My eyes were closed as I lay back on the blanket, my head resting on Carson’s thigh. I could feel the sun shining down through the leaves as they rustled in the slight breeze. I could hear the people around us as they enjoyed the park and the distant sounds of the city beyond, but they didn’t matter as Carson twirled my hair between his fingers.
I dangled one hand off the edge of the blanket to play with the grass while the other rested on my full stomach.
Maybe that last cookie had been a mistake, I thought as the idea of unbuttoning my shorts to give myself a bit of room circled through my brain.
Shifting my thoughts back to the man I rested against, I rolled my head and looked to where he leaned against the tree we’d parked ourselves under. I realized that for all I knew about him, I didn’t know a whole lot.
“Tell me about yourself,” I whispered, breaking the silence that had descended between us after our meal. “I don’t know a whole lot about you. I mean, you’re kind of a geek who likes gaming and painting miniatures. You’re a Daddy that owns a club. You live next door to your best friend and feed him whenever he comes over.” The title got more natural to say each time it came out of my mouth.
“Is that all?” he teased.
“Oh, and you give the best hugs and make the best breakfast tacos,” I replied.
“I try. What would you like to know, little darling?” he asked, his hand continuing to pet me.
Shrugging, I closed my eyes and decided to start at the beginning. “What were you like as a child?”
He took a moment to think before he answered.
“Anxious.”
“What?” I opened my eyes and looked up at him, not understanding his answer.
Carson sighed. “I never knew my father. My mother met him one night while out at a bar. He was visiting from out of town, and she didn’t care. He was gone the next day, and a few weeks later, my mom realized she was pregnant with me. She tried to find him, but all she knew was his name was Steven, and that he was from Chicago. It was like finding a needle in a haystack in a field of haystacks. My mom was a wild child when she was younger, and her getting pregnant by some random stranger was the last straw for her family. They weren’t too happy with her decision to be a single mom, so they cut her off and refused to help. I have a very strained relationship with the rest of my family if you couldn’t tell.”
He took a deep breath and continued, “Growing up, I never realized we were poor. Not until I noticed kids wearing new clothes and not hand-me-downs. Their moms didn’t work two jobs and were home every night to cook dinner or pick them up after soccer practice. Kids pick up on things, you know, and I think I could sense her anxiety, which fueled mine. I’d see her worry, and then I’d start to worry. We were all the other had, and we made it work.”
“When did you meet Foster?”
He laughed. “I think I met him in like the sixth grade or something. If you can follow the connections, he was the best friend of my best friend Mark’s little brother.”
“He’s younger than you? I don’t know why, but I guess I just assumed you were both the same age.”
“Nope, I was a grade above him, and the way our birthdays fall, I’m two years older. Anyway, we weren’t friends right away. We’d see each other in passing at birthday parties and school, but that was it. We each had our own little circles that we moved in. They sort of touched at the edges, but we never really hung out. When I started high school, Mark’s grandma got sick, and his family left to be closer to her. School was strange without him there. One day I saw Foster in the cafeteria, and it just hit me that he had been in the same situation. I don’t know what made me do it, but I sat down next to him, and here we are—fuck—twenty years later. It turns out we had a lot more in common than our best friends moving away.”
I move my hand to the one he’d laid on my chest and played with his fingers. “What happened after high