Chapter 3
Kicking my feet and giggling, I couldn’t believe what we were texting him. The three of us had come together to ultimately form one brain, and that brain was in charge of flirting, because we were a bit of a mess when it was just one-on-one.
All three of us, in our matching teddy bear onesies, sat around in a circle—except for Keaton who occasionally paced as he tried thinking back to his elitist education that taught him big words.
We were having a picnic-style dinner for my birthday.
Plenty of cake, candies, and apple juice boxes.
They were little essentials. Without a juice box, I would just refuse—or cease to exist.
“He wants you,” Keaton said.
“Let’s take this slow,” Tobias added.
“I was the one who saw the way he was reacting to him at the counter earlier,” Keaton said.
As they argued, all I could do was imagine myself in Rick’s big fireman’s arms. The way I knew he climbed trees to rescue cats and offer up his very large ladder for people who were in need.
I needed to climb his big ladder and slide down that fireman’s pole—and I wanted to do it now.
I continued to kick my feet and giggle about the entire situation.
It was hilarious. It was honestly giving me the flutteriest flurry of butterflies that ever did fly in the sky—or whatever, it was sending me over the moon crazy for him.
“You’re gonna get ahead of yourself,” Tobias said, tutting and shaking his head.
“What do you know?” I asked, flip-flopping around on the beanbags to get a better view of my accuser. “You’ve been single longer than—well, Keaton, and he’s practically a nun!”
Keaton jumped on top of me, wiggling his ass down on me. “Take that back. I did hand stuff with that guy from out of town.”
It was laughable. Sure, we’d all made up a little white lie about a guy from out of town, or someone who wasn’t known to the rest of us, or the world for that matter, because they were completely made up—a fiction!
I knew I’d done it, and I knew some of them had done it as well, mostly because we often used similar things that we took from our adult picture books, which were specifically catered to littles like me—like us.
They were about a trio of friends, just like us, and similarly there was an adult toy company made by a trio.
Trios seemed to rule the littles world, except I was very monogamous.
The only trio I was in was for business.
* * *
After being apple-juice drunk and reading stories together, we headed to bed.
Just because it had been my birthday, that didn’t mean I got a free pass to open the bakery late in the morning.
We all usually woke around the same time.
The bedroom situation was fun. There were two box rooms opposite each other, both formerly used for storage, that now currently housed mirrored setups with those not-quite-double-bed things and a whole bunch of shelves for clothes and teddies.
There was an additional floor to the building, which was where Keaton’s room was.
It was huge and had a private bathroom. I couldn’t be too jealous, though, since his folks had bought the place for us—so technically it was his—which meant we didn’t have a landlord to pay rent to.
I woke in a puddle of teddies, and some of their tiny noses were making indentations in my skin and turning it red. I didn’t catch all the marks until I was looking at them in the mirror with a toothbrush sticking out the side of my mouth.
“Oh god, I thought you were finished in here,” Toby said, clutching a towel to his chest. He had these characters from one of the animated shows we watched tatted to his chest. “Come on—”
“I slept funny,” I groaned, making no sense with the toothbrush slurring my speech.
“I told you to stop throwing your teddies on the bed,” he said, his eyes narrowed in on me. “Finish up. It’s no longer your birthday, so I can be mean again.” He giggled.
I finished brushing my teeth and let him have the bathroom. It was far too early to argue, especially when at heart we were all just littles and we could have a pout off and make a fuss, but without a Daddy in any of our lives there were no winners to throwing a tantrum.
I sat on my bed—and unfortunately the face of the teddy that was in Rick’s gift to me.
I looked at my open closet display. Whatever I wore would be obscured by my apron, and I had to be weather appropriate—fall was upon us, so maybe a cute sweater moment, but not the one with the puffy sleeves.
I needed full motor control in adult mode, especially with my serious job as a baker.
I decided on blue denim overalls and a crop top with a slogan on it nobody could see—Bear Hugs Only. I loved wearing it out. On the very rare occasion we went to the city, we would get hella drunk and it was an ice-breaker.
Keaton looked me over as his toaster strudel popped up. “Are you hoping he comes in?”
I gnawed my lip for a moment, because why had he just read me like that? “If he does, then he does.”
“I guess you could burn something—like usual.” He giggled, and distracted by looking at me, he stung his fingertips pulling the toaster strudel out. It was six in the morning, and I had to be down in the bakery baking up a storm—or just a cloudy loaf.
“One of those for me?” I asked.
Keaton pulled at a layer of the pink and purple paper plates he’d placed his strudels on. “Since it was your birthday yesterday, I suppose I can extend it to reach to today.” He placed one on the plate for me. “Where the frick is Toby?”
“Showering, I think.”
Keaton wiggled his brows. “Playing with himself, more like.”
I shuddered, almost burning my mouth on the food. “Please don’t put that image in my head.”
Keaton laughed, his shoulders hunched almost to his ears as he shared the shuddering idea.
I’d once heard a very loud buzzing, and after that point I didn’t want to know anything about my friends’ sex lives—that just wasn’t the type of person I was, even if I was very sexually charged when I was alone with myself.
We played Whitney Houston over the speakers while getting ready for the morning bake.
My schedule for baking wasn’t traditional in any sense of the word.
I would bake bread, cakes, all sorts at the same time.
People came into the bakery at all hours for their breads and whatnots, and I was a mood baker, if anything, with a slight push and guidance from Keaton and Toby.
“Do you think he’s going to come in today?” Toby asked as he prepared a piping bag with buttercream. “I mean, he’s got to, right? After those cakes. He basically said he wants you.”
I danced around the question—literally, dancing in the kitchen, with a lot of space to do so. “La, la, la,” I let out.
“Come on,” he groaned. “What do you think he’s gonna do? Come back here and give you a safety demonstration—oh my god, what if he, you know, wants to take a tour of the apartment for fire hazards, and you two just—”
“Stop,” I said, stomping my feet. “I think he’s just playing me for free cakes.”
Keaton peered in from the front—he had a wad of bills in hand. “I think if he does come in, we should get him to inspect the apartment,” he said. “If he’ll do it for free, and you know, it’ll also give you some time alone.”
“Listen, last night I found out—” I grabbed my phone from the front of my apron, cutting Whitney off. “I was looking him up online, and I found something. I was in bed, so I didn’t even want to tell either of you about it.”
They looked at each other, and in that moment of quiet they threw out all their ideas.
“He used to be in prison.”
“He doesn’t even like cake.”
“His name isn’t even Rick.”
“He’s married.”
My heart sank. “Yeah,” I let out. “Or he was. I found pictures of it. They’re old. Like from twenty years ago.”
“Well, I’ve never seen him talk about a wife, or anyone,” Keaton said.
“Or husband,” Toby added.
“Or anyone,” Keaton snapped.
“Guys!” I huffed. “He was married. Someone called Samantha. Someone who lives in Snowflake Springs.”
Keaton gasped. “I love that place. They always have fresh snow on their slopes.”
Tobias whipped at Keaton with the hand towel from his apron pocket. “Stop saying stupid rich-people shit,” he groaned. “Skiing or whatever.”
“We’re not doing this again,” he said.
Once more, I raised my voice. “He’s single,” I said.
“According to his social media profiles. But his picture is from like ten years ago anyway, so I don’t even know if he’s like even using it, or—” I groaned.
I hadn’t wanted them to keep bringing him up because my brain was already doing that, and I had questions, but who was I to ask them of him.
He was just someone who appeared when the alarm went off.
Outside of that, we didn’t know each other.
“There’s one way to ask questions,” Keaton said.
“No,” I said, looking at the smoke alarm on the ceiling. “If he comes in, then fine, but until then, please can we not mention him? And I’m not taking him upstairs to view the alarms. Let me just bake my feelings. Last night’s texts don’t prove anything, he was probably drunk or something.”
“Or something,” I heard them both repeat under their breath.
* * *
Just after lunch he came in, dressed in sweatpants and a matching gray hooded jacket—they were fire department branded. He arrived with a large blue bag on his shoulder. I watched as he looked right through from the front counter to me in the kitchen, my face flustered from the heat of the oven.
I stared. He was gorgeous and I was smitten—I think. Jeez. I didn’t know what to think now.
“Right on time,” Keaton said, as he turned and mouthed that he was sorry.
He’d done this to me—whether it was in that slip of time after breakfast and before my outburst, I didn’t know, but it felt like a punishment. Like there was candy in front of me and I’d been told not to touch it. It made wanting to touch it even more appealing.
“Okay, so I’m a little busy,” Keaton said. “And Toby is busy decorating too.”
Toby was away in his element, unfazed by anything going on around him as he made some realistic cakes—they were huge money-makers since social media blew up the whole is it cake phenomena.
And Keaton led the six-foot-something god with his sweatpants clinging to him in all the right ways straight to me.
Rick attempted to make eye contact with me, but my focus was on every inch of body.
“I actually put in a request last night,” Keaton said, nodding his head in animated gestures. “We should really get everything in the apartment looked over.”
It’s why he mentioned it—they had done this last night when I was away with the fairies in my little space, giggling over Rick’s text messages like they were a poorly illustrated book. He didn’t share a single emoji.
“So, I take it the birthday boy is going to show me around?” he asked, pulling the heavy bag on his shoulder and flexing a muscle in his arm, which I’d only ever really seen happen on myself after I’d put it to use with some very hard work—hand-whipping egg whites. I was parched, literally and sexually.
“That was yesterday,” I said, gulping so hard it might’ve been the sound of a small bomb going off. “I don’t need any special treatment today.”
He smirked, flashing his pearly white smile like it was shining just for me. “I’ll be the judge of that.”
“Go on,” Keaton said. “Take him on the tour.”
As I started to unwrap my apron, I remembered the crop top I’d decided to put on today—and maybe, in that moment of confidence, I hadn’t been thinking of what would happen if he saw it. “Yeah, yeah, if you want to just go on ahead up those stairs, and I’ll—I’ll be right behind you.”
Rick walked down the hallway where the stairs went up to the apartment, and I whipped the apron off in record time and threw it at Keaton’s face. I couldn’t distract Toby while he was in his flow state.
“It’s what you would’ve wanted,” he whispered, whipping me with the strings of the apron. “And I’m not going to apologize, in case you were thinking about getting one.”
I chased after Rick. There wasn’t enough time to even get into this now with him.
And then another realization hit. My eye twitched and my heart dropped deep into the pit of my stomach.
He was about to see everything—our playroom, my bedroom.
Oh my god, my pink glittery toothpaste which probably wasn’t good for my teeth. He was going to see it all!
“Wait!” I shouted as he reached the top of the stairs.
“Everything okay?” He glanced at me with his head turned, just a hand away from opening the door into the apartment.
He saw the crop top and smiled. “It’s important that I look at the alarms, maybe they’re set too sensitive.
I should’ve done this after the . . . third time.
” He tried covering it up with clearing his throat, and I was falling—not on the stairs, but for him.
Jeez, was this flirting? Answer me! Was he flirting? Was I flirting back? I was frozen for a moment as a cool chill had my entire body covered in goose bumps.
“It’ll take me five minutes, I promise.” As if that was the issue here.
It was bad luck to cross on the stairs, so I let him open the door, and we stood in the hallway together. It was colorful, with onesies on hooks and our colorful matching Crocs with their Jibbitz on them.
Rick turned to me and smiled. “Can I redeem it?” he asked.
I stumbled over my words to the point I wanted the floorboards to give way. “Uh—oh—um—well—yes.”
He dropped the bag down to his elbow and pulled me into his arms. My back gave a tiny pop and he chuckled, still holding me, my head in his warm chest, inhaling his sweet musk. I wanted to inhale more, so I did, and the sound of it . . . he heard, I heard, the entire block heard.
“Can I kiss you?” he asked.