomed to discipline. Some honorary uncles took pleasure in spoiling their honorary nephews. Tyler took pleasure in adding normalcy and boundaries to Matty’s life. “You’re already getting a snow cone in the seventh-inning stretch. Anyone else?”
He let his eyes cast around the group and was thrilled when Sebastian held up his cup and jangled it around, indicating he wanted another Budweiser. They generally had a two-beer limit when spending time with Matty, but recently Sebastian rarely met the quota.
“Me too,” Serafine said, jangling her own empty beer cup in the same way Sebastian had.
“Right,” Tyler said, which was apparently the only thing he knew how to say to this woman today.
Without another word, he scooted down the aisle and jogged up the cement stairs, taking them two at a time. He was relieved to see that even though internally he felt as clumsy as an elephant in ice skates, his natural grace and dexterity kept him from falling on his face. He ducked into the bathroom first and was both relieved and annoyed to see himself looking perfectly normal in the mirror. It was a strange thing to be the kind of person whose internal life never, ever showed on their exterior. Tyler knew, from experience, that his heart could be shredded like taco meat and he could still manage to look unbothered and pleasant on the outside. Perhaps it was partly due to his scrupulous attention to his outward appearance, his neatly cuffed shirts and permafresh haircuts ensuring he always looked put-together. Normally, he was grateful for that particular attribute, but today it bothered him.
When he emerged from the bathroom he walked up to the nearest concession stand. Taller than most of the other patrons at the game, he had a bird’s-eye view of the crowd. The first thing he noticed was that every single male head—and some of the female heads—within twenty feet were all surreptitiously glancing in one direction. He sighed, already knowing the reason for it, and looked around until he spotted Serafine.
“What’s up?” he asked, sidling up next to her.
She immediately stopped her peering circle through the crowd. “I was looking for you.”
“Why?”
“Three beers and a popcorn is a lot to carry. Besides, Joy decided she wanted a water and I started feeling hungry myself.”
He cleared his throat. “Okay.”
They filed into the concessions line and stood side by side, a good sixteen inches of distance between them. He was conscious of the looks he was receiving, simply for daring to stand next to this exquisite creature.
In a different world, he would have already dated and broken up with Serafine St. Romain. If she’d been just a skosh less attractive, or less spooky. If she’d made his palms sweat just a bit less. If there had been just a tiny bit less smoke in her voice, he’d have had no problem asking her on a date, texting her, sexting her, charming her, hopping into bed if and when she was into it.
The problem was, he happened to live in this particular world, where she was a perfectly beautiful, spooky, smoky-voiced vixen who gave him heart palpitations and made him feel like a preteen who’d never even check-yes-or-no-ed a girl before.
He shifted on his feet as they shuffled up the line, trying to ignore her and at the same time memorize every second of standing next to her. He frowned at himself, wishing he could pour a gallon of ice water over his head. Snap out of it, Ty!
Tyler Leshuski was no inexperienced lad when it came to women, he reminded himself. When he wanted company, thanks to his extensive contacts list and the internet, it was the rare occasion that he couldn’t find it. He was good-looking and smart and funny.
He watched a man bobble his beers as he double-taked on Serafine, almost breaking his own neck like a chicken.
Tyler shook his head at the poor fool, knowing exactly how he felt. There was just something about Serafine St. Romain that made Tyler feel like his heart was wearing clown shoes.
They finally made it to the front of the line.
“What’ll you have?” asked the bored sixteen-year-old girl with a hairnet on. She was the only person in a twenty-foot radius who didn’t look entranced by Serafine or mystified by Tyler’s place in her life.
“Ah, three Buds, two bottles of water, a large popcorn, a hot pretzel—no salt. And whatever she wants.” He pointed one thumb at Serafine and didn’t chance a glance over at her.
“Mmm, chili cheese fries, please, and is there any hot sauce back there?”
The girl pointed listlessly at the condiments stand and plugged the rest of the order into the register, holding her hand out for cash. Tyler wordlessly handed over a fifty.
They went to the side to wait for their food.
“What?” Serafine eventually asked him, turning to him with her arms crossed and those bright eyes burning a hole in the side of his head.
“What what?” he asked back, his eyes stubbornly on the kid slapping their order together behind the counter.
“I can feel your question for me. Just ask it.”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes, but just barely. He really hated all this psychic bullshit. “You got chili cheese fries.”
“So?”
“So, I assumed you were, like, a vegan or something.” He’d eaten with her before at Sebastian’s house but had been too distracted by her presence to pay attention to what she ate.
She lifted an eyebrow. “Why?”
He couldn’t help but laugh as he finally turned to look at her. He took her in from her dark, complicated braid over one shoulder, to her makeup-less face, the silver-and-gemstone rings on her fingers and bangles on her wrists. He looked her over from her loose, embroidered top to her equally loose, embroidered pants and all the way down to what looked like a pair of velvet slippers. She carried with her the scent of sage and something else earthy. As painfully gorgeous as she was, her look screamed earth child.
“Because you’re all...” He rolled a hand in the air, searching for the right word. “Organic-looking.”
To his immense surprise, she actually burst out laughing. He was used to making people laugh. It was one of his favorite things on this earth. But he’d yet to make her laugh like that. He’d thought she was most likely one of those people who never laughed, merely smirked instead. But here he was, blinking down at a row of white teeth, her lips, so full in repose, almost disappearing in the stretch of her smile. He got that solar eclipse feeling again and when he tore his eyes away from her, a faded echo of her smile followed his vision for a moment, like he’d burned his retinas on her laughter.
“I also happened to grow up in Louisiana,” she reminded him. “They run vegans out of town down there.”
So, she was a meat eater. He couldn’t say why that pleased him. He couldn’t say much of anything, really, as befuddled as he was by her smile, her laughter. Why did he let this woman throw him off his game so much? It was annoying. She wasn’t actually magical, regardless of what she told people. There was no reason at all for him to treat her any differently than he would any woman he happened to be attracted to. He could do this.
Determined to prove it to himself, his heart banged hollowly in his chest like a rock clanging against the side of a bucket. Holy crap. He was gonna do it. He was gonna finally do something about the hairs that, even now, were rising on the back of his neck. He’d been an athlete his entire life, and Tyler instantly recognized this feeling. This at-bat, at-the-free-throw-line, let-the-muscles-do-their-thing sort of feeling.
“Let’s go out,” he suddenly blurted to Serafine, his voice a little too loud, his eyes on the ground instead of her face.
Shit. Unfortunately, he’d forgotten to factor in the whole clown-shoes effect she had over him. Could that have been any more clumsy? He wasn’t even facing her. He couldn’t seem to be able to tear his eyes away from the girl in plastic gloves brushing salt off his pretzel. Stop watching that, dumbass!
Serafine turned to him, and, unfortunately, so did the woman next to them, obviously extremely curious to hear how all of this was going to pan out.
“Uh,” Serafine said, her bright eyes on the side of his face. It became immediately clear to Ty that he’d just clicked on a swinging light bulb in a dark room, tied himself to a chair and begged a concessions line’s worth of Cyclones fans to mock him.
Tyler made himself meet her eyes. He was an eye-contact sort of person, dammit! He believed in introducing oneself with his full name, in firm handshakes, in looking a person full in the face when talking with them. He’d been doing it his entire life! Why was this so hard with her?
“If you want to,” he added on lamely. Clearing his throat, he tried again. “Because I want to. Go out with you, I mean.”
She just sort of stared at him for a moment.
“I mean that I want to take you out,” he tried one more time. “I mean that if you’re into it, I’d love to take you out sometime.”
“Order’s up,” the kid with the food called. Ten seconds later, Tyler found himself with two arms full of food and drinks and no answer yet from Serafine. He looked down at the hot pretzel and popcorn, the beers balancing in a tray and felt like he was tumbling through the air with his arms too full to catch himself as he fell. He wanted to toss the food in the trash and bike home.
She stood there, the water bottles under one arm and her fries in the other hand. “Tyler...”
Yikes. He could practically see the dot-dot-dot lingering in the air after his name. She’d dot-dot-dotted him. Not a good sign, my friend.
FIN HAD THE dream last night. Which generally meant that today would be a foul day, no matter how flirtatious the June sun was.
It had come at dawn. Fin, twisted in the sheets of her bed, found herself trapped in a dream world with the last person she ever wanted to see again.
Her mother, painfully beautiful, smoking a long, seductive cigarette and obscured by thick layers of smoke and otherworldly blur, sat in a chair in the corner of Fin’s bedroom. She looked exactly as she had the last time that Fin had seen her, over eighteen years ago.
Long black hair, just like Fin’s, bright eyes that laughed cruelly at the world. Her mother, vividly gifted with clairvoyance, had always made it seem as if she knew absolutely everything.
She said the same thing she always said to Fin when she met her in her dreams. A man will bring you down, Serafine. Just the same as he did to me. Think of the thing you want the most in this world and then sail it down the river. That’s what a man will do for your life. Trust me, daughter. Trust me.
Serafine couldn’t remember if her mother had actually ever said that to her in real life or if this was her subconscious’s way of telling her that time was running out for her to get what she wanted the most.
All Fin knew was that her mother had truly believed that a man had robbed her of everything she’d ever wanted. The man in question had been Fin’s biological father. And the way he’d robbed her had been by getting her pregnant. With Fin.
It was ironic to Fin that a child was what had ruined her mother’s life when a child was what she herself wanted more than anything.
Think of the thing you want the most in this world.
Even now, standing here in the concessions area of a minor league baseball game, Fin could feel the rejection letter in her pocket. It had come to her in email form, but she’d purposefully printed it out and chunkily folded it up to carry it with her today.
For the fifth time, her application had been rejected to be a foster parent in the state of New York.
She carried the letter with her now as a sort of reverse talisman. A reminder of all the ways the world could get in the way of this thing she so desperately wanted. Her intuition had told her to print the letter out and bring it with her to this game, and now she understood why.
Because Tyler Leshuski, Nordic blond perfection in his pressed jeans and polo shirt, had finally mustered up the courage to ask her on a date.
She blinked at him. Was Tyler funny? Yes. Did it occasionally make her blood heat when she caught him surreptitiously watching her from across the room? Sure. Was he so handsome that even now she could count at least three different women letting their eyes take a little spring vacation from their husbands? Yup.
To tell you the truth, I don’t like kids very much.
It was the first time she’d ever heard him say it out loud, but not the first time she’d gotten that vibe from him. She knew for a fact that the man had dated his way around Brooklyn and had no intention of stopping.
She shifted on her feet and one sharp, folded corner of the rejection letter in her pocket jabbed into her thigh, fortifying her. There was no room for a man in her life. And there was certainly no room for a committed bachelor looking to get wet and wild.
Fin looked into those nautical blue eyes of his, dreamy and proper all at once.
“Trust me when I say that the two of us,” she said, “are not a match.”
She held his eyes for a second more, nodded her head resolutely and then turned on her heel toward the condiments stand.
There. That oughta do it.
Tyler was actually the second man she’d had to reject today. The first was a smarmy, pushy businessman on the Q train who’d apparently thought that just because she’d accidentally jostled into him, she might want to hand over her digits. She’d set him straight in just as resolute a way as she had Tyler. Although with the man on the train, she’d had to ignore the “bitch” he’d tossed her way, seemingly under his breath. She’d found that one had to be firm when dealing with men. Much like children.
“Hold the phone,” Tyler said after a moment, striding after her, his long legs easily catching up to her, beer sloshing over one wrist in his hurry. “That’s your entire answer?”
She looked back over her shoulder as she pumped Frank’s RedHot over every inch of her chili cheese fries.
“You want more of an answer than that?” she asked, raising an eyebrow, a kernel of dread bursting into existence in her gut. Please don’t make this harder than it has to be, she internally begged him.
“You don’t like me?” he asked, searching for clarification.
“I like you just fine. You’re funny and sweet with Matty.” She shrugged.
“You’re not attracted to me?”
She swept her eyes over him, almost lazily. “You’re attractive.”
“But we’re not a match. Not even for a date.”
She opened her mouth to answer him but he cut her off.
“What’s the issue here?” he asked. “I didn’t propose. I’m not a bad guy. It would be fun.”
Of course he hadn’t proposed. That was the whole point. Not that she wanted him to propose. But the venomous disdain that dripped from his voice at the very idea of commitment...
“I’m not looking for fun, Tyler—”
“Well, what are you looking for, Fin? Because I can’t figure you out.”
Temper crackled inside her like static electricity. She set down her food and turned to him, dusting salt off her hands.
“First off, I was about to tell you what I’m looking for when you cut me off twice. And trust me, if you were any other man on the street, I would have already walked away from this conversation. So take it as a compliment that I’m even explaining this to you. Tyler, I barely date people at all. And I certainly don’t date men with your priorities. I’m not looking to eat fancy food at an overpriced restaurant and make small talk while I watch you attempt to figure out how best to get my clothes off. I only like seeing movies by myself, and I’m not interested in ice-skating or binge-drinking or whatever the hell else it is that people do on dates.” She sucked in a breath for more air, and watched as the color leached out of his face. “And, most important, you are never going to have kids ‘if you can help it.’” She threw two quotes around those words, letting him know that she’d definitely overheard his conversation with Matty just now. “And I am looking to start a family. ASAP.”
“I didn’t—” he started, but she held up a hand to stop him.
She’d lost her patience. Maybe if she hadn’t dealt with the man on the train that morning, or maybe if she didn’t feel the eyes of other men on her right that very second, taking her confrontation with Tyler as an opportunity to let their eyes linger on her breasts and ass and face, maybe if the world was a little more decent to women, she’d have let him say his piece. But here they were, on Planet Brooklyn, where her temper still hadn’t burned itself out.
“You’re in your forties,” she continued, “which doesn’t bother me, but even at this stage of your life, you show no interest in anything beyond seeking your own comfort and having fun while you do it, which does bother me.”
“Serafine,” he started again, looking like he thought there was still a chance for him to argue himself into a date.
Nope. Sorry not sorry. She went in for the kill stroke, deciding to, mercifully, grant him a swift and final death.
“You cling to Matty and Seb instead of living a life of your own. You’re charming, sure. Good looking in a Zack Morris sort of way. But from where I’m sitting, you’re also a childish, too-smooth commitmentphobe. Besides, if I wanted a fling with someone—which I don’t—I’d know better than to fling with my best friend’s boyfriend’s best friend. Is that a good enough answer for you, or shall I go on?”
TYLER HAD BEEN sucker-punched once, in the eighth grade, by a kid named Simon Sigrid. Out of nowhere, the kid had marched down the hall and socked Tyler in the face. They’d found out later that it had been on a dare from another kid and had nothing to do with Tyler in the least. It wasn’t the pain that had hurt Tyler the most, but the shock of it. The realization that one could just be carrying on in one’s life and then BAM, knuckle sloppy Joe right to the nose.
That hadn’t been any more shocking than this had been. Tyler gaped at her for a moment before he realized that he wasn’t breathing. He felt like she’d just waxed all the hair off his body in one fell swoop. He felt completely naked, and every inch of his ego was smarting.
“Damn,” he said. Because it was the only thing to say. He took a step back from her. And then another. And then turned and walked back to his seat, mechanically passing out the food and drinks. He stared down at his pretzel, which he’d forgotten to get mustard for, and just passed the whole thing over to Matty, who’d enjoy it no matter what.
She was looking for more of a commitment than he could offer her. He’d always sort of known that. He didn’t begrudge her that. But to tear him to shreds over it? As if it was a mortal character flaw and not a choice he’d made a long time ago. Tyler would not be repeating his father’s mistakes. Even if it meant that Matty was as close to a kid as he’d ever get. He might not be able to commit to anyone, but he wasn’t abandoning them either.
A few minutes later, he sensed the moment that Serafine came back and sat down behind him. This time, the hairs on the back of his neck didn’t stand up. There was no electricity or tripping heart. He felt entirely heavy, weighed down and slow, as if her words had been one lead blanket after another that she’d tossed on top of him.
When Simon Sigrid had punched Tyler in the hallway of his school, knocking him to the ground, it had been Sebastian who’d pushed Simon away, who’d helped Tyler to his feet, led him to the nurse’s office while Tyler pinched his own nose against the blood running down his face. It had been Sebastian who’d sat there for hours with Tyler while they waited for Tyler’s parents, who hadn’t come.
And it had been Sebastian who’d ridden the subway home to Tyler’s empty house so he wouldn’t be alone after school.
But right now, at that moment, Sebastian was snuggled up with the woman he loved, his first priority no longer Tyler. Tyler was a distant third after Matty and Via. And that was the way it should be, he reminded himself. Yet he couldn’t help but acknowledge that that hurt almost as much as Serafine’s words had.
That once again, Tyler was the one who nobody wanted. The one who waited in the office with a bloody nose, knowing that no one was coming to get him. If he wanted to get home, he was going to have to do it himself.