Page 12 of A Little Spilled Milk

“Yes, thank you.” He eyed his stuffie. “But before I go to sleep, I like to drink milk.”

That was a signal for the letdown. Milk dribbled from my teats.

“May I have some… Daddy?”

Officially I wasn’t his Daddy, I wasn’t anyone’s. His thumb edged toward his mouth, and he sucked on it.

“You may, but we have to have a ‘Big’ talk first.”

His sucking was more frantic, and I asked him to remove his thumb.

“Okay.” He reached for his stuffie with crumbs on his fingers, but retracted his hands and raced to the sink.

“Did I do a good job?” He showed me both sides of his hands.

“A very good job. What a good boy you are.”

He grinned and puffed out his chest. “Thank you, Daddy.”

7

VINNIE

After I excused myself, I went to change my clothes. I wanted to have a pretty serious conversation with Emory, and doing so while I was still partially in Little space was a wretched idea. Not that I’d been fully there, but I had been close, which was shocking, given how our time together began and how little we still knew about each other.

It had been nice having him take care of me—making me eat, nice knowing I didn’t have to think about anything, not even when it was time to pee. It was nice. So much nice, and I knew it could never get past that point until we had a real conversation about what each of us wanted and needed.

I hadn’t had this kind of caregiving in a long time, and it would have been easy to just continue on, maybe ask him to watch some cartoons with me to keep the night going. But if we were going to do this relationship with him in any real capacity, we needed to actually have a conversation. I learned a long time ago that it was better to have it right from the beginning than to let it wait. No one wanted to be a couple of months into a relationship before they discovered that the object of their affection was ona very different page then they were—heck, in some cases, they were in different books.

Once I changed and was in completely different clothes than before, I washed my face. That was all it took to get fully Big again. I didn’t love it. Staying Little had so much more appeal in that moment, but I’d be kicking myself later if I didn’t do this now. Adulting sucked.

When I stepped out of the bathroom, there was Emory doing the dishes—by hand.

“You don’t have to do that.” It was very appreciated, but I had two hands too. I also had a dishwasher. I rarely used it, but it existed and worked just fine.

“You’ll learn very quickly, Vinnie, I don’t do things I don’t want to do. Let me do this for you, okay?”

“Sure, if I can dry,” I offered, grabbing the dish towel and starting to dry the few dishes he’d already washed. Three dishes in, I finally had the courage to blurt out, “We have things we need to talk about, don’t we? You said a ‘Big’ talk.” Letting it sit there unspoken was only making me more worried. Best to get it over with.

He turned off the kitchen sink and tilted his head so he could see me. “I did say that, but tell me, sweet boy, what doyouthink our Big talk should be about?”

“Well… I called you Daddy.” And I freaking loved doing it. Nothing had felt more right.

“You did,” he said, “and you didn’t correct yourself, like you did the first night.”

And that was something I didn’t think he’d noticed. But then again, the more time I spent with Emory, the more I realized that he pretty much saw everything, and I meant everything. They say Santa knows all the things. They were wrong, it was Emory.

“No, I didn’t.” Should I have?

“Which means…?” He wiped his hands on his towel, set the one I was holding on the counter, and pulled me flush against him.

“I forget.” And if I stayed like this with him for long, I was going to forget everything but the feeling of being in his arms.

“It feels like there is more you want to say.” His warmth against me felt amazing.

“It’s just… I called you Daddy.”

“We’ve established that.”

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