The Leah Gig [Tier 3 Exclusive] (Patreon)

All 119 pounds of Claudia Powell were fired up and ready for a fight.

“I don’t want to be pregnant,” she said. “I’m not even that enthusiastic about having a baby to care for. I want a child, sure. I’m excited to have a daughter who can do things with me. But a baby? That just feels like work I’m not excited about.”

Liam shrugged and nervously scratched his head. If she had a point, he didn’t know what it was.

“So I’ll take what I can get,” she continued. “I’ll enjoy the little pleasures that are afforded to me now. Like this: a baby shower. A bunch of women want to buy me gifts and give me attention? Yeah, that seems okay by me. But it needs to be good. It better be the best fucking party I’ve been to in years, right? Because, for one, I’m not allowed to drink anymore. That sucks. And two, when I’m waddling around with sore feet and my stomach looks like a hot air balloon - I want to look back at this party and have some sort of good memory of it to ease my discomfort. I don’t think I’m being unreasonable, do you?”

“Uh, no, ma’am.”

“Thank you, Liam.”

She scoffed and shook her head, as if the name carried a weight to it. Stories she had heard, and maybe assumptions that had already been made.

“You probably don’t want to do this, right?” she said. “I get it. It’s probably demeaning and beneath you. But also? I don’t fucking care.”

Liam’s eyes grew big. He kind of knew what he was getting into when he agreed to be here - though ‘agreed’ would have been an interesting way to describe it.

“Let’s just recap,” she said. “This is my day. My party. And you’ve got a lot of goodwill to earn back. So let’s just agree that you’re going to do what is expected of you. There aren’t going to be any problems, right? No attempts at subverting my requests that would potentially embarrass either one of us?”

“No, ma’am. Promise.”

“I promised that I’d make this worth your while, financially. I intend to make good on that promise, too. Assuming, of course, you shed your pride for a few hours and do as you’re told.”

“If I’m being honest,” Liam said, “you’re asking for me to do a lot of embarrassing stuff in front of these women and…”

“Do you know who Gladys Hoffman is?” she asked.

“No.”

“How about Denise Meyer?”

“No.”

“Gwen Shapiro?”

“No.”

“I didn’t think so,” Claudia said. “You will know exactly two people at this baby shower - myself and Bailey. You’ve never seen these women before, and you’ll never see them again after.”

It hadn’t done much to cleanse his worries, but it was probably the best she could offer.

“Okay,” he finally said, resigned to his fate.

“Are you ready?”

He shrugged. “As ready as I can be.”

There was a full length mirror to his left. He had already caught an erroneous glimpse at himself once, and he swore he wouldn’t do it again. He knew damn well what he was wearing, and he didn’t need to see it.

A frilly pink dress with ribbons and bows intricately woven through it. A fluffy petticoat underneath. A bonnet - an actual bonnet - atop his head, with its ribbons tied under his chin in yet another bow. His maryjanes and stockings. Any single element of that would’ve been enough to render him a humiliated puddle of man, but that, somehow, wasn’t even the worst of it.

Diapers. She insisted on diapers. An enormous cloth garment that seemed to be packed with thick pillowy padding. He had assumed, and hoped, that it wasn’t functional and it was just an aesthetic choice, but that didn’t make it any less embarrassing to wear. It felt like there was a stack of towels between his legs. Between the bulky cloth diaper and the crinkling plastic pants that were worn over them, the hem of his dress and petticoat had no hope of concealing every shameful detail.

“Let’s go, then,” she said, handing him a round serving tray. “You’ve got a job to do.”

--

Liam was the kind of guy that people called street-smart, which often felt like a simple way of saying: ‘he’s not the brightest bulb, but he could probably change your tire if you had a flat.’

He wasn’t enrolled in college. Hell, he had just barely managed to complete high school. Nobody would ever mistake him for a Nobel Prize winner, and he probably wouldn’t ever be seen reading an issue of The New Yorker. That didn’t mean he was dumb. He was practical. A realist.

He couldn’t speak for Bailey, but he knew better than to think that his relationship with her would be the be-all and end-all. There’d be other women after her. Maybe a lot, or maybe just a handful. Someday he’d decide that he was ready for ‘the one.’ For now, he just liked having her pretty face to look at. Someone to bring him a cupcake at work. Someone he could get under the sheets with.

Somewhere along the way, he had made a mistake or two - their names being Emma and Regina. He hadn’t lost much sleep over it, though he knew better than to assume that this wouldn’t come back to bite him in any way.

It, in fact, came back to bite him - in the form of an ill-timed sext from Regina while Bailey snuggled against him during a movie. Bailey was rather upset about it, of course she was. But it was worse than that. Bailey’s sister Claudia - the notoriously hot-headed and bratty older sister - had recently given him a job at her new restaurant as a sous-chef. It was far from the only job available in the city, should things go south, but it was unlikely he’d get an opportunity like that again. Unschooled and otherwise untrained, he’d be cast back into the worlds of retail and landscaping grunt work again.

Things were over between him and Bailey, she had been clear about that. He had accepted that. But he’d need to smooth things over with Claudia.

For Claudia, she was more amused than angry about that whole situation. Yes, she was clearly siding with Bailey. And yes, she too believed Liam to be the disappointing example of manhood he had shown himself to be.

But she wasn’t going to fire him. Seeing as how he didn’t know this, she had concocted a humiliating hoop for him to jump through - with thanks owed to Bailey for her input. And to ensure that he’d accept her wildly humiliating challenge, she sweetened the deal with the promise of a sizable check in addition to job security. For her, there wasn’t a price she could put on seeing her sister’s ex put through the ringer.

Liam probably would’ve accepted her terms had she offered him half the amount she had.

--

One step at a time. The job itself wasn’t hard. He’d be serving drinks and snacks to Claudia and her friends all afternoon. It was, theoretically, complicated by his attire, but it could only bother him as much as he allowed it to. Mind over matter, or something like that.

Amidst the snickers and giggles from the women, Bailey included, Liam had mostly been thinking about the logistics of this outfit. Where had Claudia managed to find such a large dress, with seemingly such short notice? It had only been a handful of days since her initial pitch to him on how he could redeem himself. This comically large and thick diaper. This oversized novelty bonnet? Where does one get that? How much money does such a thing cost?

“This is Leah,” Claudia announced to the 12 or so women parked on various couches and chairs in the large living room. “I figured with a baby girl on the way, I should get used to having one running around. I mean, it can’t be much worse than this, can it?”

Her comments had elicited further laughter from the women.

Liam blushed. The dam had been broken, and it was unlikely he’d be able to compose himself again. So much for mind over matter.

“Leah?” asked Claudia. “Fetch the champagne glasses from the kitchen. There will be champagne and...ugh, nonalcoholic grape juice. We will need both.”

He began his slow walk across the room, his thick and noisy diaper making it impossible not to waddle. More laughter. Clapping.

“Bailey, can you be a dear and follow the baby?” asked Claudia. “She’s too little, and I don’t know that I trust her with all those glasses and bottles.”

“It’d be my pleasure,” Bailey said, popping up from her chair like a meerkat.

He didn’t look back to see if Bailey was following him, nor did he wait for her. He trudged forward, trying his best to adapt to the added width of his cruel costume.

“I have to say,” Bailey said, upon reaching the kitchen herself, “I can barely tell the difference between the way you look now and how you looked before.”

He rolled his eyes. “Mock me all you want. Today is only temporary. Then I’ll have my job and some extra spending money and I can forget this ever happened.”

“Would it be mocking if I said that you looked cute like this?” she asked.

“Yes, probably.”

“Such a grumpy little girl,” she spat. “Do you need a diaper change?”

“I’m tempted to piss myself,” he said sarcastically. “I’d like to see how that fits into her little game.”

“I think you should too,” she said with a shrug. “I’m not sure you’d make the defiant statement you think you would. You might just be adding fuel to the fire.”

He scoffed, adding more of the thin champagne flutes to the serving tray. The skills learned from his year in catering finally had purpose again.

“This was my idea,” she said. “Claudia certainly made it her own with all of this…” she waved her hands over his poofy dress and thick diaper, “...extravagance. It’s incredible.”

“I’m so glad that I have you to thank for this,” he said. “So, thank you. I hope you get all the gawking out of your system today.”

“Me too,” she said. “Claudia has banned cell phones. So you can, at least, thank her for that.”

“Trust me, I will.”

Liam’s ego had taken a little bruising so far, but he wondered if Bailey was the one who, somehow, ended up leaving the kitchen looking more dejected. Was she trying to get a rise out of him?

“Ah, there you are, Leah,” Claudia said. “Be a good girl and get these women their glasses, please.”

If Bailey had wanted to get under Liam’s skin, she could do no wrong from paying more attention to Claudia. She worked Liam’s embarassing state into the things she said so effortlessly it sometimes didn’t even register as a dig.

Liam slowly waddled his way around the room, handing out glasses to each of the women. With each, he was met with smirks and disbelieving headshakes. Some of these women looked to be the age of his own mother - no doubt imagining the shame of their own supposed adult child toddling about like this.

“No accidents yet?” a young curly-headed blonde asked as he handed her a glass. She couldn’t have been much older than he and Bailey. He would’ve loved to have met her in any other place, at any other time.

“Oh, we’re fully prepared for that possibility,” Claudia said, answering for him. “The online kink community was more than willing to aid me in finding the thickest cloth diapers on the market. Between that and his plastic pants, he could probably go an entire day without a leak.”

He made a mental note to himself not to test that absorbency, nor to try and make some sort of defiant protest with his piss.

“Don’t be mad,” spoke another, a middle aged woman who could probably pass for someone 10 years younger if younger women weren’t in the room. “But I was thinking that it’d be a little gauche to throw yourself a baby shower. But...per usual, you’ve outdone yourself with the details. This is incredible. Who is this big baby, anyhow?”

“Leah,” Claudia said with a wink and a smile.

--

‘Book smart,’ probably, but Bailey would never consider herself to be especially clever. Clever had always been Claudia’s game - and one she excelled at.

But Bailey knew when to follow a clue, and in The Case of the Missing Panties, the timing of her folding laundry at her apartment coinciding with Liam’s last visit had been too convenient to ignore. Days later - and only weeks before Regina would send a text asking ‘Where’s your dick at, and why is it not inside me?’ - Bailey would find the missing panties under Liam’s bed while he showered.

She’d hold onto the information for a little bit. At that point, he hadn’t yet earned her ire, nor had he shown himself to be any sort of pervert. She’d rather he hadn’t stolen her underpants, but it wasn’t hard to distance herself from the situation and look at it objectively. If he did have a personal taste for women’s underwear, maybe his options for obtaining his own were hard to come by.

It was information for a rainy day. Someday, when they were cuddling in bed with nothing better to do, maybe she’d ask him to put some of her panties on. She would be curious as to how he’d react. Would he have accused her of somehow knowing the truth? Or would he roll with it, happy that she seemed to want the same things as him?

She’d never get answers to those questions.

Following the wayward sext, when she relayed this story to Claudia later - panty theft and all - she had ended her rant by calling him a ‘selfish little baby.’ One could argue that she had planted the seeds for what would come next for Liam, but it had been the much cooler head of Claudia that found herself spinning Bailey’s description of him in her mind until she concocted her plan.

--

“Does he - she - do any tricks?” asked the woman who had previously asked if he had an accident or not.

“He’s not a dog, Angie,” Claudia responded. The women, including Angie, laughed with her. “But...I bet she’d be a good girl and play along if we had any requests.”

“Crawl,” another woman said. “She should crawl like a baby.”

A chorus of “oohs” and “yeses” spread throughout the party.

“Absolutely,” Claudia said, exclaiming it as if she had just been reminded of the most obvious thing ever. “Leah, on your hands and knees. Show the nice women how well you crawl, honey.”

It had been getting harder to hold onto his stoic resolve as the minutes ticked by. His efforts to remind himself that this would eventually be over meant little when right now there were many sets of judgmental - and often gorgeous - eyes focused on his effeminate and infantile presence.

The idea of the future was slipping away. He was stuck in now, and now might take the rest of his life.

“Yes, ma’am,” he said.

“No,” Bailey said, again popping up from seemingly nowhere. “Not ‘ma’am.’ She’s not a clerk at a government office. She’s a future mommy. And tonight? She’s your mommy.”

The room had fallen silent for a moment, as if everyone was waiting to see what everyone else’s reaction would be. To Liam, the outburst had reeked of desperation - an effort to try and claim a small part of his humiliation for herself.

Judging by the smiles and nods, it had been a success.

“Yes,” Claudia said. “I would agree with that. Say it again? But using ‘mommy’ this time.”

He glanced at Bailey for a moment, lingering long enough to show his frustration, before returning to Claudia.

“Yes...Mommy.”

The women adored that.

He slowly dropped to his knees, feeling the poofy dress and petticoat bounce and flap as he did. Surely everyone got a little show there - though only a little more of what was plainly already on display. He leaned forward until his hands landed flat on the ground.

Crawling was something he just didn’t think about. He could probably think of times he had done it in recent years - getting something in his parents’ crawlspace or drunkenly maneuvering towards the toilet. But it was always born out of necessity. There was no thought put into it. But now, on his hands and knees in this ridiculous getup, he was suddenly hyper-aware of his every move. One knee in front of the other, his hands completely out of sync with what his legs were doing. Behind him, his thick diaper was fully on display for everyone to see. And the ladies were certainly shifting their vantage points to get a good view.

“That’s a good baby,” Claudia cooed. She briskly walked to the opposite side of the room, crouching down with her hands splayed out in front of her as if she was ready to catch a puppy. “Come now, come crawl to Mommy.”

What was it, fifteen feet? Twenty? It might as well have been a mile.

From behind him, a flat hand swatted the bulging diaper with a loud slapping sound. More giggles surrounded him.

He hadn’t heard anyone say anything, but the guests had seemed to have come to a mutual non-verbal agreement about what should come next. They lined up between where he had been positioned and where Claudia waited.

It was a gauntlet. And as he slowly lumbered past each woman, they swung their hand into his bottom. He felt very little of it, but it was the sound that embarrassed him more than anything else. Every woman got a thrill out of having taken a crack at the giant baby.

Towards the end of the line - the last stop before reaching Claudia - was Bailey. She rubbed her hands together hungrily. She wanted this so badly. Another firm wallop to his backside. Partial payment for Regina, he imagined.

“There she is,” Claudia said in a mock-babytalk as he reached the end. “What a good baby! Did you crawl all the way to Mommy?”

For good measure, Claudia barraged his diaper with a handful of slaps of her own.

“The baby had to have worked up an appetite after all that crawling,” Bailey said. “Shall I get him his bottle?”

“That’s a very good idea,” Claudia cooed. “Be a dear and grab that for me?”

--

It wasn’t exactly an argument - both sisters had agreed on the same points. The conflict was whether or not they should go through with it.

Claudia, perpetually the head of the class and the overachiever, couldn’t leave any stone unturned. It wasn’t enough that she had invested a pretty chunk of change into the diaper, dress and assorted infantile paraphernalia. She wanted to see it used. She wasn’t paying for Bailey’s ex-boyfriend to give a half-assed performance as an oversized toddler. She needed him to commit. He needed to become the baby, for at least this one day.

The evening before the party, Claudia had walked Bailey through an unboxing of Liam’s wardrobe for the party. Diapers, dresses, cute pink shoes, the works. And the final piece that Claudia had to show - the coup de grace - was a bottle of what looked to be some sort of medicinal liquid.

It was a liquid laxative. “Relief in as little as 30 minutes!” boasted the bottle.

Bailey had been torn. She wanted to see that in action. She wanted to see it so badly. Claudia just wanted to put on a show. Bailey wanted to decimate the remnants of Liam’s dignity.

But it had also been Bailey who took a step back and asked the same question once similarly pondered in Jurassic Park: Just because they could, did it mean that they should?

There was a hypothetical line there, somewhere. You could throw all the money in the world at Liam, but there would still be a line that felt wrong to cross without talking to him about it first. Making him poop his pants at a party might have been crossing the line.

Claudia, torn between her wildly fluctuating pregnancy hormones and the sense of reason she used to operate her restaurant, ultimately settled on agreeing with Bailey’s logic. It’d be fun - but maybe it would be going too far.

Later, sneaking into the kitchen by herself, Bailey had the last word on the matter as she emptied a sizable amount of the laxative into the baby bottle before topping it off with milk.

--

Bailey had almost forgotten about her previous meddling with the bottle. It wasn’t until she had opened the fridge that the reality of what would happen, if her plan came to fruition, hit her.

Now, with all of the women out in the living room, slapping and teasing the big baby as it was, it almost seemed like overkill to mix a laxative into the game. For Liam’s sake. For the sake of the nose of every woman in the room.

“Bailey?” called out Leah from the other room. “The bottle is in the fridge, dear. It’s not in Moscow.”

She tried to get out of her own head. Maybe she’d just empty out the bottle and fill it with just plain milk.

But there was no more milk that she could see.

And there were two baby bottles on the top shelf.

She didn’t remember there being two of them. Maybe Claudia had looked in the fridge this morning and thought to herself that one just wasn’t going to be enough and poured a second.

“Bailey?” Claudia called out again. “Baby is getting hungry.”

A little prayer and she grabbed one of the identical bottles.

“Here you go,” she said upon her return, handing it over to Claudia.

“It’s good to get some practice in with this while you can,” said Angie. “If you’re going to do it, you should do it right.”

Claudia nodded. “You’re absolutely right.”

Claudia reached a hand out to Liam. He was only uncertain of what she wanted for a moment, then he took her hand in his. She slowly walked to the large burgundy chair in the room, tugging him along behind her. He remained on the ground, hobbling forward with just three limbs the best he could. At the chair, she took a seat and patted her lap.

“Come,” she commanded. “Up here Leah, in my lap.”

He opened his mouth to ask for clarification - but he didn’t actually need any direction. He knew what she wanted, he just wasn’t crazy about it. The money had talked, however, and he knew it was going to get worse than crawling around while strangers swatted at his bottom.

Up he went, awkwardly cramming his 19 year-old body, thick diaper, and floofy outfit into Claudia’s petite lap.

“What a good girl. Are you hungry?”

He could be honest, or he could give her what she wanted to hear. He nodded.

“No no, baby girl. You need to tell me that you want your ba-ba. Can you do that?”

He swallowed, doing his best to tune out the ambient laughter in the background. “May I have the...ba...ba?”

“No, I don’t care for that,” Claudia said, her tone losing a little of its softness. “Say it again. Like you mean it.”

“May I…”

“No,” Claudia said again, cutting him off. “I think that’s the problem. You’re not talking to your teacher, Leah. You’re talking to your Mommy. You don’t have to ask permission - you just need to tell me what you want.”

He shouldn’t have, but he let his eyes drift away from Claudia for a moment, catching the wall of smiling faces looking at him from the audience. Well, except for Bailey, who looked more nervous than happy.

Strange.

A deep breath, and he tried again - trying to hit all the notes she’d be expecting: “Mommy? I want my ba-ba.”

It was the performance of a lifetime, and everyone was very pleased by it - especially Claudia.

“I knew you could do it,” she cooed, lowering the bottle into his mouth.

From the cluster of women, Bailey had started to extend a hand, as if she was going to stop this scene from going any further. She only stopped herself, putting her hand back down. She didn’t want to have to answer questions any more than she didn’t want to see Liam drink the tainted bottle.

In Claudia’s lap, Liam quickly figured out how to suckle from the bottle’s nipple. Down the hatch - here goes nothing. Milk, he thought. Probably? He never drank milk anymore, not since he was an actual child. It wasn’t quite as he remembered it tasting, but it was close enough that he figured this is just how it was.

It was surprisingly easy to lose oneself in a moment like this - and this went just as much for Claudia as it did Liam.

It had been a very very long time since he had just been simply cared for. This, he could argue, wasn’t exactly being cared for, but if he closed his eyes, it would’ve been hard to tell the difference. Somewhere in the layers of cloth and lace was a little boy - girl, today - who needed a firm hand to just plant a bottle into his mouth.

She knew it wouldn’t be the same when she held her real daughter, but there was something to this that Claudia liked as well. This feeble and dependent creature on her lap wanted love. Part of it was an act, she knew this much. It was their arrangement, and seeing as how he was getting paid for it - his job. But looking down at his face now, eyes gently closing while he slowly suckled the bottle, she was convinced that it was more than that.

Both of them, around the same moment, had wished that they had a little more privacy.

“I’ll tell you what normally happens to me when I feed my little one like that,” a young woman said. “He fills up his pants while on my lap and I need to go change him after.”

A wave of laughter from the other ladies rippled across the room - many were, no doubt, imagining such a thing happening now. Even Liam briefly imagined the idea of emptying his bowels into the soft cloth of his diaper while atop Claudia’s lap. It’d never come to that, he thought. But...it wasn’t as repulsive a thought as he’d have predicted to have been.

“All gone,” Claudia said, holding up the empty bottle for everyone to see. “What a good little girl, hmm? Drinking all her milkies like a princess!” This was met with even more laughter and applause.

Bailey’s stomach turned. She had to say something...eventually.

“Gifts!” another woman said. “You should open your gifts now!”

“Well, I can never say no to things,” Claudia said, smiling large. “Perhaps my adorable baby Leah and my just as lovely sister can fetch the gifts and bring them over here to me?”

--

“Liam?”

He spun around to face Bailey in the dining room as he held a small stack of wrapped gift boxes. “Yeah?”

“Hey, look, I think there’s something you should know…”

“Yeah?” he said. “Did you want to tell me that my diaper is showing?”

She was tempted to offer a little empathy, but his tone reminded her how he had gotten into this situation in the first place.

“I wasn’t trying to be snarky,” she said.

He sighed. “Sorry. I guess I’m just…” He took a deep breath and started over. “What is it?”

“Your, uh, bottle? The baby bottle?”

“What about it?”

“It might have been…” She repeated it again to reiterate: “Might have been…compromised?”

“Compromised? Like...expired?”

She ran her hands through her hair nervously. “No. Like...something was added to it?”

“I’m not sure what you mean,” he said. “Like what? What would’ve been added?”

“I’m not saying, for sure, that you did drink this bottle - because, you know, there were two bottles - but one of them had...a laxative added to it.”

He was missing a little context, but he got the jist of it. Two bottles. Laxative as a prank. Second thoughts. He may or may not have drunk the laxative.

“Really?” he said. “You would...do that to me?”

She sighed. “It wasn’t entirely my idea.” Which was true - Claudia had bought the bottle in the first place. But Bailey was the only one who knew the laxative had found its way into one of the baby bottles.

“So now what? You expect me to shit myself out there? In front of all those women?”

“You might not though,” Bailey said. “And...I mean...I don’t think laxatives make you...go uncontrollably, right? You’d just need to go to the bathroom eventually. If you took it at all.”

“What the hell is taking so long?” Claudia appeared in the room, hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. “This is not the time for a lover’s quarrel.”

“Sorry,” Bailey said. “It’s...my fault. I was just telling Liam that I may have...spiked his milk?”

“What?” Claudia shook her head, unsure of what that was supposed to mean. “Spike? I don’t get what you’re saying. Did you put vodka in the bottle or something? Is that what was taking you so long before?”

“She said she put a laxative in one of the baby bottles,” Liam said.

“You what?” But then, quite quickly, Claudia’s expression changed from anger and frustration to amusement. She was laughing and shaking her head. “I thought we weren’t going to do that.”

“We weren’t,” Bailey said. “But then I changed my mind. And then…I changed my mind again.”

“Right,” Claudia said, catching up, “and in the meantime I had already made another bottle.”

Claudia nodded, blushing at having her folly pointed out in front of Liam.

“Leah?” asked Claudia, her voice softening a little again. “If you had drunk that laxative, you could just use the potty, yes?”

Her soft voice and the childish word ‘potty,’ caught him off guard. It might have been a trap. But...he also kind of liked it.

“Yes,” he said, nodding. “I could.”

“Bailey, you and I will talk about this later,” Claudia said, in a tone that perfectly emulated their mother’s.

Bailey scoffed, carrying a pile of gifts out to the living room. Liam had begun to follow him with his own pile, only to be stopped by Claudia.

“What I am about to say to you will not be repeated. Not at any time, and not to anyone. And that goes for my sister as well. Understand?”

He nodded apprehensively.

“Maybe it’s my hormones, or maybe I’m just...far more fucked up than I realized. But I’m really liking this. This baby-thing we’ve got going on with you.”

He wanted to protest - perhaps remind her that this was nothing more than a gig for him. An awkward and humiliating bout of revenge disguised as a gig, but a gig nonetheless. But he bit his tongue, not entirely disagreeing with what she had said.

“If you drank that laxative and you have to, uhm, go? And you want to use your diaper? I’m just saying you could.”

He opened his mouth - ready to tell her that that wasn’t going to happen. Instead he was silenced by her hand lightly pressing against his mouth.

“I don’t need you to tell me what you want or don’t. I’m just telling you that you can. If you want. Because if you needed to, you could just excuse yourself at any moment and go and use the restroom. I imagine you’d have a hell of a time managing your pretty little dress as you tried to, but I wouldn’t hold it against you. Or, if you wanted - needed - to use that adorable diaper that I spent a lot of money on, Mommy would make sure to change you and clean you up. Understood?”

He exhaled slowly through his nostrils, then nodded.

“Very good,” she said. “I’ll see you out there in a minute, yes?”

She gave his puffy bottom an extra playful smack and she returned to the party.

And he was left with some possibilities. He may, or may not have, consumed some laxative. And, so, he may, or may not, need to do something about that eventually. And he could, or could not, use the comically thick diaper between his legs - while at this party of women who’d love to see such a thing before never seeing him again. And if he had, well, Claudia had made it very clear that she’d help with that debacle.

And, maybe, he’d just go back out to the party and continue to get teased and slapped a little for a few more hours before the party dissipated without further evidence.

Or?

Or, he could go and drink the other baby bottle. Just to be sure. He could just imagine it now - strutting back out into the party, a stack of gifts balanced in one arm while his other hand carried the other bottle. The women would love it. Bailey would probably lose her mind. Claudia would be absolutely delighted.

--

A new case had presented itself to Bailey: The Case of the Post-Party Antics.

The party had ended a little earlier than expected. Claudia had begun lightly suggesting she wasn’t feeling as well - an idea that percolated amongst the other women until they felt compelled to take their leave and give the mommy-to-be some space to rest.

Bailey, having a few borrowed chairs to return, departed as well - promising that she’d be back later to help clean up.

And when she had returned, she felt as if she had missed something. The dress and petticoat were left discarded in the living room. The bonnet and maryjanes in the hallway. The plastic diaper cover on the floor of Claudia’s bedroom, as Claudia dozed peacefully on the bed by herself.

No diaper, though? Where did that go?

Denise Meyer had purchased Claudia a very nice basket of baby supplies as a gift. Everything a new mommy could need for her nursery - baby powder, multiple packs of wipes, various creams and lotions. Except that the clear cellophane that Denise had used to keep the basket of goodies contained had been opened. The objects that were missing - as best as Bailey could recall - were now in Claudia’s room. Did she need baby wipes and baby powder?

She went into the kitchen and opened the fridge. There were no bottles of milk.

--

“I wrote you a check a week ago,” Claudia said. “It was for the amount we agreed upon, yes? I just noticed that you haven’t done anything with it yet.”

Liam, in his white kitchen uniform, blushed a little and shrugged. He hadn’t talked to Claudia at all in the past week. They rarely interacted much at the restaurant as it was, and he certainly felt apprehension about approaching her now.

“If I’m being honest,” he said, “I tore it up.”

She tapped her fingers on her desk in the restaurant’s office, debating on whether or not she should be offended by that. “Why?”

He shrugged. “Maybe...I felt like I had already earned what I was owed.”

“Yeah?” she laughed to herself. He may have reaffirmed something she had been thinking of herself.

“Thank you,” he said.

She didn’t say anything immediately. Finally: “So, look. Every day, I’m getting a little closer to being a first-time mother. It’s a great big world, you know?”

He nodded.

“I’m sure I’ll figure most of it out as I go. But, I’m thinking that I could use a...little more practice, yet?”

“Yeah?”

“Just to be sure.”

“Well,” he said, shrugging, “I hear baby girls are a lot of trouble. You need all the practice you can get.”

“Have you looked at the new schedule yet?”

“No, ma’am.”

“You’re off on Friday.”

“Oh? Okay.”

“And, just so you know, I’m also going to be off on Friday.”

He smiled and nodded.

“Just...practice.”

“Practice,” he repeated.

“Alright, good. I’m glad we had this talk. Get back out there and cut some potatoes or whatever it is you do for me.”

He smiled and practically skipped out of the office and back into the kitchen.