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He shook my hand. My family were huggers. I wondered how he survived it.
“Good to see you again.”
“You too,” he said, then promptly sat back down and continued reading.
“Mom, do you know who Peyton ran into today at LBC?” Piper asked from the kitchen.
I groaned and hurried toward the sound of Piper’s annoying voice.
“Isaac Donoghue,” Piper announced before I could stop her.
Everyone turned to look at me when I stepped into the already-crowded kitchen.
“What?” I grumbled and snatched a fresh-baked roll off of the plate that my dad had just taken out of the oven. It was too hot though, and I tossed it back and forth between my hands until it cooled down.
“Isaac is such a nice young man,” my mom said, nudging her husband. “Don’t you think so, Matthew?”
My dad caught my gaze. His eyes crinkled when he looked at me. He set the plate down and came over to pull me into a hug. “I’m glad you’re home, pumpkin.”
“Me too, Dad.”
“Well, anyway,” my mom continued, “I think he has such a cute little kid. Did you meet Aly?”
“I did,” I confirmed. “She was adorable. I can’t believe she’s going to be a mouse in The Nutcracker at only five years old.”
“Why? You were,” my mom reminded me.
“Yeah…but…”
Piper laughed. “Not everyone is a prodigy?”
“That wasn’t what I was going to say.”
Peter and Piper exchanged the look. I threw my roll at Piper’s face. She gasped when it hit her, and then she bent down to pick it back up and hurl it at me. But my father wrenched it out of her hand.
“I spent hours on those. Let’s not throw them at each other,” my dad said.
“Well, now, it feels like Peyton’s home,” my mom said with a sigh. “You three are incorrigible.”
“The spaghetti’s ready. Everyone grab something and take it out to the table,” my dad said, hustling us out of his kitchen.
Though my mom loved to make traditional Mexican food that she had learned from her mom and grandmother, she was a terrible cook otherwise. She claimed it had something to do with her great-grandmother’s recipes having magic in them. But otherwise, Dad cooked. When he had still been working his way up at Sinclair Cellars, we’d eaten a lot of takeout, but every Sunday, we would sit down for a real home-cooked meal. Just the smell of my dad’s secret spaghetti sauce brought back so many childhood memories.
I picked up the basket of rolls and followed my mom and siblings into the dining room. I set them down next to Piper’s plate since I knew she would eat more than the rest of us combined, and with my father’s metabolism, she’d not gain a pound. A feat I still didn’t understand.
Once everyone served themselves, my mom said grace, and then we dug in. But still, Piper wouldn’t let the thing with Isaac go.
“So, are you going to go out with him?”
I stuffed my mouth full of spaghetti and shot her a death glare.
My mom just laughed. “What about you and Bradley?”
Piper shrugged and picked at her salad. “We’re just friends.”
“That’s what they call it nowadays,” Peter said from the other end of the table.
“Hey!” Piper snarled.
Peter laughed. “What? You can give it but not take it?”
“I think Isaac is a good man,” my dad said thoughtfully. He looked at Piper with a raised eyebrow. “Better than this Bradley fellow.”
Piper sighed heavily. “I know, Dad. This is why we’re friends.”
Blaire snorted. Piper elbowed her in the arm.
My dad met my gaze. “I know you’re only here for a month, pumpkin, but a lot can happen in a month.”
I gulped and nodded. My dad always had a way of speaking to me thoughtfully. Even if he said the exact same things that everyone else said that made me cringe. “I know.”
“Blaire invited her to the Tacos soccer game this Sunday,” Piper volunteered. “Isaac’s team.”
“You should go,” my mom said.
“No, I still think it would be weird,” I said quickly. “We don’t know each other anymore. We haven’t even seen each other in sixteen years.”
My dad glared at Piper to keep her quiet, and the conversation veered toward other topics—Piper’s new idea for the winery; Blaire’s new job, teaching Pure Barre; and Peter’s latest comic book find. I was glad to be left out of the conversation.
There was no way that I was going to go to Isaac’s soccer game. I’d mentioned that we should meet up, and he’d said I could text him, but that was before I knew he had a daughter. That changed things. I didn’t want to get into his life for a month, only to leave again. Not when he had someone else’s feelings to think about.
I wasn’t going to text him. And I wasn’t going to go to his soccer game. That was settled.
