This story was titled and inspired by the 1977 film: "The Goodbye Girl."
Beta: Grammarly.
Any mistakes found are my own.
I do not own these beautiful characters.
The faux leather of his gloved hand squealed in protest as he rubbed the back of a closed fist against the frost-covered window pane of the MTA bus. It did little to nothing to clear the thinly encrusted layer of ice that had formed on the exterior. Still, he did manage to rub away some of the condensation, enough to peer through the little circle he created so he could continue looking at the names of street signs and buildings they passed.
Rick Houston.
Rick Boulevard.
Rick Bleeker?
He wrinkled his nose as the litany of potential surnames got increasingly worse with every passing thought. With a theatrical sigh, he leaned back as far as the stiff bus seat allowed, fingers tightening around the corded handles of his shopping bags as he lifted his free hand again, breathed heavily against the glass, and drew a smiley face in the wet fog. With a gentle nudge of his elbow into the ribs of his companion, he motioned toward the haphazard circle with a "Check it out!" grin.
The copper-haired child, his ten-year-old daughter, shook her head in amusement before it fell away to a more discerning expression: her patented "Mother 2.0" look. With a put-upon exhale, she lifted mitten-covered hands to fix his ear muffs; she adjusted the left side, then tugged the right one down from where it had managed to hike itself to his temple.
"Dad, you'll catch a cold," she chided before deeming the ears muff appropriately fixed. She settled into his side again, relishing the body warmth his larger frame emitted.
"Thank you, sweetie," he said with no small amount of affection. He let his eyes linger on her face, taking in her pale blue eyes and porcelain skin, noting the strawberry-striped cheeks from the early morning weather. After the swell of overwhelming love crested over him, he nudged her again with a "Hey. What do you think of the name 'Storm'?"
Her slightly chapped lips curled up, not so much in disgust as she was far too polite for that, but with visible displeasure. "No, thank you."
"No?" He hummed to himself, looking pensive.
Richard Storm.
He bobbed his head, not entirely put off by the potential moniker.
Rick Storm.
He scrunched half his face upward, not entirely convinced that was the way to go.
Dick Stor-
Rick shook his head in repulsion, working his tongue as if he had swallowed a capful of cough syrup. "Good call," he said agreeably after regaining his bearing. He flicked his tongue a few more times before catching a fellow commuter's eye. He offered them a hesitant smile, but they couldn't cut their stare away from his face fast enough.
Richard Commuter.
Ricky Dicky-Doo-Da.
Rick the Prick.
Meredith, his live-in girlfriend and mother to his child, had a tendency to mutter that particular nickname beneath her painted lips when she was in a mood. She had also been the one to insist he legally change his name – reinvent himself, as it were, into the type of man people wanted to buy novels from.
"Rick Rodgers is the name of a tax preparer," she had derided after another push for him to 'rework his brand.' "Not a murder-mystery novelist."
He had hated to admit it, but she did have a point. It wasn't easy, however; he couldn't just pick any old name from the air. It had to come from something, somewhere, that had meaning. Perhaps, not the word itself, but to him. It had to have meaning for him. It had to be fitting, a non de plume he wanted people to chant on book tours and signings. A name like Richard... Richard...
Rick exhaled noisily through his nostrils as an answer failed to magically fill the blank.
The bus produced a sharp squeal as it bucked, then gradually slowed to a jerky stop. Rick drew himself to his full height, towering above most of the other passengers, before he looked down at his white-knuckled hands; each finger was wrapped securely around the handle of an amalgamation of shopping bags from various stores.
He ensured that his daughter was ready to go before he allowed her to proceed down the aisle ahead of him. He started excitedly, "Just think, Alexis," he bit his lip from enthusiasm, "This time next week: California!"
"Were you ever there?"
He nodded his farewell at the bus driver, following his daughter closely as they stepped out into the brisk New York air. "Once," he replied, "For six weeks while your grandmother toured with some musical. I spent my winter swimming in the ocean and building sand castles. How cool is that?"
Her cherubic smile was genuine as she crowed, "So cool! Do you remember what musical it was?" At his questioning look, she added, "That Gram was in."
"Oh," he considered momentarily as they walked at a clipped pace down the sidewalk. He offered Alexis a one-shouldered shrug. "You know what? I don't know," he admitted with a lopsided smile. "But what I do know is that it's beautiful there, and we're going to find ourselves a gigantic house and fill it with all the toys we can get our hands on. If there's room left over, maybe I'll let you have some toys of your own."
He chuckled at her audible scoff.
"It's going to be atop the steepest hill, so everyone else below looks like teeny, tiny ants," he added, letting his imagination run wild with the possibilities of a fresh start. Their new future was only four days away.
"Will it be by the movie studios?" she asked, skipping alongside him to keep up with his inadvertently long strides; the pigtailed child was growing like a weed, but Rick sometimes forgot she was only ten.
"Obviously," he affirmed as he took a measured half-step forward, allowing her to catch up to him. He shifted the handful of shopping bags in his left hand to join the others in his right, reaching out to tug his daughter into his side as they made their way home. "We can pop in and say hi to your mother-"
"And meet some of the handsome actors?" she asked dreamily, blue eyes twinkling as she looked upward.
Castle glanced down with a fond, tolerant smile. "Nice try, pumpkin, but we've discussed this – No dating until you're 40. Remember?"
"But Rina has a boyfriend!" she protested as only a prepubescent girl could.
"Rina is also three years older than you, and not my child," he replied kindly before ushering her up the stoop of their apartment building. "Now open the door before my arm falls off, please."
She huffed but obliged, allowing him to enter first, following closely on his heels.
Sensing her morose attitude, her excessive sighs indicative of how unhappy she was not to be allowed to date the handsome actors she could potentially meet, he threw over his shoulder: "How about we make a deal, huh?" He jogged up the flight of stairs, the tissue paper crinkling loudly in the stairwell from within their bags. "You don't go kissing any boys or girls until you're at least 40, and I'll let you eat ice cream for dinner every night and skip homework till then. What do you think?"
He could sense her eye roll as they reached the second-floor landing. "You already let me do that, Daddy."
"And, yet, you never take me up on the offer."
"Because I'll get cavities, and lose all my teeth, and then no one will want to kiss me."
"Oh, yeah?" He hid a grin into the plaid scarf wound loosely around his neck. "I guess I didn't think of that. Fine, then we'll stick with the 'no homework,' thing."
"I don't know," she dubiously replied. "The Presidential Fitness Test is on Monday-"
As they approached their door, Rick nearly pulled a muscle in his neck from how hard he reared his head back in incredulity. "And you need to study for that?" he asked as he fumbled the key before unlocking it with one hand.
"You wouldn't understand," she said, chin lifted high as she crossed the threshold and down the narrow hall. At that moment, she had never sounded more like her mother, and Rick wasn't sure he entirely liked it.
Rick nudged the front door closed with the heel of his shoe, calling out to her back, "We're moving in four days, Alexis! You can skip your homework for once."
His red-headed child flounced into her bedroom but left her door open, a telltale sign she wasn't upset, just feeling dramatic – now that trait she could have inherited from any member of their family.
With a nip of his front teeth, he tugged and pulled at his gloved left hand until he could shake it off and onto the round table set in their kitchen slash dining room. He let the bags fall in a cascade of colors and plastic as he began to unwind the rest of his hanging scarf.
Letting the scarf spill from his fingers, he began to unbutton the collar of his brown winter jacket as he called out, "Meredith? We're home!" He stepped into their shared bedroom; something was amiss, but he couldn't quite put his finger on it. "Meredith?" With a twist of his lips in contemplation, he exited the room and glanced into the living area – nothing seemed different there, with the exception of a folded piece of card stock set upon the mantle of the fireplace. "Hm, what's this then?" He murmured with an affected English accent.
Rick stepped forward, resuming the task of undoing the buttons of his jacket with one hand while he grabbed the thick paper and unfurled it to see Meredith's elegant handwriting within. "Looks like it's just you and me tonight, kiddo!" he called out before the words, his eyes roving over slowly, began to seep into his mind. "'I turned down the job in LA,'" he murmured, his lips moving along as he continued to read aloud,"'David called this morning – I got the Belluci picture in Italy?'" The words were not written as a question, but confusion colored his vision. "'How could I say no to that, Richard?'" He scoffed. "'David will be joining me..." his voice petered out, "'I think he wants to give us a try, tell Alexis mommy says Ciao...'"
He didn't remember deciding to sit down. Still, when his ears stopped ringing long enough to take stock of his surroundings, he found himself sitting on the edge of the upholstered couch, his jacket half undone and the vanilla crème letter dangling between the tips of his index and thumb.
"Dad?" Alexis appeared in her doorway, a bemused frown on her face. "Are you going to get that?" Her bright eyes cut down the hall, toward the front door, then back to him again.
It took another half beat of a moment for Rick to realize that the ringing in his ears was actually the shrill buzz of their doorbell.
"Uh, yeah," he managed to squeeze out between a too-tight throat. "Yeah, pumpkin."
Alexis shifted uneasily as her father took her in, his gray-blue eyes roving over her youthful face, identifying the features that came from her undeserving mother. An unidentifiable pain lanced through his chest as he gulped.
"Is- is something wrong?"
"Yeah," he wheezed before standing on wobbly legs. He paused, catching himself before he shook his head and corrected: "No." Without clarifying, he slipped down the small hallway and threw back the door without thinking to check through the peephole first.
A startled, hazel-eyed brunette stared back at him. He took in the bright red paperback novel in the stranger's left hand and the sheaths of paper in her right. The stranger's hastily scribbled handwriting was visible beneath her bare fingers, pinked from the cold.
"Hi," he said dumbly.
"Hey," she said with an air of uncertainty. After a moment of their breaths filling the space between them, she cleared her throat and asked, "I'm sorry. Am I at the wrong apartment?"
"I don't know," was all he could manage as she fiddled with the papers she clutched.
"I'm looking for 3A-" She peered over his shoulder to see the paint-chipped embossing of '3A' on his door. "And this looks to be it."
"This is 3A," he confirmed, then stared at her in a distracted daze.
"Okay," she drawled, calculating eyes darting to his empty hands and broad frame. "May I come in, please? It's been a long, long couple of days and it's kind of cold out here."
"Uh, yeah," he blinked and, at her pointed look, took a step back and muttered, "Sorry. Come on in. Welcome?"
He watched as she tugged in a sizeable purple suitcase that he hadn't noticed at her side. After she had crossed the threshold and entered the apartment's more expansive space, he followed her with a furrowed brow and a pertinent question: "I'm sorry. Who are you?"
"I'm Kate Beckett," she answered, head cocked to the side as if he was pulling her leg. "Meredith Harper sublet her apartment to me." It lilted like a question, but she was holding up one of the pieces of paper up to his muzzy eyes. "See? This is the lease agreement."
"She sublet the apartment," he echoed rhetorically, suddenly feeling faint.
A slender hand was reaching out for him; he traced the long fingers up to the woman's cable-knit sweater, to a chunky, homespun shawl, and further up to the delicate curve of her neck before his eyes settled on the golden flecks of her green-brown eyes.
"Shiny," he commented dazedly.
"Hey," she murmured, pushing back the long wisps of honeyed brown hair that fell from behind her ears. "Are you okay? Do you take insulin or anything?"
"Daddy?"
The adults turned in unison as if it were a move they had perfected over the years.
"Hi," Kate greeted, recovering. "I'm Kate Beckett, and I'm a police officer with the NYPD. Does your dad have a medical condition?"
Alexis shook her head before she took a moment to consider. "Sometimes, mom says he has 'Richard Cranium Syndrome,' but between you and me? I don't think that's a real thing."
Rick coughed as if something had gone down the wrong pipe. He tapped his chest as the officer and his daughter looked at him in concern and amusement. "I'm okay," he croaked, though his face felt hot with embarrassment.
Kate laughed, a beautiful breathy sound before she joked, "Oh, it's a real thing, alright," sotto voce. They stood in relative silence for a moment as Rick gathered his breath before Alexis stepped forward and cleared off one of the kitchen chairs full of bags. "Please, have a seat, Officer Beckett."
The woman smiled, charmed by the little girl's manners. "Call me Kate, Miss-?"
"Rodgers," she held out her arm, hand extended, "But you can call me Alexis." They shook hands succinctly as the older woman perched on the edge of the dining chair. "This is my dad, Rick."
The man could only manage a meek wave as he gradually lowered himself onto the only other chair, plastic and tissue paper audibly crumpled beneath his weight, but he didn't seem to notice.
Alexis glanced at him, befuddled by his uncharacteristic demeanor, but then she noticed the large luggage bag set at the mouth of the hall. "Are you moving in or something?" she asked curiously. We're not supposed to move to California for another couple of days, and I don't think Mom's going to be happy to find you on the couch."
She looked to her father for his additional commentary and made a double take when she took in the disbelief writ across his face; his mouth partly open, jaw working slowly as if the words were on the tip of his tongue but unable to slip out.
Kate offered them a self-deprecating smile. "I take it Meredith didn't tell you the plan?" She straightened in her seat and clasped her hands together. "Well, where is your mom, Alexis? Maybe she can shed some light on all of this."
The child looked at her father for answers with a furrowed brow and pursed lips. He blinked once hard before licking his dry lips and rasping, "Italy. She moved to Italy."
"I'm confused?"
"Wait, dad, what?"
The voices collided with one another, tones a mixture of stricken pitches and puzzlement.
Rick took a steadying breath, heartache licking a stripe of heat at the base of his throat as he confirmed what his daughter already seemed to know: "She left us, kiddo."
He couldn't hide the shame and sorrow that creased his eyes; he ducked his head, pressing his chin to his chest, as Kate attempted to avert her gaze from the private scene.
"What? No," Alexis retorted, hurt coloring her voice, cheeks pinked. "That's wrong. She wouldn't do that to us, to me," his head lowered impossibly further. "What about California? She said we would all be together in California, remember Dad? The big house on the steep hill by the movie studio?"
"I'm sorry," he comforted with a voice equally as pained. "That's not happening anymore."
"But," her lower lip wobbled, eyes welling with unshed tears. "She said-"
"I know, pumpkin," he shifted forward, far enough on his seat that he could reach out and tug her close, engulfing her more petite body within his own. He pressed a firm kiss atop her fiery locks of hair, pushing their foreheads together as he closed his eyes.
"Where will we go?"
God, how tiny and lost she sounded.
A stab of hatred pierced his soul; how could Meredith do this to her, to Alexis? Their beautiful, sweet, precocious child.
Rick tamped down the emotion but couldn't find the words of reassurance he needed to console his daughter. He lifted his red-rimmed gaze and opened his mouth but found no answers at the ready – he had no idea where they could go. They weren't flush with cash; in fact, they were a month behind on rent and falling further behind with every day that passed. They were bereft of a steady income, living paycheck to paycheck, waiting for Meredith to hit the big screen or his books to hit the Bestseller's list – but now that didn't seem like a reality, and a roof above their heads was no longer guaranteed.
The little girl pulled away with a distraught noise; she took off toward her room, mindful not to slam the door behind her but instead firmly closing it.
Rick burrowed his face into the palms of his hands.
"I'm sorry," Kate said after several seconds of near silence. "I had no idea."
He straightened up with a sharp snort, nostrils flaring as he struggled to keep his nose from running. Though he had no visible tear tracks on his face, Rick knew he looked like he had been through the emotional wringer.
With a one-shouldered shrug, he dismissed her apology. "I didn't either up until a few minutes ago." He stared down at the linoleum floor, eyeing the tattered tops of his shoes. A short burst of curiosity had him glancing at the red-covered paperback she had set on the table earlier.
The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls.
He had once read it on a whim, the recounting of Walls' nomadic yet colorful upbringing, her story of resilience, and her father's attempts toward redemption. It had seemed fitting at the time.
Richard Glass.
Transparent. Fragile. Easily broken.
He looked down at his shoes again.
Kate took him in, considering as she worked her lower lip between her canines. He seemed to contemplate, stewing in his emotions and focusing on his well-worn sneakers as if they held the key to whatever answers he needed to find. She took in the cramped space with a discerning eye.
The living room and kitchen were open, though scarcely enough to fit more than the bare minimum for a family of three. They didn't seem like a messy sort, the abundance of shopping bags aside; she assumed they had been preparing for the now defunct West Coast move.
The little girl had been surprisingly polite and pleasant, and the man who helped raise her couldn't have been a monstrous individual if she was half of him. And he looked well-kept, at least. Tall and broad, yet held himself in a way that he didn't flaunt his considerable mass over others; he was handsome, too, in a rugged way; a little scruff on his jaw and cheeks, the missing patches where hair visibly didn't grow more endearing than off-putting.
Not that she had been looking.
Not that it mattered how handsome he was or wasn't.
The child had been lovely.
He seemed nice.
"Look," she leaned forward before she could think to do otherwise. "I know we don't know each other well," she blinked, "Or, at all, but I think we can maybe work something out."
It looked like it took effort to raise his head, but he looked at her helplessly, hopefully, as he asked, "You have another place lined up?"
"No," she apologized benignly. "I need this place, too. I put all that I had toward renting this apartment, and the move here drained the rest of it. I don't have anywhere else to go either."
Rick's shoulders sagged as he murmured, "Oh." He heaved a deep, exhausted sigh. "It's your place," he said with finality, as if just coming to terms with it in the moment. He stood, took a staggered step to the left before righting himself, and seemed to work up the courage to say, "I- May I ask for one night?"
Kate frowned, a little 'v' etched between her brows as this lumberjack of a man stood with his metaphorical hat in hand and said, "Just one night to figure something out. Please."
"What?" She stood, too. "No."
"Please," he begged, voice breaking, barely holding back the flood of emotions that threatened to lay him flat out in a puddle of tears.
"Rick, listen to me," she held up her hands placatingly. "I meant 'no' as in you don't need to figure something else out. I think you should stay. Here. You and-"
"Alexis," he supplied before he cleared his throat uncertainly. "Are you saying that we can live here? All of us? Together?"
He looked at her, leonine eyes wide and bright with a myriad of emotions.
"Yes." She nodded once and then again. "Yeah, why not? I trust that you're not a serial killer, and while that kid's smile may murder a lot of hearts someday, I think I'm safe." She gestured toward her waistband before lifting the hem of her sweater to reveal the glint of a badge. "Plus, I've got this shiny badge and gun, just in case."
Rick barked out a laugh, face creased and red from the force of it, but she could see the stark relief on his face. "You won't need it," he assured her with an engaging smile that grew as the reality of the situation dawned on him. "Alexis is very mature for her age."
"I was referring to you," she joshed, a smirk ticking at the corner of her lips. She was happy to see that Rick took the joke in stride.
"I can't promise you won't," he said with a soft and slow grin, "need it, I mean."
Oh.
Oh.
They smiled at one another, dopey and worn, before Kate slowly lifted her arm and extended her hand. He looked down at the proffered appendage before carefully grasping the smaller hand within his own.
"I'm Kate Beckett."
Electricity pricked at his skin, gooseflesh erupting as he pumped her arm up and down once.
They were going to be okay.
He felt it.
Knew it deep down in his bones.
This woman, this unerring Knight, broke into their crumbled fortress and righted the weary occupants from within, dusting off their shoulders, looking them straight in the eyes, and telling them she would be their haven.
They were going to be okay.
He was going to be a famous novelist.
Alexis was going to grow up with a roof over her head.
They were going to pull through this together.
He clasped her hand firmly, thumbing the back of hers as a final thought struck him.
"I'm Rick... Rick Castle."
The End.
Please Review.