Saturday, January 14th
135.)
I made cinnamon rolls. They were slow; I needed a one-inch rise, which took a little over an hour. I wound up making three different sets of dough, so the rise was a little staggered. I flattened it and covered the surface in butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon, then had to wait.
Cinnamon rolls were not methodical. They were really hard to screw up, which was kind of relieving. It also meant I could experiment with different shapes: square cinnamon rolls, triangular ones, some thin, some thicker. The thicker ones didn't cook right though. I wondered if I could make one of those put-the-shape-in-the-right-hole baby puzzles, but with cinnamon rolls. Probably not.
I didn't notice the sun coming up. I didn't notice Blossom in her pajamas. The first thing I noticed was a clatter of a tray on the countertop as Blossom tried pulling one of the sticky cinnamon buns apart from the others. I nearly jumped out of my skin.
"Sorry," Blossom said bashfully. "I didn't mean to spook you."
"No... it's fine..." I stood there for a minute, wondering where I was in my routine. The kitchen was a mess. I was a mess. I only had a few hours of sleep before I had to get up and change.
Blossom had a warm, understanding, and weary-early-morning-style smile, and she surveyed the kitchen to figure out what her next move should be. She knew that this was a harmful activity, functionally, but she also knew how much Amy had pushed herself the previous night and she wasn't about to rob her of her coping methods. So she licked her fingers clean from the sticky cinnamon and frosting, and made her decision.
"I'm going to be your cleaning girl; I'll tidy up after you. You can finish the current batch you're on, and we can go cuddle. How does that sound, cupcake?"
"Yeah... okay..." I felt so stupid. I knew last night was a lot. I knew this was bound to happen. It felt so inevitable, cuddled up to her chest. Wearing that wet diaper. Thoughts spinning around in my head. I was surprised I fell asleep at all. After I did, I hoped I wouldn't wake up. But I did, and then all this, and...
"Amy?"
"Sorry..." I mumbled, turning away from Blossom. I found the place in my routine that I'd paused at and let it take me far away from my feelings.
"You can talk out your thoughts if you want to, I'll do my best to listen."
Blossom began to move around the kitchen to clean up after Amy, stopping here and there to take a bite of cinnamon roll, and then to wash her hands. Blossom knew - or at least suspected - that intimacy like last night was probably very new to Amy, and she tried to remember how it felt all those years ago.
"These are so good by the way, I love the triangle ones."
"Mmhmm..." I barely registered what Blossom was saying. I had two more sets of dough that needed to be put in the oven, but I was limited by baking time. A little less than half an hour. I cut up the second-to-last log of dough and arranged it in the spare pan. Too much waiting...
"The sorority house has one of those double-ovens. You know the ones with one on top, and one on the bottom?"
It was idle conversation without much purpose; just to fill the noise between the percussion of the baking steps. After Blossom finished cleaning, after she'd walked Amy out of the kitchen, she would look at having some real conversation.
"I wonder if you can make cinnamon roll cupcakes. Would that work?"
"I dunno..." I wasn't thinking. But the talk of one of those double ovens sounded heavenly. I guess for a big house, you'd need two. I wished I had two. Think of the efficiency.
"Okay, let's go now."
Blossom was wiping my hands with a wet cloth. I wasn't sure how much time had passed, but I had the final tray of cinnamon rolls in the pan and ready to go.
"Twenty-five minutes," I told her. "And you have to put the glaze on afterward. It's in this cup. Just pour it on."
"I got it," Blossom said, pulling Amy away from the kitchen. "Did you sleep?"
"Mmhmm. A bit." I sulked and looked down at my pajamas. "I'm a mess."
Maybe another day, Blossom would make a diaper filling joke about that; today wasn't that day. Today was a day of warm smiles and gentle predictable movements and motions.
"How about I give you a bath, and I can get your pajayjays in the wash? How does that sound?"
"A shower, maybe..." Blossom giving me a bath sounded like a bit too much at the moment. After last night, and then after today... why did I keep handling everything so terribly? What was wrong with me?
"Are you sure?" Blossom asked, sounding a little unsure.
"Mmhmm. I'll be okay."
"Put your clothes outside the door?"
"Okay." I gave Blossom a little smile and tried to muster all the optimism I could. "I'm okay, I am."
"I believe you," Blossom said, hoping that her belief was put in the right place.
I took a shower upstairs in the bathroom across the hall from my room. I brought my day clothes into the bathroom with me and left my dirty ones outside the door.
The warm water helped to wake me up a little. It brought me back to reality. I knew that Blossom wasn't angry at me for yesterday, and I knew that she wanted everything that happened. For some reason, she liked me. She wanted me. I didn't have to be so critical of myself.
Don't write her out, I reminded myself. That was my promise.
While Amy showered, Blossom washed her face in the kitchen sink and brushed her hair using the mirror by the back door. Once she was done with that, she fulfilled her promise on the cinnamon rolls at the 25 minute mark. Amy was still in the shower, so Blossom put on a pot of coffee and sat up on the kitchen counter with her legs dangling while she nursed a cup in her hands. Her life had become so strange since she'd met Amanda, but at the same time… strange didn't mean bad. Honestly, Amy might have been the first person she'd found herself in a relationship with since high school that she might have wanted to meet her Dad.
That was definitely something.
When I was dressed again - my hair wet at the ends - I went back downstairs to find Blossom nursing a coffee mug. There was a fresh tray of cinnamon rolls cooling on the counter.
"Hey, uh..." I stopped a few feet away, trying to hold eye contact with Blossom. "I'm sorry about all that. I really am okay. I just had a moment."
"I know, cupcake."
"I just... I don't want you to think I didn't like yesterday. I did. A lot."
"Baby girl, I know you did. I wouldn't have done it if I didn't think you did. And you're doing exactly the right thing by checking in too. So now I'm gonna do the same: I loved what we did yesterday. Every single part of it. And I'm stating my intent that if you want to continue playing like that, I'm going to keep initiating~"
It was oddly formal speak from Blossom Brixley, but when it came to things like play, intimacy, and consent, it was best to be clear about things.
"Also, you're beautiful."
"Ha... thanks..." I rubbed the side of my wet hair and broke eye contact. I wasn't sure I could keep this conversation going though, so I took a step back both literally and metaphorically.
"Do we have plans today?"
"I don't think so?" Blossom answered.
"Then maybe I can finish Academy A?"
"Oh my gosh, yes please! Do you need any help from me? Maybe an outfit you want me to wear, for inspiration, while I loiter around the house?" Blossom was only half serious, but she'd go full serious if Amy wanted it.
"I think you'd just be a distraction," I said honestly with a little laugh. The last thing I needed was Blossom in a diaper and lingerie in my peripheral vision. Or rather, that was the last thing Academy Works needed.
"Very fair! I'm extremely eye-catching, and a diaper would only increase my appeal~"
Blossom winked and leaned in to give Amy a kiss on her forehead in that kind of big-sisterly way.
"I'm going to do some sorority social stuff then. We can just co-hang, or you can go to your room, or anything that works best for you, alright cupcake?"
"Alright," I said. I grabbed a cinnamon roll off the counter and went back upstairs to get my laptop.
It took me a long time to get in the groove of writing. I last left Aya and Wendy at the ceremony, when Aya's name was called. But where was I supposed to go from there? I wanted to write about The Calm, the strange phenomenon that happened after the ceremony the previous semester. It was going to happen again. But what did that look like?
I always wrote better when I was in a diaper. I wanted to go put one on. But at the same time, I didn't. Everything felt so wrapped up last night, in the scene with Blossom and the stuff that happened after. If I went to get changed, Blossom would know. It would feel heavy and awkward. It was maybe the first time since I came to the beach house that I wished she wasn't there with me.
But after a while, after some time focusing on the words on the page, and re-reading the previous chapter, the world around me fell away. The sensation of wetting myself the night before was fresh in my mind. The hazy twirl of my thoughts as Blossom spanked me. The heat in my chest, in my heart, when we kissed. And a sense of comfort and childishness. A lack of concern. I reflected on those things and began to write.
A lack of concern. Comfort. But confusing. Unsure.
Yeah, I could do this.
Yeah, I knew what I wanted to say.
The chapter had a weird flow to it, like water in a river, but maybe that river was in the dark. You hit the rocks and you didn't see them coming. But the river continued to flow and pull you along. It felt... dreamy. Dreamy was good.
It only took me a few hours to finish the chapter, but I wanted it to be perfect. Blossom brought me a few more cinnamon rolls and I ate them while reviewing what I'd written. Little tweaks here and there. A bit more exposition. So when I was done, it was late afternoon. It was late afternoon and I had finished writing Academy A.
I sunk into Blossom's sofa with a sigh. Jeeze. What an ordeal. How was I ever supposed to write another one?
I closed my eyes for a moment, just to think about the next story, but my body had other plans for me. When I opened them again, my laptop was on the coffee table - closed - and the blanket from Blossom's room was on top of me. I sat up and rubbed my eyes.
"I fell asleep," I said, when I noticed Blossom at the end of the sofa. She was watching a TV show on her iPad.
"You did," she laughed. "Only a few hours ago. You needed the rest."
"Probably..." I sat up and rubbed my eyes.
"You need to do more writing?" Blossom asked.
Oh yeah, Academy Works. "No, I'm done. You wanna read it?"
"Oh hey, Blossom Brixley, do you wanna breathe? Yes, I wanna read it! Give me that good stuff!"
So I sat up and pulled my laptop onto my lap. I typed in my password, scrolled to the start of Chapter Sixteen, and passed her the computer.
***
(If you are following Academy Works, please read Ch.16 [linked above] and return here to continue the story. If the next Academy Works story has been released, it is recommended that you DO NOT read it at this time.)
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