✅ The Last New Start [NaNoWriMo2021]

136. Big Confession

This is a bonus chapter dedicated to Santoro. Thank you for all your support this year! And a happy new year to all my readers. Thank you!

Tess stared down at the sandwich in her hands, but her mind was on other things. Life had gotten so much harder recently, in ways she had never expected. Spike had been in the house for nearly a week now, and they were still getting into some kind of routine. But keeping her last remaining secret had proved really hard. It wasn't like he would pry; she could always say she was doing something she didn't want to talk about, and she knew that he would accept it. But she didn't want him to think that she had secrets from him. She didn't want him to know that there was anything wrong, and even if he didn't know what it was, he would have been sure that there was something there.

She couldn't wait to go into Ashfields to see Dr Lutwa again. Just a couple of days, and then she could see if what she had learned during their stay at the hospital had actually meant anything. She'd only woken up wet once in the last week, which gave her a little more confidence. Perhaps this problem, whatever had caused it, really was going back to normal. Perhaps, if she was lucky, she could stop wearing diapers for bed again before the next time she had to go to the pharmacy for more. She didn't think that she could get them home and into her room without Spike noticing, and she didn't think he had any reason to be out of the house, so curing this issue before then was suddenly a top priority.

Her attention was pulled back to the present when she felt a hand on her arm. She looked up to Spike, who was still sitting beside her. There was a little smalltalk going on between Spike, Rachel, and Ashli, and for a moment Tess wondered if someone had said something that called for her attention. She hadn't been focused too much on their words, and wasn't sure. But then she followed Spike's gaze, and saw that Mindy Ciertowczki was walking towards them. Spike's reaction was maybe a little possessive, a subtle hint. On some level, he still thought that Mindy would try to come between him and Tess.

That was a little reassuring. It meant that his feelings for Tess were something like what she was feeling, even if they hadn't really explored what their relationship could mean. But it also showed that he hadn't been paying Mindy too much attention over the last couple of weeks. It had been a long time now since she tried to get Spike's attention, and she was rarely accompanied by an entourage of popular girls now. In fact, as she walked over, her former sycophant Jasmine Eldridge was actually making a joke about how she looked, eliciting giggles from a couple of popular, slim, and wealthy girls who Tess would have believed were Mindy's best friends last year. She was the butt of their jokes now, because she had gone out of her way to apologise to all the people she had treated harshly over previous years of high school.

"Uhh... hi," she said, treating the group to a sheepish grin. "I... uhh..."

"Want something, Mindy?" Spike asked, raising an eyebrow. His attitude was confrontational again, and Tess put her sandwich down to put her hand on his.

"I just... I..." Mindy mumbled. "I apologised. To everybody I could think of. And I've tried to make up for the way I acted. It felt like I was tearing up my social life, and all my reputation. Those girls can't stop laughing at me for going out of my way to talk to the poor kids, the nerds, and... you know, all the ones we used to pick on. But I think maybe that's a good thing. I know now how I made people feel. And I found out..."

"Hmm?" Spike asked again.

"It wasn't a punishment. It actually feels good to try and help people. It feels good when somebody says thankyou and actually means it. So I want to thank you too. For pushing me to do the right thing. For letting me understand that there's no sense in making other people feel bad just so I can pretend I'm happy. I'm going to be me now. Not the role my family set out for me, just me. The person I want to be. And I'm going to say the things I want to say. And I'm going to strive for the things I actually want, instead of what tradition says I'm supposed to want. No more denial. Just me. Even when it hurts. And people who only like me when I'm playing the queen bitch role were never really my friends. So I guess everything I gave up was fake anyway."