Chapter 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?”
“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.”