Stone
Too late to back out now.
After a restless night at Payden’s, during which it had been my turn to lay awake most of the night being thinky and going over plans in my head, we sat outside a house with a lawn full of flowers and an assortment of garden gnomes. At least the fence was wooden instead of white, with hanging baskets of blue and yellow flowers adoring the porch, where his parents were already waiting.
Shit.
Yeah, no chance of telling him to turn around at this point. There was nothing left to do but reach for the door handle and accept my fate. I prepared myself as best as I could for what I was certain I’d hear,What makes you think you’re good enough for our son?How do you expect to take care of him when you couldn’t take care of yourself?
Both were fair questions. Both of which I laid awake repeatedly asking myself just last night.
I doubted my answers were going to be good enough, but they were the truth which was all I had.
Payden had insisted that we get up extra early this morning to get new jeans and a shirt that didn’t have metal bands all over it, which I refused to let him pay for, even if it took every crumpled bill I had left on me after the unicorn castle I’d surprised him with at the last toy store of our trip. I sat on the floor last night and built it, too, so we could play with it while we got settled after our vacation. There was just no way I could leave it there, not when I knew the moment I laid eyes on it that it belonged to him.
Seeing those other Bigs spoiling the hell out of their littles had left me feeling lower than dogshit, especially after Payden had to put my new phone on his bill. Even if it wasn’t rational, since neither the trip, nor having a little in the first place, had been part of my five-year plan.
I’d never had a plan. Ever. For anything.
And now that was going to show.
“Stone?”
Payden’s voice sounded cautious, scared, like he was afraid I was going to take off running down the road and leave him there to face his parents alone.
No chance in hell, but I did need to reassure him of that, because there was real sadness in his voice now.
“We um, have to get out.”
“I know little unicorn,” I said, covering his hand with mine and keeping it there as I swiveled to face him.
As soon as our eyes met, he looked away, so I framed his face with my hands and gently raised his head until our eyes were level again.
“I’m just afraid of messing this up for us,” I told him. “Sweetheart, you know there is a very real chance that they are not going to like me, right? And that your dad might order me to stay the hell away from you, which he’d be in his rights to do, so if he asks me to leave, I’m gonna go, okay, and I don’t want you to follow me. I’ll go back to the apartment, I promise. But your folks will want to hear about your trip. They’ll want to talk to you and make sure you’re okay, and I doubt they’ll like you leaving before they can see for themselves.”
“No.”
Screech.
Wait. That wasn’t the way this was supposed to go. “W-what?”
“No,” He repeated, covering my hands with his now. “They are going to love you. No one is going to ask you to leave, and no way in hell would I let you walk all the way home after bringing you here if they did. You’re my Daddy. For the first time in my life, I got to pick, and I picked good! I didn’t wait around to see who decided to take a liking to me. I found you and I don’t want to let you go.”
“Aw, little uni, I’m not asking you to. I just want to start off on the right foot with your parents.”
“Then we’d better go because Mom’s starting to get antsy, and she’s waiting on the bottom step now instead of the porch the way she used to do when one of my dates brought me home late after she’d expressly told him what time to have me back here.”
Oh shit. Well, that wasn’t good. I was getting off to the wrong start already.Go Stone.That should have been the whole damned mantra for my old band and the theme song too. Getting off on the wrong foot. Every damned time. Never failed.
Okay. I was getting spun out, which wasn’t going to help matters either.
“Then we’d better not keep her waiting any longer than we already have,” I said, kissing him on the nose. “I love you, my sweet unicorn bestie.”
“I love you too, my Daddy and unicorn bestie until the end of time.”
The end of my time might very well lie on the other side of that door, but I kissed him again, on the lips this time, and got out before I could talk myself out of moving. He scrambled out the other side and met me in front of the car, grabbed my hand, and held it in a death grip as we headed up the walk to where his mother waited.
I could certainly see where he got his smaller stature and delicate looks from. Even standing on the bottom step, the top of his mother’s head barely came up to my shoulder, whereas his father looked imposing from where he stood on the porch, arms crossed as he leaned against a pillar, appraising me.
