Page 6 of Their Little House Tristan
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He stood up.
As a kid, that would have scared me. Now, I just braced for whatever wrath he was going to unleash. To my surprise, there wasn’t any.
“You have a week to make your choice. You either need to quit or move out. We will not assist you in this depravity.”
“Working is depravity?”
He held up his hand. “Do not test me.” And out of the room he went, leaving just my mother and me.
“Why do you do this…all this rebelling?” She swished her hand in the air, as if that somehow made her words true. “It’s time to grow out of your teen angst or whatever this is.”
“I’m an adult, Mom. I’m not a teen. This isn’t angst. This isn’t rebellion. This is who I am.”
“Then who you are needs to go someplace else.” And she followed my father, leaving me all alone to figure out what to do next. I didn’t want to quit—but, also, I had nowhere to go.
The next day, when I went in to work, Miss Lily recognized right away that I was stressed and pulled me aside.
“Hey, you’d tell me if any of the members were inappropriate with you, right?”
She thought it was a member, not that I had much interaction with them. I loved how she was always looking out for us.
“No, everyone here has been great. Fabulous, even. It’s just…you know, I came here because I had to leave school.”
She nodded.
“The only place I could stay was my parents’, and I’ve been saving money to move out, but they discovered I am working here, so that timeline’s moved up a little bit.”
She took my hand and dragged me to the little bulletin board.
“Please, I apologize if I’m assuming incorrectly, but you’re a little, right?”
I hadn’t been able to take advantage of the club yet. Goodness, I didn’t even have any little clothes to wear. I’d trashed them all when I moved back in with my parents for fear of being found out.
“Yeah…”
“Here.” She pulled off a tab and handed it to me. “This is a rental. It’s not a full apartment. Everybody has their own room, and everyone there is little. They even have their own playroom. It’s pretty fabulous, from what I hear. And quite a few club members live there. You should check it out.”
“Thanks. I will. I gotta get back—”
She shook her head. “I mean, call now. Even if your parents gave you time to move out, do you really want to chance that they won’t move that timeline up?”
“Thank you, Miss Lily.”
I ducked into one of the dressing rooms that wasn’t booked for the night and made the call.
The next morning, I went and checked out the place, signing on immediately. It was everything I wanted it to be. The bedrooms were nice. The couple of people I met on my tour seemed genuinely happy to see me. And the playroom was…everything.
I dropped my suitcase off and took a trip to a store where I could buy some little clothes. If I was gonna have a playroom, I was gonna dress the part. Thankfully, the rent was low enough that with the money I’d saved, I still had enough to get a couple of pairs of pajamas, some onesies, a paci, and a new stuffie.
I missed my old things. But this was a new beginning—and they were new to signify that.
The first thing I did, even before I unpacked, was to throw on some little clothes and head to the playroom. I’d started to explore the different toys when another little came in—one I didn’t recognize.
“Hi, I’m Bellamy, and you are Tristan?”
I nodded.
“Do you want to play?”
