She gasps and shakes her head. “No. Uh-uh. Nope. I like praise. I totally panic if I think I’m gonna get in trouble.”
I can’t help chuckling. Shaking my head, I sigh, “Well, you’ve picked the wrong Boy to make friends with, Tess. Ilivefor trouble.”
She leans back a little, eyes raking over me almost skeptically. “You seem too nice for that to be true.”
“You can be niceanda brat, you know.”
“Sweet, then.”
I make a gagging sound. “I’mnotsweet.”
Tess’s lips curl upwards and she starts digging into her own lunch, taking a bite of food and waggling her empty fork at me. “Nah,” she says as she chews, “you just comforted me, a complete stranger, and talked me down from my freakout within like five seconds of meeting me.Thatis sweet.”
“Maybe I just didn’t want to make a scene?”
“If you’re really the brat you say you are, wouldn’t making a scene beexactlythe kind of thing you’d enjoy?”
“I…”Damn it.She’s probably right. I scowl. “Shut up.”
She giggles.
I can’t help but smile back.
***
After lunch, I half-consider signing up for the same Littles group activity that Tess does, if only because it feels like I’ve made a friend already, but I am not feeling Little today. So, instead, I wave goodbye to her and head towards my chosen Middle activity for the afternoon, which is apparently an arts and crafts session on the lawn.
There are a bunch of Middles and their Caregivers already in attendance when I get to the group, and I swallow because I seem to be the only Middle on my own. The counselor running the activity is cute, though, so that’s something. His stickers and wristband have him flagging as a Daddy and gay, which also lifts my spirit. He’s also a solo Daddy, unpaired for the week, if I’m understanding the stickers correctly. And the bandanas tucked into his back pocket suggest that he’s happy to play with Middles and Littles both.
“Hi! You missed us all introducing ourselves,” he tells me, making my stomach drop a little. But his smile, surrounded by dark stubble, is warm, and he doesn’t seem annoyed by my accidental tardiness, “I’m Kris,” he points to his nametag, which reads ‘Kristian’. “What’s your name?”
“Benjamin, but I like Benji,” I answer with confidence. I look around the group, most of whom are standing behind a semi-circle of eight easels. “I was late ’cos I couldn't choose what I wanted to do first. Sorry.”
“No need to apologize,” Kris beams back at me. “It’s the first real day of camp and there’s a lot to choose from.”
I nod, not sure what kind of response he expects from that.
Apparently none, I realize as he just claps his hands and gestures to the others. “Today we’re going to do some landscape painting. You can follow along as I paint my own canvas and try to paint thesame scene as me, or you can choose another view and paint that instead. You can paint with your Caregiver or on your own. That’s totally up to you, too.”
“I’m here on my own,” I explain, as if that’s not obvious by the fact that I turned up alone. I choose one of the free easels, adding, “And I don’t have an assigned Daddy.”
There are some murmurs from the couple at the easel to my left, but I ignore it. I don’t need a Daddy to enjoy myself, or my regression. Kris, at least, doesn’t seem to think I do, either. He just smiles that warm Daddy-esque smile at me. “Excellent, more chance for you to express yourself on the canvas without interference.” He makes a show of “hiding” his mouth with the back of his hand before stage-whispering, “Daddies can be a bit bossy about these things.”
Sunshine-y Daddies don’t usually do it for me, but something about this guy’s warm brown eyes and bright smile makes my stomach flip pleasantly. He’s got a cute face, like I said, but is otherwise just your average Daddy. He’s not super tall, and he doesn’t look ripped or even particularly athletic, but I’m attracted to him anyway.
Maybe because the last Daddy I hung out with was a jerk.
I fight the urge to roll my eyes at my own inner voice.
He wasn’t a jerk. We just didn’t really gel. He wanted alittleLittle, and he’d thought that because of my whole pee kink, I might be okay to regress further than I actually do. It probably frustrated him that, nope, I’m really just a Middle with some Little tendencies, and a bit of a brat to boot.
I wonder what this Daddy —thisKris— is really into.
But then I shake myself out of those thoughts and remind myself that I am not here to hook up or find a Daddy. I am here to relaxand indulge my regressed side without anyone else’s expectations weighing on me.
Everyone chuckles at Kris’s attempt to be silly and then he moves to the easel at the front of the group, turning to face it. “Now,” he says loudly over his shoulder, “I’m going to be painting the scene right in front of us, with the lake and the mountains in the background. I’m going to start with this pot of green paint…”
I lose focus almost immediately when I notice just how nicely his shorts fit his ass.
