And really, my job could be a lot worse. I spent most of my day in the office going to meeting after meeting, putting out fires and seeing potential future fires. I always had to be on my toes, and it was heavy stress—thanks to any uncontained fires being my fault, no matter who started them. It was getting more and more intense lately, and I needed a break.
Sadly, instead of a break, I got a business trip. I had to go deal with our office a few states over, and I was not there for it. Not only was it a waste of time, because everything I had to do could be done on Zoom, but it also meant leaving Daddy, and I really wasn’t ready for that. Worst of all, it wasn’t an overnight trip. No, I was there all freaking week, which meant five days and four nights without Daddy. I wasn’t ready for that.
“Daddy, can you come on my trip with me?” I was being whiny and grumpy about it. I knew that. I also knew that he had abusiness to run, and gallivanting to another state to wait for me to be done working each day wasn’t the way to keep it going strong.
“You know I can’t, sweetheart. I wish I could. It would be nice for us to get away, we haven’t done that yet. What about this? What if I come down Friday after work, and we can spend the weekend together? Do the whole tourist thing?”
At first, I wasn’t sure if I wanted to accept the offer. I absolutely wanted to spend the weekend with him. But I could do that anywhere, and going home and being in my own bed sounded great. He was right, though. We hadn’t done anything like this together, and spending a weekend away, just the two of us, exploring a new city… It sounded pretty fabulous.
And that was what we ultimately decided to do. Having something to look forward to all week would help things move along more quickly.
I wasn’t sure if I was going to be allowed to drive to the location. The company preferred we flew when possible to save time. But the last thing I wanted to do was fly, because I wanted to bring my milk with me. Airlines were weird about milk even when it was to feed infants. It would be far more difficult if there was no baby, especially if they knew it was for me.
Thankfully, the ticket prices were extremely high and included a long layover, making driving the better option in their eyes. Driving meant I could bring my cooler of milk. Daddy had pumped enough for me to have a bottle each day, and he kept it frozen so that when packed well and surrounded by ice, it was still that way when I got there.
I settled in that first night, pulled up Zoom, and Daddy read me a bee story as I drank my milk. There had been a time when I thought there was nothing better than sucking down a bottle of milk, but now that I’d had it directly from Daddy, the intimacy of the warmth and the bonding of drinking it that way…it wasn’t the same with a rubber nipple in my mouth. But hearing his voice as he told ridiculous stories about bees who went to balls and others who decided they wanted to be birds…it was nice. Not the same but a million times better than if I was drinking it alone.
We did this every night, and by Thursday, I was ready to tell my boss to shove it and go home. It wasn’t like I was making any great progress. Mostly, I was sitting in on meetings, which was hardly what I called productive. That night, as I drank my milk and listened to the bumblebee ball for the ten-millionth time, I remember thinking as I dozed off that I wished Daddy was there so I could drink it direct.
But when morning came, there was a knock at the door. It was Daddy. I hadn’t just beenthinkingthat I wished he was there. I’dsaidit. He was standing right in front of me.
“I’m so sorry, Daddy.”
“Never be sorry for telling me what you need, Allen. Never.”
“But you have work. You have the bakery. You have employees.”
“There’s nothing huge today that they can’t manage. And when I asked them if it would be all right, there wasn’t a single hesitation. And trust me, they’d hesitate. If this had been Christmas time or near one of their birthdays, I’d have heard about it and wouldn’t be here standing beside you.”
I threw my arms around him, holding him close. “We need to buy them presents, Daddy.”
“We can do that. But first, I seem to remember a sweet boy who wanted to have some milk directly from his Daddy and not from a bottle. Do you know who that could be?”
I looked up at him. “It was me, Daddy.”
“Let’s get you on the bed. Get you what you need to have a good day at work.”
My Daddy was the best, the absolute best.
12
PATRICK
That first day at the hotel, I spent most of the day waiting for Allen to get out of work. I explored different things we could do in the city and went to a couple of shops to pick up gifts for the people at the bakery, but for the most part, I just hung out in the hotel room. I’d never say it was a waste, though.
I hadn’t come early because I needed to spend the day with him. I came because he needed me. Hearing him cry as he fell asleep, saying that he wished I was there, nearly broke me. There was no way I could’ve been any good at work today. It would’ve been one of those cookie-fail-after-cookie-fail days, like I had back when I first started and had no idea what I was doing.
One thing I discovered while Googling everything I could about the city was that they had a club with a Little room. Normally, when I saw clubs that had day passes, I was a little leery. You didn’t want to be around people who were there just to ogle the members, and at some of those places, that was very much what it was. But the more I read about this place, the more I realized they wouldn’t allow anyone like that in there. I had to fill out quite a bit of paperwork to even submit for a day pass,and because I was in good standing at a club of my own, it went through the same day. According to the website, it could take as long as a month.
I had a good feeling about it, suspecting that when we got there, it would feel safe, and if at any point it didn’t, we’d leave. It wasn’t even a done deal that we were going, because I hadn’t asked Allen if that was something he was interested in. He might just want to stay in the room, order room service, and sleep snuggled in my arms. And if that was the case, I’d be happy with that, too.
He came back later than he had originally scheduled, getting sucked into a work happy hour he had no interest in attending. He kept me updated along the way, and I wasn’t worried about him physically, but emotionally, he was good and done for the week. The sooner he was able to break away, the better.
When he walked back into the hotel room, he stank. Not that I planned on telling him that so bluntly, but he’d either been around smokers or vapers or both, because his smell hit me before he had the door closed.
“I need to shower before we do anything,” he said. “I don’t even want to tell you about this happy hour.”
“That bad?”
