A WRIGHT CHRISTMAS (Wright Standalone)

4. Peyton

4

Peyton

“You will never guess who I ran into at the Lubbock Ballet Company,” I said to Piper later that day as I drove with her and Blaire to my parents’ home on the south side of town.

“Isaac Donoghue,” Piper guessed.

My eyes widened. “How did you guess?”

“Because his daughter is obsessed with dance. She’s there almost every day.”

“What?” I gasped. “You knew this and didn’t tell me?”

“Everyone knows that, Peyton,” Blaire said from the backseat.

I turned around to glare at her, but Blaire just laughed. She was Piper’s roommate and best friend from college. They’d been inseparable ever since they first met. She had a baseball hat low over her wide blue eyes, and her nearly black hair whipped around her face in the wind with the Jeep’s top down. It was too cold to have the top down at the end of November, but Piper always liked to push boundaries.

“Well, I didn’t know that. It was quite a shock to meet his daughter.”

“She’s so cute though, isn’t she?” Piper said.

“She is. Is her mom…in the picture?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could.

But Piper’s smile fell off her face. “She died…in childbirth.”

“Oh.”

I flushed and looked out the window as the streets of my parents’ neighborhood zoomed past. Christmas lights dotted the houses as everyone prepared for the upcoming holiday. For so long, that had only meant extra hours in the studio and endless Nutcracker performances. Not that I’d ever minded. But in that moment, I minded.

“Yeah, he’s doing okay now, as far as I know,” Piper said. “It was pretty traumatic at the time.”

“I can only imagine.” With a sigh, I turned back to Piper. “So, he’s a single dad? Not…attached?”

Piper’s smile returned. “Are you interested?”

“No,” I said automatically. “I’m only here for a month. I’m just trying to digest everything I missed.”

“Liar.”

Blaire cackled from the backseat. “Yeah, he’s single. His parents and sister help take care of Aly a lot.”

“Oh, wow, Annie,” I said, remembering his sister’s name. “I haven’t seen her in forever. She was just a little kid when I left.”

“She’s in med school now,” Piper said.

“That’s amazing.”

“Yeah, Blaire plays on Isaac and Annie’s soccer team, the Tacos.”

“The Tacos?” I asked with an eye roll.

“Hey the Tacos are awesome!” Blair said. She leaned forward. “Anyway, Isaac started the team. He’s so much better than the rest of us, but I try to keep up. Julian and Hollin aren’t bad, but they’re not as good as me.” She got a wicked glint in her eye. “You could come with me on Sunday. It’s indoor.”

“Oh no, I couldn’t do that,” I said immediately. “I mean, it would be weird, right?”

“What’s weird is you trying to deny that you’re still into Isaac,” Piper said as she pulled up to our parents’ house.

I ignored her…even if she was right. Especially because she was right.

Instead, I chose to marvel in the splendor of the Christmas display. Every year, my dad tried to outdo himself on Christmas lights. Already this year, he had every inch of the house plastered in lights, and a few of those inflatable Christmas displays were up and operational. He’d recently gotten into adding music and synchronizing the lights display with his favorite songs, which ranged from “All I Want for Christmas Is You” to “Despacito.” The videos they sent always made me laugh.

Piper parked out front, and we hopped out of her Jeep. She jogged around the hood to meet Blaire and me as we walked up to the front door. My brother’s SUV was parked in the driveway. He opened the door before we could even knock and barreled into me, picking me up and twirling me around.

“Peyton’s home!” Peter called inside.

“Pipe—Pey—Peter!” our mother, Hannah, called, always messing our names up. “Whatever your name is, put your sister down right this instant and go help your father with the spaghetti.”

Peter set me down with a wink. He and Piper were so similar sometimes, it was terrifying. They were twins, though Piper would proudly proclaim that she had been born three minutes earlier. And they even looked alike. Same straight dark brown hair and chocolate eyes with a proud, defined jawline and golden skin. Only Peter was a good head taller than both of us.

“You know, Mom, you wouldn’t mess up our names so much if you hadn’t named us so similarly.”

“Bah,” she said, waving a dishrag at me as I stepped inside. “I still would. As long as I get the person right on the last one, that’s all that counts.”

I let her pull me into a hug and kiss my cheek. “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too. But at least we’ll have you for a month this year. That’s more than I can ask for.”

“It’s good to be home. Where’s Abuelita?” I asked about my grandmother.

“She couldn’t make it tonight, but she’s anxious to see you. You should swing by her place when you have time.”

“I will. If I have time.”

Peter’s boyfriend, Jeremy, was already seated at the dinner table with a copy of The Great Gatsby in his lap. He was an English PhD at Tech and could always be found with a book close at hand.

“Jeremy,” I said, and when he didn’t look up, I repeated his name.

He blinked rapidly and glanced up, completely lost in his book. “Did you say something?”

“I was just trying to say hello.”

He smiled and tucked Gatsby under his arm. He stood to his considerable height, six and a half feet tall and as lanky as they came. Fair as could be—as if, like a vampire, he never saw the sun—with blond hair that always fell forward into his baby-blues and a disarming crook of his lips. Like he wasn’t quite used to looking people in the eye. He was the opposite of my brother, but they just seemed to fit.

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.