Friday, January 13th

130.)

Blossom and I spent the week texting a little more than usual. She flirted a lot, which was to say, about the same amount. I had to change my work schedule a little because of school and Aunt Patty let me work from home on Fridays. Downside: I didn't have any alone time at home all semester. That meant the only place I felt comfortable writing Academy Works was at Blossom's beach house. I was absolutely determined to finish Academy A this weekend.

That Friday, we had a plan. While I was in therapy, Blossom was going to go to the post office before they closed at 7. Then she would double back and pick me up. It was an efficient use of time.

"So, how would you describe your relationship?" Stephanie asked me. I was playing with the magnet rings I kept in my coat pocket.

"I haven't the slightest idea," I sighed. I'd spent most of the session so far just talking about the way Blossom and I started dating, or not dating, or whatever we were doing. It felt like a relationship, but the kind of relationship you have when you're five and you think someone would make a good husband when you play house. Or, alternatively and paradoxically, the kind of relationship you have when you're married and have lived with someone for fifty years and you like to sit on the porch in the summer and do puzzles. I was missing that in-between step, the part where you get to know each other and fall in love and have all the fights and sex and stuff. I didn't know anything about Blossom, but I felt like I knew everything. Why did it have to swing from absolute to absolute like that? Why were we so contradicting?

"Well, I don't think it's that pressing," Stephanie shrugged. "It takes time to fall into a pattern, and sometimes you can't know what you're looking at until you see all of it. And besides, isn't this good for you?"

"I don't see how," I said flatly.

"Well, if she has no expectations of you, then you can't screw it up. Right?"

"Or she has expectations that I don't know about, so I'm destined to screw it up."

"That could be true," Stephanie conceded, "but remember what we talked about last week? If you're going to play the game, you need fair rules. Destined to screw up is not fair."

"I can't change reality," I said sourly. I found myself acting like a jerk sometimes with Stephanie. I think it was because she let me get away with it.

"That is incorrect," Stephanie said happily, like I'd stumbled into a trap. "Reality is a subjective experience. What you consider real isn't the same as what anyone else considers real. We have consensus, like that the sky is blue, and then we call that 'real', but you'll always have people who see the sky as something else."

"Those people are wrong."

"Why?" Stephanie asked. "Because they don't align with the majority? Fifty years ago, the majority said being gay was a disease. Majorities change."

"I don't think people will ever change their mind about the sky," I said.

"They changed their mind about the shape of the Earth."

"We learned more information," I argued. "We figured out more stuff scientifically. Same with being gay."

"Sure, and maybe one day we'll learn that what we all call 'blue' isn't the same at all. How can you know what someone else sees? What if they see green, but they call it blue? Or what if you see orange, but you call it blue? What if we find another dimension of space and realize the world isn't round, but it's a trapezoid? Or a shape we don't even have a name for yet?"

"We can only act on what we know," I said, reeling in her philosophical argument.

"True. But part of knowing what we know is that we define the universe using our senses. Our flawed, limited human perception. Nothing we observe can be absolute, because we can't be absolutely sure of ourselves."

"Fine, oh my god. You win. Reality is subjective, okay?"

"I wasn't trying to win anything," Stephanie said, a little ashamed of herself. She twirled her hair when she was self-conscious. I noticed that last session.

"No, I know." I sulked into the couch and tore the magnet rings apart, then stuck them back together. "I mean... I see what you're saying. I just don't know why it matters."

"Well... how about I try again? Is that okay?"

I nodded.

"When you play a board game, there are rules, right? Like, they're written in that book thing that comes with the game."

I nodded again.

"The law is kind of like that too, right? We write down what the rules are so we can use them in court. We can say 'this is wrong' and 'this is right'."

"Sure?"

"But we still argue the rules, right? That's what lawsuits are. Two people disagreeing on the way the rule is interpreted."

"Okay..."

"What I'm saying..." Stephanie said slowly, trying to tie her metaphors back together, "is that when you interpret the rules, you're often fighting for the other side. You're the lawyer working against you, rather than the lawyer working with you."

"So when you say I should change reality," I finished for her, "you're saying I should be choosing the interpretation that is best for me."

"Yes, exactly." Stephanie sighed. She seemed happy that all that came together. It was weird, because sometimes she acted like such a real life human being. She was so fallible. Maybe that's why I kept coming back to see her.

"So how do I do that?" I asked, actually curious this time.

"Well, why are you destined to fail?"

"Because Blossom has expectations and I don't know what they are?" I guessed.

"Because you think Blossom has expectations and you don't know what they are."

"So I shouldn't think that..." Jeeze, this was a long routine of mental gymnastics. I was exhausted already.

"Maybe you should just trust Blossom," Stephanie suggested. "You made promises to each other, right? So those are your tenets. Nothing more."

"It seems too easy," I sulked. But Stephanie said:

"Easy doesn't mean wrong."

***

"How was therapy?" Blossom asked.

"Fine?" I closed her car door and buckled my seatbelt. "Sometimes I feel like I go in there and I just talk about stuff I already know. Or I argue something I don't really believe. And then, at the end, nothing is really that different."

"I think therapy is a lot like that. And then sometimes, you'll be at home the next day or the next month or the next year and suddenly something your therapist said just... lands with you. Or maybe it doesn't. Who knows. The important thing about therapy is that you're working on it, I think."

Blossom was wearing an oversized hoodie with the school football team's name on it, with shorts so short they weren't visible below the hem of the hoodie: just bare legs all the way down to her white socks and sneakers. It was a low-effort Blossom Brixley day today.

"I guess so..." I watched Blossom pull out of the parking lot before I reflected on another thought I had in therapy.

"I think I'm kind of a brat with her? With my therapist? I feel like I'm falling into this pattern of just being like nuh uh! whenever she says something. It feels disrespectful..."

"Everyone has a way with their therapist. Becky goes into hers with a list, like, a notepad. And she rapid-fires through her thoughts and feelings and writes down everything her therapist says in return. But that is so not how she is outside of therapy; it's just the way she feels in control when being vulnerable. Maybe you being bratty is the same? It's kind of Littley behavior, right? That's something you have a lot of control over."

"I guess so..." Using Little feelings in therapy to deflect from emotional conversation? Yeah, that did sound like me didn't it?

"I don't think I'm much of a brat though?" I said, more like a question. "Whenever I act bratty with you I feel guilty." I'd tried a few times, almost instinctively. But I always felt bad afterward.

"Maybe you feel guilty because you feel at a social disadvantage with me, and like you don't want to do anything to push me away, so you think that being bratty is pushing the limit too far? Honestly, babes, I like bratty girls. I think it's cute. And I have a killer 'smug babysitter who's going to let you tire yourself out' smirk; you'll see it one day."

"Hm..." Blossom made a really good point. I didn't want to push her away. I didn't want to push anyone away, not really. Including Stephanie. Maybe I just acted this way with her because I knew she was getting paid for it. She had an incentive to put up with me. I bit my lip and played with the magnet rings between my fingers. Why did I always think of something I needed to talk about in therapy right after therapy?

"I'm glad I could give you something to think about, cupcake. Wanna go get ice cream? It's an excellent after-therapy treat, and the DQ," she said the initials out loud, "is open all year round."

"Sure, alright."

You'd think ice cream in the middle of January would be a bad idea, but the heat of Blossom's car was a biome of its own. She had to finish her cone before she could keep driving and I fished cookie dough chunks out from a Blizzard cup.

"So, do we have any plans this weekend?" I asked. "I'd like to try to write, if that's okay..."

"No plans," Blossom said between licks of her ice cream cone. "Though I was thinking we should do a scene or something together, since we have new diapers."

"Mmm..." I nodded. That could be fun. I struggled a lot staying in character, but it did make it easier to do things with Blossom that I wouldn't ordinarily do. See: letting her change me. "Something Academy?" I assumed.

"That sounds great! I'd love to explore more new things, and Academy is a tour de force of interesting kinky lovely baby things. And adding you to the mix, cupcake? That just makes it all the better."

Although Blossom knew that Amy didn't believe her when she said how attractive she thought she was, Blossom was an industrious and patient gal when it came to the long game.

***

By the time the two of them got to the beach-house, Blossom had a little time to formulate her idea. She waited until they got inside to spill the beans on it.

"Okay, I have an idea. For a scene. And I think you're gonna love it."

"Alright?" The beach house was predictably freezing. I kept my coat on and Blossom had already turned on the heat. She had a box in her hands from the trunk of her car - diapers, probably. She wasn't struggling to carry it or anything, but she was an athletic girl.

"Okay, so," she set the box down on the kitchen counter, as though carrying a box of diapers inside and setting it down in such a place was entirely normal, "I wanna give you the opportunity to be a brat. And to have a tantrum, if you wanna. Something babysittery, maybe like... imagine you're Talita, but it's a few months before the story, that kinda vibe? You're new to Town, your brain is melting a little so you're prone to lashing out and being bratty, and you refuse to accept diapers. And I'll be your babysitter, and let you run your course and see how it gets you nowhere, and then diaper you once you tire yourself out?"

"Uh..." That whole thing was kind of embarrassing, especially because Blossom said it so candidly. But I had two big complaints. The first: "So you don't get to be Little? That doesn't seem fair..."

"How is it unfair, if what I want is to play smirking babysitter to your bratty baby?"

"Well... I don't know. It just is." I gave her a look, but Blossom wasn't really the most babyish girl in the world. I knew she liked diapers, but she liked a lot of things. Was I boxing her in to assume she only wanted to be a little girl? Maybe playing babysitter was what she wanted. But that brought me to my second point: "Anyway, there are no babysitters in Academy T."

"Sure there are; Talita gets babysat. Any of the other Moms and Dads are babysitters for the Candies at any given time~"

"Other parents are not the same as a babysitter," I said flatly. But Blossom waved her hand at me.

"It's our roleplay; it doesn't have to be canon or anything."

I guess she had a point... even if it wasn't an Academy Works roleplay proper, it was a really fun idea. And I could try this whole brat thing out. I didn't show it, but the idea was really exciting to me.

"Fine. But this house has to warm up first. Or we could do it tomorrow?" I didn't know how Blossom was feeling, but I was ready to go. It felt like ages since we did anything like this...

"Let's do it tonight, after it warms up. We could cuddle on the sofa under a blanket while we wait? Or we could put our new diapers away, together? That'll fill some time."

"Yeah, okay."

Blossom hoisted the box up into her arms again and led the way up the stairs. We were both still in our winter coats. My bedroom was just as we left it: a mess. I usually cleaned up and made the bed before I left, but Blossom was in a hurry on Saturday. I sat on the edge of the bed while she fumbled with the combination lock.

The diapers in the packaging were cute. We got one in her size, one in mine. They were both the same: white and pink with bunnies. She got Larges and I got Extra Larges because those were the only two sizes they had in stock. I watched her take them out of the packaging and play with them in her hands.

"Jeeze, they're adorable..."

"They really are. Can you imagine being alive like... fifty years earlier? And having nothing cute to wear? Like? We're hashtag-blessed, and I mean that unironically. We're in the golden age, that's for sure."

"Golden age for adult diapers, at least," I laughed. Blossom stuffed all the diapers in the trunk. With two packs of BunnyHopps, the white diapers Blossom and I had been wearing recently, and the remnant black and pink ones we still had left over, the thing was well and truly stocked. Baby powder, wipes, and my adult baby bottle just barely fit on top.

"No more new prints for a while, huh?" But that was okay, I liked that we had options.

By the time we were done, the house was bearably warm. We went back downstairs and took off our coats. We sat on the couch, checked our phones, and put them down at about the same time.

"Well?" Blossom asked.

"Yeah. Okay." Here goes nothing.