Page 1 of Lakeside Little (Pineberry Falls: Summer Daddies #2)

This year marked my sixth year coming to Pineberry Falls during the summer.

It started out as something I did to see my cousin, Oliver, although at the time when he invited, he hadn’t told me he was some councilperson, which surprised me but in the best possibly way because the entire town was so open and gay, even the straight couples had little rainbow emblem badges and flags everywhere.

He’d assured me then it wasn’t mandated, just a sign they wanted to show respect for the rainbow family.

Now I was twenty-seven and I definitely was no longer staying at Oliver’s place with his husband. Sometimes, there were just things you shouldn’t hear a family member doing, even someone you only saw a handful of times a year.

I’d been renting out a cute cabin by the lake for three years each summer for the entirety of August, I had the entire place. Sometimes, friends would come up for a weekend when they got it off work or they would make it a week. Either way, I was happy for the company.

The insanely delicious smell of the outdoors mixed with the signature pineberries were intoxicating.

I’d barely unpacked when I took a moment to rest on the bench outside the cabin.

There were several cabins, each dotted around the edge of the lake in a half-circle, each under the canopy of the large famous Vermont maple trees.

My phone buzzed in my pocket. Oliver was calling.

“ Hey, did you arrive ok? ”

“Yeah, just arrived, taken a break from unpacking to just watch the lake,” I told him.

“ You should’ve stopped by in town first, I wanted to introduce you to Malcolm, he’s the one who did that piece of art in my office.”

Even though I wasn’t a resident of the town, I was in the group chat which was all for the littles.

We shared our teddies, stuffies, dollies, anything we played with and gave our play meaning.

Malcolm was the newest addition, he’d posted his blind box Sublime teddies in the chat, and I was jealous of them, but only because he’d been in town less than a month and had found love.

“I’ll be in town later, I’ve got you a gift,” I said.

“ Oh, is it PR? You know I love the PR stuff you get. What is it? ”

“You’ll have to wait and see, obvs.” I giggled. “Anyway, speaking of PR and work, I need to update my socials.”

“ Ok, Cus, make sure you come to town and get food as well, otherwise I’ll have both our mom’s on at me for letting you come up here and starve ,” he laughed, although it was absolutely something both our moms would do.

Hanging up the call with Oli, I went back into the cabin and hauled the larger of my two suitcases on the bed.

That was the most important suitcase in my possession.

It was years of hard work and collection.

Most of the dolls in there were bubble wrapped because of how much they were worth, although they were right up beside some of the plush stuffies and teddies, so they had plenty of cushion to keep them from banging around inside.

Nory Nightingale was the current star of my social media accounts which focused on all my dolls and their stories.

I liked to think of it as soap opera between them.

Nory was a vampire doll, she was custom, and her skin sparkled in the right light.

She wore black dresses in this gorgeous fabric, which didn’t cost too much because she was like ten inches tall.

I was grateful for having an audience who found joy in what I created.

Nory’s currently storyline was about her going on vacation and then also seeing the man she’s been crushing on was also on vacation at the same place.

It was pure coincidence they were at the same place, mostly because they both rode in my suitcase.

My little space was more of a boy space where I would heal all the wounds of being told boys can’t play with dolls and showing my inner child that we could do whatever we wanted now. We had big boy plans and big boy money to make them all come true.

With my phone at the ready, I found a perfect spot by the window where Nory was place with her sunglasses on his face, her head almost turning one-eighty because it was only way I could get her placed without falling and looking out of the window.

I captioned it, ‘ sunscreen at the ready, this lady of night is ready for her vacation’.

Immediately, notification came flooding with black heart emojis, they were her signifier.

“Ok, Nory,” I said to her, posing the doll on the windowsill. “We’re going to take you out and get some nice poses in the shade. Do not flash the people, so make sure to keep that hand pushing your skirt down, ok?”

She was so sassy, I knew she was rolling her eyes and sighing.

If she had it her way, she’d be flashing everyone, and I didn’t want people to think she was that type of lady.

Even if at heart, she was a horndog. I giggle-snorted at what she might’ve said to me, imagined in this posh British broadcaster voice.

‘ Darling, don’t worry about me, I’m getting laid, you’re not. ’

“That’s not very nice, Nory,” I said. “If I had a man like Rio Stallion, I’d be getting laid too.” He was her love interest, and a repurposed action hero. He’d recently just divorced Serena Quartz, heir to a mining fortune, and Nory’s archnemesis.

I took Nory out of the cabin and walked toward the lake, there was a light breeze in the air, pushing the sweetened warm air in our direction.

And thankfully she was keeping her skirt down.

Snapping pictures of Nory to use as a stop motion later, I had her walking small steps towards the lake where I would let her dip her feet for a moment, but not longer than that.

Waterlogged dolls were sometimes impossible to recover.

It was a rarity, being able to take my dolls out in public without getting sideways looks from strangers.

On occasion, I met with some friends in the bigger parks, and we all had our dolls or stuffies.

I usually set them up like they were collabs which helped me out of the mindset that people were just staring because it was work.

My accounts had over a hundred thousand people follow them, some for the dolls, others for the stuffies, but everyone followed for the drama.

Most of the dirt was dry in this heat and was easily brushed off as I anchored Nory into the group for each of her steps until we were near the bank of the lake. It was always such a nice view over the mountains in the distance.

“Stay right there,” I whispered to her. “We just need one big picture with the mountains.”

As I snapped the pictures, a branch cracked to my right, and as I turned a man in khakis, an unbuttoned Hawaiian shirt, showing off a forest of his own in the form of hair all the way down to where he’d precarious manscaped into a treasure trail.

He waved at me and pushed his bucket hat back slightly to reveal his deep golden face as if he’d been sat out under the sun for days.

On my knees, from getting the best angle of Nory, I didn’t know where to look or what to do. I mean, I didn’t want his first impression of me to be on my knees in the dirt, especially when he looked like that. Any potential impression was gone out of the window, as long as he didn’t see the—

“Hey,” he said. “I—I heard you over there, and—” he looked around. “I thought you were—”

My eyes snapped to the doll, meeting his gaze. “It’s—”

He smiled. “You don’t have to explain,” he said. “I was kinda hoping someone could take a picture of me for my mom.”

“Sure, I can.”

As I went to grab Nory, she fell forward, right into the lake water. I screamed. I shrieked. Birds flew from their nests. I was not playing around. This was serious. And I froze, watching as Nory’s sparkly body sank.

“I’ve gotcha!” The handsome stranger said, resting one of his large warm hands on my shoulders, and stretching deep into the lake with the other, getting the short sleeve of his shirt all wet. He pulled Nory right out from what was the abyss.

“I—I—I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to—I—”

He held her out as she dripped water everywhere, her black hair now all stringy and sticking to her face. Her skin lacked luster, and her clothes were treated like a dirt filtration system as dirt and grass stuck to them.

“It’s ok,” he said, stroking my back and giving it a gentle pat with one hand while still showing me the doll in his other. “I get it. If I dropped something in there I’d scream too, maybe not quite as loud, I don’t think I’ve been able to get that high since I was in my teens.”

I laughed, because if I didn’t, I’d cry.

There was nothing I could do now, but there was something I could do, and that was save Nory from her fate of being trashed.

“Fuck,” I grumbled. “Thank you. I—” If she was lost forever, that was a death, and this was not the summer for that.

This was the summer of funshine, fun in the sun.

“You’re welcome,” he said. “You should get her rinsed off and pat down dry.”

Nodding to his instruction, it was what I needed right now. “I know it’s just a doll, but she was expensive, and oh my god, I just screamed about a doll.”

“I once screamed at a baseball game,” he said. “Trust me, you’re fine. And I know what it’s like to invest a lot of time into something and then just have it disappear.”

I accepted Nory back into my hand, feeling an overwhelming sense of guilt for having her propped up so close to the lake. “Hopefully it didn’t disappear forever,” I said, looking at the sparkle on the dolls skin appear duller, and some of it sit on the surface of the lake.

“I don’t think anything disappears forever,” he said. “It just transforms. I can help you with the doll, in a previous life, I actually worked with chemicals, so I know what not to use on this type of material.”

First, he rescues Nory, and now he rescues me from the verge of a breakdown. “Yes, please. I’m just in that cabin.”

In the cabin, they were stocked with all the necessary cleaning supplies for the stay. I rummaged around under the sink while Nory sat on the counter of the kitchenette, wrapped in a cotton tea towel.

“Uh—” I pulled out a spray bottle with ‘no harsh chemicals ’ written on the side when I realized, I didn’t even know this man’s name. I’d been so far in shock, I hadn’t even asked what he was called. “I found something.”

With his shirt now tucked into the top of his khakis, his glowing body on full display, I felt like I needed to be submerged in the lake to cool off. “Hope you don’t mind, I had to take this off, got a little wet.”

“I’m Jack, by the way. I don’t think I said that before.” I was swallowing hard, trying not to look anywhere specifically, but his body hair was a direct arrow, and I was still in a state of shock, this seemed cruel. Hot men were always my coping mechanism, and he was right there in front of me.

“Diego,” he said. “And that’s not gonna work. That will still bleach the doll. Don’t ask me how I know that.”

“How do you know that?” Rule number—whatever, when someone says don’t ask how—I’ve got to ask, especially when it might give me something juicy to think about. “Do you have kids?” I asked, hoping to eliminate some thoughts.

He shook his head. “Never been on the list for me,” he said. “And I know because as a kid, I sorta ruined a lot of my sister’s toys with stuff like that.”

I gasped, clutching at my neckline. I wished there were pearls so I could yank them free and have him help me pick them up. I’d been on my hands and knees; it was time I saw him there too.

Wow. I had to get laid immediately. I fanned a hand at my face. “Well, I’ll let you make up for that by helping me protect mine then.”

He nodded. “I’m at your service.”

And he did service me— my doll. I stood by and watched as he gave Nory a nice little bath in the kitchen sink, washing away the lake water slowly. It was completely unexpected to see him with his muscular physique be so gentle with a doll he could’ve snapped in a single crunch under his fist.

It took nearly thirty minutes for Nory, now completely disheveled to be rid of the lake water. She was laid on the tea towel, her hair fanned out to dry it faster, and her clothes placed around her, almost like she was laid out in a box on arrival. But she was far from brand new.