✅ The Last New Start [NaNoWriMo2021]

104. Heart

"Love you."

Two words. Two syllables, barely more than a breath.

Tess had never said anything like that before. Maybe she'd uttered the words once when she was six or something, and didn't really understand what they meant, but if so she couldn't remember it now. And she might have said something like that to her close family, but that was a very different meaning. She'd never said it to a guy she liked before, and she hadn't intended to say it this time. She'd just wanted to say something brief and noncommittal to end the conversation. Something like "See you tomorrow." Or "Good luck." Or "Love you."

It wasn't what she'd wanted to say. It wasn't what she wanted him to think. But the words had risen up automatically, ambushing her from somewhere deep in her subconscious mind. She could call it a freudian slip, except that it wasn't even close to what she'd been trying to say. She didn't know where the words had come from.

What would she say when Spike asked her? She couldn't deny the words; she'd said them way too clearly for that. She could hope that he hadn't been paying attention, or that he would think he'd misheard. But she knew that if he asked, she wouldn't be able to deny it. She couldn't be dishonest, not with Spike. She cared about him more than anyone else, and she couldn't even imagine lying to him. She wanted him to understand her more than anyone else ever could, and she hoped that with time she would be allowed the same kind of insight into his thoughts. How could she get close to that if she couldn't even tell him the truth. All she could say was that she hadn't meant to say it, and the words had just slipped out.

Were those two words true? She didn't know. She wasn't even sure what the words meant; she had a pretty good idea what most boys her age meant they wanted when they said those words, and as much as she thought, she hadn't really been too excited about those things in any part of her imagination. But she knew that she wanted to be with him. Was that love? Maybe.

She stopped as soon as she heard what she had said, and almost turned back. But she couldn't face him now. Couldn't deal with his confusion. This would be a big conversation no matter how well it went, and she knew that she didn't have time today. She needed to be all the things she saw herself as: mature, organised, and practical. If she turned around now, she would miss her window of opportunity for today. If she even hesitated, and he came closer to ask if she was okay, she wouldn't be able to complete the last task on her to-do list. So she didn't allow herself to look back. She picked up her pace, through the archway in the far corner of the courtyard.

The next area looked like it belonged in some ancient monastery. Perhaps this was the original heart of the campus; when medicine had been administered by monks. She could easily imagine all these gothic arches, draped with climbing plants, as something that would have been tended by priests in the days before the Chapel of Saint Medicine had evolved into the current form of the Pine Ridge Municipal Care Trust. Tess strode along between two lines of ornate archways, and only at the far end glanced back to see if Spike had followed her. There was no sign of him, and she didn't know if she was relieved or disappointed.

She wanted him to chase after her. She wanted him to ask what she had meant; to demand to know what she was really feeling. Tess wasn't even sure herself, but that didn't matter. She was sure that if Spike asked the right questions, she would have to give him the right answers. And that was when she knew the answer to a question that had been dancing unnoticed in the back of her mind for quite a few weeks. She really did want him to see her as a baby. She wanted to show him the nursery, and admit that when Gabby had pushed her into being a little kid again, it hadn't been completely terrible. She wanted to tell him what had happened, and let him make up his own mind. Maybe not about the bedwetting; that would be solved in a few days.

But Spike knew about the headspace thing. And he had some idea that hypnosis could help with it, although he didn't know anything about the details. They had mentioned it a few times since their first awkward conversation on the subject, but always talked in the abstract. Never saying that she had actually done it, or that she wanted to. The closest they had come to making it personal was one time when Spike said he wondered if she might like a little break from responsibility, and that he thought he might like to try being Daddy if she thought it would be appropriate.

Tess had been too shy to respond. But now she knew that she had to tell him that she had been a little before, and that she had enjoyed it. She would say that she'd only done it when Gabby forced her, but that she had enjoyed some parts of it. She couldn't mention that the best part had been treating Ffrances as her little sister, the few moments where she felt like she was still in charge, because that wasn't her secret to reveal. She wouldn't tell him just how young she had been. Being eight or ten years old again so he could be a babysitter might be fun, but she could only cringe when she imagined him thinking of her as a baby. That wasn't what she wanted at all. And for the same reason, she was sure that she would never mention diapers. Or that childish potty. She would tell him about the special trigger Ffrances had given her, so that he could tell her she was that young. But she would never tell him about the one to stop her wetting her pants.

That was a short term problem. The clinic would send her for more scans, or something would turn up on the second or third batch of blood tests. There was no way that a normal girl like her, practically an adult, would suddenly lose her potty training. And if it was a medical problem, that meant there would be a medical cure. Something she could get to fix the problem, so that Ffrances's stopgap solution would no longer be needed. She didn't need to tell Spike about that, because she would have stopped worrying about it long before their relationship actually went far enough for him to find out.

Relationship?

The thought made her freeze. She couldn't believe she was thinking like this, when he had been her closest friend for most of the last two years. But she couldn't deny that whatever they had, while not a traditional romance, was surely closer than most friends could dream of. If she wanted to think of it as a relationship, then it was. Just so long as she didn't scare Spike away by using the word too freely.

In any case, the important thing was that she was determined to tell him about her willingness to be little if that was what he wanted. And about all of the other regression and hypnosis stuff; just nothing about babies, accidents, wet beds, or diapers.

And with that on her mind, she ran the last hundred metres to the Pine Ridge outpatient pharmacy. She had a prescription to pick up, the note stamped ADCCG, and she knew that it would be waiting for her here, if she could just arrive before the place closed for the evening. That was the problem with dropping in on the way home from school, especially when it had turned out that Spike would be staying in the guest suite of Ffrances's office again due to an uptick in his stepfather's persistent anger issues.

She arrived ten minutes before the closing time posted on the doors. The sign said that they wouldn't start serving someone who arrived in the last fifteen minutes, but Tess gambled that it would be different when – thanks to the doctor calling to check supply – they already knew what time she would be coming to pick it up. And this time, she could breathe a sigh of relief. There was an anonymous-looking plastic bag waiting for her. Adult diapers; ones that would allow her to be protected from any little accidents, without looking childish enough to inadvertently send her into the childish headspace that Gabby had insisted on creating in her mind after her first experiments with hypnosis in the back garden.

One step closer to freedom, she thought as she wondered how she was going to get the packets home without Gabby seeing them. One pack in her school bag, and the other wrapped up under her arm? She could only hope that her cousin didn't see it, because Tess was already sure that Gabby would be sad at any of Tess's attempts to avoid that headspace. She could explain it; she could say that she was trying to find a solution for the bedwetting problem, and that the doctor had prescribed diapers automatically. But she was sure that it would be a whole lot less stressful if she didn't have to talk to Gabby about this at all. She just hoped that she would be lucky, and Gabby wouldn't be home right now.

It would be easier is she didn't have to tell Spike some of her most embarrassing secrets in the morning, as well. But Tess knew she was in love with that boy, even if saying the word filled her with terror. And she knew that before he could be the Daddy he wanted to be, she would need to come clean about how much power he would have over her. Nothing worth doing was ever easy, and she knew that this was one important conversation she couldn't postpone again.