His Baby Boy novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: Look at Me
After closing, Malcolm takes the broom from Perrin's shaking hands and calls him baby boy, and Perrin says yes, until Agnes comes out to say Malcolm paid off their loan.
"Look at me, baby boy," Malcolm said.
Perrin kept his eyes on the floor.
His hands were shaking so hard the broom handle rattled against the counter.
Malcolm took the broom out of his fingers and leaned it on the wall.
Then he put two fingers under Perrin's chin and lifted.
It was ten minutes past closing, and the Gull & Kettle was empty except for the two of them.
The man who had just screamed at Perrin over a wrong order was gone.
His oat-milk latte was still dripping down the front of the pastry case.
"Say it again," Perrin whispered.
Malcolm's gray eyes went still.
"Which part?"
"The name you called me."
For fourteen months Malcolm Dearborn had sat at the corner table every night from nine until close.
He drank decaf and read shipping reports and never once raised his voice.
Perrin had given him free refills for the first month, and then it had stopped being about the refills.
"Baby boy," Malcolm said, slowly this time.
Perrin's knees almost went.
Heat climbed his neck, and he was glad of the dim light.
"I've wanted to say it since your second week," Malcolm said. "You dropped a tray, and you looked at me like you were waiting to be told it was all right."
"It wasn't a good look," Perrin said.
"It was the best look I've ever seen."
His thumb moved once along Perrin's jaw.
"I'm going to tell you what I want, and you can say no. If you do, I won't say it again and I'll still sit at that table."
Perrin's heart was going so fast it hurt.
He had never told a living person what he was.
A twenty-five-year-old man who kept an otter named Biscuit under his pillow.
A man who sometimes came home from a bad shift and wanted nothing in the world except warm socks and somebody saying he'd done well.
"Tell me," he said.
"I want to look after you," Malcolm said. "Not as your friend, though I'll be that too. I want you in my house and my bed and my lap, and I want you to call me Daddy when you're small, and when you're not."
He said it low and level, with no hurry in it.
"And I want to be the one who tells you you're good," he said. "Every day. Until you believe it."
The espresso machine ticked as it cooled.
Perrin looked up at last.
Malcolm's face was open, and he was waiting.
He was not going to take anything Perrin did not hand him.
That was the whole thing, Perrin thought.
That was why he had kept coming back to the table every night, long after he stopped pretending it was only coffee.
"Yes," Perrin said.
His voice cracked.
"Yes, Daddy."
Malcolm breathed out, and it shook.
Perrin went up on his toes and kissed him.
It was clumsy.
His nose bumped Malcolm's cheek, and then Malcolm's hand slid into his hair and tilted his head, and it stopped being clumsy.
Malcolm kissed him slow and deep, with the whole night to spend.
Perrin grabbed two fistfuls of his coat.
"There," Malcolm murmured against his mouth. "Good boy. That's my good boy."
Perrin made a sound he had never made in public.
Malcolm lifted him onto the counter, between the register and the tip jar, and stood between his knees.
"Say that again," Perrin said.
"Good boy."
"Again."
"You were so brave just now," Malcolm said into his neck. "With that man. I wanted to throw him through the window."
"I didn't want you to."
"I know. So I didn't."
The back door banged open.
Agnes came out of the kitchen with her white braid coming loose and her glasses pushed up into her hair.
She was crying already, and she did not look at the two of them on the counter at all.
"Perrin, honey, I'm sorry," she said. "I didn't know how to bring it up. I found the letter this morning and I couldn't sit on it."
Perrin slid down from the counter, and Malcolm's hands let him go slowly.
"What letter?" Perrin said.
"From the bank." Agnes pressed her hand to her mouth. "The loan is paid. All of it. Eight weeks ago, Malcolm paid it off. We were going to lose the lease at the end of the month, Bernie and I, and he just."
She waved her hand helplessly at the gray-coated man by the register.
"He just fixed it," she said.
Perrin turned.
Malcolm did not look away.
"Eight weeks," Perrin said.
"Perrin," Malcolm said. "Let me tell you why."
Perrin pulled his apron over his head.
He folded it carefully and set it on the counter, because his hands needed something to do.
"You bought them," he said. "You bought the place I work and the two people I love, and you sat at that table and said nothing for eight weeks."
"Baby boy."
"Is that what I am?" Perrin said. "Bought?"
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