Fin waved a hand through the air. “Ah, you know how I feel about red auras.”

Via shrugged. “All right. You know best. But what I just saw? That was really special.”

“I agree.”

Via got the strange feeling that they weren’t exactly talking about the same thing.

“HOLY GUA-CA-MO-LE,” MARY SQUEALED as she danced across the room and grabbed Seb into her arms. “She is SO cute, you lucky dog! Seb, I’m so excited for you!”

“Oh. Yeah. Totally. Although I wouldn’t really describe her as cute.” Seb thought of Fin’s fall of long, black hair, her spooky eyes and her loads of intricate jewelry.

“Are you kidding? She’s cute as a button. I just wanted to put her in my pocket. When she read Matty that story, I almost died.”

“Wait.” Seb was putting the pieces together. “Are you talking about Via?”

Tyler stopped typing on his phone across the room.

“Of course.” Mary looked confused. “The one you were supposed to go on a date with.”

“No, Mary, I was supposed to be on a date with Serafine this morning.”

Mary’s face scrunched down in even more confusion. Her eyes flicked to Tyler for a second. “Hold on. The one who you obviously have a major crush on was NOT the woman who you had a date with? And the woman whose mere presence gave Tyler a lust-induced brain aneurysm—”

“Hey now!”

“—was the one you were actually supposed to be feeling things out with?”

Neither Seb nor Tyler said anything.

It wasn’t uncommon for Mary to be this honest. But damn.

“I didn’t have a lust-induced brain aneurysm,” Tyler insisted sulkily.

“Then what the hell would you call it, Ty?” Mary asked, completely comfortable holding her friend’s feet to the fire. She and Tyler had become close after Cora died. There was nothing like dragging a friend out of the wreckage of his life to bond two people. And they’d been equally present in Matty and Seb’s life ever since.

“I was just surprised was all. She’s really hot.”

“She’s too young for you,” Seb snapped, falling back onto the couch and scraping his hand over his face. Mary and Ty looked at one another in surprise. Seb’s temper rarely reared its head. Even in his darkest place, after Cora had died, he never snapped. “They both are. They’re too young for us.”

Seb lifted his head and stared Tyler in the eye as if challenging him to say different.

Tyler didn’t disappoint. He tossed his phone on the coffee table and crossed one ankle over the other. Mary settled in on the far side of the couch, looking like she was wishing for popcorn.

“Maybe they’re too young for you, old man. But not for me.”

“We’re the same fucking age.”

“Apparently not.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means that just because you have a kid you act like you’re over the fucking hill. You’re forty-two years old, Seb, not exactly about to join the AARP, okay?”