Right Where You Left Me | Grayson Dolan

9

Grayson

"A weekend at the beach," I said, setting our duffel bags in one of the bedrooms of my grandparent's lake house.

Brooklyn, Ivy and I were spending the weekend here along with Ethan and Kylie, who were already swimming in the lake.

"It's perfect weather for the lake this weekend," Brooklyn said. "Ivy, do you wanna get your swim suit on and go swimming?"

Ivy smiled at Brooklyn, which always made my heart flutter with happiness. The adoration in Ivy's eyes for Brooklyn made me fall in love with Brooklyn even more every single time.

Sure, it was an adjustment to find out that I was a father, but Ivy was the missing piece to my life that finally made the puzzle complete.

These two girls are everything to me and more.

Brooklyn and Ivy went to the bathroom to get their suits on, so I changed into mine too.

When the girls came back downstairs, they had matching messy-buns in their hair which were the cutest ever.

"Wow. You're hair looks so cute," I said, reaching down to scoop my daughter up.

"Thanks, Daddy," she said. "Mommy has a bun too."

"I know," I said, smiling at my girlfriend. "Looks so cute."

"Thanks, Baby," Brooklyn said, reaching onto her tiptoes to kiss me on the cheek.

"I like your suit," I told her. She was wearing a white swimsuit top that made her eyes pop, and the bottoms were black. The whole bikini made her skin look tanner, and she looked stunning.

Brooklyn always looked stunning.

"Thank you," she said as she grabbed Ivy's life vest. We made sure to get Ivy a new one, so she'd have one that fit her correctly. Always better to be safe than sorry.

After Brooklyn grabbed Ivy's vest, we took Ivy outside towards the sand, where she immediately wanted to make sandcastles.

Ethan had brought a bunch of our old beach toys to the lake, so we had little plastic shovels and pails, and different molds for the sand.

Ivy and I were having a blast making cool things out of sand.

Brooklyn was sitting on the dock with Kylie, both of them watching us, and Ethan was making sure that the boat was ready to go out on the water.

All of us got on the boat, Ethan driving while the rest of us enjoyed the breeze of the water.

Kylie was sitting on the bench behind Ethan, Brooklyn sitting with her while I sat across from them with Ivy, who was coloring with markers in a coloring book.

"Oooh, that picture looks pretty," I told my daughter. "What color is that?"

"Pink," she said. "And that's purple, and green, and yellow, and red," she continued, pointing to each color. I found it cute how she said "lellow" for yellow.

"Good job, sweetie," I said. "You're such a smart girl."

"Do you wanna color with me?" she asked, handing me a red marker.

"Sure, honey. What part do you want me to color in?"

"Ummmm, the fishy's eyes," she said. The picture she was coloring was a cartoon fish.

"Okay," I said, putting the marker down. "Should I make them green?"

Ivy giggled. "Yeah! Gween!"

Quickly coloring the eyes of the fish green, I smiled at Ivy. "There. The fishes eyes are all green now."

"You're good at coloring, Daddy," Ivy said.