Make a Wish (Spark House #3)(12)

“Okay.” Peyton bounces over to the ball toss, and we take turns throwing the ball, laughing when we miss—which is often—and high-fiving each other when we manage to get one in the slots.

“How do you like being back in Colorado Springs?” I ask.

“It’s pretty good. I like my new room. Me and Dad painted it the first day we got the house, and then we went shopping for decorations and that was fun.” Peyton looks over her shoulder, maybe checking to see if anyone else is close enough to listen in. “But it can be kind of lonely. Dad has to work a lot right now, and I only have a couple of friends. I like Claire, but she plays sports all the time and watching her games is kind of boring.”

“Do you go to her games often?” I ask.

“A couple of times a week. Sometimes I go over to my nana’s house and she always has fun activities planned, but she’s busy during the day a lot, so I can’t always go there.”

“What else do you do with Claire?”

“Sometimes we draw, or color, or play outside. She likes to be moving all the time, and sometimes I just want to make crafts and things like that.”

“She sounds a lot like my sister, and you sound a lot like me. I bet when you’re in school, you’ll find other friends who like the same things you do.”

“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.”