76.)

It wasn't a great day. I felt horrible. I kept trying to stay positive, to argue with my thoughts, but they were too loud. Eventually I had to use the bathroom, so I changed out of my diaper. I didn't feel right being in it in the first place, but I was scared to take it off. I wasn't sure if I would feel better or worse, and I really didn't want to make anything any harder on Blossom.

Turns out, it didn't really change anything. I still felt horrible, and my thoughts were still too loud.

We were back to watching The Good Place because comedies are supposed to help. That's what Blossom said. I don't know if it worked or not, but it was nice watching the first season again. If Blossom minded, she sure didn't show it. She had changed out of her diaper too.

It was late afternoon before I could really talk about any of it, I think because I was too tired to keep being loud and horrible. That was when Blossom asked:

"How are you doing?"

An apology seemed a better answer than "bad".

"I'm really sorry," I sighed, sulking into the sofa. "I really thought it would be okay... I thought I was doing the right thing. And now I just feel like I can't stop doing the wrong things."

"My Dad used to tell me that sometimes people apologize because they need to be told they're forgiven, even if they didn't do anything wrong. Sometimes you need that external factor in your life, so..." Blossom turned on the sofa, tucked her legs up underneath her too-tall form, and put her hand on Amy's thigh in a show of reassurance. "I forgive you, Amy. You didn't make the choice to feel bad, or to have a hard mental health day. So while I don't think you did anything wrong, I forgive you all the same."

Blossom wasn't exactly what one would describe as a helper-type, but her Dad was a pretty smart guy. Not just book-smart, but people-smart. He'd raised his daughter all on his own, and that meant either having or developing a decent degree of emotional intelligence. For Blossom's dad, it was probably a mixture of both.

I nodded. I didn't know what to say. I didn't know how to explain any of it. I felt empty inside, like someone hollowed me out with an ice cream scooper. My stomach was in knots. But I wasn't sad anymore. I felt too tired to be sad. It was a weird silver lining.

"Do you wanna do some coloring?"

Blossom had some coloring books and pencils in her car, in case the two of them wanted to do some diapered tummy time together. Even without the other accessories and clothing, coloring was a pretty zen experience.

"I dunno..." I sunk into the couch a little more. I didn't want to get too embroiled in Little stuff and taint those feelings with this sickness. But at the same time, I was trying to keep from playing with my fingers and I wasn't doing a great job. Maybe having a pencil in them would help. So I said: "Alright, I guess."

Blossom lit up with a small subdued grin and nodded her head, slipping off the sofa with graceful poise before turning to face Amy.

"You stay right here, alright? I'm going to get the supplies from the car."

Had she done that a few hours before, I might have tried going back to the kitchen. By now, I was too exhausted. So I waited with uncharacteristic patience as she went to her car and came back with a canvas tote bag.

"So I've got pencils and markers and crayons; I don't know what you'll want to use, but I've got them all."

Blossom set the bag down on the coffee table and then dragged it over to the Wave Wall, so there was plenty of room on the floor if that was where the two of them wound up.

"I got four books uh..."

She took each out one by one, and held them up as she read the titles.

"This one is Queer Cuties, this one is Baffling Buildings, this one is Amazing Animals, and this one is Fantastic Fireworks."

They were all adult-aimed coloring books, which Blossom had agonized over getting when she was purchasing them. She didn't know if she'd find a kids' coloring book to be very engaging, but she also didn't know if it defeated the purpose to have an adult version.

"Animals, please." I liked the alliterative titles.

Blossom gave me the Animal book and sat down on the floor with the other three. As she leafed through them, I flipped through the pages of the Animal book. The pictures were a lot more complicated than the ones for kids. There was one page of a sloth that I particularly identified with today, so I selected that one.

I hadn't colored anything in a long time. I think I liked markers the most as a kid, so I chose those ones. I held the book in my lap and started with the trees in the background to warm up.

Blossom wondered about this, about keeping Amy's hands busy and her mind focused on something that wasn't baking. On the one hand, this was a lot cheaper, but on the other hand, it meant Blossom got less desserts which was in its own way a tragedy.

Blossom wound up picking out the Queer Cuties one and picked a page at random; a scene of a house with one woman on the roof in a flannel top fixing some tiles, and another woman at the bottom of the ladder in a sundress looking up with a look of pride on her face.

Okay, so markers were not quite the experience I remembered. I did my outlining first, and then filling it in - which was my favorite part - left little lines all over the page. I guess it added some texture, but it wasn't really the vibe I wanted.

Instead, when I got to the sloth, I switched to crayons. Sloths were usually white or cream colored or something, but that was kind of uninteresting. I was coloring mine a light purple. The crayon said "lavender".

"Coloring in is either a lot harder than I remember, or I'm just really out of practice," Blossom mused out loud. The sound of crayons and pencils on paper were their own form of calming ASMR.

"Yeah, I know what you mean. Maybe we should have stuck with kids books for a while." Crayons were going a little better than the markers. The colors weren't quite as bold and sometimes the wax on the paper made a weird line or texture. I was trying not to be such a perfectionist about the whole thing.

"Are you suggesting that perhaps we're not adults at all, Amy? Perish the thought." Blossom looked up with a little smirk and then back at her paper. "Do you think it's okay for two redheads to date? I kinda wanna make both these girls redheads, but like one of them more red-red and the other more orange-red."

"I can't imagine why hair color would matter in the slightest, especially if gender doesn't."

I don't think it was a real question. I think Blossom was just trying to engage with me. Or maybe this was the more adult-version of "what color is a buffalo?". I started giving some accenting dark-purples to spots on the sloth to make them pop out more. The crayons really didn't hold a candle to the marker-colored background.

"I thought about it once, you know ~ going red? But I like the bottle blonde. It always catches people off-guard, especially the guys in my engineering program. It's like Legally Blonde to them, only I'm an engineer so it's like... Structurally Blonde."

"Structurally Blonde," I chuckled. That was a good joke. "I always thought you looked kind of stupid in high school. Like a trophy wife. But I guess I got used to it or something." I wasn't trying to be mean. I hoped she didn't think that was mean. Everything was past tense, and she was a lot meaner to me back in the day.

"Oh absolutely; for a long time I thought about what kind of guy I'd wanna land and how that would benefit me and how I wouldn't need to work and all that outdated stuff. And one day my Dad was home and he asked about how my studies were going and I told him I didn't care because I'd never need to work. And you know what he told me? He said that beauty fades with age, and knowledge increases. And I'm already beautiful, so why not get a headstart on knowledge? And I guess that really stuck with me."

"Smart dude." If beauty faded with age, I'd hate to be the sucker that got stuck with me. If I could even land a sucker.

I finished my coloring book page first. It wasn't very good. I switched to the fireworks book after that and tried to find ways to mix the different mediums: markers were a lot brighter, colored pencils had good fill, and crayons were good for effects and stuff. I guess I kind of got into it.

"Done." It was dark outside when I finally turned my book to face Blossom, who was lying on the floor of the living room on her stomach.

"You're so much better at this than I am, lemme see!"

Blossom's page was only about halfway done; she'd decided to do each brick in the house different shades to show depth and texture and that had doomed her to a special kind of heck.

The fireworks were really pretty. I didn't do the sky very well; I should have just left the page white. But all in all, it wasn't bad for my first coloring page in 10 years.

"Woah, that's gorgeous!" Blossom said excitedly, eyes sparkling. "You create super beautiful things, cupcake. You know that, right? I design stuff, but you create stuff, and that's incredible." Blossom felt actually pretty self-conscious about her own by comparison.

I swear, I probably could have scribbled on paper and she would have found something artful about it. Just because I could write diaper stories didn't mean I was good at anything else. But for as much praise as Blossom gave, she didn't offer to put it on the fridge; I guess that was just another story trope.

I colored one more picture, but I didn't put as much effort into it. Blossom spent the whole night on one picture, which should have been in a museum or something. I wanted to actually put it on the fridge, but I didn't want to fall into the trope if it wasn't a real thing.

I had been feeling tired all day, but around nine or ten I couldn't take it anymore. The whole day had been exhausting, and I was struggling just to keep my eyes open. Blossom was too enraptured in touch-ups to notice, so I pulled myself up to shaky feet.

"I'm gonna crash, I think."

"Do you wanna eat first?" Blossom asked. "We've been coloring most of the day and I'm feeling pretty hungry and if I go to bed hungry, I have bad dreams. And you have enough issues sleeping as it is."

Amy had barely had anything to eat all day, and Blossom was nothing if not observant.

"I don't think so." I faked a smile. "I'm not really hungry. And the sooner I sleep, the sooner I might feel better." Moods were always so hard to shake, but sleeping was like a reset button. I couldn't guarantee I'd wake up okay, but at least I'd have a chance.

"Alright, but you gotta pinky promise me that you'll wake me up when you wake up, so I can take care of you."

Blossom held up her pinky in earnest.

"I don't like waking people up," I sighed. There was a little more to that statement, but I was too tired to get into it. "I'll try, though."

"Promise to try?"

Blossom offered her revision, still holding her pinky up.

I groaned, but whatever. I knew I wouldn't wake her up anyway, but I guess trying to defy my nature wasn't impossible. It was actually defying my nature that was. So I linked pinkies with her.

"G'night."

Blossom seemed pleased by this, even though she wasn't entirely sure anything would come of it. She did decide to offer one last conceit.

"Do you wanna snuggle?"

I knew she was adding more layers of security to the "keep Amanda out of the kitchen" routine. But it wasn't going to be necessary: I was too tired to bake. Then again... she didn't have to know that.

"Sure," I shrugged, like I didn't care. Was I trying to convince her or me?

"You know," Blossom started, once they were in the bedroom and she was changing into her pajamas - facing away for Amy's comfort, and not really out of any concern for her own dignity, "I sleep so good when I lay with you."

"Habit probably," I teased. "You spend more time in bed with someone than in bed alone." If Blossom made a face at me, I didn't notice. I was pulling the covers back on Blossom's bed and trying to math out which side I usually slept on. I had never slept downstairs in Blossom's bed before.

"I think it's a mixed bag for me," I said, following up on her thought. "Sometimes it's nice, sometimes it's not."

"Well, let's try and get that average up! I bet I can get you to at least an 80% satisfaction rate, sleeping with me. I do get pretty good reviews from other people I sleep with, so~"

Blossom turned and stuck out her tongue, playing off of Amy's teasing.

"Just focus on getting a passing grade," I shot back. I turned around to look at her a little too soon. She had a pajama top pulled down over her chest, but her butt was clad in only a thin pair of black panties. I looked up at the ceiling as she bent over, stepping into a set of pajama shorts.

Once the both of us were in bed, my head felt heavy. The pillow was soft - probably softer than my pillow upstairs - and my body was so tired. I felt like I could fall asleep at the drop of a pin. But Blossom rolled over and wrapped her arm over my chest, resting her thigh over my legs.

I thought I might get uncomfortable again, or freak out. But weirdly enough, the both of us wearing panties instead of diapers somehow made the whole thing less intimate. Wasn't it supposed to be the other way around?

I rolled over on my side, facing away from her, and she cuddled closer. She was warm... a little space heater under the blanket. I felt my eyes falling closed in the dark room.

"I hope you have wonderful dreams, cupcake. Dream of happy thoughts and bright horizons."

Blossom had her eyes closed when she made the well-wishing; happy thoughts and bright horizons was her father's goodnight mantra.