Chapter Eight
Rowan
It had been two days since we had our “probably a date” dinner at the diner. That was two days of overthinking, two days of checking my phone incessantly, two days of being grumpy. This had to end. If I didn’t like being around me, no one else did either.
I called Sammy and asked him what he was up to. I should’ve known better because he spent the next ten minutes telling me all the things he had done and planned to do. It was a nice distraction but left me without the answer to the question I’d meant to ask.
“How about you? What are you up to?” he asked after annotating his entire day to me.
“I’m having a bad day.” It wasn’t really bad in the traditional sense, but I was in a funk. “And thought—”
“My place or yours?” Gods, Sammy was the best.
“Mine?” It was selfish to want to be little in my own space when he was doing me the favor, but Sammy wouldn’t have offered if he hadn’t meant it.
An hour later, he arrived with his backpack, a bag of groceries, and the promise of a pizza being delivered in twenty minutes.
“I vote we talk over pizza and then play.” Sammy liked to know exactly what we were doing when we played like this.
At Chained, he was much more “go with the flow,” but he rarely fell into little space there.
To him, it was nice to be around other littles, and that made up for him not getting what he needed out of the time.
But when it was the two of us together, we worked hard to make sure we both walked away feeling good.
“Works for me. What did you bring?”
He brought junk food: frozen waffles for the morning and a can of whipped cream for hot cocoa.
“It’s official. You’re my favorite.” I hugged my bestie.
“And what was I before I brought your favorite cheesy crackers?”
“My favorite.”
He shook his head.
The pizza came, and I turned on the television to a movie we’d both watched together countless times about a dog who wanted to be a fish. It was silly and fun the first few times we saw it but now functioned as background noise.
“This is perfection.” I picked off the pepperoni and popped it into my mouth. Usually pepperoni was pepperoni, but this place did something different in their process because it was always crisp and extra delicious.
“But your day wasn’t.”
“It wasn’t about today, not really. It’s that…” I pulled out my phone and opened to my text messages with Summit. There were no new ones. Not a one.
“When you see your phone, what do you think it means?”
“That I’ve been ghosted, and he doesn’t like me.” Saying it out loud had me seeing how silly I was being.
Summit was a lawyer and had a busy job that required his full attention. Looking at my phone and going sad panda because he didn’t call in two days wasn’t rational. A couple of weeks? Sure. But a couple of days?
“Never mind. I hear it now.” I leaned back against the couch.
“And what do you hear?”
“That I’m being silly.”
“How we feel is never silly, but you did have some huge jumps from what you know to what it means.” He rested his head on my shoulder. “What if he feels the same way?”
“What do you mean?”
“You didn’t message him either. What if he thinks that means you ghosted him?”
“But he’s a daddy.” Probably. “And…oh, you’re right.” Whether he was or wasn’t a daddy didn’t matter when it came to communication. I knew this and yet, with Summit, I allowed myself to easily fall into a role we hadn’t discussed yet.
I was the problem.
My phone buzzed on the table.
“It’s not Summit.” I showed him the message letting me know the electric bill was ready to view.
“You have your phone in your hand. You can send him one now with not much effort.”
“Or, we can play games, eat junk food, and not think about Summit at all?”
“If that’s what you want.” He let it go. Or, more likely, he wanted me to believe he was letting it go.
If I were to guess, there was no way I’d be allowed to climb into bed without a reminder of my promise, which was good. If Sammy wasn’t here, I’d probably talk myself out of it. I was good at that.
“Do you want to put on your jams before or after video games?” I asked.
He stood up and grabbed both plates. “Before, it is. I brought my dog footie ones, if you want to be matchy.” And by match, he meant I wore my cat ones. We were more themed than matched.
I grabbed two sippy cups and made some chocolate milk in them as he got changed. It wasn’t as good as hot chocolate, but made a lot less mess. We’d save the cocoa for the morning.
Sammy won every single game we played, just like always. But he always acted like it was a real close call. It never was. I stank at the games but still loved them. They distracted me completely and, while it wasn’t true little space, it worked.
“Cartoon and bed?” I asked.
“Cartoons in bed?” We’d only be able to use a laptop there, but it was fun to do, and I’d already started nodding during the video games, making the couch not the best choice.
We climbed into bed together, the laptop between us, our stuffies in our arms and our water sippies on the nightstands.
“I’m not starting the show until you message him.”
“Yes, Sammy.”
The first few times we played together, when it came to whiny replies like this, we’d say “Yes, Daddy,” but soon figured out it messed up our roles too much, especially with us sometimes stepping in as caretaker. Now, we simply used each other’s names in the same intonation.
I grabbed my phone and using a gif I’d seen and an abundance of emojis, I typed, Check yes if you like littles. Check no if you don’t want to meet me for another date. And hit send before I could change my mind.