113.)

In less than ten minutes, pizza had arrived. The house was warm enough to walk around without a blanket, and the two of us decided to set up on the couch instead of at the kitchen counter. I grabbed some red pepper flakes from the cupboard and checked the fridge for drinks. The apple juice was past its expiration date. That's what we got for only visiting this place on the weekends, or, in this case, two weekends. We would have to go grocery shopping in the morning. Then again, if we were leaving tomorrow, maybe it wasn't worth it.

Blossom didn't mind drinking water with her meal; she really only drank three things on the regular anyway; water, DC (her term for Diet Coke), and alcohol. Other drinks like juice were fine for the occasional treat, but she was otherwise fine and happy with water.

"You know, Becky said when she went to England that they don't put pepperoni on their pizzas and that is just… so obtuse to me. I don't even like pepperoni that much, but a pepperoni pizza is just… iconic, isn't it? Am I being Americocentric about it? Who knows."

"Dunno." I pulled out my phone with my free hand and typed in a Google search. "Yeah, it looks like they don't usually put pepperoni on pizza in Italy. I guess because, when pizza was first popularized, it was street food. And pepperoni was too ritzy. The more you know."

"That makes sense! Becky's been to most places in Europe and she loves it and is always trying to get me to go there with her, but I'm always so busy busy busy. And to be honest, I'd rather be spending the time here with you, although don't tell Becky that or she'd never stop being passive aggressive about it."

"You never talk about her..." I knew Blossom's best friend was named Becky, but very little else about her. Blossom almost never talked about her life outside of the beach house, unless it was so lost in the past that I couldn't touch it. Maybe it was because Blossom's spheres were starting to touch that she felt like maybe talking more about other facets of her life was more applicable now.

"Oh! Well, Becky's my best friend. It's not short for anything; her birth certificate literally says Becky. She's honest, sometimes - often - to a fault. But you also never have to wonder if she's mad at you, because she'll make sure you know. She's probably one of the best gift-givers I've ever met, and she's also always looking out for me. Which is good, because sometimes I'm bad at looking out for myself. She's also super smart."

"Huh... she sounds cool." I knew Blossom had a lot of friends, but I guess I never really thought about it. In my brain, Blossom existed as an extension of me. This was mostly her fault, I think; she kept me so separate from everything that it was hard to imagine her life. But now that I could... well, it didn't feel quite the way I wanted it to.

"She's pretty cool, I'd say. You're going to think she doesn't like you at first, because everyone does. But she's just being her, and I don't mean that in a bad way. I just mean, she doesn't put on a fake face to new people because she thinks that's insincere. So you get her at her most her, and that way you know pretty quickly if you'll like her. Oh, speaking of! Do you wanna see the dress she got me?"

"Sure." It was hard to sound enthused. I was enthused! Right? I wanted to see Blossom in a cute dress. But the whole thing just made me nervous. Probably because I was meeting this girl tomorrow, and this girl was important to Blossom.

After dinner, Blossom got up and went upstairs to change. Ever since that talk about intimacy or whatever, she was a lot more cautious about undressing in front of me. I appreciated it, but a part of me didn't feel right. Even if Blossom was abrasive, it felt selfish to make her act differently for me.

When Blossom came down, she was dressed in the Selkie dress she'd gotten from Becky; shimmery pastel pinks and blues and yellows, puffy sleeves, and her long long legs out on display. She'd done something a little special for Amy though, and when she finished showing off the dress itself she did a little curtsy to show off the diaper she'd put on underneath.

Ever since I'd known Blossom - even in high school - I struggled a lot to see her as anything but sexy. We had talked about it before; how tall girls with big boobs get typecast into a certain role. If we went to an ageplay munch together, everyone would assume she was the caregiver. I hated stereotypes like that, but I couldn't help but fall into them. She was just... a sexy woman.

But in that dress? I stared dumbfounded up at her, and not in my usual stupor of thirteen-year-old-boy-seeing-boobs-for-the-first-time. I stared at her because her blonde hair was tied up in low pigtails, she flashed me the white plastic of her diaper, and her dress was colorful and frilly and every bit the archetype of a six-year-old-girl-at-a-cotillion.

Okay, she was still sexy. I mean, she was Blossom Brixley! But that was the first time I could see Blossom as a Little above all else. For some reason, that made things a whole lot less awkward.

"You're so cute! Holy crap..."

"Thank you! I've wanted a Selkie dress for so long, but I wind up with choice paralysis and put like four in my cart, and then talk myself out of it, and Becky's just decisive as heck, and she got me the one she knew I really wanted even if I didn't know that. How do I look? Is it okay?"

She did another little pirouette, giggling to herself as her pigtails swung around with her.

"You look incredible." Then I picked a more accurate word. "Adorable. So... so sweet and cute and..." I blinked, like she might be a mirage. But she was still there, and gosh. I was beaming.

Then, in an unexpected combo move, I was sucker punched by two thoughts. The first was how she was so much cuter than I would ever be. The second was how great Becky was. The smile fell from my face and I tried to think of something else.

"Hey now, I see that, I see that face thing. Your expression. I saw it, I could almost see the thoughts behind your eyes." Blossom went immediately from sweet and cute and giggly bubbly to caring and maternal sounding. It was a talent she seemed to have.

"What's up, cupcake? Tell Blossom, she's here to listen. And by Blossom, I mean me, of course."

"I cannot take you seriously in that outfit," I laughed. She was actually pretty good at acting like a mom sometimes, but in that dress? Absolutely not.

"It was a dumb intrusive thought," I answered, because I knew she wouldn't let it go. "But I'm really okay. I promise."

"Well, I can't force you to share it with me, buuuut…" She put on a cute and dramatic pout and pointed to her face. "Do you really wanna make this girl pouty?"

"Oh, hold on..." I knew I was deflecting, but honestly? Good. I went over to the box on the table, where the pacifier clip was, and picked it up. Then I went into my backpack and grabbed my pacifier. I looped the cord around the pacifier handle and went back to Blossom, clipping it to the collar of her dress. It didn't match at all. Like, at all. I was a little sour about that, but I'd never seen Blossom wear something so childish!

"You can't have it, because it was a gift," I said, picking up the pacifier from the end of the tether. I put it in my mouth for half a second - the first time Blossom ever saw me with the pacifier in - to clean it, then pulled it back out. "But you can borrow it for now." And with that, I plopped Blossom's first pacifier as an adult between her lips.

As a woman who was pretty in control of her life, a lot of what happened felt foreign to her. Like she was only an observer as Amy went and fetched the pacifier, attached it to her Christmas gift, clipped it to Blossom's dress, and then put it first between her own lips, and then between Blossom's.

There were many shades of pink on Blossom's ensemble and her cheeks added another to the palette. Her eyes were wide in surprise, like a rabbit in the headlights, and she quietly sat down on the sofa with a binkie between her lips and not a damn word to say.

She was so cute. Like, so cute! Like, model on the internet cute! I wanted to take a picture of her and put it on my Twitter, but that probably wasn't a good idea. Even without her face, there was a lot of risk there.

"Bluey?" I asked, mustering up my excitement again. I knew I couldn't change into a diaper, not with her dressed like that. It was hard to look at her for too long or my jealousy would sprout back up, and putting myself in a vulnerable headspace would only make it worse. But that didn't mean I couldn't enjoy a kids' TV show.

Without a word - either because she couldn't find the right one, or because she'd forgotten how to talk - Blossom nodded her head.

Bluey it was.

I thought Bluey would put me into a little girl headspace, but it really didn't. It was great supplemental material to little space, but it didn't induce it the same way diapers did. For a while, Blossom was cute and quiet, but every time I glanced over at her something looked wrong.

Because she was Blossom Brixley, and she looked like a toddler? No, that I could put my finger on.

Because she was sucking on my pacifier? No, it was more like something was missing.

A diaper? Check. A pacifier? Check. A cute outfit? Check. Even pigtails! Check.

What else did a little girl need?

It took me three episodes to figure it out. She needed an adult.

"Hey..." I said, a little nervously. "Do you want to lay on my lap or something?"

Blossom wasn’t sure if that was okay, because of nagging thoughts about intimacy and boundaries. But for the same reason she couldn’t find the right words, she couldn’t pay attention to those thoughts either.

Instead, her thought process went:

Do you want this?

Yes.

Then nod your head.

And so she did. She nodded her head and leaned over to lay down on Amy's lap.

I put my hand on Blossom's shoulder for a moment, then I had to sit up a little more. Eventually, she and I found a comfortable position. Then, after a while, I started to play with her hair. Lightly, just a little twirl here or a scratch there. And we watched Bluey.

I think both of us were waiting for me to freak out. She had put her head on my lap before and I didn't like it. When she got too close or put her arm around me, I didn't like that either. It was an intimacy thing, right? But this didn't feel intimate. It didn't feel like I was her Mommy or anything. I felt like I was babysitting. Blossom Brixley didn't even seem like Blossom Brixley. She was someone else. Maybe, in a way, I was too.