sheet of paper. I’d never explained my process to anyone before, much less a child, so I thought about it for a few moments before beginning.
“I find it easiest to start with the outline. Like this.” I replicated the dog’s face, focusing on the shape of his head, snout, and ears. “I don’t press down very hard, so the lines are easy to fix or cover up.” I glanced at Maria. “Does that make sense?”
Instead of answering, she began lightly adding the outline of her own dog on her paper. It didn’t look exactly like mine, but it was similar enough that I could tell what she was doing. “Like that?” she asked.
“Yep.”
I spent the next twenty minutes filling in just the dog’s head, step by step. I gave her tips on shading and drawing eyes and even how to properly hold her pencil. Although I wasn’t sure if she followed all of my instructions, she seemed to be paying attention, so I figured that was pretty good for my first lesson.
When we were done, she smiled down at her picture. It was actually pretty darn good. Her parents—or whoever she took it home to—would have no trouble figuring out that it was supposed to be a dog.
“Nice work,” I said, offering her a hand for a high five.
Maria slapped her little hand against mine. “What’s wrong with you?”
So many things.
“What do you mean?”
She pointed to my cast, and I got it.
“Oh, just a little accident. I’ll be back to normal in no time.”
“Don’t let her fool you, Maria,” a deep voice said from behind me. “Thea was never normal to begin with.”
As the little girl giggled, I shot a faux scowl at Tristin. “Is that so?”
He nodded solemnly. “Of course, I’ve never thought there was anything that great about being normal.” Leaning over the table to admire our pictures, he added, “I’m sure that beautiful unicorn would agree. Did Thea draw it?”
“No,” Maria cried with another giggle. “I did!”
He slackened his jaw in exaggerated surprise. “You did? I can’t believe it.”
She held the drawing out to him, and Tristin’s answering smile was probably the gentlest I’d ever seen from him. “For me?”
She nodded.
“Thank you. I’m going to hang it up as soon as I get home.” Turning to me, he asked, “Are you ready to go?”
Too stunned to come up with anything else, I merely said, “Yes.”
Seriously, who was this guy? He was more at ease with these children than I could have ever hoped to be. And they loved him.
After we said goodbye to Maria, Tristin grabbed my drawings from the table and added them to the one from his tiny admirer. “Who is this?” he asked as we made our way to the Range Rover, referring to the black ball of fluff.
“Toto, my fake dog.”
“Fake how, exactly?”
“At the first meeting with my Western Civ study group, I told them that I had a dog named Toto.” I shrugged. “And this is how I pictured him.”
Tristin released a startled laugh. “You’re serious.”
“Yep. Don’t ask me why I did it. Guess I was just in a mood.”
He shook his head at me. “Sometimes, I have no idea what to think about you.”
“I could say the same about you. You’re amazing with those kids, Tristin. Like, really, really amazing.”
He lifted a shoulder, as though it was no big deal. “It’s not hard. They just want someone to pay attention to them.”
“It’s more than that. Those boys were literally sitting around waiting for you.”
“Because they know I’ll make myself look like a goof playing with them.”
A goof. Yeah, right. In my opinion, he’d looked like a damn hero.
Since I couldn’t say that, I asked, “Are you good at every sport?”
He chuckled. “I was playing with a bunch of children. I only looked good in comparison.”
“I might not know anything about basketball, but I could tell that you have natural grace out there. Did you ever play on a team?”
“Yeah, for a few years. But, then, Leo decided to go all in with football, and I followed suit.”
“Do you miss it?”
“Not as much as you probably assume. Team sports aren’t really my thing.” He opened the passenger door for me. “It’s fun playing with the kids, because there’s no pressure.”
I lifted myself into the front seat and held my crutches out of Tristin. “I’m kind of surprised the center allows you around them.” As soon as the words popped out of my mouth, I wanted to stand in front of the SUV