Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 56 (Patreon)

“Hey,” Jamie said.

“Hey back. How was your night,” Ella asked. She was sitting in the art corner with a sketch book and pencil.

“I learned my middle name is Patrick.”

“Uh O. Whuddya do?”

“What makes you think I did something?”

“Either you were looking at your arrival certificate, or you got called by your full name, and that only happens when you’re in trouble.”

“I climbed onto the kitchen counter.”

“That was dumb.”

“I know. Already got that lecture. What are you drawing?” She turned the book to show him. “Wow. That’s really good. You’re doing that from memory?”

“Yep. I went there when I was in college during a semester abroad. I studied art.”

“It’s really good.”

“Lots of practice. I draw this a lot. I can draw you if you like.” She turned to a fresh page and started sketching. “Hold real still.”

“Uh, okay.” Jamie suddenly felt very self-conscious, and he wasn’t sure if she was flirting with him. He was never sure about that.

“Done.” She tore out the page.

“Already? That’s incredible.” Jamie took the page from her and grimaced, handing her back the drawing of a stick figure falling off a kitchen counter. “Ha-ha. Very funny.”

Ella did get a good laugh out of it. “So why’d you climb up there anyway?”

“To get a snack.”

“And you weren’t allowed a snack?”

“No, I just didn’t want to ask for one. Ya know, it gets old being a constant burden.”

“That’s what they signed up for when they adopted a little. It’s also what you signed up for when you put yourself up for adoption. Does your mom ever make you feel that way?”

“No. I’m just not used to asking for things.”

“I get that. It takes getting used to, needing permission.”

“Not just permission. I mean, just having to ask. Makes me feel like all I do is take.”

“You ever have something you loved? Pet, sibling, kid?”

He’d never had a pet or sibling. If he counted his clients, he’d had a hundreds of kids. “Kids, in a manner of speaking.”

“When they needed something, did it feel like they were taking?”

Jamie frowned. Of course it didn’t. “No.” He felt compelled to explain more. “I grew up in foster care. Most of the homes I went through, you didn’t ask for things. Bad luck, ‘cause most foster parents are just wonderful people, else they wouldn’t become foster parents. I just got a few bad ones. Asking was seen as not being happy with what you were given. That wasn’t … well received.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I know I’m not a foster kid, but this is still so new. Still feel like I’m a guest … Does that go away?”

“Doesn’t sound like your mom thinks of you that way. It’ll go away when you decide to stop feeling like a guest.”

Fair enough, Jamie thought. He knew Mom and Manda didn’t think of him like a guest, and he knew he wasn’t a guest, but the feeling wouldn’t go away. It was always there, making him always a little bit uncomfortable.

“So what was your punishment?”

Jamie blushed. The two of them were getting to know one another awfully fast. Friendship grows fast in extreme circumstances, and being in a different dimension living in this way among these people certainly counted as that.

“Timeout,” he said.

“Hard to get used to at first, isn’t it?”

“Timeout? That was my first.”

“No, I mean the reality that you can be punished again. Being accountable to someone in that way again, subject to their authority. No jury, no appeals court.” Ella scoffed. “Parenthood is the one true dictatorship, especially for littles.”

The last part of the statement sounded a bit dramatic, but Jamie understood what she meant, and he agreed wholeheartedly with the first part of what she’d said. “Definitely. For a moment, I thought ...” He sighed and stopped talking.

“That she was going to spank you? Does she hit you, or would she, do ya think?” Ella had a definite opinion on corporal punishment: it was hitting, no matter word people used. And she had a definite response to people who would insist a spanking is not hitting: fuck you.

At the very word spank, a number of little ears turned up, and several littles looked uncomfortable to hear it. Jamie was. “Yes. And no, I don’t think she’d ever do that. And then she told me so last night. It’s just … in the moment … it just brought up bad memories is all.”

So someone, or more than one someone, hit him as a kid, she thought. Fucking sonsabitches. She figured he didn’t want to talk about that, so instead she turned to the bright side. “Good that you know that now, at least, that she never would. What did she say when you asked?”

“I didn’t ask. I just said that I got … afraid when she picked me up and told me she wanted me to remember not to do it again. I told Amanda, and then when Manda told her, Mom cried.”

“Then she must really love you.”

“Yeah, she does,” Jamie said without a smile. Just a fact, and a fact that wasn’t new but was still fresh, still a puzzle to him. She just loved him. From the start and even more now. What did I do to deserve instant love, Jamie wondered. Don’t suppose you know, Jamie wanted to ask.

Instead, Jamie decided to ask, “So how come Diane didn’t tell my mom another unregressed little came her? My mom was real concerned about that.”

“Privacy.”

“Just saying there’s an unregressed little doesn’t violate privacy, does it?”

“In San Siena it does. I’m not even sure there are a twenty of us here.”

That still didn’t make much sense. “So what if someone knew an unregressed little came here? We have to hide or something?”

“’We?’ No, we don’t have to hide. How ‘bout I draw your picture for real now?”

Jamie knew when a conversation was being purposefully but politely ended. He didn’t try to get an answer.