Chapter Thirty-One:

Abe wouldn't let me get close during the event, but by the time twenty spankings had landed on Leona’s frilly bottom, after Betsy had made my girlfriend stand up in sobs and curtsy and say sorry to Becky, after she left her alone with a smug smile, I was on her like white on rice. I lifted her up onto the picnic table and cuddled her close and tight. How dare she spank my baby...

"I wanna go home," I muttered to Jackie in a tone I was growing all too familiar with. A childish resonance, with a hint of embarrassment. Regression. I felt small and vulnerable and pathetic. I just... I just wanted Jackie to hold me. So that's what she did.

Until Simon - Becky's stupid friend from the stupid Bed Bath & Beyond store - came up with a pacifier and pushed it between my lips. I looked up at him with a mixture of hopelessness and frustration.

"Simon," I chided at him, more viciously than I thought I probably should have, "would you go up to someone’s baby in public and push something in their mouth?" I took the binky from Leona’s lips, sucked it like a parent, and offered it back to her - but with the onus on allowing her to take it. When had I got so protective?

But Betsy took no time in coming over to shoot me down.

"Well, Jackie, don't worry - she's my baby, and I don't mind Simon helping. Now I think it's time for Baby Luvs to go play. You can leave her to me, alright?"

I looked up at Betsy and then at Jackie, sucking softly on the newly offered pacifier. It seemed like they were at war. War over me? Oh...

But a new voice snapped me out of my introspection. A woman in dark eyeliner had leaned down in front of me, with a wide grin.

"You look gorgeous today!"

"Um... fank you," I muttered around the pacifier. She looked familiar... hadn't I met her somewhere before?

"I found the site and I saw that there was a livestream today and I just had to come see you, and your manager, I guess? He wanted to charge me but I was like no way just let me come for free I'll even be on camera and then he was like sure so here I am and you are just freaking ADORABLE."

Alright, but who the heck was this woman? I narrowed my eyes at her, trying to figure her out; she looked a little familiar but nothing came to mind. I sighed and shrugged, letting out a deep breath; cameras weren't paying any attention to me - I didn't matter. I was just a photographer. And I think that... that hurt. Because I wanted to be more. I was better than Betsy...

The girl from the bathroom at the mall! That's who she was! Ugh, this couldn't get any more humiliating. But the next minute, she took my hand and pulled me to my wobbly feet. I fell into her and she supported my weight.

"My, my. You still have problems walking? I suppose that's how babies are sometimes..."

It seemed like she was talking more to herself sometimes. It felt very... diminishing.

"Let's go to the playground - I'll push you on the swings!"

I looked back at Jackie and Betsy for help, but neither of them stepped in to save me.

Push her on the swing?! Wait! Grr. I stopped myself, but my hands were balled up at my sides as she took my girlfriend off across the park to the swings and the camera crew followed. I guess I had a job to do, too, huh? I futzed with my camera for a few moments before following.

When the woman had gotten to the swings with Baby Luvs, she introduced herself. "I'm Aims, and you're adorable, Baby Luvs. The cutest baby I've ever seen. Do you wanna see if you can touch the sky? I bet I can push you so high that you can!"

"I dun like heights," I confessed quietly to Aims, but she either couldn't understand me around the pacifier or she didn't care. After plopping me down in the swing, she started to push me and I realized very quickly that my feet couldn't touch the ground. I sucked harder on the pacifier and clung to the chains of the swing, looking nervously at Jackie as she snapped a photo.

I took a few photos, and I used the lens to watch Leona on the swing. Look. Click. Look. Click. I realized something, though: I realized that she wasn't having fun. She wasn't enjoying herself. Her knuckles were white. Her expression uncertain. She was sucking on her pacifier and her eyes look in a different direction in each photo, until eventually they were closed.

"Hey let's check out the slide?" I suggested. "Maybe you could help her up the fort to the slide?" What was her name? I didn't catch it. But she stopped pushing and thought for a moment, before nodding.

"Alright camera chick, we can do that. C'mon Baby Luvs."

When the swing stopped, my knees were shaky. I fumbled to catch my balance, but Jackie and Aims were quick to hold me by the hands, like a child learning to walk. I couldn't look up at either of them. Aims pushed me too high, and I... I shuffled shamefully away from the swings as I felt the thick, warm cloth between my legs, knowing full well I couldn't help wetting myself in fear. Every moment in this documentary, I felt like I was slipping. And now, my adulthood was finally out of reach...

"Let's get you up the fort, okay?" The goth girl grinned, but Leona cuddled close into me the moment she tried to pull her away. Which only made Aims pull harder.

"Hey Luvlee," Like, Luvs and Leona, I continued. "What's the matter, are you scared? Do you want me to come up? Or do you want me to stand at the bottom and catch you?" Life had gotten so weird. I was willingly a part of this. I was willingly on video, featuring this girl I'd fallen utterly in love with, that I was treating like an actual child right now.

I looked up at Jackie and then up at the slide nervously. The slide wasn't high. The slide was for children. It was hardly big at all. But the fear of the swing kept a constant hold on me.

"At the bottom, pwease," I muttered around the pacifier, sucking it for comfort. No matter where I searched for my maturity, I couldn't find it. Ugh, snap out of it Leona!

Aims took her up the stairs, holding both of her hands and walking behind her, guiding each step in the most childish way possible. And when she got to the top of the stairs, when my Leona sat at the top of the very small slide, her eyes were wide as saucers, like this was a mountain and she was facing down it. I stood at the bottom and waved at her, taking a picture, before getting focused.

"You can do it, Baby Luvs, you can do it my little Luvlee. Don't worry, Mommy will catch you." Mommy. I said it on camera. Fuck. Whatever, who cares? Leona came first. And when she came down the slide, I was going to catch her. She was mine.

The rush of air was more exciting than I thought. The feeling of free falling as I slid down the slide. But I'd been down a hundred slides a hundred times and they never felt anything like that. This documentary was getting to me. It was messing with my head. But at the bottom, Jackie was there. She caught me in her arms and pulled me into a hug. She was warm and safe and I was so happy she had been there. It was only for a moment... just one, stupid moment. But that one moment could change everything. Because, for that moment, I wondered if maybe I really wanted this. If maybe... I was destined to be her little girl.