Page 1 of Daddy's Little Camping Trip
Chapter One
Quill
Running wasn’t my thing. If I was running, either a lion escaped the zoo and was chasing me or…no, that was pretty much it. Running and I were not friends and tonight, as I bolted down the street, I could only guess how awkward I looked, but I didn’t care. My goal was to reach the bus stop in record time, and I was failing miserably. Just as I turned the corner, the bus was pulling away, the very last one.
It was that kind of day. What more could I have expected? Nothing else had gone right. Why should catching the last bus be the first?
Work had been hectic, and I got asked to fix my boss’s mistakes. I didn’t even hate my boss. Justin was a nice enough guy and he tried hard, but his was a case of being promoted above his abilities, and that left me with a lot of cleanup pretty much all the time. My coworkers asked me why I did it. Why I didn’t just let the department fail so the bigwigs could see how poorly Justin was doing. They didn’t understand that our job was to make him look good so he was up and out of there.
But today, I was pissy about it because it led to me leaving far too late. I’d planned to leave an hour before but got lost in a trail of errors a mile long and, next thing I knew, it was time for me to do the dreaded running. And, the thing was, I didn’t mind working extra. What I did mind was having to pay for a rideshare instead of using my bus pass. At least I had the money and didn’t have to walk the seven miles home, which, five years ago, might’ve been the case.
I pulled up the rideshare app and winced at the quote they gave me. It still boggled my mind how drastically the rates changed over the course of the night. Oh well. It was what itwas. Car ordered, I popped into the convenience store on the corner to grab a premade sandwich and a bag of chips for dinner. Hopefully, the sayingyou are what you eatwas wrong because the way this week had been going, that meant I was junk. I really needed to take the time to go to the grocery store and get some actual ingredients instead of living on burgers, pizza, the food truck outside my office, and convenience-store food.
What I really need was a vacation, but we had another couple of weeks before this big project was signed, sealed, delivered, and done. Until then, this was my life.
My rideshare showed up a couple of minutes earlier than they estimated, and I climbed in and listened to my sweet older driver talk about how there was a big storm coming. I hadn’t heard about it, but I didn’t really pay much attention. It wasn’t winter, so I didn’t have to worry about snow, and rain was rain.
I made the appropriateahasandI sees as he babbled on and on and on about the weather report, thanking him as he pulled up to my apartment building, grateful for the quiet as I shut the door, leaving him inside to ramble on to the next person.
I didn’t really know why I was so grouchy, but I sure was. I’d worked super-long hours many times before and been part of projects far more intense than the one we were working on. Maybe what I needed was a night out at Chained. I could put on some super-cute clothes, hang out with some littles, eat some chicken nuggets and, who knows, maybe find a nice mom or daddy to play with. But that wouldn’t be tonight. Tonight was about making it through till tomorrow, nothing more.
My apartment was just the way I left it. Breakfast dishes still in the sink, the vacuum set out because, silly me, I thought I was going to have time to do that today. But now it was too late. Mr. Robinson from next door hated the vacuum, insisting that using it after seven p.m., “the polite hour,” was unacceptable.
I pushed it back into the closet for tomorrow, threw on my pajamas, and plopped down in front of the TV with my sandwich and chips. I’d take a shower before bed, but I needed some relaxation time. It wasn’t as good as little time, but it would have to do.
I envied littles who could be little alone, and I supposed I could try being little in my apartment. I could throw on the right clothes, eat the right food, watch the right shows, and play with the right toys, but what good did that really do me? It didn’t give me the time away to destress. It didn’t give me the feeling of being taken care of. Didn’t allow me to take all the responsibilities of being adult and hand them over to someone else for a short period of time, so I rarely even tried.
Instead, I flicked on the TV, found a rerun of a sitcom from when I was a kid, and ate the cardboard bread and wannabe lunch meat concoction and far more barbecue chips than I should in an entire month.
My phone buzzed, and I feared it was my boss. Instead, it was the group chat a few of my little friends and I had, although, I guessed we weren’t so much friends as much as we sometimes played together at Chained. We didn’t see each other outside of that, and I didn’t know much about them. They probably knew just as little about me, but we had fun when we were together.
I opened up the window.
Did you see?
See what?
They’re having a little summer camp.
People in the chat were discussing how fun it would be to go camping.
I think this one’s not for me, guys,I typed into the window and hit send.
You busy, that weekend, Quill?
I hadn’t even looked at the date. Odds were, I wasn’t.
Nah, I just prefer, you know, roughing it at the hotel with only standard-sized bath towels instead of bath sheets.
Oh, come! It’ll be fun!
Nah. I’ll be thinking of you guys when you go. I gotta go take a shower and get ready for bed. Talk to you later.
I put my phone on the charger, not wanting to deal with it anymore.
Chained had some really great activities, but why couldn’t they have little weekends at places that were less bug-filled, mud-filled, and uncomfortable? That was what I wanted to know.
Showered and in bed, I snuggled up with my teddy bear and closed my eyes, welcoming the sleep that came easily. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t kind of sad I was gonna miss out on a weekend with my friends.
