Done Adulting Vol. 1 Ch. 102

In the immediate aftermath of their playdate he’d not given it much thought, but as each day had passed since then, he thought more and more on the feel of her, her voice, the way she understood him, mostly, and wouldn’t let him pretend or be dishonest with himself. He felt disarmed with her.

“Hey,” she said. “I told April I’d bring you this. Took some convincing to get her to let me.” Ella laid out the mat and put the bottle down, seating herself near Jamie’s feet. He sat up.

“Thanks.”

“So you want to tell me what’s been bugging you? You’ve hardly been speaking to me.”

“It’s not you.”

“I know that. I haven’t done anything to piss you off. Believe me, I’ve thought about it,” she said. He didn’t respond. “Mind if we split this?”

“It’s …” Jamie started to say.

“I know what it is. I tasted it already.”

“I thought you only had it on special occasions.”

“So I’m deciding today is special then, sourpuss. May I?” He nodded, and she took a few swallows, feeling whatever chemical was in it immediately go to her head. It had been a while since her last drink of the good stuff, as she liked to call it. “I missed that,” she giggled. She passed him the bottle. He took a drink and sighed.

“What’s wrong, really?”

Jamie told her about his feelings about his littler and littler behavior, to which she responded, “God, Jamie, so what? Are you happy?”

“Yes.”

“Then so what? That’s why you came here, to be happy. Your mind isn’t disappearing. You’re not drooling on yourself. Being emotionally and physically dependent on people doesn’t make you weak or regressed. I should know. You wanna see regressed? Billy threw a tantrum because someone took the red truck, and Sabina can only hold a crayon with her whole fist, but they chose that and they’re happy.”

“I don’t want to be like them.”

“You’re not! You’d know that if you ever actually talked to any of them.” Jamie sighed. They kept passing the bottle.

“I don’t want to forget either.” She knew what he meant. “If I just disappear into this new life, that means I forget.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.” The milk was making her even more blunt than she usually was. “If you’re feeling guilty about forgetting, obviously you haven’t forgotten. You’re just not wallowing in it anymore.”

“I should though.” There wasn’t much conviction in his voice. He should, he felt, be wallowing, as absurd as it sounded, because that was the only way to remember such sad stories in such a sad world, but he wasn’t wallowing.

“No, you shouldn’t. I’m not even chasing you down that rabbit hole today. Is that all you got? ‘Cause both of those things have been bothering you since you got here.”

“Cheryl is coming to visit. Sometime around Christmas.”

“Our Christmas or theirs?”

“We have Christmas here?”

“Imported when littles told their bigs about it. Eventually caught on.”

“Guess that sort of renders the ‘Jesus is the reason for the season’ thing superfluous.”

“Yeah, he didn’t so much catch on here.”

“I don’t know which Christmas.”

“This is your caseworker, the one you spent the night with?”

“It was more intimate than that.”

“You love her?”

“I think so. It’s hard to tell after so long. I thought we’d be constant pen pals.”

“Why aren’t you?”

“Life, I guess. I needed her a lot then, and now other people fill that role, and things were in such chaos at first. When I came out the other side of it, it just seemed less urgent, and then, before you know it …” he trailed off.

“Was it ever romantic love?”

Jamie took another drink while he thought about that. “I guess not. It … Just as deep, but no, not romantic love.”

“What was it to her?”

“I’m not sure.”

“If to her it was romantic love, I can see why you’re so nervous about seeing her again.”

“I just … I already left her, but I didn’t leave her behind, if that makes any sense. I don’t want to break her heart. And I don’t want her to see me like this.”

“She knows about your lifestyle, Jamie.”

“How could she?”

“She sent you here. She interviewed Rebecca and Amanda. She’s gotten the site visit reports from your caseworker here. Maybe she doesn’t literally know or at least didn’t when she sent you, but I really doubt there’s anything about your lifestyle that’s going to surprise her.”

“How could it not? I made it pretty clear I didn’t want to be regressed, and maybe I’m not, but I’m definitely acting like it.”

“Jamie, seriously, I wear diapers too. I drink breastmilk sometimes too. I prefer to be near or on Stacy most of the time too, just like you do with Amanda and your mom. None of that makes me regressed. If you were acting like you were regressed, you’d struggle with your own shoe laces, and we literally could not have this conversation.”

“Still …”

“She knows what bigs are like. She sent you here and wants to see you; that means she’s fine with it. Plus, she wouldn’t have sent you here in the first place if she didn’t know what bigs are like, know all the possible things that could happen to you, and still think this was still the best place for you, right? Not if she loved you.”

Jamie digested that. “So you think she probably figures this is what my life is like here? What I’m like here?”

“Yeah.” That was some relief, at least, though he still disliked the thought of her knowing what the way he lived his life; imagining how he’d feel being seen by humans from back home, he still expected it would be deeply embarrassing.

“I still don’t want to hurt her. When she comes and figures out there’s no … I don’t think there’s a future for us. Even if I go back … It’s not like she can wait. Or should. And I don’t want … What if she’s been waiting, thinking about when I go back someday? What if she feels like … Shit, what if she feels like we’re not friends anymore? Ya know? The opposite. Wouldn’t that be bad enough?”

“Are you? Friends anymore?”

“Well, it’s not like we had a falling out. Just drifted apart. I did. I’m not sure if she did.”

“Maybe you didn’t drift apart at all. Feelings get less intense.” She took a drink. “That’s just natural. It was an intense time, like you said; passions cool. She had something you needed; you had something she needed.”

“What if she still does?”

“I don’t think that’s likely.”

“Why not?”

“It’s been close to a year there.”

“What?”

“You knew time there is faster than here, right?”

“Not that much faster.” The consequences of that were stunned Jamie for a moment as he took them in. That meant the difference was about a third. Ten years in Itali for Jamie would be closer to thirteen for Cheryl. He had never asked about the exact time difference, and neither Cheryl nor anyone else had ever told him.

“Sorry. I figured you already knew.” She let it sink in and took a couple more swallows, enjoying the warm, fuzzy feeling collecting in her toes and making everything seem mellow. “I just … I find it doubtful she still needs what you gave to her all this time later. People don’t do that; most don’t anyway. They heal and keep going.”

Jamie looked like he’d been hit in the stomach. She moved closer to him, put an arm around him and offered him the bottle. “I didn’t mean it that way. I just mean … the nature of love changes. I’m sure she still loves you, but probably in the way you love her now. She’s still your friend, and you’re still hers. It’s just … you made room in your heart for other people. She probably did the same. I know that can feel like being displaced, but it’s not. You know that.”

“Yeah,” he said, finishing the bottle, “I do know that.”

Ella lightly kissed Jamie’s cheek. The milk had loosened her tongue. “I’m not just saying that because …” She giggled.

“Because what,” he asked, looking up again and turning to meet her eyes.

“Because I like you too. Because I need a friend like you too.” She closed the last inches between them. When he didn’t move away, she kissed him again and put her hand on his thigh; when he didn’t move away, she slid it up to his chest and kissed him again. Jamie kissed back but kept his hands to himself.

“You … you want to …” Jamie had a hard time saying the words.A part of him was telling him not to, that it was a bad idea and he wasn’t the sort of person to be so reckless and impulsive, that he was risking one of his most important relationships. But the other part, no doubt helped along by the milk and the emotional storm he’d been stuck in, told him he wanted to, that it was okay .

“Yes. If you do,” Ella said halfway to a whisper. Jamie did, and whatever kept him from saying so – his usual insecurity with women, not being sure where the boundaries were, not understanding the consequences of forming that type of relationship with Ella carried – were overcome by the bottle and his longing for touch and his affection for Ella. His anxiety coupled with the milk and sent his desire to touch and be touched, his feeling of near-union and closeness with others, higher and higher with each swallow, and now he felt no such inhibitions.