Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 106

“You can stay up late tonight if you want to. You got enough sleep,” Becky said as she changed Jamie’s dirty pants again. It was after dinner, and the four of them had returned to their cabin and changed into warmer clothes.

“What are we gonna do?”

“We’re going to go up to the lodge and join the big campfire.”

“That sounds fun,” Jamie said excitedly. He was especially looking forward to that part. It had been years since he’d sat around a campfire, all the way back when he was a camp counselor while he was in college. Once he was in a clean diaper, Becky dressed him in the same sleeper he’d worn all day, figuring it would smell too smoky to sleep in, so why put him in something clean, but first she added socks to his feet and put a T-shirt on him. “I’ll be out in a minute. Why don’t you go find the girls?”

Jamie found Amanda and Mel sitting on the couch with a couple of blankets and drinking wine coolers. “We should have brought real liquor,” Mel said.

“This is real liquor,” Amanda riposted.

“Yeah, if you’re fifteen.”

Jamie looked between them and decided he wanted Mel. He walked over, put his arms up, and she hefted him onto her lap. It was a moment of clarity, realizing how spoiled he was becoming, just putting his arms up and expecting uppies without even asking. Naturally, none of the bigs in his life saw anything unusual about it, and Jamie was happy to be that kind of spoiled.

“I hear you go by ‘Jamie Bear’ now,” Mel said.

“That’s my new nickname for him,” Amanda said. “Mom calls him Baby Bear.”

“How did you get that nickname?” Jamie blushed and looked at Amanda, who nodded to urge him to tell the story himself. He hesitated.

“If you don’t, I will,” she warned.

Jamie turned his head so he wasn’t looking directly at Mel. “I, uh, was bored one morning and, ahem, put a diaper on my bear, and then Amanda called me 'Jamie Bear' and my teddy 'Baby Bear.'”

“Dawww,” Mel gushed, hugging Jamie back and forth. “I can’t believe you’re real sometimes. I love that name.” She loosened her grip, and they looked at each other. Quick as a flash, Mel pinched his nose and pulled her hand away. “Uh O! I got your nose!”

“Give it back,” Jamie demanded. She held her hand out of his reach.

“No! I wanna keep it.”

“Please!”

“No.”

“C’mon,” he whined. Amanda smiled and looked on in admiration, maybe a bit of jealousy, at the ease with which Mel could get Jamie to play along with these little games.

“No! I’m gonna feed it to the fishes tomorrow.”

“Nooo!”

“What’s going on out here,” Becky asked when she came out of her bedroom.

“Mel stole my nose!”

“Mel,” Rebecca scolded, “You give him back his nose.”

“Okay,” she said glumly and screwed it back on to his face. Jamie checked to make sure it was secure when she took her hand away. Satisfied, he put his head on her chest and thanked her.

“Are we ready,” Becky asked. Amanda sat up and picked the blankets up off the couch. Mel sat up with Jamie still clinging to her. Becky dashed back into the nursery and came back with Jamie’s pacifier. “Here ya go, Baby Bear.” Jamie opened his mouth, put his lips around the paci, and then put his head back on Mel’s shoulder. They left through their back porch and followed the sidewalk past another dozen cabins to the lodge.

It was more impressive from the back, a four-story grand hotel on a hill looking over the lake, continuous balcony lined with Adirondack chairs and charmingly lit with glowing yellow lights on each floor. The lawn sloped away from the building until it leveled out around a large firepit on a stone patio circled by chairs and an outdoor bar. The moon was full, and away from the city’s lights Jamie got his best look yet at the night sky of his new home. He didn’t know anything about astronomy, and didn’t really care to, but he still wondered what he was seeing, where he was in the vast universe that was his.

Amanda took a double-wide chair so she and Mel could share a blanket and pulled it close to another for Becky. Mel gave Jamie to his mom and went to the bar, returning with three cups of mulled wine steaming into the dark just above their rims.

Becky sat down in her chair with Jamie in her lap, put her cup on the arm, and spread one of the blankets over the two of them. He relaxed against her, and in a few minutes a trio of musicians walked down from the lodge, one with a guitar, one with a fiddle, and one with a harmonica. The last took turns singing folk songs with the guitarist.

While they sat, other families came, some with children and others with littles. The bigs joined in the singing sometimes, and Jamie tried to pick up some of the words so he could sing a little, too.

As the set was wrapping up and the moon reached the top of the sky, Jamie turned over and signaled he was hungry by nuzzling his head into Becky’s chest. Thinking she would go back to the cabin now that the session as breaking up, she instead unbuttoned her blouse and lifted her bra, then pulled the blanket over Jamie’s head. Deciding he didn’t care if she didn’t, he nursed from her and remembered nothing until morning.