Chapter 15:

The day after the party was rather uneventful. I threw up in the toilet from too much alcohol, we ordered breakfast to our room, then checked out. We went back to Volleyball House where she measured me to be a mere 2’11” tall, which meant I lost the bet. I would have to cook for her that week.

After she playfully rubbed it in my face, we cuddled and whispered sweet nothings in one another’s ears for the rest of the night.

The next day, something came in the mail that I wasn’t expecting. The package was addressed to Jackie, but she made me open it in front of her. She even allowed me to use a pair of scissors.

I cut through the cardboard, removed the packing peanuts, and reached inside the box, only to find what looked like a stainless-steel thing with a lock on it.

“What is this?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? It’s a chastity device, dingus!” she laughed with glee.

“Um, what?” I was flabbergasted.

She condescendingly bent down in front of me to explain the situation like I was a child. She took the device out of my hands and showed me what she was going to do with it.

“I’m going to put this on your cock, and it’s going to stay on permanently. You only get to take it off when we have sex or when you’re taking a shower.”

“But, but why?”

“Because, you’re smaller than my leg now, sweetie. And I want to regulate how fast you shrink. You’ve already proven that you don’t always have the best self-control. Remember? You almost creamed yourself just by looking at me in my dress.”

“I know but, I’ll be better. Please don’t do this to me, this is gonna be torture,” I whined.

“Oh, stop being dramatic. It won’t be ‘torture’. It’ll be…slightly uncomfortable.”

She struggled to hold back a snicker after she said that. Obviously, I didn’t find this situation as funny as she did.

“I’m not sure I like that you’re getting pleasure out of this,” I said.

“Come on, it’s kinda funny. I’m in charge of your orgasms now. That’s pretty hilarious!” she said, still half-laughing.

“Can we please not do this?” I reiterated.

“Your goddess has already made her decision, Dessy. Are you going to go against your goddess?”

She raised her eyebrows, daring me to defy her. I was too chicken, though.

“No.”

She almost looked disappointed that I didn’t resist a little bit. Perhaps, she was looking for a flirty little confrontation.

So, I reversed my decision in the moment to give her what she wanted. “You know what, forget that! I’m not wearing it!”

I came to regret that.

She talon gripped my crotch, squeezing my balls into oblivion, and carried me with one hand all the way to our room.

“Mmm, you still have fight left in you, Dessy.”

“What are you doing?” I squeaked in terror.

“Punishing you,” she giggled.

I broke down. It was combination of the pain and fear of what she was going to do next.

“Please!” I screamed, “I’ll wear the chastity thing! Just please stop!”

“Hehe, it’s too late little guy. You disobeyed your goddess. Five spanks. I think that’s fair.”

I panicked, remembering back to when my sister spanked me. It hurt so bad. My ass was tender for two days after. And Jackie, from what I could tell, was way stronger than my sister.

“Please, please! Don’t spank me, I’ll cook for you two nights this week!”

No response. So, I upped the ante.

“Three nights!”

Nothing.

“Every night this week!”

That got a reaction. She put her hand up to her mouth, squealing with joy. She was getting off on the fact that she could make me do anything she wanted.

“Ok, are you sure?” she asked.

“Yes, yes! Just please don’t spank me. It hurt so bad when Amanda spanked me.”

A naughty smile danced across her face. My heart sank.

“What if your goddess wants to spank you though?”

I felt tears coming, but I suppressed them. I wanted to retain some semblance of strength in front of my girlfriend.

“Could we maybe not do five spanks?”

“Four,” she said.

“Three,” I said.

“Ok,” she put her hand up that wasn’t crushing my ball sack, “Three spanks, and you only have to cook for me one night this week. Just like we originally planned.”

“Ok, but can they be gentle?”

“Maybe,” she couldn’t stop grinning.

“What do you mean, ‘maybe’?”

She sat down on the bed and laid me over her bare legs. Before I knew it, my pants were flung to the other side of the room; I was naked from the waist down. With gleaming enthusiasm, she explained the little game we were going to play.

“I’m going to flip a coin, and you’ll call it. If you guess right, then I’ll spank you with tender love and care. If you guess wrong, I’m gonna make that little bootie of yours redder than a beet!”

“Oh god,” I exhaled nervously.

She flipped the coin and ordered me to call it midair.

“Uh, heads!” I shouted.

I had no way of knowing what the side the coin would land on because her hand was above me. She could’ve just lied and spanked me with all her might all three times if she wanted to.

“Heads,” she reported.

I was pleasantly surprised. She wasn’t going to lie.

WHACK!

I let out a tiny yelp. It stung a little, but just like she said, the slap was with tender love and care. She rubbed my ass with her hand, soothing the pain centers. As she massaged and kneaded my butt cheeks, I almost forgot that I still had two more spanks ahead of me. It didn’t take that long for her to remind me.

“Time to flip again, little guy.” Her hand came away from my ass and I heard the sound of the coin getting flipped in the air by her thumb.

I silently panicked. Do I change my guess to tails? Do I stick to heads?

“Heads!”

The coin landed in her hand, and she slapped it onto her wrist.

“Heads!” she exclaimed, “Good guess, honey!”

She wasted no time and spanked me once again. This spank was noticeably harsher. I gritted my teeth on impact and groaned. She immediately seized on my anguish and taunted me a bit.

“Oooh, did that hurt? That wasn’t even the hardest I could go.”

I decided to goad her on a bit. I only had one spank left, and I was prepared to take a really hard hit if I pissed her off.

“You’re such a bitch,” I mumbled.

She grabbed the back of my neck and swiftly flipped me onto my back so I could see her face. Everything about her suggested that she was furious. Her brows were furrowed, her eyes were squinted, her mouth was puckering with rage.

“What did you say?” she snarled.

“Um, nothing, goddess. Nothing at all. It was, um, stupid,” I babbled.

“What…did…you…say…to me?” She grabbed my shirt and lifted me by the collar, so I could look her in the eyes. My feet dangled several feet in the air; I was at her total mercy.

I closed my eyes. I was on the verge of tears, and I couldn’t bear to see her this furious with me. I was terrified. “I didn’t mean it, I’m sorry! Please don’t hurt me!”

When she said nothing, I winced, bracing myself for the worst. Then, with my eyes still shut, I could feel her shaking. I opened my right eye ever so slightly, and saw that Jackie was laughing.

“I’m not mad at you, little guy! It’s all just roleplay!”

“Roleplay?”

“Yeah, roleplay. Like it’s not real. We’re pretending.”

I couldn’t help but be a little confused. She never mentioned that we were ‘roleplaying’ until just now.

“Why didn’t you just tell me that?” I asked in earnest.

“Well, because, it would’ve taken away from the realism. It wouldn’t have been as intense.”

I sighed. “Jackie, you scared the shit out of me! Next time you want to roleplay, please let me know. And next time we’re gonna have a safe word.”

“Ok, ok!” she relented, “If you insist! But you do have one more spank left. Do you want to try your luck?”

I didn’t want to, but her eyes pierced into my heart and begged me to take another vicious slap to the ass. Her puppy dog eyes won the day.

She set me back down on her lap, ass up, face down. The flip came sooner than expected, and in seconds, I blurted out, “Tails!”

“Oooh, honey, I’m afraid you guessed wrong. It’s heads. Who would’ve guessed that our first president would be staring up at me 3 times in a row?”

I took a few deep breaths, trying to ready myself for what was coming. I squeezed Jackie’s thighs as hard as I could, digging in with my fingernails, hoping to god this wouldn’t be as bad I as thought it could be.

“Are you ready, Dessy? ‘Cause this is gonna hurt.”

“I think—owwwwww!”

She whacked me mid-sentence. I was totally caught off-guard. There was no count-down, no nothing. My whole ass stung like a bitch, because at this point, Jackie’s hand sprawled even larger than both of my butt cheeks. So, when she spanked me, my whole butt felt it at the same time. There was no spot that was safe from her hand’s wrath.

And my butt wasn’t the only part that felt it. In fact, the pain snaked upward throughout my whole body. The hot agony reverberated throughout all my limbs and metastasized in my mouth. She hit my ass so god damn hard that I felt it in my tongue and my teeth.

With absolutely no conception of the scale of anguish she just caused me, she asked, “Are you ok, Dessy.”

At this point, my face had collapsed into her thigh. More than a few deep breaths were needed to give me the ability to even respond.

After few seconds passed, she reiterated her concern for me. I knew if I didn’t respond soon, she would get worried. In lieu of speaking, I gave her a thumbs up, even though I was nowhere near ok.

“Ok, Dessy. Are you sure you’re ok?”

The pain in my mouth had subsided for the most part, and I was able to talk with minimal gravitas.

“Y-Yeah, J-Jackie. I-I-I’m ok-k.”

“You don’t look or sound ok. Your face is bright red. So is your ass,” she laughed momentarily before getting back to her point, “I think I might’ve hit you too hard.”

Thank god, she’s not entirely oblivious, I thought.

“Y-Yeah, maybe,” I concurred out loud.

“Yikes,” she said, “That was less than half as hard as I could hit ‘ya. You’re getting real weak, I think I need to be more gentle.”

“Y-Yeah, maybe,” I said again.

“Do you want to cuddle again?”

“Y-Yeah.”

“Under one condition.”

I knew what was coming. I just nodded.

“You need to wear the chastity device.”

“I know,” I said.

She fitted my cock with the metal contraption. At first, it was cold, so I jumped.

Once it was firmly on, and she had yet to lock it, Jackie asked, “Are you ready to begin your first week of celibacy?”

“A week?”

“Yes. Every Sunday, I will unlock this, and we’ll do boyfriend and girlfriend stuff.”

“Heh, ‘boyfriend and girlfriend stuff’ you say?” My interest was piqued.

“That’s right! But you’ll be doing exclusive ‘girlfriend’ stuff for me throughout the week. Stuff your little dicky won’t get to take part in.”

I knew exactly what that meant. That meant more time spent with my head halfway up her pussy choking on her fluids.

Am I dreading sexual contact with my girlfriend? I asked myself.

I dreaded sex that didn’t provide me any direct gratification. What man wouldn’t? She must’ve noticed the dejected look on my face because she tried to reassure me.

“Dessy, you’ll begin enjoy pleasuring me sooner than you think. I know that right now it seems overwhelming and scary, but you’ll come around. Trust me on this one.”

That was the end of our conversation on that topic. When your goddess tells you to “trust her”, you trust her. And that’s what I did.

The day after the insane spanking roleplay fiasco was Monday. I was awoken to the sight of Jackie in her fluffy red robe, peppering my nose with kisses. Since I couldn’t do much of anything on my own anymore, she had been waking me up for a shared morning routine.  

We entered the bathroom together. Too short to pee standing up, she lifted me onto the toilet seat to pee sitting down. When I was done, she transferred me onto the bathroom vanity, handed me my toothbrush, and we brushed our teeth in unison. Even standing on top of the vanity, my head barely cleared her shoulder. As I hopelessly gaped at the ridiculous size difference between the two of us, a jaw dropping sight damn near made me faint with joy.

Her robe was bursting at the seams. She had it tied at her waist, but it was struggling to keep her boobs from popping out. I could see the fabric getting pushed to the limits. Second by second, the red fluff of her robe stretched wider.

Are her tits growing?

I scolded myself for thinking up a scenario so silly and far-fetched. Then again, I was shrinking. Was it so far-fetched for my girlfriend to be growing? No, no. I wasn’t ready to believe it.

And just when I’d concluded that it was indeed in my head, her boobs exploded out of her robe and sent a devastating rip through the fabric. Her tits overflowed her robe like waves overcoming an insufficient levy, and I was the idiot standing in front of the levy.

Her breasts slammed into me and sent me flying into the vanity mirror. Luckily, she caught me before I fell or hurt myself even worse.

“Dessy! Are you alright? I’m so sorry!”

I didn’t hear a word she said. I was mystified by her boobs apparently growing bigger right in front of me.

“Jackie, did your—boobs just grow?”

“What? Are you kidding?” she asked.

“I don’t know!” I said frantically, “I was looking at you, and your boobs were expanding! Are you telling me I’m hallucinating in addition to shrinking?”

Jackie pulled me into her breast flesh that was now out in the open. They rubbed against my locked-up cock, and it immediately twitched to life. I groaned, knowing that being fully erect inside the chastity device would hurt.

“Calm yourself. I’m pretty sure I would know if my boobs were growing, Dessy. And if they are, so what? I think we know for a fact that you like big boobs.”

“Yeah, but,” I tried to say. Her boobs grinding up against my whole body was distracting me. My dick was steadily growing bigger, upping the discomfort.

“But what?” she asked playfully.

“What if I infected you with whatever I have?”

She laughed, “If I got infected by you, wouldn’t I be shrinking?”

“I don’t know, maybe it affects girls in the opposite direction,” I theorized.

Jackie hugged me closer, sending my now completely hard dick careening down into the depths of her soft, inviting cleavage.

“If you infected me, and it’s making my boobies grow, all I have to say is thank you.”

She kissed me, smearing my whole mouth with the toothpaste that was still on her lips. I kissed her back, not caring one bit.

Without ceasing our kiss, Jackie clasped me against her supple curves as we seamlessly transitioned into the shower. In fact, I barely even noticed we were moving into the shower, because when she turned on the water, I recoiled from our epic kiss in shock.

“Hey, give me some warning next time!”

“It’s just water, ya wimp! Get over it!”

She and I laughed as we both gradually got wetter. Jackie eventually put me down so she could crouch underneath the shower head to properly wet her hair. I sometimes missed my old height, but I was sure I never wanted to be cumbersomely tall as she often was. It didn’t appear like she cared at all though.

The way we did showers was different than the way I assume most couples shower together. I always imagined that couples probably take turns applying soap to one another and take frequent breaks to indulge into one another’s bodies.

We certainly indulged in one another’s bodies, but we didn’t even have to clean each other. Like a symbiotic organism leaching off its host, I simply stood in between Jackie’s legs as she washed her body and waited for the soap to cascade gracefully from her body onto mine. She called it ‘secondhand soap’.

While I stood underneath her, I massaged her thighs and calves, soothing them from hours of volleyball practice. The first time I did it, she complimented me on doing things for her “without being asked”. I remembered back to when I heard my dad’s spiel on how women expect men to “read their minds”. A once meaningless rant now made all the sense in the world to me.

“Mmmm, that feels so good,” she said, “Keep going.”

I kneaded at her thighs like I was trying to flatten dough. I wondered how I would much longer I would be able to effectively massage Jackie. At the rate I was shrinking, I would be smaller than a two-year-old by next week.

“Lower,” she beckoned with her arm.

I shifted my hands downward a few inches.

“Lower,” she repeated.

I moved my eager fingers down to her calves.

“Even lower.”

How low does she want me to go? I thought to myself.

I got down on my knees and went down to her ankles, gently rubbing them and kissing them with my shriveled lips. Still though, she wasn’t satisfied.

“That feels awful nice, Dessy. But my footsies need a little more attention than they’re currently getting from you.”

Without skipping a beat, I refocused my massage down to her ‘footsies’. I started with the tops of her feet, tenderly touching them with my finger pads. My fingers gradually trekked on down to her toes.

Her toes made me realize once again how pathetically small I was. Not only was her big toe way more than half the length of my whole hand, it was nearly half the length of my entire foot! Wrapping my ill-equipped fingers around her sturdy toes showed me once again that I was no match for her.

As I massaged her gargantuan toes, I was taken into another lucid daydream. Just like all the other times, I was a fraction of my current size. But this time, I was standing atop Jackie’s toes, trying my absolute hardest to massage them as she so pleased.

“Come on Dessy, are you even rubbing my toes? Don’t tell me you’ve given up again!” Jackie’s voice boomed from on high.

“Jackie, I swear I’m doing the best that I can! I’m jumping up and down on your toes! See?!” I squeaked up at her.

Momentarily, I forgot that we were still in the shower, until a stray current came flooding down Jackie’s leg and caused me to lose my foothold. The current sent me tumbling backwards into the crevice between two of her toes. The crevice was wide enough for me to fall in and tight enough for me to get hopelessly trapped.

“Jackie!” I screamed several times, trying to make my voice heard through the downpour of water coming from the showerhead. It was to no avail. She didn’t heed my screams of despair.

Then, I started hearing my name echoing. “Desmond! Desmond! Desmond!” it boomed. I felt a wet hand on my neck.

“Desmond! Are you alright? You stopped massaging.”

I was back in reality. I was back to my 2’11” stature, and I was back to a Jackie who didn’t let me suffocate in the middle of her toes.

“Yeah, I’m alright,” I said, looking up at her, “I just zoned out for a second.”

I had yet to tell her about my shrunken daydreams because I was scared that she would use it as a justification to speed up the shrinking process. I could imagine exactly how she would respond; it would be something like: ‘You’re having these dreams, it obvious you want to shrink. You might as well just do it!’

Her hypothetical point was too salient, so I had to keep this under wraps until I was truly dedicated to becoming less than a foot tall.

After we were both nice and clean and out of the shower, Jackie wrapped herself in a towel, then dropped a full-sized towel on me, which I disappeared under entirely.

She laughed at me for a moment as I tried to crawl out from underneath a towel that was twice my size, but then relented and lifted the towel. She said, “You know, you’re at an awkward size. Too small for a normal towel but too small to dry with a washcloth. I can’t wait until you’re the size of a toy and I can dry you off with paper towels.”

Sensing the vibe she was giving off, I played along. “Wouldn’t it be wasteful to dry your boyfriend off with paper towels?”

She put a finger on my naked chest. “You know, you’re right! When you’re small enough for that, I’ll just put you right here,” she said, pointing to her cleavage, “And you’ll never get dry. With my boob sweat, your sweat, your cum, you’ll always be a slobbering mess.”

“And I look forward to it,” I said.

“I bet you do.”

When we got back to our room, she dressed me in a toddler sized collared shirt and jeans. They were actually quite comfortable; the jeans were even a little baggy around the waist. I ate a meal that consisted of a glass of one of Jackie’s famous smoothies and a quarter of a bagel (Jackie ate the rest of my bagel and another one on top of it). After all that, we hit the road.

I now had to sit in the back of Jackie’s Jeep because I was below the legal height to sit in the front seat. I hated the mother-son dynamic it created between us, but what could I do? The law was the law, and I definitely didn’t want to be the reason she got a ticket. I actually couldn’t wait for the days when I could ride to school in her purse or in her shirt. No one would be the wiser, and I wouldn’t be stuck languishing in a dumb car seat.

In just under 20 minutes, we arrived on campus. Jackie’s first class started before mine, so we went to the student union to meet up with Gabby, one of the volleyball girls I’d met on the limo ride to the party. Jackie had recently learned the she shared philosophy class with me, so she would be escorting there today.

As I sat in Jackie’s lap, she informed Jackie when and where to meet her after our class was over. Then she lifted me off her lap.

“Ok, you two,” Jackie said, “I have to go. Get him there safe, Gabby.”

“You have nothing to worry about,” she said.

Jackie passed me over to Gabby. That was when I realized my feet had only touched the ground one or two times today. Most of my time was spent in my girlfriend’s arms.

Once Jackie was gone, Gabby could tell I was feeling a bit antsy being held by her, so she offered to let me walk. Luckily, we had a lot of time to get to our building. She probably wouldn’t have offered otherwise.

“Yeah, sure. I’ll walk,” I said, jumping at the opportunity to be slightly independent.

“Ok, but I will have to hold your hand.”

I let out a sulking sigh. Even a stroll across campus could never be the same.

“I’ll walk slower. I know you don’t want me to drag you along like a little kid or something,” she said.

I didn’t complain any further because I knew this was the best I was going to get.

The walk to class was uneventful, boring even. Gabby, who usually talked more than she breathed, was oddly silent. I was hemming and hawing on whether or not I should try to initiate a conversation with her, but then conversation found me.

“Desmond?”

I looked up from the ground and saw that it was Maggie calling my name. I hadn’t seen her for weeks and the look she had on her face was the exact one I was dreading. She was shell-shocked. She believed me on the phone when I told her that I was shrinking. Seeing me in person though was an entirely different thing for her.

“Yeah, it’s me,” I said, trying not to sound downtrodden.

She kneeled down in front of me, not bothering to introduce herself to Gabby. She was still substantially taller than me, even on her knees.

“You weren’t kidding about the whole shrinking thing. How tall are you now?” she asked with a look of worry on her face.

“Just under 3 feet.”

“You shrunk by almost 2 feet and you didn’t tell me?!”

“I- I-, uh, I-,” I stumbled.

“Never mind, Desmond. It must be hard enough for you. I didn’t mean to accuse you of anything.”

Wanting to get my height off her mind, I directed her attention to the girl holding my hand and introduced them to one another. I explained that she was a fellow volleyball girl and that she was a friend of Jackie’s.

“Jackie. How’s it going with her, huh, Desmond?” Maggie asked.

“Good, actually. Really good.”

“Hey, sorry to cut things short but I wanted to get Desmond to our class a little earlier. I want to find a seat in the front so nobody’s head can block his view,” Gabby interjected.

“Yeah,” Maggie said, clearly a little upset that she couldn’t talk to me a little bit more. “Desmond can we meet up and talk tonight? It’s been a while.”

“I’ll ask Jackie before we leave campus. Maybe she can leave me with you.”

She laughed, “What am I your babysitter?”

Gabby butted in again, “When you’re with Desmond, it is kind of like being a babysitter. He’s so small that he needs help with just about everything.”

Maggie looked at me, her eyes wide in disbelief. She couldn’t fathom how openly this girl was belittling me.

Completely ignoring Gabby’s comment, I said, “Ok, Maggie. I’ll text you later with my answer. I really hope we can talk.”

“Me too. See ya, Desmond,” she said before walking away.

We got to class roughly 10 minutes early, which got us a front seat right in the center of the lecture hall. Gabby sat down first, waiting for me to get out my supplies: notebook, pen, and highlighters. Once I had all my notetaking materials, she scooped me up onto her lap, after which she folded down the desk on top of me. That allowed me to put my stuff down.

I looked around a bit and saw some different looks. The looks girls gave me were of pure confusion and puzzlement. It was like they didn’t know quite what to make of me. The looks guys gave me were much clearer. They were jealous—jealous of the fact that I was sitting on a hot volleyball girl’s lap—and they weren’t. I couldn’t blame them. If I were put in their position, I would probably be just as jealous.

The class went as it did normally. I took notes furiously while trying to forget that I was sitting on a girl’s lap—to make it seem completely normal.

It was a philosophy class, and as I was mindlessly taking notes, I realized that the material being taught had real world relevance to my life.

Utilitarianism: the belief that your actions should result in consequences that maximize the happiness or the benefit for the most amount of people.

Deontology: forget the consequences of your actions, is what you’re doing morally right under a strict set of rules?

I was having an epiphany right there in Gabby’s lap. Finally! Something in class truly applied to my real life. In that moment, I realized that I had a choice to make.

I could opt for the utilitarian outlook and let myself shrink. It did technically make the majority of people in my life happy. All the volleyball girls thought I was cute and adorable, and Jackie and I were falling in love partly because of my rapidly decreasing size.

But I couldn’t deny the harm my shrinking was causing to my mother. She was devastated at the fact that she was losing her son, and up to this point, I’d ignored her suffering. That, to me, was undoubtedly a moral wrong.

I knew the reason why I’d ignored her suffering, and I just didn’t want to admit it to myself. I was being selfish. A huge part of me relished the shrinking process. I loved how I felt so small in Jackie’s arms. I loved how tiny she made me feel when she stood up to her full height. This was my first relationship and it was going better than I could’ve imagined. What incentive did I have to blow it up by trying to reconcile with my mother and seek treatment for my shrinking?

I felt paralyzed. I needed someone to talk to about this. Someone who wasn’t Jackie or my mother. And I knew who that was. I sent a text to Maggie.

We quickly formulated a plan for us to meet and talk. I would ask Gabby to go to the bathroom, and when I left, we would meet by the library. When we were done texting, I put the plan in motion.

“Gabby, I need to go to the bathroom,” I whispered up to her.

“Ok, I’ll take you.”

“No, I can go alone. I want you to stay here and fill me in on all the stuff I miss, ok?”

“Alright,” she said.

What an airhead, I thought.

I got off her lap, walked out of the lecture hall (luckily the door was propped open), and headed straight for the front of the building.

Then, what I thought was an airtight plan, was ruined by Jackie. She was there in lobby early to pick me up from class, and she saw me walking out. I scolded myself for being so stupid.

“Hey, where are you going without Gabby?” she asked as she came closer to me.

“I just got up to go to the bathroom and take a walk around the building. The lecture hall was getting stuffy.”

“Ok,” she said, seemingly accepting my misleading explanation. “Are you ready to go back in?”

I nodded, and she bent down with the intention of carrying me back into my class.

“Hey, um, Jackie? Do you mind if maybe you don’t carry me like a baby into my class of 200 people?”

She looked me right in the eye, her sympathy cast off to the side. “Dessy, what have we been talking about lately?”

“How I need to accept that I’m getting smaller and that I need help with things.”

“Right. So, are you being very accepting of that truth right now?”

I hated how she thoroughly dismantled the idea of myself being an independent man with the use of just a few well-placed rhetorical questions. I had no choice but to shake my head no.

“No, you’re not. You don’t need to care what others think of you. In fact, they’re probably jealous of you. The girls want to be the one with a shrunken little man, and the boys want me to be their big, strong mommy. You have it all, Desmond.”

“I certainly do.”

“Now, come on with me.”

I didn’t protest any longer. She picked me, stowing me away under her arm and waltzed into the lecture hall like she owned the place. She sat down next to Gabby, placing me back into her lap so I could finish taking notes.

As stealthily as I could, I slid my phone out of my pocket and texted Maggie to let her know that the plan fell through.

After class was over, and Gabby had parted ways with us, she walked with me in her arms to my next class. On the way there, I asked Jackie point blank if I could hang out with Maggie that night.

Her answer greatly disappointed me.

“No,” she said flatly.

“Why not?” I asked.

“Because I have a lot of work to do tonight, and we need to go home after the day is over."

“Just because you have a lot of work doesn’t mean I can’t go hang out with Maggie.”

“Yes, it does.”

“Why is that?”

Jackie groaned with annoyance. “Are we seriously having this conversation, Desmond? It’s my job to watch you, take care of you. Wherever I go, you go.”

“What is this, Saudi Arabia? Do I need a female guardian everywhere I go?”

“Yes!” she shouted emphatically.

“Well fine! Maggie can be my female guardian for tonight until you come pick me up. Is that fair?”

“Not tonight, Desmond. I don’t want to have to come pick you up later, alright. I have a lot of work to do, I told you that.”

“Ok, but you’re open to me hanging out with Maggie on another night. Is that what I’m hearing?”

She hesitantly nodded her head at me. I was overjoyed. I reached my arms up around her neck, hugging her and kissing her all over her face.

“Thank you! Thank you!”

“Jeez, you must’ve really missed her,” she said.

“I know you only met her once, but she’s a good person. She tells it like it is, and she doesn’t hold any punches. Sometimes, I need her to set me straight.”

I could see Jackie was feeling a bit vulnerable by her awkward silence. I was raving about Maggie and how great she was, not even mentioning how much I valued her, my girlfriend.

“But she doesn’t hold a candle to you, baby. Trust me on that. I just miss her is all.”

She beamed at how I put her on a pedestal. I knew I had her now.

“Ok, Desmond. Tell you what. I’m practicing late tomorrow and then I’m going out with the volleyball girls. Tomorrow, while I’m out doing that, you can hang out with Maggie. Is that ok?”

“Yes, that’s perfect!”

Tomorrow. Tomorrow I could spill the beans about everything to Maggie without worrying about what would happen. Tomorrow was the thing grounding me. Tomorrow was thing keeping me from losing my mind.