“There’s no smoking in the bars here, but they had a small blocked-off patio where you could go to smoke. And the coordinator of tonight’s event—because apparently, this was planned the entire time and no one bothered to tell me—decided that he’d book that for us to be more welcoming. I wasn’t sure how he equated the two, but long story short, I may need to burn my clothes.”
“I’ll grab them when you’re in the shower and make sure they get taken care of. Don’t worry about that,” I said.
As he was taking a shower, I put the clothes in the bag the hotel had for their laundry service, called down to the front desk, and had it picked up. They promised it would be ready before we left, and no one was sad to see them go.
After his shower, I sat my sweet boy on the chair and took up the hair dryer, setting it on low as I worked on his hair. “Did you want me to go get something to eat so we can just stay here tonight?”
“Would you hate me? You came all the way here to what? Sit in the hotel?”
“First of all, I could never hate you. Second of all, I came here to give you milkies this morning. Mission complete. So tell Daddy what you would like to do tonight.”
“Then maybe…staying here sounds perfect. We can do something tomorrow. There’s a lot going on in the city.”
“There is.” I described the different events that were happening the next day, some in the parks, some on a local museum row, and one in the city square. “What do you think if tomorrow, after we check out some of those, we go play at the club?”
He sat straight up. “Here? There’s a club? Does it have a Little room?” Excitement was pouring off of him.
“It does, and they seem really nice. We’ve already been approved.”
“I would like that, Daddy. I would like that so much.”
Late the next afternoon, after going to an art walk, attending a big band festival, and eating far too much at an International Food Expo, we walked into the club. I helped him get changed in the cutest Little locker room I’d ever seen. The benches were painted like different animals, the lockers were all primary colors, and they even had a changing table in one corner. There were a couple of other people there, but they mainly kept to themselves, which made sense given how vulnerable being in a space like a changing room can be, so it wasn’t surprising.
“You ready?” I held out my hand for my little bee. He wasn’t wearing his bee outfit, but he had on a bee onesie with bee shorts, bee socks, and a little bee antenna headband. The only thing missing were wings, which he’d apparently had at one point but had broken. I loved how he stayed in theme.
There wasn’t much to the Little room. It was a large, open space covered with gym mats and different toys in random corners. It was nothing fancy or elaborate like some clubs I’d been to, but it was exactly what Allen needed. He crawled around, played with me, found some playmates to join us, and stayed in Little space the entire time. My sweet boy must have needed this after the stressful week he’d had.
“Ready to go?” The lights had flickered a couple of times, indicating they were closing the room or I’d have waited for him to tell me he was ready to leave.
“Yeah, let’s go home. When we get there, can I have snuggles?”
“You can always have snuggles, but we’re not going home, we’re going to the hotel. Remember?”
He shook his head back and forth forcefully. “We’re going home.” He put his hand on my chest. “You’re my home, Daddy. It’s not a place that stands still. It’s you.”
“Very well, my sweet boy. Let’s go home.”
13
ALLEN
After my last work trip, I sat down with my bosses and told them I was looking for a change. They immediately assumed that I wanted to move up the ladder, but that wasn’t it. I didn’t have any desire to be top management. As it was, I was higher up than I wanted to be. I was looking for something in a different department, something that was fewer meetings and more “doings.”
I was lucky and able to slide into a lateral position almost immediately. It was exactly what I’d been looking for. I went in, kept my head down, and did my work. I had a few meetings to attend, because there was no escaping meetings, but for the most part, it was tedious, monotonous work. And well, frankly, it was what I needed.
Things were going great with Patrick. We checked out the local club, we’d had Little time at both our places, and we even had Jeff over for a few play dates. I hadn’t been sure how well that would work when the idea was first brought up. Jeff was so very different from me, and very in-your-face about things that should sometimes be kept as inside thoughts. I shouldn’t haveworried. It all worked out. Daddy was more amused by Jeff’s antics than anything else, which was good. I wanted them to get along. They were both important parts of my life.
The only complaint I had about my current life, and it really wasn’t fair to complain about, was that we were going back and forth a lot between Daddy’s place and mine. Some days I’d sleep at his house, some days he’d sleep at mine. And it was great because we were together a lot, to the point where even though we weren’t living together, we might as well have been.
He was the first person I saw every day and the last one I saw at night, with rare exceptions. But it was getting to be a lot. We had to constantly be thinking if we had the right clothes at the right place and changing what time we had to leave based on whose house we were sleeping at.
I decided that we were going to have to make a decision on that, but I wasn’t sure how to bring it up without sounding like I was demanding we move in together. And even if I did say it that boldly, where would we stay? I had my bees. He had his bakery. We both had ties to our locations.
So even though every day I woke up saying I was going to bring it up that night, every night I chickened out and didn’t. I hadn’t wanted to rock the boat. I didn’t think it was something that would break us, nothing like that, but one of us was going to have to give up something important, or we’d have to decide to keep things as they were. That was some heavy lifting emotionally, and it could wait.
I was in the shower when Daddy came over and was surprised to see him coming in the bathroom, buck ass-naked. I shouldn’t have been. He always kept me on my toes, and it wasn’t like I didn’t prefer him naked.
“Room in there for me?” He didn’t wait for my answer and climbed in.
