Page 4 of A Little Spilled Milk

“And I’m going straight home.”

“Bye, Matt.”

He was a nice kid who should have a Daddy to look after him.

Clients came and went, including the new one, until there were two mason jars remaining. I yawned, hoping the guy would be here soon, but he was stuck in traffic.

A door slammed, and I was on alert, thinking Vinnie was home. My bedroom backed onto his, and I often lay awake at night, wondering if he was asleep on the other side of the wall.

But I had a long day tomorrow. It was the end of the month, always a busy time in my regular job.

Five minutes away!

That was my customer. If he was delayed any further, I’d fall asleep.

My eyes were closing and head nodding forward when someone pounded on the door. That was him. He was a pounder. If I was his Daddy, that wouldn’t happen.

But I wasn’t anyone’s Daddy.

3

VINNIE

Having to attend a week’s worth of training across the country for work always sucked. Thankfully, it was only once a year. And sure, the knowledge was useful, but it took me a full week to recoup.

Being away meant that I didn’t have my own bed, I didn’t have my own toys, and I didn’t even have my milk. And because the company was trying to save money, I didn’t even have my own room this year, meaning no comfy jammies for me. And even though I brought my favorite stuffie, a tiger with a backpack on, it had to stay in my suitcase. The trip was flipping miserable. But at least I was back now.

My rideshare from the airport pulled up in front of my building, letting me out so that I stepped right into a big puddle. My foot was soaking wet. At least I was home. All I had to do was go upstairs, take a shower, put on some Little clothes, and climb into bed with a bottle of milk and life would be good again.

I didn’t think I was asking too much. My stupid bad luck did.

After waiting far too long for the elevator, I was finally home. I walked into the door to find it dark. Not the normal “there were no lights on” dark, but “I couldn’t see” dark.

I flipped the light switch—nothing.

I used my phone’s flashlight to go into the living room—nothing worked.

I went into the kitchen—even the microwave clock was off.

Fuck. Fuck.

It wasn’t a power outage. If it was, the lights in the hallway would’ve been off. No, it was just my apartment, and since electricity was included, it had nothing to do with the electric company. Nope. It was an internal issue.

Double fuck.

One nice thing about this place was that we had our own circuit breakers. We didn’t need to call maintenance to deal with that. But when I reached the box and saw that not one, but all of them had tripped, I kind of wished they had been there. It wasn’t normal to have them all trip like that, and I wasn’t even sure what made it happen or if it was safe to put them back on.

Unsure what to do, I left them as is and called the maintenance department to have them figure it out after all. The last thing I wanted to do was turn them all on and start a fire.

I really needed my bottle, then bed.

“The milk.” I ran to the kitchen, realizing for the first time during all of this that no electricity meant that my fridge would be off too.

“Please let it have happened only a few minutes ago.”

I started by opening the fridge. It would be the first to lose temperature, and I wanted to keep the freezer section sealed as long as possible to prevent the rest of my milk stash from thawing out.

It would’ve been a great plan if the fridge was still close to temperature. Only it wasn’t. The stupid thing was warm. Nothing in there would be salvageable, with the exception of my steak sauce.

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