147.)

"ETA?" I asked. Blossom checked her GPS.

"Hour and a half."

I groaned. It wasn't that I wasn't having a good time with Blossom; I certainly was. Conversation was flowing, and we'd spent the past hour listening to the Encanto soundtrack. Twice. No, the problem was a lot less subjective.

"You gotta pee?" Blossom teased. The only reason she guessed it was because she was in the same boat.

"Mmmm," I said, which was all but confirmation. Blossom ordered both our meals at McDonald's with the biggest drinks, because she didn't want to have to go into a gas station. It was a good idea at the time.

"You know..." Blossom trailed off, not needing to say the rest of her sentence.

"I know," I said with a pout. "It's not that easy." I'd never done it in front of her before. I'd never done it in front of anyone.

"It's one of those things that's easier to write about, than to do?" She laughed brightly and reached one hand over to stroke the nape of Amy's hair supportively, while still watching the road.

"You just do your best, baby girl. If you want we can pull over on the side of the road and I can stand outside the car while you do your business?"

"That is infinitely worse. You saying that is infinitely worse." I swatted Blossom's hand away, but I knew she was just trying to be supportive.

"It's just kind of embarrassing, you know? Like, even if you don't know I'm doing it, it's still... I'm still doing it. And you're right there. And I don't know. My body hates it. I think my brain kind of hates it too."

But it was a hurdle we would have to overcome eventually, right? I couldn't keep walking into the other room to wet myself for the rest of my life.

"Absolutely. Becky used to have this thing where she hated people knowing when she was having sex. Like, she'd go out of her way to make up lies, like, 'oh me and Chad are going to check on his records' or 'me and Brad are going to the store' and then she'd go out the sorority front door and literally climb up to her bedroom window. And the thing was that like we all knew, and she knew that we knew, but for some reason just the idea of people knowing wasn't something she could handle. And like, she's better about it now, but brains are hard and thoughts can be senseless."

Blossom knew that her story about Becky wasn't strictly comparable, but she was trying to be supportive at least.

"Is it easy for you...?" I asked, a little afraid of the answer. But Blossom came back at me with:

"I don't think I've ever actually... I mean, I think we were in the same room once, but you were distracted. And it wasn't easy at all."

Huh. Even Blossom Brixley had trouble with it. That was a little encouraging.

"It feels rude almost," I said sheepishly. "Like, burping or farting or whatever. It feels gross and rude. And I don't want you to think I'm gross or rude..."

"I guess I can understand that comparison," Blossom said. "Like if you weren't in a diaper, and you wet your pants, the natural response is to panic and be overly apologetic and maybe freak out. And I think that is one part 'I'm being gross' and one part 'I'm causing problems' and diapers definitely solve the latter, but that first one is much harder to get over. And like, I don't even think pee is gross, like," not the time to talk about pee related sex, Blossom, "it's just pee, that's all. But man, social conditioning is a bitch."

"Yeah..." I sunk further into my seat and played with my fingers in my lap. I wasn't really sure how to do this. Once I wet myself when Blossom was in the other room; that wasn't so bad. But with her sitting next to me...?

"So let's take this from an engineering perspective," Blossom said suddenly. "How do you do with public bathrooms and stuff? Don't you use the bathroom around other people there?"

"I mean, there are walls between us. But even then, I'm not a huge fan of it. It's awkward... I don't want to hear other people do it, and I don't want them to hear me."

"Oh, hm." Again, Blossom didn't have an issue with that either. Public restrooms were gross sometimes, but she never thought about it like Amy did. "What about little kids? They have accidents. That's not gross."

"Keyword: accidents," I said. "They can't help it. You don't blame a kid - generally - for having an accident."

"So say you have an accident," Blossom posited. "Is that better than doing it on purpose?"

"Hm... yeah, I think so. I mean, it's still embarrassing, but it's not my fault right? I'm not being rude."

"Okay, so what about we take that one step further. What if someone else tells you that you have to do it. Then it's not your fault either, is it? And it's not rude. In fact, it would be more rude to not do it, wouldn't it?"

"I never thought about it like that..." But if Blossom were to tell me I wasn't allowed to use the bathroom? Well, I would have to use my diapers. I wouldn't have a choice. It wouldn't be my fault. "Yeah, I think that helps. But I think ordering people to wet their diapers–"

"Academy A style!" Blossom interrupted.

"Yeah, like that. But I don't think that's very realistic. I would probably need a scene or something..." I found it a lot easier to do stuff like that when we were roleplaying, like letting Blossom spank me or instructing her to wet herself. I had to step outside reality if I wanted to act unrealistically.

"Well…" That word marked a tonal shift for Blossom as she tried to develop the most bare minimum of scenes in her head. "I'm not stopping the car just so you can pee, young lady. You're just going to have to hold it like the big girl you keep trying to tell me that you are. A big girl would be able to hold it, and wouldn't have an accident~"

I felt a bit of color on my cheeks. I mean, it wasn't exactly permission. If anything, it was the opposite. But if I did wind up wetting myself... well, maybe it wouldn't be my fault. That was the point, right?

"Well... I... need to stop. So..." Half-scenes like this were always hard for me. I felt out of my depth. I didn't know what was real and what wasn't, and mistakes seemed to surround me like bombs in a game of Minesweeper. But Blossom was always good at leading me into the next square without any big explosions or Game Overs.

"The only reason we'd be stopping would be if you were a little baby who had an accident; otherwise you can prove that you're a big girl and hold it in like I am."

Blossom sometimes also struggled with this kind of halfway scene, but for different reasons. She was happy as a clam to slip into a role, but she was often afraid of pushing the envelope too far and making it no longer fun for Amy.

"That's not fair," I said with more of a dull pout than a sharp tone. "I had that whole drink from McDonald's, and... and I gotta use the bathroom..."

"And I had the same size drink and I'm going to be able to hold it, because I'm an adult. You are an adult, aren't you? You're not just a little accident-prone baby, right?"

I hesitated. There wasn't a winning scenario here, which was the point. I bit my lip in mock nervousness.

"No, of course not..."

"Then you'll keep that diaper dry until we get to the hotel."

"But..."

"But?"

It was a challenge in a single word; a dare for Amy to push a little further.

I hesitated again. Nothing I could say would change the current situation, and I didn't want it to. If I wet my diaper now, sometime between now and the hotel, it wasn't my fault. It was because I couldn't hold it. We'd established that my goal was to try, so in character that was what I'd do. It didn't matter what the reality was, because Blossom and I were creating our own reality.

"Nothing," I said shyly, and pushed my fingers together in my lap.

"Good girl. Now, how about you pick some music for us to listen to. Can you do that for me?"

I picked up my phone and changed to a new soundtrack - something that wasn't Encanto - and the car went back to normal. Blossom was Blossom and I was me. But there was that small undertone, that little bit of permission... if I wet myself, it would be an accident.

It wasn't until I could see the New York City skyline in the distance that I realized how near we were to our destination. The car ride was long, longer than I was ready for. And by the end, I really did have to pee. I knew I could probably hold it until we got to the hotel - the GPS only had twenty minutes left on it - but I also knew there would never be a better time.

I'd been wiggling in my seat for the better part of an hour, and it was exhausting. Blossom had asked me to put on a Halsey album fifteen minutes earlier. The rhythm of the car was smooth and steady. I think we were both tired.

I reminded myself that I had to hold it, that I couldn't have another accident. That Blossom would never let me out of diapers if we arrived at the hotel and I was wet. Somehow, that made it easier.

Little trickles of warmth in my jeans. I'd never worn jeans before when I wet myself, and it felt foreign. Like I wasn't wearing a diaper at all, and soon I'd see dark blue patches of wet denim. But that didn't happen. It took a few tries before the trickles turned into a stream and my diaper grew warm and wet beneath my bottom. I held my hands together in my lap and avoided looking up at Blossom. I didn't want her to know. I could sneak into the hotel bathroom and change before she found out. Right?

When I was done, I felt a lot better. Less uncomfortable, less squirmy. Relaxed, actually. And when I smiled at Blossom, hoping my cheeks weren't too red, she didn't seem any wiser.

Okay, so that wasn't so bad.

"New York has the prettiest damn skyline in the world, doesn't it?"

Blossom was beaming happily as the city in the distance grew larger, and if she had any idea that Amy had wet herself, she didn't show it. And that was kind of the whole point, wasn't it? People always think it's super obvious, but it's really not.

"Mmhmm. It's been a while." It was already pretty late and the sun was going down. Winter brought dusk so early, and the sky was a watercolor painting above the skyscrapers. I wasn't sure where we were staying, but I'd been googling some food options since we started driving. I had some ideas for dinner.

"I think maybe we should do dinner first, and then find a place to stay; how's that sound?"

Partly because Blossom didn't want Amy to adjust her dinner budget based on Blossoms hotel budget, and partly because she wanted to see if Amy was wet.

"Absolutely not," I said flatly, with a touch of panic in the back of my voice. But then I realized maybe Blossom didn't remember what she was wearing, so I gestured to her outfit. Nothing but a sweater and a diaper? Technically she had shorts on, but I wasn't even sure a fancy restaurant would let her inside.

Well, that certainly backfired, didn't it? Blossom realized what Amy was pointing out, and she bit her lip and looked into her rear-view mirror distractedly.

"Right, right right, okay, you're right, yeah. Alright, You're right, okay, so let's…" What was the name of the place? The Dominick Hotel? It was right across the street from where we were going too, which was perfect. Although Blossom was worried that Amy might suss out her plans if she put 2+2 together. But for the benefit of being able to just cross the street to go there in the morning? It was worth it.

"Hand me my phone and I'll update the GPS."

Blossom put the hotel location into the GPS. It was in SoHo, and probably kind of expensive. Probably not as expensive as Blossom would have wanted to spend, though. I went through the list on my phone of SoHo restaurants while she got stuck in traffic.

"I forgot how awful it is to drive in New York City, holy moly."

Still, Blossom probably would have preferred extra time in the car than any time at all standing outside of it in her barely-covered diaper, which was only discreet because of her oversized sweater. Maybe she'd leave a review for the diaper company. B-: Good diaper, didn't leak, not at all VSCO girl fashion compatible.