For me, it already was.
Another quick kiss then Stone took a shower while I was dressing and checked in with my parents. Maybe overthinking Payden should go away and the brave version on the platform yesterday should take over. He made really great decisions.
Chapter Eight
Stone
Visit his parents at the end of the week?
After the way he’d basically picked me up off the street, well, okay, technically, it had been a train platform, and I hadn’t been selling my body, just a couple of songs if folks were willing to give me a few minutes of their time.
Still. We were strangers, even after a day spent together. Meeting the parents was something you did with someone you were serious about having in your life forever.
Wait.
Was that what he wanted?
Why?
How?
With me, of all people?
My head was reeling as we entered the dining car.
I seriously doubted his mom would squeeze the stuffing out of me when she realized her son had brought home a man with literally nothing to his name besides some old clothes and his guitar. My band had come to such an explosively disastrous end that those quarterly royalty checks I used to use to travel all over the world were barely enough these days to supplement my street corner singing.
What a fucking waste.
The least I could have done for myself was buy a house, so I had a place to land when shit went south. Only I’d never seen the point in buying a home only to have it sit empty while I was off snowboarding or base jumping somewhere. Which left me exactly where I was right now, glancing between the menu and the schedule, trying to piece together how to make today the new best day ever for Payden, who’d done more than he probably realized by bringing me along with him.
For the first time since my world had fallen apart, I started thinking about what the future might look like beyond which city to test out next.
“I’m going to do something naughty,” I declared, leaning forward and motioning to Payden, lowering my voice more. “I’m going to order dessert for breakfast.”
His eyes widened as he flipped the menu around, skimming the other side before flipping it back again. “Where? I don’t see that. Do you have a special Littles menu?”
“Nope, we have the same menu, Littles on one side, Bigs on the other, but look right here,” I said, pointing to the picture of a giant scoop of ice cream sitting on top of a waffle. “That chocolate chip waffle screams dessert to me, and the ice cream on top is definitely dessert, and I’d say the strawberries count as both fruit and dessert topping, so, still in the dessert category, thus, dessert for breakfast.”
“Dessert for breakfast. I love that. I want dessert for breakfast too,” Payden declared.
“Would you like an order of bacon to go with yours?" I asked.
“Yes, please.” He replied, turning from the menu to the schedule.
“Did you see that they’re playing Thomas and The Magic Railway at ten? We’ll have plenty of time to eat and get you changed into your Thomas outfit if you want to go, since I noticed that you had a couple of them, and afterward, we can check out the train car they've turned into a ball pit. I bet we could have plenty of fun in there.”
“You’re going to get into the ball pit with me?” He asked, eyeing me skeptically.
I got it. After seeing the way most of the daddies watched their littles from near whatever boisterous and often messy activity they were engaged in, I figured I was already screwing up in the Daddy department by engaging in activities with him, but he didn’t seem to mind, and that was the only thing that mattered to me. If he wanted me to stay on the sidelines, I’m sure he would tell me, especially if I was spoiling his fun, so taking my cues from him seemed like the best idea.
“Yup, too bad it’s not a giant one, like they had at this festival I attended in the desert a few years back,” I said. “They had one so deep you could do a cannonball into it.”
Even with the nets they had around it, balls would fly over sometimes, and people would snatch them up and take off with them. I even had someone give me one to sign at a merch table. I didn't tell Payden about that part because it always felt weird to talk about being famous, especially when I hadn’t been that guy in over two years. People still recognized me from time to time or thought they did until I shook my head and insisted it wasn’t me. A few of them wanted selfies and chucked extra bills in my guitar case when I let them take pictures with me.
Damn.
I really had no other skills besides playing, which was going to be an issue with this whole meet the parent’s thing if I didn’t come up with some sort of game plan that wasn’t going to make me look like a freeloader, especially when I had no intention of being one.
