Doing Business, Part 68 (Patreon)

Sixty-Eight

Even in the days before diapers entered my life, I was wary of coffee. I loved coffee, but coffee didn’t always love me back. Drinking a hot cup of joe meant that I’d spend the rest of the morning making sure I had a planned escape route to the closest bathroom–as it just seemed to run right through me.

More often than not, Mommy would just pick up her morning coffee between the house and the office. Even on the days she decided to stay home–whether she was working from home, or playing hooky–she’d still make a quick run to a coffee shop to pick up a tall cardboard cup of caffeine. On rare occasions, however, she’d make a pot of coffee in the kitchen. Those were my favorite mornings. There’s just something so pleasant about waking up to the smell of fresh hot coffee. The way it just seeks you out, grabs you, and pulls you into the kitchen. I didn’t drink it–Mommy said that coffee wasn’t for babies–but just smelling it was usually enough to put me in a good mood for a few hours.

And so it was a pleasant surprise to wake to the smell of coffee.

For a moment, I thought it was going to be one of those special days where Mommy decided to stay home from work. I’d go to the kitchen, finding her in just a short t-shirt and some panties–cup of coffee in one hand and a spatula in the other as she made some pancakes for us. I’d be seated in the high chair–another costly custom piece she had acquired since I started staying with her–and she’d cut them into little pieces, feeding them to me one bite at a time.

No, that wasn’t right. Mommy was somewhere else. A resort? Business thing? It was hard to keep track of Mommy’s life anymore.

It all came back to me. Ava. She was at the house, and it was she who made coffee. I almost audibly groaned, thinking about the awkwardness of the day before. How I had greeted her on my hands and knees, swollen diaper between my legs. How I had messed myself right in front of her. How she changed my diaper for me, all while talking about how she wanted to date other men.

Or something like that.

She had tried her hardest to initiate conversations with me throughout the day, but she was met with the resistance of a grumpy toddler. It wasn’t entirely purposeful–sure, I was in a bad mood, but I didn’t want to be a dick to her. Small talk and dirty diapers was all she got out of me.

But coffee. Coffee seemed like a good start to this new day. It was like a ‘restart’ button had been pressed.

Okay. You want to win some points back with her? You can start by just not being a brat.

I exited the crib, checking the snaps on the bottom of the onesie I wore to bed last night. Still holding. Status of diaper? Wet. Not drenched, but certainly not dry. It’d do.

I followed my nose out of the nursery, all the way to the kitchen. As tempting as it was to just crawl–I opted to walk instead. I was a little wobbly for a minute, but by the time I got to the kitchen, I felt like I had found my rhythm with it once again.

“Good morning,” Ava said. She was, in fact, making pancakes on the stove. I wondered if Mommy had told her to do this, or if beautiful women all just thought alike.

“H-hi there.”

“I thought I’d make some breakfast. You like pancakes, right?”

“I, uh, do, yeah.”

“Why don’t you sit down. I’ll get you something to drink. There’s some juice in the fridge. Or milk.”

“Maybe I’ll have some, uh, coffee?”

She smirked as she mulled it over–like she either hadn’t expected me to say that, or Mommy had already told her what I was and wasn’t supposed to be consuming. At last, she shrugged.

“There’s plenty in the pot,” she said. “I’ll pour you some.”

“I can get it…”

“Well, maybe I should…” she started, pausing for a moment. I knew what was happening. She saw me as a toddler. She saw me as someone who couldn’t be trusted to handle a hot beverage. “You know what? Go ahead.” Still, she couldn’t stop herself from adding: “Be careful. It’s hot.”

As tempting as it was to give some snarky response about how shocked I was to learn that coffee was hot, I just nodded. She was doing her job–taking care of me. A baby.

I took a mug from the cabinet and set it on the counter, carefully pouring the steaming liquid into it. Every single movement I made was careful and deliberate–I couldn’t risk a misstep here. It was incredibly important to me that Ava see that I was capable of pouring myself a cup of coffee.

Mission complete; coffee achieved.

“Hey,” I said. “I’m really sorry about yesterday.”

“Sorry?” she asked. “For what?”

“Well…just being kind of rude, you know? I think I was just kind of moody yesterday and…”

“Don’t worry about it,” she shrugged. “Maybe I owe you an apology too.”

“What? No, I don’t think so. What could you possibly be apologizing to me for?”

“Mommy trusted me to be a babysitter, you know? And I promised her that’s what I’d be. And what was the first thing I did yesterday? I practically begged you to change your life. That was rude. You’re living your best life here, you know? Who am I to assume that I know what’s best for you.”

I opened my mouth, ready to tell her that she’s wrong–ready to explain that she had actually been pretty inspiring to me. Instead, I moved my arm a little too quickly, splashing hot coffee on myself.

I cried out. The pain only lasted a moment, and it wasn’t even that bad–it was just the surprise of it.

“Oh my gosh! Clark, are you okay?” She rushes to me, towel in hand, to try and dab away the liquid on my onesie.

“I…I’m fine.”

“Maybe coffee wasn’t the best idea?”

I wanted to tell her that it’s not a big deal and that I’ll be fine, but she reached forward and took the cup from my hand. There was no time to react or protest as she dumped the mug out into the sink.

“Why don’t you have a seat. I’ll get you some juice in a sippy cup, okay?”

I sighed, realizing I lost this battle. There’d be more later–more opportunities to prove I’m more than a baby. Out of habit, I started to climb into the high chair, but thought better of it–quickly sliding into one of the ‘adult’ chairs at the table instead. She smiled at this, but didn't say anything. She didn’t have to, I was pretty sure I could read her mind: “Okay, sure. You want to pretend to be a big boy? I won’t tell Mommy.”

“I respect that you’re doing your own thing right now,” she said, getting back to the stove and picking up the conversation where she left off before I spilled coffee. “And, look, of all people? I get it. Being treated like a baby is the best feeling in the world. Who knows? Maybe I could’ve benefited from asking Neve if I could move in with her for a few months. Getting breastfed every morning? God, that sounds amazing.”

I opened my mouth to try and speak again, but I’m too slow–she just kept on going.

“Be a baby for as long as you’d like to, Clark. Good for you for embracing it.”

She sets a plate of pancakes down in front of me, along with a sippy cup. To my surprise, she’s already cut the pancakes up into small pieces for me.

“Ms. Heller said you liked it like that,” she said. “She also said you liked to be fed…but…”

“I-it’s fine,” I stammered. “I’m capable of feeding myself.”

She sat down next to me, a plate of food for herself, along with a cup of coffee. Damn, the coffee smelled so good.

I imagined myself in the future–far in the future, when I had gray hair and wrinkles. Ava and I would be regaling some friends with tales of the wild, occasionally diapered, adventures we had in our youth. “What made you decide to give up the baby-stuff?” someone would ask. And I’d answer: “It was the smell of coffee, I think. I just realized I didn’t want to live in a world without it.”

“Ms. Heller will be back in a few hours,” she said. “Are you excited?”

Honestly? Of course I was. She could be away for just a few minutes and I’d still be delighted to see her walk through the doorway again. But I wanted to play it cool: “It’ll be nice, yeah.”

“She’s probably very excited to see you.”

“I dunno,” I shrugged. “I think she likes getting a break from all the diaper changes.”

“I can’t blame her for that…”

“Actually, I think she’s traveling with Ms. Beaufort this weekend,” I said. I had forgotten that it might have been a sore topic–I was just trying to change the topic to anything other than me being a baby.

“Yeah, that’s what Ms. Heller said,” Ava shrugged.

I knew it was none of my business, but I was too curious to just leave well enough alone. “So are you, like, upset with her?”

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I don’t think she did anything wrong. I made the decision to move on, you know? I wanted to stop wearing diapers and suckling on her tits. So I don’t really get a right to be upset if she finds someone else.”

“Ah,” I said. “Jealous?”

“Maybe.”

“Do you have regrets?”

“Sometimes I think I do? But, ultimately, I think I made the right decision for myself. It just sucks to know that there’s someone else now. Someone else getting all the special things I used to while I’m not.”

I thought about Hillary–Mommy’s last ‘baby’ before me. I wondered if she would’ve felt the same way, seeing how Mommy treated me now. Maybe, one day, I’d feel the same things Ava was when I moved on from Mommy’s care and she filled that void with someone else.

“Well, I know it’s not the same thing,” I said. “But if you want, there’s plenty of diapers here. If you want to slip into one.”

She laughed. “I appreciate that, Clark. But I’m not the baby. You are.”

I felt myself blushing.

“Speaking of,” she added. “How’s your diaper doing this morning?”

“It’s…” It occurred to me that it was much more wet now than it was when I first woke up. Now it felt drenched. Squishy and juicy. “...pretty wet, I think.”

“Need a change?”

I wanted to tell her, again, that I could do it myself. Instead: “Maybe after breakfast.”

“Suit yourself.”

I picked up one of the small triangular-shaped pieces of pancake with my fingers, dunked it in the pool of syrup on my plate, and tossed it into my mouth. While it still felt pretty normal to me, it suddenly felt kind of juvenile while in Ava’s presence.

“Hey, can I ask you something?”

“Of course,” she responded.

“When you…stopped wearing diapers, was it hard to not have accidents after that?”

“Harder than I would’ve thought,” she said. “But not impossible. It’s not like you’re starting over again from the very beginning. You know how to hold it–you just have to be a little more conscious of it for a while. Speaking for myself, I had to fight the impulse to just let go everytime I needed to pee or…well, you know.”

“So there were accidents?”

She laughed, nodding her head. “Afraid so.”

“Were they…bad?”

Another laugh. “Well…I’d argue that there’s no such thing as a good accident. I ruined a few pairs of panties. Made a fool of myself once or twice. But, I dunno…” She shrugged. “...that’s all in the past now. A few accidents seems like a fair price to pay for the freedom I’m enjoying now.”

I wondered if I should ask her to elaborate, but I didn’t think it was necessary. I think I understood what she meant by ‘freedom.’ The freedom to leave the house. Go places. Meet people. Have a job. The freedom to just exist without having to think about the time or manpower required to change a dirty diaper.

“Just thinking about the future?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Maybe.”

Actually, I was thinking about the now. I was thinking about the imaginary arms race between me and this guy she worked with–a guy I didn’t even know the name of. He got to see her everyday. She seemed to like him–or, at least, like him enough that she was thinking about him while she changed my diaper the day before. And? He was potty trained. Presumably.

In other words: he had a head start on me, for as long as I was still pooping my pants.

She was staring down at her phone as I pondered my place in Ava’s life. She was smiling. She let out a little giggle. A text from that guy?

Calm down, man.

“You okay, Clarky?” she asked. I wondered what it was that tipped her off that I was having a little moment.

Clarky. You know, I had gone most of my life without ever being called that everyday. Sure, friends or relatives would occasionally throw it out there in an endearing way when I was younger. But now ‘Clarky’ was synonymous with ‘Baby Clark.’ And as long as people were still calling me ‘Clarky,’ I would still be a baby.

I watched as Ava’s attention returned to her phone as I shoved another piece of pancake into my mouth and chewed it. I was thinking. Plotting.

How do I grow up? Again.

I begin to make a mental list of how I’d achieve such a goal.

Step 1: Leave the house once in a while. Start reacclimating myself to society-at-large. I’d never grow up if I stayed disconnected from everything outside of the house. I needed to get out of my stinky little bubble.

Step 2: Potty training?

Step 3: Get Mommy to unlock me? That’s going to be a challenge.

Step 4: Figure out school.

Step 5: A job? Living on my own again?

There was another task in there that I’d have to complete–I just didn’t know where it belonged yet. Talking to my mother.

Of all the loose ends left behind when I abandoned the world to live with Mommy, it was my relationship with my mother that felt like the loosest. I had fretted and fretted over her visit, only to have been pleasantly surprised by how well the visit actually went. Only to–almost literally, I sometimes thought–shit all over that progress when pictures of me and my dirty diapers were sent to her.

She had tried to reach out to me countless times. She left voicemails. Text messages. She sent a letter to my apartment–which Evan was kind enough to forward to Mommy’s. And I had no response to any of it–petrified of having to face the damage that might have been caused. I didn’t want to have a conversation about it. I didn’t want to explain to her what happened. I also didn’t want to have to lie to her. So…I just hid. I had been hiding ever since.

“All done?” Ava asked, her voice saturated with sweetness as she looked at me with her pretty eyes. She was talking to me like a toddler. And she probably would for a while. Maybe not in every conversation–but in enough of them.

“Y-yeah…”

“Good. Let me take this out of your way then.” She stood, taking the plate and bringing it over to the sink where she rinsed it off before putting it into the dishwasher.

It was nice to be cared for–even the little things. Being a baby had perks.

I couldn’t help but steer my eyes over towards her phone, sitting on the table still, as she worked at the sink. I knew I shouldn’t be nosy, but my stare was fixed on the black screen–just hoping that she’d get a text so that I could get a clue as to what her life was like now.

And then it happened. I willed a text into existence.

Caleb: “LOL”

That was the entire message. But that was also enough of a message. Ah yes, Caleb. Caleb likes to laugh. Out loud, even.

What had Ava said to him to get that response? The logical part of my brain knew that it was probably nothing worth dwelling over–I was thinking about this interaction way more than either of them had. But fuck logic. I wanted to speculate on the worst case scenario–the one where his response came to her making a remark about where she was right now. “I’m stuck at my former boss’s house, babysitting a grown man in a diaper. And you better believe he’s wearing a pissy diaper right now.”

And to that, Caleb just said: “LOL.”

I realized that, in addition to coffee, I also missed beer. And liquor. Those things used to help when I was getting myself all worked up about things that didn’t actually matter.

Speaking of coffee…Ava had left most of a mug’s worth sitting on the table.

“Hey, uhm, were you going to drink that coffee?”

She laughed. “Why? Did you want it?”

“Kind of.”

“I’d say I should put it in a bottle or sippy cup for you, but I don’t think it’s hot anymore. You might make a mess of yourself, but at least you won’t get burned.”

I sighed. “You know that I’m not actually a baby, right?”

She looked conflicted. Did she agree with that, or not?

“Just, uhm, be careful.”

I sighed and slowly dragged the cup towards me on the table. I’d probably set myself back considerably in my imagined battle against Caleb if I managed to spill even a drop of the coffee. I concentrated, putting all my energy into my steadiness as I lifted the mug to my lips.

Oh shit. Near-orgasmic. Coffee. Caffeine. I couldn’t help myself, I chugged the rest of the cup down, the room-temperature liquid going down surprisingly smooth.

“What do you think?” Ava asked. “Should we deal with that diaper?”

“You know…I don’t think it’s that bad,” I shrugged. Really, I just wanted to put off another diaper change for as long as possible. I needed more opportunities to remind her of how mature I could be. Her wiping my ass wasn’t going to be one of them.

“If you say so,” she said.

We migrated back out to the den, taking seats on the couch to turn the TV on again. Nothing in particular–we seemed to take turns flipping through various channels and platforms mindlessly as we talked.

“So when Mommy and Ms. Beaufort started their company, did they talk to you about joining?”

She nodded.

“You just…didn’t want it?”

“It was nice of them to ask,” she said. “But it would’ve been the same thing as the old company, you know? Leaders and followers. The followers would wear diapers.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’m surprised you’re not working there,” she said.

“Mommy and I talked about it. I could have if I wanted to. But…”

“...but you wanted to just live the full-time baby lifestyle?”

I shrugged. “So it seems. But I’ve been over to the office a few times. Mommy used to take me there to show me off.”

Ava giggled. “You must’ve loved that.”

“It wasn’t the worst.”

She was right–I had loved it. There was nothing to hide there. Nobody to hide from. Everyone knew exactly who I was and what I was all about. I’d be paraded around the office, giving everyone time to make their little jokes, squeeze my cheeks, and playfully pat my thick bottom. Ms. Beaufort, Lyndie, Ms. Roberts, Amber. They loved it. I suspected Risa liked it too–if only because it took some of the attention off of her for a while.

“You don’t go any more?”

“Not as much,” I shrugged. I had become a real homebody as of late. The outside was an overwhelming place for a big baby who might fill his pants at any moment.

“You know what I miss?” she asked, the sound of someone seamlessly changing the subject.

“Huh?”

“That pizza place over by your old apartment. Toretti’s?”

I laughed. I thought about that place from time to time. Not for the pizza–but the staff. Pizza Girl. It had been a while. Did she still work there? Did she ever think about me–the guy who wore diapers?

“I liked that place,” I said.

“All the pizza places by Lyndie and I’s apartment suck. I want that pizza again.”

“Yeah? We should, uh, go sometime.”

She looked at me, smirking and with a curious eyebrow raised. “Really?”

“M-maybe I should get out once in a while. And that’d be fun, right? You and me going to get pizza?”

“Almost sounds like a date,” she giggled.

“N-no, I mean…” Maybe I shouldn’t have been so quick to shut her down. “We should go sometime.”

“Will Mommy let you?”

“I…think?”

“Well I’d like that,” she said. “Let me know when you want to do that. And bring extra diapers, of course.”

I loved coffee. But coffee didn’t love me back. Drinking that cup had been a bad idea–especially since it had been a while since I had any.

Nervously, I laughed it off. “I’ll be fine!”

But in the next moment, a deluge of noisy sputtering waste was filling my diaper and all I could do was blush and stare at the floor.

I repeated, mostly to myself: “I…I’ll be fine…”