51.)

It felt like a dream. Automated, like machinery. Science. Chemical compositions in a beaker, swirling around. The results were predictable. I bent, I turned, I twisted. I mixed, I kneaded, I rolled. It didn't hurt, even when I would get the cookies off the tray a little too early and the metal would still be hot. It didn't frustrate me when everything fell to a halt because I was going faster than I thought and there was still thirty seconds left on my egg timer. I paused. I waited. I proceeded.

I could only make a dozen cookies at a time. That was good. Controllable formulae. Heat, absorption, time, surface area. They all played their part. I didn't mess with the constants; the ingredients were my variables.

I don't know if Blossom was watching for a long time or a little time. I didn't know if it had been a half an hour or half a day. The sun was up, but the counters were no longer polished in sunlight. It must have been an easy transition, a simple slipping from one state to the next, like an ice cube in a glass of cold water.

Water... I hadn't had that in a while.

Blossom showered. And then she went to her room, and she got dressed: very very short denim booty shorts, with a pale lemon hoodie so long that it covered them up entirely and gave the appearance that she wasn't wearing any pants at all. She had socks in two different colors and sneakers with laces that sparkled a little bit in the light.

It was pretty standard fall fashion for Blossom Brixley.

As she teased her blonde hair up into a single left side ponytail, she looked at herself in the mirror and took a deep breath.

What would a Mia Moore story do, to help a girl like Amanda?

She stepped out of her room and made her way back to the kitchen, waited for an opportunity to step into the path of Amy, and took both of her hands in each of her own long-sleeve-covered-hands. And then she kissed Amanda right on the forehead; not a difficult task given the height difference.

I was turning. I was getting a fresh tray for another batch of cookies. I was going to put it down on the island and knead out little balls of dough. I was going to line that tray with those balls. I was going to pick it up and turn and set it on the oven. I was going to take the other tray out of the oven. I was going to put the new tray in the oven. I was going to reset my timer.

I was turning. I was getting a fresh tray for another batch of cookies. My hands didn't touch the metal; they touched other hands. They were warm, but so much colder than I expected. And then a pressure on my forehead.

I was turning. I was getting... a thing for cookies. But Blossom's hands were in my hands, with warm sleeves pulled over the palms and thumbs. Her lips pressed to my forehead.

I was turning... and she kissed my forehead. And when she took her lips away from my flour-covered skin, I was frozen in place.

I wasn't turning. I was standing still.

"You're far too little to be in the kitchen, cupcake. And look, you're all covered in flour, to boot. I'm going to run you a bath – with bubbles – and we'll get you all cleaned up."

That.

That's how this would be handled in a Mia Moore story; with absolute certainty and confidence, and prescriptive words with no room to wriggle out from beneath.

"I..." I was doing something. I had a task list in my head. It was important. A next step. But Blossom took my hand and led me away from the kitchen. It was like that one robot in Wall-E that went off its path. Confusion. Endless possibility. Daunting. But my brain quickly compensated: I wasn't pathless. I was on a new one. Blossom's hand pulled me along in a line. Not up the stairs, but into the first-floor master bedroom. That was where Blossom slept most nights. Not last night. But most nights. Through the room I had never been in, only glanced in, and into a side-room. A bathroom. There was a tub and a shower. Both were quite large. Like a magazine. I shook my head and tried to figure out where I was.

Amy was definitely not all quite cognizant of her surroundings; she was vague and spacy, like she was on something.

Blossom was 100% sure she wasn't.

But she treated her as though she was, which was to say: with an abundance of caution.

She started the water running, and she dropped a bath bomb into the churning tub as it filled; turning the water itself an opaque pink, and fluffing the surface with thick and luscious bubbles.

"When the tub is full, I'm going to turn around and give you a spot of privacy so you can undress and get in the bath. Do you understand?"

"I have... cookies..." That's what I was doing. Baking. A tray was in the oven. Timer. Right, how much time was left? Balling the dough and exchanging the sheets... five minutes? Five minutes from when my routine was disrupted. That could have been ten seconds ago or ten minutes. My head was fuzzy. I had to get them out of the oven, or...

"You tell me what to do, and I'll take care of them. For today, you're done baking, cupcake."

She leaned down to turn off the running water, double-checked the temperature, and then motioned to the tub.

"Clothes off; in you get. I'll turn around."

There was a lot of channeling of story characters and scenes here; Mia's and others. But also, there was a certain innate maternal energy that Blossom tapped into, and all this felt right.

I didn't want to. I wanted to finish what I started. But what I started was on a loop, a command at the end that forced it to repeat and repeat ad infinitum. There was no true ending. Already, the disruption made going back to it feel impossible.

I was down to just my underwear when I heard the egg timer in the distance. My nerves lit up like fireworks and my blood raced through me with adrenaline. I turned and made my way toward the door, but Blossom had already turned around to catch me. I tried shoving past her, oblivious to the fact that I wasn't even wearing a top.

Blossom, for her part, did her best to keep her hands away from touching anything they oughtn't, and she also kept her eyes locked on Amy's and didn't take the chance to look any lower out of respect for the girl's modesty.

"You tell me what to do, and I'll do it, cupcake. But not until you're in the tub."

She used one hand to direct Amy's chin, so she could look her right in the eyes, and she smiled genuinely. Warmly.

Blossom was tall. Blossom was also quite strong. It didn't take long for me to realize I had no hope of winning this physical contest. So I took a step back and, all at once, realized what I was wearing. Or rather, wasn't. I quickly covered my chest with my arms.

"Just... take the cookies out of the oven. The ones on the counter are done, so just put them on the tray in globs like..." I almost moved my hands away from my chest to show Blossom the size the cookies should be, but I stopped myself at the last minute. There was too much to explain, and the timer had already gone off.

"Take the cookies out of the oven. Put the dough in the fridge. Okay? And don't forget to turn the oven off!"

"Deal. And when I get back, you'll be in that bathtub waiting for me, understand?"

She wasn't sure if Amy was back to her senses, but some words and recognition of her toplessness was a good start. She turned and began to head out to the kitchen to fulfill her end of the deal.

I stripped as quickly as I could and sunk into the tub. It was a little hotter than I liked, but I was too nervous that Blossom would walk in at any time and see me naked. So I sunk under the bubbles and grimaced at the heat on my hands.

Blossom didn't come back right away. I sat there, looking over the pink foam, at my flour-dusted pajamas on the bathroom floor. The panties I was wearing were just coral-colored cotton. They were so boring, the kind of thing you buy at Walmart for a dollar just to have something to wear. Coincidentally, that was also exactly where, why, and for how much I bought them.

Ugh, I couldn't believe I let her see me like that…

Blossom took some time. She followed the directions given; took the cookies out of the oven, put the dough in the fridge, turned off the oven. And then she took a picture of the many plates of cookies because it had a pretty good aesthetic to it, and only then, finally, did she make her way back to the bathroom.

How was she going to talk to Amy about this?

"Did you turn off the oven?" I asked, before Blossom had even made it fully into the bathroom.

"Of course," Blossom said.

I sighed, something between wistfulness and relief, and sunk further into the bubbles. I hadn't had a bath in forever... maybe since I was a kid. I tried to take one as a teen, when I was first getting into baby stuff again, but tubs were always so small. I felt fat and ugly and not at all like a little girl. This tub, though... it was more like a jacuzzi. I could probably sit on one end of it and Blossom wouldn't even be able to reach me.

"If you want, I can wash your hair? I've got some really nice smelling stuff; and my hair is always bleached so I need good quality shampoo and conditioner to keep it looking nice."

There was something in Blossom's voice, something not commonly found there: uncertainty. A little vulnerability, or self-doubt, maybe. She was usually really good at hiding that kind of stuff.

"I can do it," I muttered into the water. Without the momentum of baking, I was starting to remember why I was in this state in the first place. Blossom, doting over me like this. Cuddling with me last night. My head on her lap. My cheek on her chest. I was making a fool of myself. I closed my eyes and tried to think about something else.

"You're so cute, cupcake."

A compliment. Simple, genuine, honest and real.

"You're so... in your own way. A hot girl is offering to wash your hair, in the bath she drew for you, and you're being all skittish and stoic. You don't need to be, Amy. You don't need to be guarded, or doubt yourself."

"I didn't ask for your advice," I said quietly. I could have been sharp or venomous with those words, but I wasn't feeling angry or annoyed. The words came out evenly and without inflection, like I was reading them out of a textbook. That's how I felt, like I was reading out of a textbook. I could be happy with that. Textbooks weren't always fun or interesting, but they were usually right.

"That's true."

This territory wasn't a space that Blossom was used to exploring, but she was doing her best to navigate it all the same. She flashed a cheerleader smile - practiced and perfect - and left the bathroom. Not for long, though; just long enough to go through the bedroom, out into the living room, and to bring one of the dining table chairs back with her so she could sit down. Amy both watched her movements and didn't; a kind of side-eyed disinterested curiosity, but Blossom was starting to understand how her friend worked and what her actions meant.

With an exhale, she sat down on the chair next to the tub and leaned forward. She rested her feet on the edge of the bathtub, her elbows on her knees, and her chin in her hands.

"You know, you didn't want to get to know me at first, and that's turning out okay. Don't you think?"

"Sure," I dismissed. I didn't want to argue with her. I felt like anything I did would just make it worse, and that feeling was absolute. There was no recourse, like fucking up was my destiny. I was at an impasse, where everything I thought was both inexorably wrong and tirelessly right.

"I know how you write, which means that's probably how you operate, too - big internal monologues with a lot of words unsaid."

Blossom smiled and tilted her head in her hands.

"So what are you thinking, Amy?"

"Nothing," I lied. Never in my life had I been thinking nothing. Sometimes I had so many things I was thinking all at once that it was just a hum of indecipherable noise, but that was the difference between 'nothing' and 'everything'.

Right now though, I wasn't thinking everything. I was thinking a few specific things, very loudly and very angrily. All of them were hard to listen to, even with the crystal-clear acoustics of my inner-skull. I wanted to go back to baking...

"Alright, well if you're not thinking anything, I can put some music on and wash your hair."

She was already fishing into her pocket for her phone, and thinking about what music to play. Blossom knew that Amy was lying to her, but at the same time she also knew she couldn't change someone else's behavior and could only alter her own. Maybe music would help.