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

I was to blame for what had happened to his doll.

I hadn’t seen it there on the bank of the lake.

I’d been sitting around the side doing some fishing.

The last thing I expected to catch was his attention, even if I’d wanted a picture.

Friends back home in Philly were asking.

They wanted to see how I was doing after being laid off from the construction company I’d worked at for the last fifteen years.

To both their surprise and my own, upon meeting Jack, I was doing better.

His playful energy was just what I’d needed to pick me up, especially since I wasn’t even getting a nibble from the fishing rod.

Although, I was rusty at it, the last time I went fishing was five years ago, and I’d caught a single fish that slipped off the hook back into the water.

After fixing Jack’s doll, I went back to my cabin a couple minutes away. I laid in my bed with a book I’d grabbed from a gas station on the way up here. It was about fishing in Vermont. The smell of the pages had me drifting off into a slumber, I barely even read the first line.

A thud woke me. The sunlight peeking through the windows had gone, replaced with a darkness. It came again, this time more recognizably a series of knocks.

Grunting as I moved, my body stiffened to the jean shorts and white vest top I’d sweat through. At the door, a surprise awaited me in the form of Jack. His big smile and a covered silver pie tray—at least, I assumed it was pie.

“Hi,” I grumbled, finding a kink in my neck which begged to be massaged.

“I wanted to thank you for what you did earlier,” he said. “I went into town, grabbed a pineberry pie, they’re absolutely divine, if you haven’t had one before.” With his mouth still open, his tongue seemed to suspend itself midair. “Sorry, did I wake you? I didn’t think it was that late.”

“Oh no, it’s fine. It’s only—what—” I turned my wrist to see the watch reveal it was turning 9 PM.

“I napped and—at my age, a nap easily turns into sleep once you’ve spent the entire morning out fishing with not even a nibble,” I chuckled and pressed my palm at my neck with my fingers pulsing at my nape, trying to discover where the knot was.

He tried handing me the pie, but I stepped aside to invite him in. “I should turn a light on.”

“I shouldn’t have knocked; I saw the lights off.” And still, he stepped inside at my invite. “I am also going to admit something to you.” He headed to the kitchen area, which was laid out in the same standard as his cabin.

“Hit me with it. Unless it’s to tell me, your doll is destroyed, I feel awful for distracting you.” I kept a hand at my neck, massaging the knot. My pit out, he was looking right at it. I hoped I didn’t smell.

Jack shook his head, placing the pie and peeling back the foil cover.

“No, no, Nory will be fine,” he said. “The issue that I’m having now is with something I brought with me and thought I could do myself, but you said you had a background in fixing things and, I figured, you might want to help me.

” He batted his lashes like he knew they would get him somewhere.

And he was absolutely right, but also, that guilt was still sitting on my stomach uneasy.

I nodded, both to agree and to see what the heck was happening with my neck. “Sure.”

“Usually, I wouldn’t ask anyone but since you’ve seen my doll and stuff, I figured you already know about my collection and stuff.”

Most of what he was saying wasn’t going in, until I saw the bracelet on his wrist. It was pale blue, covered in bear faces and tied together with a fancy metal bear pin.

He was a little, it all added together, and from there, as I looked him over, I spotted another piece of jewelry around his neck, the chain dangled out to reveal the pacifier.

“I’m happy to help,” I told him. “You wanna help me slice this pie up? I’m starving. I kinda went to bed without dinner.”

He gasped. “You should always eat,” he said. “Didn’t you catch anything?”

Pretending to catch an arrow at my gut, I gasped. “You wound me,” I said. “I told you; I’ve had no luck on the lake; I feel like the fishing license was a total waste.”

“Have you tried going out on a boat?” he asked, giggling. “I see people out on boats all the time when I’m here.”

“Right. I forgot you know this place,” I said. “So, tell me, what’s so special about it to you?”

“We should have pie before we talk about that.”

Slicing the pineberry pie, we sat out on a bench with the fly zapper in full force beating down on all the insects that dared to get too close.

We ate and I discovered one of the beauties of this place.

Jack told me it was one of the reasons he liked it here, but another reason was the community, and if I hadn’t put it together before the bracelet and necklace, I would’ve figured it out.

The following morning, after finding I was still tired enough to sleep, I woke with a giant smile picking my smile from each corner.

My plan for the two weeks I was here were to fish, eat, recoup myself mentally, and get back to Philly where the job search would begin again.

I’d been here for two days already, and I could only feel-good things happening for the next twelve.

After a shower, I discovered the kink in my neck completely gone, almost as if it had never been there.

I didn’t immediately go to see Jack, but instead, I went back to do some fishing at my spot down from the cabin.

Armed with a bucket of maggots, my rod, and the book I’d only managed to skim through the pictures of, I sat on the fold out chair I hadn’t brought back to the cabin.

“You’re gonna catch something,” I told myself as I flicked through the book and stopped on a random page. “A walleye. Ok, let’s see.”

I was at it for about an hour before I heard a twig behind me snap. It was Jack. I shouldn’t have been too surprised. He approached with his doll and that signature smile which made me feel like I was fifteen years younger, and what I would give to be thirty again.

“Any luck?” he asked.

“Not a bite.”

He hummed and smacked his lips. “I can help,” he said. “My mom’s boyfriend used to take me fishing, it was supposed to be a way for us to bond, or maybe just a way for me to not be gay, which failed on both parts because they broke up and I’m still very gay.”

And now he was straight up telling me, which he didn’t need to, the signs were there. “Be my guest,” I said, pulling the fishing pole from the hole I’d perched it inside to keep it upright while I waited.

“Can you look after Nory then?” he asked, placing his doll on my lap, prepositioning her legs so she was sat. “This is the most masculine thing I’ve done in while, by the way, before you ask me why I can’t fix my doll house.”

I almost forgotten that’s what he needed my help with.

Jack reeled the wire in. The maggot had fallen off it. He sighed. “Ok, well, firstly. This lure isn’t alluring enough. And I’m not saying that to be mean.”

“There’s a box of them,” I told him. “I was going to read this and see, but every time I try, I’m just a bit bored. I’m better with my hands than with my eyes.” I showed him some of the callouses on my hands and he reached out to touch them. He was soft on them.

“Wow, you need some hand cream stat.”

“I wouldn’t even know where to start with that stuff,” I told him. “The closest I probably come to that is sunscreen. It’s important especially when you’re sitting out all day.” He chewed on his lip for a moment. “Did you put sunscreen on?”

“I got distracted,” he said, shrugging. “I’ll put some on when you come to the cabin and help me rebuild my dollhouse, ok?”

As much as I always preferred people to be protected from the sun, we were sitting under the trees right now, so there wasn’t exactly any immediate need. Plus, he was in the middle of showing me something I should’ve known how to do already. It seemed you could teach an old-er dog new tricks.

Jack threaded fishing wire around a lure, the most colorful with chromatic shift with sparkles almost. “I’m not putting my hand in maggots tough,” he said, sticking his tongue out to fake vomit. “But you can. And then, you’ve got to take a really big swing, keep the line slack and let it fly out.”

“I used to go fishing every weekend. You think I’d be better at it,” I said.

“This the most masculine thing I’ve ever done, so keep expectations low about what else I might be able to do,” he laughed.

The was a nibble and a bite almost immediately on the line. I didn’t need help reeling it in. I didn’t lack in the muscle department. And after a couple tugs, the fish was right there, hanging on the hook.

“What is it?” he asked.

“A fish.”

Jack swotted my arm with the back of his soft hand. “Oh my god, I know that. I mean, what type?”

It was right there on the tip of my tongue. “A bass, I believe. You can double check though.”

He picked the book up and flicked through it to assure me it was a bass. “Is this a catch and release or—”

“I’m eating it,” I told him, pulling the bass off the hook. I’d forgotten how strange fresh fish felt right out of the water, the scales almost slimy to touch. “And since I’m not sure I would’ve caught it without you, I’m more than happy to share.”

Jack eyes the fish and then me. “Is that even gonna be big enough?”

“We can try fish for another,” I said. “But if you want me to help with your thing first, I can.”

“I have another idea,” he said, sitting his doll in my chair. “Can I take a picture with the rod like almost optical illusion in her hand?”

I placed the fish into a small bucket that had been severely underutilized. “Absolutely. I wanna see you work your magic.”

Jack snort laughed. “It’s not magic; it’s just practice.”

Yesterday at his cabin, he’d shown me some of his social media accounts for the doll.

I was surprised to see so many people following him and engaging with that content.

I always assumed it was niche and still fringe.

But so much had changed since I’d been in the Dom and submissive spaces, especially those that engaged with Daddy kink and age regression.

I threw the line out again while Jack got his picture for the social media accounts.

He was quick with it, snapping so many photos in all different poses.

And before he could show me, I was reeling in a second fish.

Another bass, this one a little smaller.

It was a miracle, either that, or Jack was my lucky charm.

“Nory is having a relaxing day fishing,” he said. “I’ve got these plastic fish that she’ll hold up in another picture.” He explained that most of the time he was just documenting his life through the eyes of his dolls.

“Not to be rude, but you make money through this?” I asked.

He laughed. “Yes, it’s a community, and I get sponsorships which are really good and helpful, especially when it’s things I know people who love my content will also love.”

“That’s incredible. I feel ancient when people talk about tech,” I admitted. “Do they also play with dolls and stuff?”

“Some of them do, yeah, a lot of them probably wish they were,” he said.

“You know, not a lot of people are openly allowed to express themselves, and that’s a crying shame because expression is such a pure form of freedom, and if you can’t express yourself, it’s probably like having your soul locked away in a prison. Not that I’ve ever been to prison.”

“Me either,” I said. “It’s a way of looking at it.”

Jack clutched his doll to his chest, running his fingers through its hair. “What’s your expression?” he asked. “The one thing that if you couldn’t do, you’d just rather die?”

He stumped me. I didn’t have an immediate answer to him.

I’d come here to get away from thinking and stress.

“I’m a second-generation American, my folks immigrated from Mexico, expression for me was to dance, you know, a little salsa, but I’m not a dancer.

So maybe my expression was to make things. ”

“I forgot you just lost your job,” he whispered.

Shaking my hand in his direction, it wasn’t his fault that I was beginning to fall down a brain hole. “I got a decent severance package,” I chuckled. “It’s fine. I just need to decide what I’m going to do with the rest of my life now.”

“ Orrrrrr ,” he said with such a lighthearted tone it was a relief.

“You don’t have to decide, and you can just stay and fish, and maybe I can take your mind off that by giving you something to make-slash-fix for me.

” He bat his lashes so adorably. “But it’s totally cool if you just wanna hang by the lakeside for a bit longer. ”

I slapped my hands together. “Well, we’ve got two fish, that’s one each. I’m ready to come help you now and take my mind off all that.” And truthfully, I wanted to see what other surprises Jack had, I didn’t know if I was getting a certain signal, but there was something there I needed to explore.

“Yay!” He applauded. “But you’ll have to keep the fish out. I don’t want my cabin smelling.”