I had a lot of onesies, and I wanted to show him all of them. I knew I couldn’t do that because it would take up all the time he’d probably set aside to come here. I knew hewas busy, and as a fireman he could be dragged away on a call at any minute. I had to make every moment with him count right now. He might decide it wasn’t for him—and then I’d probably have to move, change my name, and start a whole new bakery.
It’d been fifteen minutes. He called out to me while I was on my third onesie try-out. I didn’t want to show him any of the boring ones with the designs on them. He had to see the full playfulness of them, and I had that. The perfect onesie. It wasn’t on the rack. It was buried in some suction-packed cube.
It was an almost replica design of the big green dinosaur, Reptar, fromRugrats in Paris, one of my favorite movies ever made. There was a copy of it on VHS stuck in a TV unit somewhere in my parents’ basement. The tail on the onesie was all foam and thick, nearly had a life of its own, or maybe I was swaying when I walked, but it whipped at the walls.
“Whoa,” Daddy said. He was plating the food for me on the counter, making full use of the compartments. “Dinner is almost ready. You know, I’ve not had this much fun in a while. Thank you.”
“The fun is just beginning,” I said, then gave my best dino roar.
“Oh no, you’re going to scare the dino nuggets on your plate,” he said, trying to hide them with a hand hovering overing the plate. “You look amazing, by the way.”
“Thank you,” I said, swishing my hips as the tailwhacked the sides of the door. “Okay, I think I might have to put something else on.”
“Aw, why?”
“I can’t sit in this. I just wanted to show you.”
He stared at me for a moment, longer than I thought he would, with his eyes all over me. I loved every second of it. “I’m taking pictures with my brain.”
I giggled. “You don’t have to. If you ever want to see me like this, you just have to ask, but—I think it would destroy the tea-party setup just like it destroyed Paris in the Rugrats movie.”
“Ahh,” he said. “That’s why the face of it looks familiar. Not that I ever watched it, but when I was a teen and my younger sister was that age, she had it on sometimes.”
“You’re funny.”
He blew a kiss and winked at me. “Now put something on you can sit down in,” he said. “That’s a good boy.”
It was a good job this onesie had room inside—because I was chubbed up to the max. He called me a good boy, he’d prepared dinner for me, and hewinkedat me. I didn’t know people still did that. Like one of cupid’s arrows right through my heart.
I rushed back to my bedroom, giggling.
Maybe the guys were right, maybe we would get naughty in my bedroom.
The bedroom which needed to be cleaned.
Oh god.
We were going toplayin here.
6. RICK
I’d almost denied myself of this. I’d almost let my brain tell me this wasn’t appropriate. I’d always been of the mindset that I wasn’t supposed to date in the town I was living—but that came with the caveat about outing myself, and I was thirty-eight. Being out was the right thing to do, especially when I knew anyone would snap Caspian up if they were given the chance.
I loved seeing him play and perform for me—still not too sure on the accuracies of the play, but that’s what today was all about. We were discovering each other. I loved the dynamic of being Daddy, in control, taking care, and I wanted him to have the space to be messy, to play, and not have another thought in the world but what he was focusing on—and that’s how he’d had those alarms going off so often. There was nothing wrong with him, he was just hyperfocused a whole lot, and if I’d been anyone else, maybeit would’ve been annoying, but I was me, and I found it adorable.
“Okay, this one is much better,” he said, returning to the lounge and his tea party setup. It was his fourth onesie. It was a fashion show almost, but with different comfort levels for sitting.
“You look cute. Are you ready to eat?” I asked. “I think the nuggets and spaghetti are cool enough.”
He smacked his lips, licking them. “Yes, and—oh, I forgot to—”
From the side of the beanbag chair I was on, I pulled out a juice box. “Ta-da!”
He squealed. “You really thought of everything.”
“I’ve tried,” I admitted.
I had a small regular plate with food in front of me. In all honestly, I loved the taste of nuggets, they were a secret junk food I’d order when I got takeout, but besides that, I tried eating healthy—many smoothies. Maybe too many if you considered soup a smoothie too.
