141.)

"Hey there, baby girl."

It was still winter. It was still cold. And Blossom, sitting in the driver's seat, was still dressed as though it were a calm spring day. Today, she was even wearing oversized sunglasses, despite the fact that there wasn't a single bit of sun in the drab and dreary sky. It was her way, and Blossom Brixley changed diapers better than she changed habits.

"I've missed you!"

"You would," I teased. Blossom looked down over the top of her sunglasses at me.

"You're in a good mood."

"Therapy went well," I said. "I think so anyway. I told Stephanie about Little stuff... so..."

"Oh my gosh, that's a big deal! How did she take it? You're not crying, so I figure it went well?"

"I think it went well. She's really insightful, and I think giving her that puzzle piece helped a lot. I definitely feel a little better understood."

Blossom pulled out of the parking lot. I noticed bags in the back seat. Obviously she had gone to the grocery store while I was in therapy.

"Hey, um. You know how I'm a brat sometimes?" I asked, fiddling with the magnetic rings in my coat pocket. "Does that bother you? That I lie about what I want?"

"Not in the slightest," Blossom answered, looking over her shoulder to the traffic, and then back at Amy so she could continue. "I kind of just figured you had trouble letting people do things for you, so you have an instinct to be a bit contrarian and obstinate. Probably because of bitchy girls like me in high school giving you trauma over expressing yourself."

"That's... definitely one interpretation." It didn't sound wrong though. I wondered who was right: Stephanie or Blossom? Could it be both?

"I guess when I act like a brat... if I say no to things, that's almost like giving myself permission to enjoy it. Instead of getting in my head about it."

"Like if I get you juice in your baby bottle," Blossom posited, "and you thank me, then you have to feel ashamed for wanting a baby bottle at your age."

"Right. But if I say no, I'm not a baby..."

"Then you get the thing you wanted anyway," Blossom finished the thought, "but you also know it's not your fault for getting it. So you have no reason to feel ashamed or guilty."

"I mean, I still want it," I argued. "So I should still feel those things."

"But that's not what happened. Like when we roleplay scenes and stuff; that's not the same as fantasizing."

Blossom made a good point. There was a difference between doing something in your head and doing it in the real world. My brain was a constant series of contradictions; I could argue with my thoughts from any angle. I'd never find consensus. But the real world was concrete: those things objectively happen. It creates certainty.

In simpler terms, wanting to save someone doesn't make you a savior. And wanting to kill someone doesn't make you a murderer. Definition of character is based in action.

So if I think I want a bottle, but I say I don't... only one of those is objectively true. I said something. I made a statement. The accuracy of the statement isn't important unless I act in contradiction to the statement.

Look at me, reframing my kinks in behaviorally healthy ways. Wild.

Blossom was pretty good at multitasking, so her driving and talking about this kind of stuff wasn't a problem at all. And it also meant that when Amy had long pauses to think and contemplate, Blossom wasn't left hanging - she could just focus on the road until Amy reconnected to the server.

"What if I go too far?" I asked. "Like, if I start annoying you but for real..."

"Then I'll tell you. I mean, I probably won't always be in the mood to argue with you."

"But won't you be mad at me?" I asked nervously.

"Would you keep being a brat if I called Yellow or Red?" Blossom asked.

"No?"

"Then no, I wouldn't be mad at you."

I nodded my head. I didn't believe her entirely, but I wanted to trust her anyway.

"What about other people, who don't know safe words? Won't they be mad at me if I'm kind of a jerk sometimes?"

"Well..." Blossom had to think about that one. "I think you have to be more responsible in those cases. Read the mood, you know? If you feel like you're making things bad, then tone it down."

"I always feel like I'm making things bad," I admitted with a sigh.

"Then start out with me, use the fact we have safe words to learn what goes well and what doesn't, and then we can slowly expand the circle. We can do Becky after me - she's pretty straightforward when it comes to how she feels." Most of the time anyway, Blossom thought. "Then we can expand further. Find yourself a happy place where you feel like you can be you."

"Mm..." I didn't like it, but I didn't have a better alternative. And anyway, I wanted to talk to Blossom about the stuff with Stephanie. But Becky came up naturally, and I hadn't talked to her about Becky since last weekend.

"So, I know you and Becky spent the day together Monday?" I said, more like a question. "How was all that?"

"We had a great time, actually! Becky wanted to go watch Roller Derby but when we went there they'd turned the place into an ice skating rink, so we rented some skates and did that all afternoon."

"That sounds fun. I haven't skated since I was like... ten." Figure skating was a pretty common hobby for young girls in New Hampshire. It was just as common to quit after a year. I fell into both of those demographics.

"So... are you two doing better then? How did... stuff go...?"

"Are you asking if we did anything lewd?" Blossom teased, raising an eyebrow.

"No," I said sharply. And then. "Maybe..."

"We kissed some," Blossom admitted. "Is that okay?"

"Yeah, I think so..." It was still weird, because Blossom and I hadn't really defined what we were. I wasn't sure where I stood, or what our boundaries were. But I wasn't exactly jealous of Becky. I just wasn't sure of anything in particular.

"If it helps, and I don't know if it will, Becky also asks about our activities. I think it's cute; you're both pretty insecure. And you're not allowed to take that and internalize it; it's my own choice to be smitten with two girls who are both mildly insecure despite also being awesome."

"But you aren't dating her?" I asked, to clarify.

"She's my best friend," Blossom answered, which technically wasn't an answer, but she meant it as one.

"And I'm...?" I let the question fall off. We hadn't talked about that, though we kept meaning to. I knew we were dating, but did we have a word?

"You're my partner. You're my baby girl. You're like my paramour, only instead of it being illicit because you're cheating on someone with me, it's illicit because we run away to the beach every weekend and do naughty cute things."

"So... partner." That was a reasonable term. I kind of liked it. It felt a little more mischievous than girlfriend, and a little more ambiguous. But maybe even more concrete. If we were partners we did things together. We considered one another. I liked that.

"And Becky isn't your partner?" I asked, to clarify.

"She is not," Blossom agreed.

"Okay... okay."

"Feeling better?" Blossom asked.

"I am. Thanks."

Blossom pulled up to the beach house. I wondered if instead of grocery shopping she would drive the rest of the way up here, turn on the heat and water, and then drive back down to get me. It would take the full hour, but at least the house would be warm when we got there. But it was already most of the way through January, and in a few months it would be warm again. We could actually use the beach, though we might lose a lot of our privacy.

Once we were inside and under the blanket, I brought up therapy again.

"You said you go to therapy, right?"

"Mmhmm. Wednesdays. We do Telehealth though."

"Does your therapist know about baby stuff?"

"They do not. But to be fair if it was causing me any degree of mental anguish, I'd probably bring it up. I tend to only talk about things that are current problems for me. It's this darn engineering brain. I might be built Brixley Tough, but just as tough are the rules and processes I make for myself."

She laughed and turned to look Amy in the eye.

"I think this means you're more mentally healthy than me, because you've told your therapist about your baby stuff~"

"I really don't think that's what that means," I said flatly. But if baby stuff wasn't a thing that was important to bring up in therapy, what was? "What do you talk about then? Me?"

"Sometimes! Often it's school stuff, sorority stuff, friend stuff. I spent a lot of time working up the courage to invite you to New Year's Eve, and my therapist definitely did some heavy lifting there. You probably wouldn't like In-Therapy-Blossom; she's very direct."

"Yeah, maybe. But I hope I like all of the Blossoms. I'll get a bouquet or something."

"Ughhh what a bad joke!"

"I know, I regretted it immediately," I laughed. "Stephanie told me today that she thinks I'm bratty with other people because it's kind of a childish thing to do. And that's my way of being Little Amanda in a more socially acceptable way."

"That makes an alarming amount of sense. It's like we get more and more pressured to be 'adult' as we grow up, and it's only certain childish behaviors that are 'allowed' to make it through. It's kind of brilliant, honestly."

"Yeah, because I chose to do this very consciously." I rolled my eyes. "But, I dunno. I wish maybe I had a way of expressing that Littleness without being rude to people."

"It's like we talked about in the car: it also gives you permission to enjoy a thing."

"I still hate that it inconveniences others..." I sulked. "I hate that I like it so much..."

"I don't know how much Twitter you look at, babes, but there are a lot of people in the community and outside of it who adore bratty girls. And I'm sure those people would actually disagree with you entirely on the idea of it being inconvenient or rude, wouldn't they?"

Blossom liked to take opportunities like this to remind Amy that the two of them weren't alone in the world when it came to this stuff. Maybe she liked to remind herself of it too.

"I guess that's fair..." I let out a sigh, a mixture between relief and exhaustion. "But what a terrible mix. I'm saddled with a crippling need to make everyone happy, but one of my favorite ways to express myself is to be annoying. Like, that's some dubious food."

"Huh?"

"Uh, sorry. I just started playing Zelda on my Switch, and you can cook, and..." I paused. This joke wasn't worth explaining. "Lin would have laughed."

"Well, I should do a video game with you then, so I can get some of those references too!" Honestly, for as much as Blossom loved the TV shows they did together, and the writing that Amy shared with her; she knew that having more options of ways to spend time together was never a bad thing.

"Sure. We can pick up Pokemon or something. Lin keeps telling me to play the new one. Maybe we could like, play together? It's just one player, but we can take turns."

The house was starting to warm up a little so I shimmied out from under the blanket and went to hang up my coat in the closet. We had no plans together this weekend, but I wanted to start on Academy Works Part 6 if I could.

"That sounds like fun! I used to watch the TV show all the time as a kid; I can't believe it's still going. I hope Bluey lasts that long!"

She laughed and laid back on the sofa, taking up the space left behind when Amy had stood up.

"I think Pokemon ended recently," I said, making my way back to the couch. "Or, I guess Ash isn't the main character anymore? Something like that. I'd have to look it up."

"Dinner plans?" I asked. "I saw you got a lot of groceries."

"Yes! I wanna cook for you. We have a lot of going-out-dates and we do a lot of ordering in, but apart from your baking we don't make a lot of food here. So I wanted to make something for you. Kinda... a romantic thing?"

She was trying to hold in her giddiness, but honestly it was hard to hide her big stupid grin.

"Fish?" I asked.

"No fish," Blossom verified.

"Sounds good then," I said with a shrug. "And maybe while you're cooking, I'll try to write."

"Nuh uh."

I blinked in surprise.

"You... don't want me to start Academy M?"

"I very much want you to start Academy M," Blossom said seriously. "But you also get really wrapped up in writing. And when you start, you don't want to stop. And dinner is only going to take me an hour."

"Oh... hm. Yeah, I guess that makes sense..." I sulked and sat down on the couch. "Well, what am I supposed to do then?"

"Relax, watch TV, doomscroll your socials; just enjoy not having to do anything and being pampered in a way that's not just on your butt~"

Although, Blossom noted to herself, that part would invariably happen too.