Total pages in book: 122
Estimated words: 115288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 115288 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 576(@200wpm)___ 461(@250wpm)___ 384(@300wpm)
“That’s what Dad says. And I’m going to a school with art programs, so hopefully there are lots of people who are like me.” She tosses another ball, and this time she gets thirty points.
“Nice work!” I high-five her. “I’m sure you’ll make lots and lots of friends.”
She nods and bites the corner of her lip. “I miss my friends from Boulder.”
“I bet you do.” I give her a side hug. “When I was just a little bit older than you, I had to move too.”
“You did?”
I toss a ball and miss. “Yup. And we had to move away from our friends too. But I made new ones at my new school. It was hard at first, but the really great part was that I had new friends in my new school and old friends from my other school.”
“So you had twice as many friends?”
“I did. And even though I didn’t see those older friends all the time, we had a lot of fun when we got to hang out. It made our time together even more special.”
Peyton nods thoughtfully. “You have sisters, though, don’t you?”
“Yup, two. I’m the youngest.”
“Sometimes I wish I had a sister, but I’m almost ten already, so I don’t know if that will ever happen.” She tosses another ball, and this time it gets fifty points.
We whoop and high-five again, then move on to the dance game. I learn that Peyton loves dancing and she’s very, very good at the Just Dance video game.
Half an hour later, the pizza arrives, so we take a break from our dancing competition—which Gavin found highly entertaining to watch from the comfort of the booth—and dig into the pizza, rating it on a scale of ten, based on cheesiness, sauciness, and the crunchiness of the crust. Peyton eats two slices before she pushes her plate away and starts coloring her place mat.
“There aren’t any brown crayons for the horse.” She sifts through the little cup, searching for the right color.
“Why don’t you color the horse pink or blue or purple?” I suggest.
Peyton frowns. “But horses aren’t blue or pink. They’re brown or black or gray, and sometimes they have spots.”
“In real life, but in our imagination, they can be any color we want them to. If there was a land full of princesses and castles and magic horses, I bet they’d be fun colors with rainbow tails,” I say.
“Kind of like My Little Pony?” She makes her scrunchy face again.
“Kind of, but a bit more grown-up, with some added flair maybe? Like My Little Pony with The Princess Bride vibes. Have you seen that movie?”
“I have! I watched it with Dad last year on Mommy’s birthday. It was her favorite movie. I’m going to make him a pink horse with a rainbow tail!”
“I think that’s a great idea.” I help her color in the horse while we wait for dessert.
After Peyton finishes coloring her horse and eating ice cream, she decides she wants to use the slide on the indoor play structure, which leaves Gavin and me on our own, watching from the sidelines. We head back to the booth, and I take a seat beside him, so we can both see her, and I don’t have to make direct eye contact the entire time.
It’s one thing to have Peyton as the focus and the buffer, but totally another to make small talk with Gavin. Despite having spent a year and a half living in his house, he feels like a relative stranger now. I’ve changed, he’s changed. And obviously both of our lives have done the same.
“Thanks a lot for meeting up with us today. Peyton couldn’t stop talking about you after the party and wanted to know when I was going to message you so she could see you again,” Gavin says as his gaze shifts from me to the structure, where Peyton is heading for one of the slides.
“It’s honestly my pleasure. It’s really great to see her. She’s turned into a lovely little girl, which isn’t a surprise since she was a great baby.” That hot feeling creeps up my spine again.
“She was,” he agrees and says softly, “although I think you had a lot to do with that.”
“She has an easy personality. She was only ever fussy when she was uncomfortable.” My mind goes back to that night all those years ago. She’d had such a hard time sleeping, and Gavin had been so under-rested. And emotional. For months, I replayed that one night over in my head, experienced the mortification time and time again, felt buried in the embarrassment and guilt of it all. If I hadn’t gone into the kitchen, would everything have been different? Would they have stayed? Was it better that they left?
“The sleepless nights when she was teething were always the hardest.”