Page 31 of Reaching Gavin

“You two abandoned me.” She pretended to pout, but I had no doubt that someone her age had spent most of the last half hour on her phone.

“I’ve never been here before,” I told them as I helped myself to a slice of veggie and a slice of pepperoni. Gavin’s eyes widened at the pile of food I was making myself on my plate, but he didn’t say anything.

“Lucky you. Gavin makes me come every week and he never lets me win.” Imogen stuck her tongue out at her brother.

“We come once a month,” Gavin corrected her. But I saw the look he shot her. It was full of warning.

“So, you come every week?” I said with a laugh, folding my pizza in two so I could take a bite without losing half the toppings.

“I do, and when she’s in town, she’s forced to come,” Gavin admitted. “She’s not a Skee-Ball addict like me.”

“Skee-Ball addict?” I raised my eyebrows, pretending to be impressed before I shook my head sadly. “And you still can’t hit a 100.”

“You’re going to have to show me how you do that,” he said as he shook Parmesan on to his slice.

“Not until I win,” I told him.

Across the table, Imogen smirked, pizza paused midair. “You two are perfect for each other.”

The Skee-Ball battlecontinued after we finished our pizza. This time Imogen joined us. She might act too cool to be in an arcade, but she had some serious moves. She might not come with him every week, but she came often. I watched as Gavin pretended to steal her tickets and felt a twinge of homesickness grip my heart. My entire family was too far away for me to get to spend much quality time with them. Most of my interactions with my younger siblings were over the phone. Gavin and Imogen were lucky to get to see each other as often as they did.

It took me far too long to figure out the Gavin hadn’t loaded up our cards with an insane amount of gameplay, he had actually purchased the unlimited pass. Every time I expected the card to come back and tell me I had run out ,it only sent the balls funneling down the chute one more time. It was why I didn’t notice that Imogen was the one playing next to me instead of Gavin. I straightened up, arching my back to stretch it out. We’d been playing so long that I was starting to get sore. I had the tickets to show for it though.

“Where did your brother go?” I called over the noisy restaurant.

She shrugged, abandoning the waiting balls and following me in my stretches. “Bathroom probably.”

“So how often does he really drag you here?” I asked.

She returned my grin. “It’s usually once a week. Unless one of us is traveling.”

“And you hate it?” I didn’t believe that she did but getting her to admit otherwise in front of him would never happen. That was sibling rule number one.

“No. I just enjoy giving him a hard time.”

“That I understand. What got you into historical preservation?”

“I’ve seen a lot of strip malls.” She pretended to gag. “It’s a hazard of your dad having a coffee shop in every city in America.”

Or five in every city, but who was counting?

“Not a fan?” I asked.

“Have you ever been to London on Paris? If they tore down buildings for strip malls, imagine what they would look like.” Her voice was rising slightly, filled with passion. I’d found what made her tick.

“America isn’t nearly as old as those cities. Those buildings are hundreds, sometimes over a thousand, years old,” I pointed out.

“Well, five hundred years from now, I don’t want America to be full of preserved strip malls.”

“That’s a long-term plan.” Apparently, Gavin’s younger sister wasn’t going to be content to sit around and spend the family money either. She might not be building her own empire, but she seemed to be putting the family name to good use.

“What’s up with you two?” she asked, shifting the subject from the relatively benign topic of architecture. “Are you dating?”

I shook my head. Trust the very young to not see why us dating would be problematic. “He only got me to come out tonight, because he said you would be here.”

“Ouch. You wanted a kid sister buffer? He really does need to start dating. He’s losing his mojo.”

That made me laugh. I couldn’t imagine any woman who would want to go out with Gavin and his kid sister when she could get Gavin to herself. “I wanted to talk to you. I’m working on a presentation for the Majestic Theater.”