Not Okay, Cupid

Chapter 1
Whole Story

Chapter Description: Whole Story

The day after Valentine’s day. The weather was still chilly.  Not cold, but just chilly.  “Brisk” might have been a better word for it. Chilly enough that short sleeved t-shirts might seem underdressed, but warm enough where sweaters were being eschewed, mittens were out of the question, and  people were going out and about in the park despite the occasional blustery wind.  In other words, an average Floridian “winter”.

“You don’t understand,” Aaron insisted.  “I missed our date for a very important reason. I met Cupid! The real Cupid!”

His girlfriend said nothing.  The godling had said that would happen. “Don’t worry,” Cupid had told him.  “I got your back. Lots of guys fuck up this day.  It’s what I’m here for.”  He’d handed Aaron a candy heart, the pink dry little edible chalk that no one ACTUALLY liked to eat for Valentine’s day.

“What am I supposed to do with this?” Aaron had asked.

The slim baby faced god winked at him. “Just pop it into your mouth and start talking to her.  Everything else will take care of itself.”

“Will it keep her from dumping me?” 

“Better,” he’d promised.  “She won’t be able to keep her hands off you.”  It was weird.  Aaron had always thought that the god normally depicted as a flying baby would look more like...well...a baby.   This guy was young looking, but other than that, he seemed to be about Aaron’s age.

Yet somehow, as sure as Aaron had been dialing his girlfriend to apologize for the fiftieth time, he knew that this was no ordinary stranger.   The fact that time had stopped for the entirety of their conversation had helped...a lot.

“Yeah?”  Aaron asked.  He was in the presence of a love god.  A literal love god. 

“You’re dick will be getting wet every day for years!” Cupid promised.

“Thanks!”  Aaron said.  

“Oh,” the suspiciously adult god said. “And I prefer Eros, by the way.  Make sure to call me Eros when you tell her this story.”

The light red hoodie from yesterday kept Aaron plenty warm.  He’d refused to change his clothes from last night. In truth, he was terrified that if he went to sleep he might wake up and this would all be just a dream.  Then not only would his girlfriend be rightfully justified in being super pissed at him; but he’d be a complete and total jackass who probably just got high or something.

His girlfriend dressed in a pink long sleeved blouse and blue jeans. It was a wonder she hadn’t dumped him for missing their date.  Who the fuck missed Valentine’s Day?    She very well could just be waiting for him to shut up long enough to break up with him.  But Eros promised that if he just explained it to her, everything would be fine.    Who was Aaron to argue with a god? 

“What do you think about that?” Aaron asked, after having told his girlfriend the whole tale.  (Okay not the whole tale.  He might have left out some of the promises) “Crazy right?  But yup.  I met Cupid.  On Valentine’s Day.”  He pouted his lip out.  “Eros, technically…” he corrected himself, “but I like Cupid, better. So I’mma call him Cupid.”  He popped the candy heart into his mouth and bit down.

Magic managed.  Forgiveness and sexy times in...3...2...1...swallow.

Yet, his girlfriend didn’t respond.  He thought he’d at least get a giggle or a guffaw.  Maybe a slap to the face for lying or something.  Aaron didn’t blame her for not believing him.  He wouldn’t have believed it himself if he hadn’t lived it. 

“Babe?”  Nothing.  She wasn’t even blinking.  Not breathing, either.  But she wasn’t suffocating.  No one was.  Just like yesterday, the breeze didn’t blow, and only the only movement came from his awkward shifting.  Likewise, the only sound came from a subtle crinkling and rustling from his pants every time he moved.

“Oh shit!” Aaron said to himself.  “God powers must be kicking in or something.”  Weird though.  Cupid hadn’t mentioned about time stopping again.  How was she supposed to forgive him if she was frozen and zonked out?  He did a full walk around her, hearing his footsteps and crinkling, but nothing else.

Crinkle?  Rustle?  In his pants?  Never mind that.  Something was wrong with her. “Babe?”  He asked again, and waved his hand in front of her face.  “What’s wrong?  Can you hear me?  Baby? Hon? Sweetie?  Mommy…?”

A burst of liquid heat erupted from below his beltline.  Hot and pooling all around his privates. It had been some time since something like this had happened to him, but he recognized the sensation easily enough.   Some things people never forgot.   “I’m peeing,” the young man gasped.  “I’m peeing my pants…”  For some reason this was harder for Aaron to absorb than the idea that the supernatural existed.

Speaking of ‘absorb’, no puddle of urine formed at the man-boy’s feet.  No dark spot along his zipper or shame dripping down his thighs.  The warm wetness just splashed up against him, and puddled around his taint before not quite disappearing.  His underwear sagged and swelled, but it did not drip or fall off. To an outside viewer the reason might be obvious, but Aaron’s panicking mind refused to connect the dots.

His grey matter had more pressing concerns. Fidgeting fingers fumbled for a zipper.  Better to piss in the open air than in one’s pants.  (What would it hurt if time was stopped?)  The zipper to his jeans was gone. So were the souls of his shoes.  So were his socks.

The entire lower half of his wardrobe had melted like a wax candle into one garment. His top half was getting in on the act a second later; tucking itself in and then blending in seamlessly. The red of the hoodie and the blue of the jeans mixed and swirled around until Aaron was covered from head to toe in an infantile purple. 

The hoodie portion drew itself up and pulled taut around Aaron’s head.  Reaching up, Aaron tried to yank the hood back down, but it was stuck.  Trying for the back of his head only revealed that the top of his hoodie had sprouted round little stuffy ears.  He must’ve looked like a teddy bear; or a child dressed as one.  To finish the outfit, a pacifier popped out of thin air and attached itself to what used to be Aaron’s collar.

Itching, like a thousand fire ants biting him at once, overwhelmed Aaron. What was happening?  Was he dying? Going insane?  Aaron fell to his knees clawing and scratching at the now soft and pajama-like material. He rolled on the ground like a dog, internally begging for the itching to subside.  Finally, it did, and when he brought his hands to his face, he felt smooth.  Baby smooth.  Not a single trace of stubble even though he hadn’t shaved in over a day.

When time started back up, Aaron was crawling on the sidewalk, and the majority of his body encased in a macro version of a footed sleeper: The kind of thing people wore in in private; or the kind of things babies were dressed in for public on particularly chilly (but not cold) days.

“Aaron?” his girlfriend asked him.  “What are you doing down there, baby?”

“Mommy!” he shrieked.  He tried to stand up, but could only push himself up to his knees.  “This isn’t what it looks like!  I don’t even know what it looks like.” Begging as he was, he looked like a toddler asking for uppies.

His words fell on mistranslating ears.  “Awww, come here sweetie.  Come to Mommy.” 

“Wait!” Aaron yelped. “How are you picking me up?  Why am I calling you Mom-?” The man-child let out an “eek”, as Mommy started to squeeze his crotch.  He should have gotten hard.  He should have flinched at just how tight her grip was.  But he was too confused to be aroused, and there was some kind of barrier, some thick material giving more cushion than normal, so he didn’t feel her probing as intensely.

“Uh oh,” she said.  “Someone had an accident!”  She giggled and started walking.  “Though at your age, I guess it doesn’t really count as an accident, does it?” 

“Mommy?  Where are you going?!  Where are we going!”

“Uh-huh.”  She said in that way that adults used to encourage a baby to babble on, even if they couldn’t understand them.  She couldn’t understand him!  His own Mommy...girlfriend...couldn’t tell what he was saying.  “You don’t say?”

He really hadn’t.  “Mommy!  It’s magic! I’m not a baby! This wasn’t supposed to happen!  You were supposed to forgive me and fall in love with me.  Not-!”

Aaron cut himself off when he saw where she was taking him.  He’d never been in the women’s public restroom before, and his eyes wouldn’t focus on the writing long enough to read the letters, but she recognized the human outline with the skirt.   “I don’t have to go potty,” he pleaded.  That much was true, and Mommy didn’t take him to the potty.

Across from a row of sinks, was a thick plastic table mounted on the wall.  Miraculously steadying Aaron with one arm on her hip, she reached and pulled down the shelf.  “I can’t read…” Aaron said aloud, his voice echoing off the empty bathroom walls.  It wasn’t just a matter of his eyes focusing.  There was a sign right next to the fold out, and even though he recognized that those were, in fact, letters on the sign, he couldn’t read what they said.

“I can’t read!”
 

The symbol on the plaque next to it was of two vaguely humanoid shapes.  One smaller than the other.  The small one on its back and the big one by the smaller one’s legs.  Also, the small one had something white wrapped around its waist.  The only person who wouldn’t know what the symbol meant would be the person young enough to be depicted laying down on the mounted shelf.

Aaron’s back went onto the plastic tray of the baby changing station.  It didn’t collapse under his weight as it should have.  Rather it seemed to subtly grow to accommodate his full grown form.  Reality had stopped according to Cupid’s whims the other day.  Today it was going out of its way to literally pamper the boy.

His once-girlfriend pulled a strap over his chest. Aaron’s hands shot down to the buckle, but the locking mechanism might as well have been frozen in place, just like the snaps running along his inseam.  “CUPID!”  he called out. “EROS!  THIS WASN’T PART OF THE DEAL!”  The restroom became glassy with Aaron’s tears.  “THIS ISN’T WHAT YOU PROMISED ME!”

Aaron wanted up.  He wanted out of this device, this location, this scenario. He wanted his adulthood back. He wanted Mommy to hold him and tell him it was going to be okay.  Holy crap (a poor choice of words).   Whatever hocus pocus was making him look like a baby to others was starting to affect his brain, too, and only now was he realizing it.

  “My baby’s got a soggy bum-bum, doesn’t he?” Mommy cooed.  “Yes he does!”  Electric jolts of panic came out as laughter while she tickled him beneath his arms.  “Ooooh, does Aaron not like the tickles?  Mommy’s just tryin’ to help him get all the pee-pee’s out.”

“Mommy! Stop!”  Aaron sucked in his breath.  Why had he called her Mommy? Why was he still calling her Mommy? Why couldn’t he think of her as anything BUT Mommy?!

Mommy didn’t stop.  As far as Aaron knew, she couldn’t understand him.  Even if she could, the love god’s promise was true:  She couldn’t keep her hands off him!

She couldn’t keep her hands from unsnapping the buttons along the inseam of his footed sleeper.  She couldn’t stop unthreading his bare, now hairless, legs from the built in socks, her fingers like tickling spiders as she shuffled the rest of the sleeper up his hips, exposing a bulging sopping wet diaper.

Powerless to stop her, Aaron craned his neck up and looked past his chest to see how far he’d gotten into this mess.

A diaper!  He was really wearing a giant diaper!  But it wasn’t an adult diaper or a Depends or whatever old people wore when they couldn’t hold it in.  It was a REAL diaper. A DIAPER diaper! A BABY diaper!  It was a BIG baby diaper, but it was a diaper nonetheless.

He racked his brain.  What brand was he wearing?  Huggies?  No. Huggies wasn’t covered with purple monkey decorations.  Which diaper was the purple monkey one? He’d seen commercials for it. Mommy eventually answered his question for him. 

“Live and learn,” she said, taking a fresh one out of her diaper bag, “and then get Luvs.”

Truer words were never spoken.  If Aaron made it through this alive, he’d consider himself learnt.  Yesterday, he’d come across Cupid.  Today he was in a soggy diaper and it was a Luvs of all things.   Irony had left the building and now Aaron was in cruel punishment territory.  If he made it out of this, he’d learn to not take candy from strangers.

How long was he gonna be stuck in Luvs?

Not long, it turned out (not that pair anyhow).  Mommy tore open the diaper with two flicks of her wrist and peeled the sopping wet padding back.  “Mommy!”  Aaron yelped.  The scent of ammonia invaded his nostrils, as his penis glistened in the light.  He had been told that he’d get his wick wet.  He just didn’t think he’d be the one wetting it.  No pubic hair, either...

“Shhh,” Mommy hushed him.  “I know, I know.”  She really didn’t.  No clue.  No one did.  No one except Cupid.  The cold wipes dragged across his crotch were gentle enough, but they were so cold that any pleasure Aaron might have derived-however perverse- was canceled out by the temperature.  Hard to gain pleasure when every change was pretty much a localized cold shower.

Mommy crossed his ankles over each other and lifted his legs up for him, not even asking for his help.  His whole body might as well have been filled with cotton to Mommy; slightly cumbersome but not at all heavy. 

His backside got the same treatment as the front.  Just as refreshing.  Just as romantic, (as in not at all).

The ruined diaper that used to be his underwear (that was something he hadn’t thought of until now) went into the garbage with such a loud “thunk”, that Aaron was positive that Mommy would realize how heavy it was and therefore couldn’t have been a baby’s diaper and obviously he wasn’t a baby.

He was barely half-right.  “Wow,” Mommy said.  “You really filled that one up, didn’t ya?”  She wasted no time in slipping its replacement beneath him.  “I’m impressed it didn’t leak!”  She took no powder to his privates, but the sickening smell of baby powder took the place of warm piss anyways.  No magic needed. Luvs just had a perfumed core.

The fight had left Aaron as Mommy pulled the new diaper up and taped it on over him.  He hadn’t quite given in to despair.  It’s just that diapered was better to him than being naked from the waist down.  He stopped squirming and kicking, however feebly, just so Mommy could re-thread his legs into the bottom half of the sleeper and button it back up.

The sleeper felt roomier after it was buttoned up. Was he shrinking too?  No.  The new diaper just hadn’t swollen up yet.

Keyword: Yet.

Aaron’s tantrum resumed the second he was back on Mommy’s hip.  “Mommy!” He cried out.  “Listen to me!  This is a mistake!  I’m not a baby!  I’m a big boy!  Cupid did this!  I’m your boyfriend! Your BIG boyfriend!”  Damnit!  Even if she could understand his speech, the words weren’t coming out right.

Mommy walked them away from the changing table, but instead of going back out to the park, she took a sharp right turn before exiting the bathroom.  Aaron had thought it was a broom closet, but he caught a glimpse of the sign.on the open door just before Mommy closed it.  Like most bathroom signs, it was genderless and facless; just bulbous sillhouettes of roughly human people.  A mother holding a baby, obviously

What was this?  He’d never seen anything like it before in any men’s room.

It was just a small room, not much bigger than a bathroom stall.  There were no toilets though.  Was this another kind of diaper change station?  No. It couldn’t be.  Just a small wicker couch and a locked door.

Bunched up and cradled in Mommy’s arms, Aaron was carried over to the couch and laid down in Mommy’s lap. “Still fussy after that diaper change? Mommy knows what’s really bothering you.”

“I really doubt that.”  Aaron quipped.  He found himself repositioned so that he was nowhere near eye level with his girlfriend. Then she started to unbutton her blouse.“No…” Yes. 

Something had changed about her clothing. In its own way, her underwear had shifted too.  But only her underwear.  She now had cups that unfastened in the front.  A nursing bra.

“No, no.”  Yes, yes. 

“Baby Aaron is fussy cuz he needs Mommy’s milk.”

“No!”

His barking protest only made the milk drip out of her nipple.  It was over then.  With a titan’s strength, Mommy shoved his head towards her teat.  His mouth opened to scream, but no sound came.  He just latched on.  Latched on and enjoyed it.

Trapped inside his own body, Aaron suckled and exalted as Mommy’s milk poured into his mouth.  The creamy stuff slid down his throat and he gulped with gusto.  “Someone’s a hungry boy,” Mommy cooed.  “That’s right.  Eat it all up.  That way you can grow up big and strong.”  A lot to unpack in that sentence, considering that if reality had been working properly, Aaron would have had a good hundred pounds on Mommy.

This was so wrong.  He’d wanted to do so many things to this girl- yes, including suck on her titties- but that was more foreplay than anything else.  Drinking out of them had never been in the game plan. Several minutes in, just as he was starting to feel a bit stated, Aaron realized this was wrong on a physical level, as well.

His tongue told him this was delicious; the greatest thing he’d ever tasted or would taste.  In the same way that he could no longer keep his pants clean to save his life, it made sense.  Part of his brain had been switched into infant mode.  But his throat and stomach were still a grown-man’s. But he should not be able to nurse this much out of Mommy.  Short of a pocket dimension linked directly to her nipple, Mommy shouldn’t be able to produce this amount of milk in one sitting.

Aaron’s head was tugged away and he was switched over to the other breast.  He got in one gasp before his body took over again and resumed nursing.  No more thought.  Too much sensory input.  Too much warmth.  Too much primal pleasure.  He could feel Mommy’s heartbeat.  He could feel and hear her humming as she gently rocked him there in the feeding stall.

Time to check out.  Time to give in for a little bit.  Time to just fill up.

The would-be boyfriend came to draped over his Mommy’s shoulder, and her hand thundering on his back.   More reality bending. She’d carted him around and wasn’t even breathing hard.  He should be crushing her.  But as far as the universe was concerned, he was her baby boy now.

“Uuuuurp!”  The burps proved it.  Mommy paced around the room and jostled him, but it was no struggle at all on her part.  Functionally, he was weightless.  Just a bit of gentle prodding to get the gas out of his tummy  To his dismay, more than just gas was coming out.

Had his body been able to fully cooperate, Aaron would have thrashed; kicked and screamed.  Perhaps even hit Mommy upside the head so that she’d drop him.  That way, he could rush to a toilet in time and stop the inevitable from happening. Had his body been allowed to cooperate, he wouldn’t need the diaper wrapped around his hips at all.

Unlike the first time, Aaron was acutely aware of what was happening.  There was no surprise this time.  Disturbingly identical to the first time, there was absolutely nothing he could do to stop himself.   His body did the work. Aaron just had to live with it and let gravity do the rest.

He let out a low breathy moan. “Noooooo….” Mommy just shushed him and kept rubbing his back.  This wasn’t part of the deal.

Carried outside the restroom, Aaron was gently plopped back down into the seat of a stroller that hadn’t been there before and buckled in.  Speaking of “plop”, that was the word that best described the situation in his pants as something vile was spread around just beneath his sleeper.

Plop.

“Noooo...I need a change again.” There was something Aaron never thought he’d never have to say that out loud.  Only the assumption that his vomiting up the breastmilk would simply be written off as spit-up kept the contents of Aaron’s stomach where they were.

Birds stopped tweeting.  New lovers locked lips for an uncomfortable amount of time. Park joggers and dogs catching frisbees hung mid leap.  The breeze stopped as if someone had hit a fan’s switch, and neither the sun, nor the clouds moved an inch.  For some reason, however, none of that helped the smell coming from Aaron’s diaper.

Time was frozen...

“Looks like you're getting settled in,” a familiar voice said.

Aaron whipped his head around. “Cupid!” The next sounds out of Aaron’s mouth could have been either a child’s temper tantrum or a grown man’s bellowing rage.  Hard to tell given the context.

The god smirked.  “It’s Eros, actually.  You look more like cupid. What with the diaper.”  He snickered.  “Gosh it feels good to say that. I love it when people actually eat the candy instead of tossing it away.”   There was something different about the man.  He no longer looked so clean cut. His voice seemed a little deeper, and there was a bristly coat of facial hair on his cheeks and chin. Even in Florida, the weather was still too chilly to wear short sleeves, but Aaron would have placed good money on the man having thicker and darker body hair.  In other words, this godling now had everything Aaron lacked.

All that realization accomplished was another round of wordless screaming and Aaron rattling the bonds of his stroller.  All the anger and rage was causing his cheeks to flush and his limbs to tremble.  It was almost enough for him to forget the stench and texture in his underpants.  

Almost.

“Oh come off it,” the divine con-man said. “Even if time wasn’t stopped. You wouldn’t be able to get out of that stroller.  Stronger dudes than you have tried.”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Aaron asked.

“Tell you what? That my magic would turn you into a giant baby?  That you’d lose your potty training and wouldn’t even be able to remember your Mommy’s name?”  He cocked an eyebrow.  “Would you have taken the bait if I had?”

Aaron made no reply.  He knew the answer.  So did Eros.  He decided to ask another question, instead. “Why turn anybody into a baby?”

“There’s more than one kind of love, y’know.” He winked.  “Trust me, there was no way you were getting into her pants after forgetting Valentine’s day.  At least now she can get into yours.” 

Aaron sunk back into the stroller.  It was the only way that he could get the straps to have even a bit of slack.  “Yeah...thanks for rubbing it in.”

Eros bent over and tweaked Aaron’s nose.  “I’m not here to rub it in,” he said.  “I’m here to help.  You’re the only one I tricked into eating the candy this year. The least I could do was check in and maybe offer some perspective.”

The baby man took the pacifier dangling off his sleeper and put it in his mouth.  “Heph haw?”  Neither the pacifier, nor his crossing his arms in a pout made him look terribly threatening.  He couldn’t help it.  His body and emotions were at-best half under his control.  The urge to fuss and cry out for Mommy was starting to well up and if he didn’t find a way to self-soothe, he’d start doing it.

“Just that it’s not all bad,” he said. “Free food, room, and rent.  Everybody thinks you’re cute.  More and more babysitters are sexy co-eds these days.”  He looked to Mommy; still frozen in time and checking to make sure her blouse was properly rebuttoned.  “Though your Mommy’s not bad either.  Good for you. Dude. Glad I could help salvage the relationship.”

“I’h in a fugging diaphuh,” Aaron mumbled behind the paci.  “I’h huh fugging baby.”

The smile was not unkind, maybe even kind of sympathetic.   “So what?  In the long run that’s a bonus.  You can lie around and burp and fart and puke; y’know, the same stuff you used to do.  Only now, everybody will still think you’re cute for doing it.”  Easy for the off-brand cupid to say. There was an air of condescension to his voice. Eros was the doctor giving a cancer diagnosis but softening the blow with how much weight people lost in chemotherapy.

“Buh diaphus…!”

“Just think of it as sensory input.  Sometimes it’s a cool and dry and fresh feeling.  Other times it’s wet and warm...maybe a little sticky.  All are nice feelings.  Your downstairs doesn’t really care where the feelings are coming from.  Hell, it looks like your upstairs doesn’t care so much, either.”   That made Aaron spit the pacifier back out.  “It’s not like you gotta clean it up yourself, anyway. And the cartoons might suck, but they’re sneaking all sorts of references for the parents these days, so it’s not like you can’t get something out of them.” 

Aaron couldn’t believe what he was hearing.  He felt he was losing his mind and had lost all autonomy, and here this jackass was just breaking his utter degradation into a list of pros and cons; of pitfalls and compromises.  Some dark corner of his brain supposed Eros had had plenty of time to compartmentalize and think about things this way.

“My brain is turning to mush.”  Aaron sniffed.  “I don’t even know my Mommy’s real name.”

The former baby god twerked his mouth to the side.“Yeah...that part stinks.”  His nose twitched.  Something else stank, too.  He finally got a decent whiff of Aaron’s predicament. “I gotcha covered.”

Aaron felt a whoosh of wind as the breeze picked up. The birds were flapping and chirping once more. Time was moving again.  “Excuse me miss,” Eros said.  “I don’t mean to embarrass you, but I think you’re buttoned up a little funny.”

Mommy looked down at her blouse and blushed.  “Ooops!  Thank you for telling me.  How did I miss that one?”  The stroller started to whirl around back towards the public restroom.  Back to the nursing station. 

“No worries. It happens.”  Eros replied.  “And uh...if you don’t mind me saying, I think you’re little tyke might need some help, too. I might’ve just caught a whiff of something if you know what I mean.”

Aaron flushed beat red as Mommy lifted him out of the stroller and patted him down like a police officer searching for a gun.  The guy who’d roped him into this just winked.  “Oh, you’re right,” she said.  Her voice got all cutesy high, again.  “And I just changed you, little man!”

“Did you change him first, and then feed him?”  the god said.  “Sometimes the input up top makes the bottom start to make room. You know?”

Mommy’s eyes lit up.  “Yeah,” she said. “I never thought of it that way, but that makes sense.  Are you a father?” 

A devilish smirk. “Something like that.  I’ve got a lot of experience with babies is all”  Aaron wished he’d accepted candy from a death god or something.. 

Aaron’s brain went all buzzy again as Mommy nuzzled him.  “Baby boy had to make room for Mommy’s milk.  Shoulda fed you first, changed you second.”

“Yeah,” Eros agreed.  “He’s too little to potty train at this stage anyways. Might as well save up on Luvs.”

Mommy  adjusted Aaron so she could (somehow) hold him and look at Eros at the same time.  “How did you know what kind of diaper he wore?”

It was the first time that Aaron had seen his counterpart blush.  “Lucky guess…Hey uh...what’s the little guy’s name?”

“Aaron,” Mommy said. 

“Is he your first?”

“My one and only.”  Gross pants notwithstanding, the love Aaron felt made his brain want to melt in the best way.

Eros stuffed his hands into his pockets.  “I’m sorry if I’m being forward, ma’am, but maybe after you change Aaron I could give you my phone number.  You could text me.  Maybe we discuss getting a sitter for him and I buy you a cup of coffee…?”

Mommy seemed to think for a moment.  “Offer to pay for the sitter, and you can buy me dinner.”

“Deal.  I’m Eros...I mean Errol by the way.”

“Sarah.”  Sarah.  Mommy’s name was Sarah.  “Now if you excuse me, I’ve got a little guy who needs me.”

As he was carried back into the changing area, Aaron sincerely hoped that Eros wouldn’t be there when he got put back into his stroller again; that this was just a roundabout way of getting him clean pants and a bit of lost knowledge.  He could live with thinking of his girlfriend as Mommy, but it’d be a cold day in hell before he called that rat bastard “Daddy”.

(The End.)