Make a Wish (Spark House #3)(48)

“Wednesday at five.” He programs it into his phone. “We should probably head over to the school so we can catch the tail end of rehearsals.” He stands and extends a hand, helping me to my feet.

On the way out of the coffee shop, his fingertips rest against the small of my back as he opens the door and ushers me outside. Little gestures, smiles and sidelong glances individually don’t mean much, but added up, it’s starting to feel like this friendship we’ve formed is shifting, and I’m not sure what to do with that, if anything.

I don’t want to ruin this good thing we have.

I wish the butterflies in my stomach understood that.





Thirteen


IT’S NOT REALLY A DATE, YET


GAVIN

“Dad, when are we going? Aren’t we supposed to meet Harley soon?” Peyton comes bounding into my room and launches herself onto my bed, bouncing on her butt.

“Yup. I just need one more minute.” The five o’clock start time for this class doesn’t leave me with a lot in the way of time. I basically picked Peyton up from my parents’ house and forced her to eat a snack—which ended up being cookies because I still need to get changed out of my suit. I’m wearing a pair of jeans and a T-shirt, with a zip-up hoodie in case it gets cool later. It’s only late September, but the days are shorter, and when the sun goes down, there’s a chill.

I splash a little aftershave on my hands and slap at my neck.

“Do you want to smell good for Harley?” Peyton asks.

I pause and glance up at her knowing smile. “I don’t want to smell bad for Harley, or anyone.”

“Those are your going-out jeans,” she says haughtily.

“How do you know they’re my going-out jeans? I have more than one pair of jeans you know.”

“Yeah, but you have your work-on-the-house jeans, the mow-the-lawn jeans that have grass stains on them, and then you have two pairs of going-out jeans.” She holds up two fingers. “These are your going-out ones.”

“Well, I’m going out, so I guess it makes sense that I’m wearing my going-out jeans, doesn’t it?”

She chews on her bottom lip for a second before she nods. Her lips twist to the side. “Is Harley’s friend going to be there again?”

“Which friend is that?”

“Um.” She taps her chin. “Chad?”

“Oh. Uh no. Harley and Chad aren’t seeing each other anymore.” I’m a little unsure how to navigate this conversation with my nine-year-old. We mostly watch princess movies and cartoons, and while I’ve dated a few women over the years, I only introduced one of them to my daughter. Not because I didn’t think she could handle it, but because I didn’t think it was a good idea to bring women into her life who might not stick around. And my mother-in-law made that very difficult.

Maybe more difficult than I realized, based on her reaction to Harley at the assembly a few weeks ago, and we’re not even dating.

Not yet. But maybe soon. I don’t exactly know how long I should wait on that, though. Probably not too long. I don’t want to give anyone else a chance to swoop in and ask her out before I get a chance.

I hope she’ll say yes when I do. To a date that doesn’t involve a nine-year-old. Not that I don’t love having my daughter around, but I’d like to spend more time with just Harley. And I can’t explore the chemistry we seem to share when she’s reading bedtime stories and making glitter crafts.

“What does that mean?” Peyton asks. “Not seeing each other anymore?”

“Well, you know in Frozen, when Princess Anna starts to fall for the bad guy?”

“Hans.” Peyton makes a face. “He’s not nice. He’s selfish and mean.”

“He is. And Anna sees him for who he really is, and instead, she falls for Kristoff, even though he smells kinda funny because his best friend is a reindeer and he’s a little weird.”

Peyton scrunches up her nose. “So was Harley’s boyfriend a Hans?”

“Well, no … I mean, maybe. You know what, this is a bad comparison. Harley decided that she didn’t want to be Chad’s girlfriend anymore. Sometimes that happens. People grow apart instead of together.” Man, I really suck at this conversation.

She twists her hands together. “Do they sometimes grow back together after they’ve been apart?”

“Um. Sometimes? Why?”

She bites her bottom lip. “Is that what happened when I was a baby? With Harley? Did you grow apart and now you’re going to grow together again?”

I feel like I’m digging myself a huge hole with this conversation. The kind that can easily get too deep to climb out of. “No, honey, we moved to be closer to Nana and Grandpa, not because of Harley.” But that’s not entirely true either. I’d been on the fence about moving, not wanting to start over again. In fact, Ian had been ready to put an offer in on a house in Boulder and take on the task of getting the Greenscapes out there up and running. A few days before he and Lynn were going to go out there and look at a house, I decided Peyton and I should be the ones to make the move. We went to the house showing and I put in an offer right away.

“But now that we live here, we see Harley again,” she points out.