The New Girl

Family Pt.2

(Gabby's POV)

After Ayden finally got Dakota and Colton to get upstairs to join the party, he took me to the living room where his sister sat talking to an old lady.

I knew it was his sister because, one, he's shown me pictures of her before and, two, she looks just like him. Audrey was dressed in regular blue jeans and a pink shirt that said birthday girl on it and black bubble letters. She even had a cute crown on that said birthday girl.

"Hi, Grandma," Ayden smiled bending down to hug his grandmother. Then each of Ayden's friends all did the same. It's cute how close they all are with Ayden's family.

"Who's this beautiful young lady? We don't see many of those around here too often, do we, Audrey?" His grandmother said, winking at Audrey.

"No, we don't, Grammy," Audrey giggled as she hugged her legs to her chest.

"This is my friend, Gabby. Gabby this is my grandma." Ayden introduced us.

"Hi, it's great to meet you. And you too, Audrey." I chuckled. Audrey just smiled and waved shyly.

"Great to meet you, too, honey."

Ayden continued to introduce me to all of his family members, which was quite nerve-racking. There's no way I would be able to remember everyone's names. I know he's not really expecting me, too, but I feel like I should.

After I had met nearly everyone in the house, Ayden and I sat down at the dining room table. Bennet went to go play a Wii game with Audrey and Dakota and Colton were asked to run to the store to get ice cream.

"Who's that?" I asked, nodding my head in the direction of the man that was talking to Ayden's mom.

She was incredibly sweet to me when Ayden introduced us. She seems like a really nice person.

Ayden turned around to see who I was talking about. When he faced me again, he was biting his lip, internally debating. "That's my stepdad, Eric."

"Oh," was all I said.

"My dad is stationed overseas and couldn't be here today."

"Wow, that's really cool, Ayden." I'm jealous his dad is doing good for our country while my dad can't even do good for his family. Well, this family.

"Yeah, we just miss him," he said as he watched his sister play just dance with Bennet who was losing extremely bad.

"I bet," I agreed.

As much as I dislike my dad for what he did to my family, I would be lying if I said I don't miss him. For the 16 years he was a dad to me, he was an amazing father. I never would've ever guessed he'd leave us.

"Come on, let's go save Bennet." Ayden chuckled softly as he rose from his seat. We walked to the living room side by side. Ayden took the Wii remote from Bennet's hand and thrust it in my direction. "Show us what you got Gabby Girl."

At first it was just his friends that came up with all the wacky nicknames, but now Ayden has hopped on that bandwagon and calls me the first nickname that comes to mind.

Dancing is not a skill of mine, even if it is just a Wii game. I probably looked like an uncoordinated seal while trying to dance next to Audrey who seemed to know all of the dance moves by heart.

"Two stars, finally!" Ayden clapped as my score chimed as it hit two stars while Audrey's was already at 4. The song ended and I sat down on one side of Ayden and Audrey sat on the other.