PTSD | Sequel to Little Clifford

11

Ashton's POV

"Ok so first, we are going to get lunch since it is 12 and none of us have eaten yet," I inform Arden as I look at her through the rearview mirror of the car.

"Ok," she says softly while watching all the cars go by out the window.

I pulled into the parking lot of Macca's figuring Arden would enjoy eating here. The three of us went inside and ordered our food before finding a table.

"Can we play on the playground?" Arden asked shyly.

"Of course!" Calum tells her and we move to one of the tables in the playground area. Cal bends down to help her untie her shoes since I tied them in tight double knots and she holds on to his shoulders as he slips them off her feet.

He sets them on one of our chairs and then Arden gently grabs onto his finger, "C'mon Cally."

He chuckles, "Oh, I can't go in there Princess. I'm too big."

She looks up at him with furrowed eyebrows and tilts her head, "What?"

I quickly snap a picture of them two and send it to Michael, captioning it: 'She's confused as to why Calum says he is too big for the playground.'

"Yeah Baby," he laughs, "I will barely fit!'

"No you're skinny Cally," She tells him.

"You're too cute," he laughs and shakes his head, "Ok, I'll try."

He begins pulling off his boots and Arden comes over to me, "You have to come too Ashy."

I chuckle before agreeing and taking off my own shoes. Luckily, there was nobody else at the playground since it was the middle of the week and most kids were in school. Arden climbed into the jungle gym first and Calum followed.

"Oh my gosh. This is made for little people, not men over 6ft tall," he groans as he tries to go up the little steps.

I also had a hard time climbing up them but it was pretty funny. We crawled around the jungle gym until we heard our order number being called. All three of us slid down the slide and then Cal went in to grab our food while Arden and I sat down at the table.

Calum returned only a few seconds later and we all began to eat our food.

"Guess where we are going next," I tell Arden with a smile.

She smiles back softly, "I don't know."

"Well you know how your dance shoes are all torn up? We are going to take you to get new ones!"

She gives us a shy smile, "You don't have to do that. I can still wear my old ones."

I laughed, "Oh my goodness! We are buying you new dance shoes. You aren't wearing your ripped ones anymore."

Her smile grew as she blushed a little bit, "Thank you."

After we finished up our food, we drove to a store that sold dance shoes. We actually had to look up online where we could buy them because we had no idea.

It didn't take long for us to find a pair because we had an employee help us and Arden got the exact same shoe a her last ones.

"How about you do some turns?" I say and point to the little dance room that they had connected to the shop. It was empty so Arden shyly agreed.

We went inside and I helped Arden to slip out of her vans and into her new ballet flats.

"What should I do?" She asks.