Chapter 18
CHAPTER 18
ESME
The drive into Nashville had been filled with tension. Nothing in me had wanted to leave Jake for the night, which was strange in and of itself. Until today, I'd never been one to feel clingy. After spending nearly a full day with Jake, I wasn’t convinced I knew myself at all.
Then again, ever since I'd met Jake, my life had been one unexpected event after another. I had a feeling Jake was going to be the reason for a lot of what I thought I knew about myself being thrown out the window. He was like a magnet pulling me toward him no matter how much my brain told me to stay away.
I wasn’t sure we were dating, at least not yet. After spending the afternoon talking on my couch, I was confident if we weren’t, we would get there soon. We’d chatted about everything from life to what Jake was looking for in a Daddy and what limited knowledge I had on being one.
Dating or not, however, the club Jake and his friends were going to was members only, and my research had taught me it wasn’t easy to get vetted for a membership. It wasn't like I was going to be able to waltz in there on their coattails as Jake’s new boyfriend.
Even though I was new to relationships, I knew I couldn’t be so domineering as to ban Jake from going out with his friends. I was willing to admit I was mostly clueless about Daddy/little relationships, but I knew enough to know there was a difference between dominant and controlling.
Jake didn't want to be controlled; he wanted a safe landing zone with someone who had his best interests at heart. A night with his friends was in his best interests.
The invite to dinner by Jake’s friend and the relieved smile Jake gave me made the decision to join them for this part of their evening an easy one.
I hung back a little as Jake’s friends—the little ones—drew him toward them and they began walking to the restaurant as a clump. Their voices traveled back to where the two Daddies and I were walking.
“How’s your face? It looks painful.” I had no idea who asked the question.
“Turns out makeup sponges are different than elephant sponges. Seth gave me one.” Given he’d stopped at Seth’s, that was likely Larson.
“Does he really have a capybara?” a third voice asked.
Jake finally raised his hands in the air, stopping his friends. “It’s sore but mostly okay. Oh? What does a makeup sponge look like? And he does. She's so damn cute!”
Trent shook his head with an amused smirk. “You know they are going to want to meet your capybara soon.”
“We can arrange that," I assured them with a nod.
Jake and his friends stayed huddled together a few feet from us after Trent gave the hostess his name and how many people were in our group. The wait wasn’t more than ten minutes, yet Trent needed to remind Logan to be calm twice, then gave up and grabbed his hand to keep him from wandering off in the direction of the kitchen.
With the noise from the conversations of other patrons, I was only able to make out bits and pieces of what was going on. I was thankful Jake had taken a few minutes on the drive to tell me about his friends. He’d told me enough about them I didn’t need official introductions to put faces to names. Without that basic background information, I'd have been even more confused than I was.
Logan was saying something about the owner of the restaurant, a puppy, and a bowl of dog treats that had caught his attention, and he was determined to get to the back office.
Even with his hand held firmly, he was trying to find ways to get what he wanted. “Aiden. Aiden, hey, Aiden, find Jett. Tell him I want to see Deke!”
The tall brown-haired man with big plastic glasses looked around until he spotted the owner of PenAlety Box. Aiden managed two steps before Trent cleared his throat. “Baby boy, if you even think about going to bother him, you and your puppy are going to be sitting on the couch instead of playing with your friends.”
Logan stuck out his tongue. “I’m not a pup tonight. I’m here to babysit the littles.”
Trent raised a surprised eyebrow. “Babysit?”
His question was mostly ignored as Aiden turned toward Logan and stuck his lip out in a pout. “You’re always my puppy.”
I hadn’t schooled my expression very well if Canyon’s laugh could be believed. “New to the lifestyle? Or new to polyamory?”
“Oui,” I said automatically, only for Canyon to laugh harder. My cheeks heated with embarrassment at not only my admission but the way I’d naturally slipped into my native language.
I decided there was no time like the present to rip the bandage off. For the first time in my adult life, I was outside of a work environment and around a group of gay men out for the night with their boyfriends. “Actually, everything is new to me. I’m just stepping out of the closet, I guess you could say.”
Canyon didn’t react to the admission with more than a brief flicker of surprise in his eyes. He hummed, then clapped me on the shoulder, his hand resting on my back a surprisingly welcome weight grounding me and helping my breathing to even out. “You’re safe with us.”
Trent must have been listening to us while wrangling his boyfriends. “There are a few guys who couldn’t make it tonight. I’d like to say that it will make it a calmer introduction, but when Logan is involved, nothing's calm.”
Canyon's humored snort and his chest vibrating with laughter had me questioning how to react.
His grin widened when he glanced over to Trent, though he spoke to me. “Trent’s the sheriff, Logan’s the chief deputy. They’ve been best friends since high school. Logan is not submissive, but he’s both a pup and a middle, and Trent is his Daddy and handler—not Master and not Daddy Dom. Don’t ask. I’m not sure Trent actually knows what his exact role is with Logan most of the time. Aiden’s a Daddy’s boy through and through but is just as happy getting into mischief with his puppy.”
Aiden looked over, a huge smile on his face as he nodded at Canyon’s words.
Canyon chuckled and looked back at me. “Personally, I’m usually exhausted after spending the evening with them. I don’t know how Trent manages to keep up with those two.”
“He loves us. And what you guys don’t normally see is that he’s getting into just as much trouble as me most of the time,” Logan said from beside his boyfriends.
Just then, a waitress called out Trent’s name and suddenly everyone was moving toward the back of the restaurant. “Jett said you’d be safer back here.” She threw air quotes around the word safer and was grinning widely. To Logan, she winked. “And I heard something about Deke coming out soon.”
“Yes!” Logan fist pumped the air as Trent groaned.
The boys were seated on the far side of the table and an actual dog—Deke, I presumed—came out. All of them were excitedly talking and petting Deke, leaving the Daddies and me alone on the other side of the table.
“So you know about our boys,” Trent said before he picked up the menu.
Now that I knew he was a sheriff, I understood the fierce look he was giving me. I fully suspected he was damn good at his job. “Um, yeah. I mean, it isn’t exactly like any of them screamed it from the rooftops or anything. I’ve just overheard enough to have a pretty good idea.”
Trent hummed in thought. “And does it bother you?”
I shook my head slowly. “Bother isn’t the right word. Shocked and confused were definitely the first feelings. Now that I’ve put it all together and have a little bit of an understanding, I’m more curious.”
Canyon gave a firm nod of his head. “I’m glad to hear that.” He looked at the other side of the table and smiled at the men laughing. “We haven’t known him long, but Jake’s just folded himself into our group.”
Trent agreed easily. “He just fits with the guys.”
I had so many questions but didn’t know where to begin. How was it that Jake had become friends with these guys? Why was he the only one without a Daddy? Seeing him interacting with the three men on the other side of the table and listening to his laughter made me warm in a way I’d never been before. And I didn’t understand that either.
Canyon cleared his throat in order to get my attention. “Seth said you retired suddenly earlier this season. It surprised the hell out of him. Are you doing alright?”
“That’s a loaded question if I’ve ever heard one.” Then I thought about the conversation I’d had with Easton and how welcoming both the Grizzlies and Parliament had been, and the last few months didn’t feel so draining. “But I think I landed in a place that is going to help me move forward.” Giggles erupted from the other side of the table and a smile formed on my lips.
The server came over to take our orders. I’d barely looked at the menu and was trying to remember what was on it when I heard Trent start rattling off an order. At first, I thought it was ridiculously long, but then I realized he was ordering for all the boys, Jake included. As soon as he’d finished, Canyon added drinks for each of the boys.
They then ordered meals for themselves, but before they finished ordering, Canyon asked for four cookies to go and double-checked there were no almonds in them because one of the guys was mildly allergic.
When she got to me, it took a few seconds for me to tell her my order. I’d been so stunned by their easy ordering, I’d totally forgotten to look at the menu and ended up asking for a burger I’d heard Trent order.
These men knew one another better than I’d ever known anyone before. I wouldn’t have been able to name a single favorite food or side dish for any of the guys I’d played with in Boston. The only thing I knew was one of our first line guys had been deathly allergic to shellfish. Then again, having to use an emergency injection on him and call the paramedics at a restaurant had been enough to burn his allergy into my thick skull.
Trent leaned toward me and spoke quietly. “You good?”
I blinked rapidly, trying to figure out why he’d asked the question. “I think so.”
“You sure? Your eyes are a million and a half miles away.”
I glanced his way and gave something I hoped approximated a genuine smile. “Yeah. I was just thinking about how well you all know each other. It’s surprising, I guess. I’ve never been around people who know one another so well.”
Trent’s eyes went distant for a second before sparking with renewed amusement. “The thing with this group, no matter how hard you pull away, they pull you back. They’re like fucking bloodhounds and will sniff you out if you go missing. Once you’re in, you’re not getting away.”
The words had hidden promise in them and potentially a warning as well. Jake had become part of their group, and there was no changing that. “I’ve never had friends like that,” I said, my honesty surprising even me.
Canyon looked over at Jake, then to me. “Well, if you’re interested in Jake, you’ve just found friends like that.” Before he even had a moment to breathe, something caught his eye on the other side of the table. “Be careful, Lars.”
“Okay,” Larson answered automatically with a hint of dejection in his voice. I had no idea what he’d been doing, but he was clearly sad to have been caught.
“How does it all work?” I asked, too overwhelmed to be articulate or smooth in my delivery. “I’ve been doing research like crazy, and what I see from them and you all is not what I see online.”
Trent’s head fell back as he laughed loudly enough most of the restaurant looked in our direction. Canyon sighed, though the laughter around his eyes told me he was used to his friend. “Please ignore this lunatic. What he’s failing to say is there is no dynamic that matches what he has with Logan and Aiden, and you’d never find that on a blog. Unless one of them started blogging and you came across it, the chances of that are the same as me suddenly losing twenty pounds.”
Trent laughed harder at Canyon's words as he nodded like a bobblehead.
Canyon rolled his eyes at Trent’s laughter. “Seriously, he really is a functioning adult and a good sheriff. But sometimes he forgets how to be normal.”
Logan chimed in from the other side of the table, effortlessly falling into our conversation. “Normal is highly overrated.”
Canyon had to bite back a laugh. “While there’s nothing wrong with normal , I have to agree with Logan on this one. The beauty of the lifestyles we have is that, while we’re all Daddies with littles and middles, our relationships don’t look the same. Even though we each experience it with our partners, our relationships would never work for another couple. Personally, I’d lose my mind with a middle-pup who doesn’t want a Dom but still needs a Daddy and a little who wears more food than makes it in his mouth.”
Trent had sobered while Canyon spoke and was finally able to rejoin the conversation. “And I’d be lost with just one boyfriend.”
Aiden leaned over. “No, you’d be dead because he’d smother you in your sleep.”
I found myself laughing with the rest of the men, who were wholeheartedly agreeing with Aiden’s assessment.
Canyon chuckled. “And I would go crazy trying to juggle a job and Larson and another boyfriend.”
Trent pointed at Canyon. “But you have Larson’s siblings.”
“Touché!” Canyon clapped his hands together as he laughed.
After they sobered, I had a question I needed answered: “What’s the difference between middles and littles?”
Trent leaned toward me and spoke quietly as our food arrived and was distributed around the table. “Logan’s like your run-of-the-mill defiant teenager who still needs help with routines and remembering to go to bed… and someone to keep track of his favorite stuffie. One of the guys who isn’t here tonight is also a middle, but his middle is a little more fluid between little and middle. He’s happy as can be playing with cars and trucks with Larson but will lose hours playing video games with Logan.”
Oddly, the explanation made sense to me. More sense than almost anything I’d read online.
“Aiden, Larson, and Jake are littles. Though, once again, each of their takes on the lifestyle is slightly different. They all like bottles at bedtime, and we’re constantly chasing lost security items and sippy cups. Most of them have binkies, but Larson prefers his thumb.”
I looked over, a smile spreading on my face. After learning what I had about Jake over the day, it wasn’t hard to imagine a sippy cup in front of him instead of a straw cup with a lid on it. Looking at the other littles, I noticed each man on the far side of the table had cups with lids and straws sticking out. Their dinners looked more like kids' meals, though they were portioned for an adult, and each plate had a different toy on it. Between bites of fries, burgers, and chicken fingers, the men were debating who was going to get what toy—all different types of cars.
With the loud laughter, the lidded cups, the toys with their meals, and the dog pacing behind the chairs waiting for food to be either dropped or offered, I understood why we’d been put in the far corner of the restaurant.
I took a few bites of my burger, appreciating the taste but still focused on Jake and trying to figure out how to ask my next question. Finally, I pushed my own awkwardness to the side and opened my mouth. “So many of the blogs I saw, the littles were wearing… uh…” So maybe I hadn’t pushed all my awkwardness away.
Canyon saved me from my own discomfort. “Diapers?”
I only managed a nod in response.
“They are part of our boys' lifestyles, but it isn’t the same for every little.”
“Jake?” I asked, not sure if I wanted the answer or not.
Canyon lifted a shoulder. “That’s something to talk to him about if you’re interested.”
I groaned. “I think I’m interested.” I held up my hand to stop myself from saying something stupid. “Actually, I know I’m interested in him. None of what I’ve learned about him has turned me off or made giant warning signs flash in my brain. But it’s still strange to me. I’ve never… I mean, I have … but not really.”
Dragging my hands down my face, I blew out a frustrated breath. I was annoyed at myself and also the life I’d led for so long. I’d been hiding and ashamed of a part of me. Jake was smiling at something one of his friends had said and I spoke without really thinking about what I was going to say. “I’ve never actually dated a man before. The last one I was with changed my life in so many ways.” I glanced over at Jake since everyone knew we’d hooked up.
The way Canyon and Trent squinted their eyes in my direction told me I needed to use more words. I looked directly at Canyon, finding it easier to focus on him. “You know how Seth told you I retired unexpectedly?”
Before I said anything else, Canyon’s eyes widened noticeably in understanding. “No.”
I nodded once. “I went to a club over the summer… I hooked up with a certain man that night. Thankfully, there weren't any pictures of that , but there was a picture of us kissing on the dance floor.”
Trent’s eyes flashed with anger and his nostrils flared. “And they made you retire?”
I lifted a shoulder, the absurdity of the situation really hitting home for the first time, and I scoffed. “Retire or lose my C. Those were the options.”
Canyon’s expression was sad as he spoke. “So you chose to give up something you loved in order to stay closeted? Why not give up the captaincy?”
“My going from a long-standing captain to not even an alternate would have brought questions I didn’t want to come up with answers to. And loved was the key word there. I used to love hockey. Used to live for it. Over the last handful of years, I’d become tired of hiding myself. The box that had been created for me and my life had become smaller and smaller and just kept getting harder to stay in.
“And I hated myself a little more each time the box got smaller. Part of me thought about coming out and letting Anders live with the fallout of demoting me due to my sexuality. But I didn’t want the publicity for…”
“Jake,” Trent said softly.
“Yeah, Jake. I didn’t know his name at the time, but I worried someone would find out who he was. If those pictures existed, there were probably others. Then I saw the ultimatum for what it was: a way out.”
The men around me were left speechless, and I deflated. A combination of anger and resentment warred with the overwhelming relief of being out of Boston.
While I didn’t know any of them well, I got the impression the group of men around me were exactly who I’d been searching for. Men who were unapologetically themselves: gay, out, and proud of their boyfriends.
And dammit, once again, Cass had been right.