Pumping the Breaks
Chapter 14
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[ Summary: Theo and Odette have a heart-to-heart before they have a chest-to-chest, concluding in Theo learning the truth of the events of Fresh Farmers.]
Theo
Odette finished crunching on her organic, cheesy animal snacks and slid her flattened hand around the couch cushion. Unable to find it, she grumbled and encouraged her brain to work with yet another handful of cheesy zoo animals even before the first was swallowed.
And her strategy… worked.
Her “brain food” seemed to help her remember to unzip her oversized hoodie by a few inches, revealing what some would consider to be items worth looking for.
For his part, Theo looked too long. He discovered for the hundredth time that day that Odette was the owner of two admirably large boobs, breasts so pretty that there was an urge to lean in to get a better view, like there might be some hidden message written along her cleavage that he could read if he squinted and looked close enough.
It wasn’t a message, but to Theo’s surprise, there was something resting between her porcelain white spheres. . .
Or, erm, maybe “globes” was a better descriptor, actually. Or, perhaps, a twin set of low orbit weather balloons. The latter evoked the right image for color and size. The former was far more in keeping with the actual impressiveness of such big boobs on such a small body.
Globes. Slightly elongated planets with ice caps made of strawberry sherbet. . .
Would you RELAX, Theo? Yeesh, dude. C’mon!
Odette employed the same tool for fishing in her boobs as she did for fishing in the couch cushions: a flattened hand and a scooping motion. The hoodie was small enough that it kept her pillows packed together, making the cleavage a thinner, tighter pink line, one that proved easier to excavate. When she found what she had been looking for, she pulled it free with an exaggerated draw, like it was attached to her heart by a string and was trawling her whole torso with it. At last, she huffed out a cute, mewing sigh and pressed the small, rectangular object into Theo’s shoulder for him to take.
The entire wordless event took about ten seconds altogether, everything happening smoothly and uninterrupted like it wasn’t the cutest thing ever.
But watching Odette interact with her world—her food, her clothes, her body, her brain—was of such a fascination to Theo that he had the same adhesion to his seat he would after binge watching a whole documentary.
Lives of the Criminally Cute, and the Normal People they call Friends.
Had a nice ring to it.
The flat, black rectangle with an edge to edge screen did not have a ring to it, which was an irony of ironies given that it was Odette’s smartphone. He knew it belonged to her both from the white and pink case that said “Be A Light” with a prominent superhero featured on the back, and by referencing the place from which it was just extracted.
Miss Miracle, Theo’s inner voice spoke, recognizing the character as a comic book superhero. He’d seen the exact pose on a cover at his job as a book retailer, which he recognized only seconds before the warmth of the cell phone really hit his hand, a warmth that had come from being snuggled betwixt Odette’s breasts—which he recognized mere seconds before he was bombarded by a sense of déjà vu that took him straight back to Fresh Farmer:
This was the second time today that his fingers were privileged to touch a sleek, stylish piece of technology toasted with the power of his best friend’s teats.
His own phone had experienced a similarly enviable fate. . . Which put a damper on his whole “place of extraction” argument.
Like, if every phone Odette’s stored in her cleavage was hers, that meant that his phone belonged to her. And at some point, Pari’s phone may have also transferred ownership by means of being nestled in Odette’s pink, soft pocket. Did the rules only apply to phones? Were there other things it applied to. How big an item could Odette fit between her breasts?
Theo glanced up from the phone in his hand, saw Odette with her mouth open trying to catch a thrown cheesy cracker. It plunked her squarely on the forehead.
He gaped at her boobies, seeing an entirely new property in them.
Then he noted that she was watching him see a new property in her chest.
Jeez, Theo. C’mon. Focus.
Theo sighed, giving up the strand of thought. “This is what you wanted to tell me all this time?” he asked, shaking the phone a little for emphasis. “Did you mean ‘Be The Light’? The text on the back? Because as much as Miss Miracle is an inspiration for nerds everywhere, I didn’t expect this to be where you were going with this.”
“No,” Odette shook her head. She silently dug for another treat, tossed it up, and caught it satisfyingly. She chewed. Swallowed. And sighed with delight. “Find the ForeverAge 2 Mobile app on my homepage.”
“Sure”.
He found it among a number of other mobile games, making an intentional effort not to be on any one screen too long to avoid looking nosy.
The app opened and he commented on what he saw.
"This is your profile, isn’t it?” replied Theo. He haphazardly scrolled, familiar with Odette’s build enough to not be too shocked by the stats of a max level archmage character. He kept scrolling and scrolling, not sure what he was supposed to see until he swiped over to the “gear” tab of the gacha game mobile app. Once there, a stylish animation played of Odette’s female archmage twirling around, surrounded by glittering lights and dancing colors, until she stopped and posed with a staff that had a brilliant, orange sphere and six tendrils forking from its head.
Theo leaned into the phone, floored by what he was seeing. “Whoa, wait. Wait—you got this!?”
“Yup.”
“When?!”
“Just now! I can’t believe I pulled that thing.”
“The odds are, like, less than a percent,” Theo fawned, now much more delicate with the phone he was holding. “Staff of the DawnGuard” was a promotional item, ranked SSR—the highest in the game. It was a niche weapon, not for general use but. . .
Odette spoke. “We’re going to blaze through the Nightfeller’s Verity Quest now. Every creature in that dungeon is weak to sun magic.”
“And you’re one of the only mages on the server who actually has gear spec’ed out with sun magic damage in mind.”
“DawnGuard gear, here we come! Your character is going to look so badass!”
“You. . . Wow, uh, thanks, but isn’t that a lot of grinding?”
Theo handed Odette her phone. Odette tilted her head. “Well, yes. But you’ll be grinding with me, of course.”
The idea of “grinding” with Odette took on a new meaning after the day he’d had, but Theo was relieved to find that Odette wasn’t in a position he could spoil by being a pervert. Sure, he was sitting right in front of her folded legs, but her thighs didn’t squeeze out of her shorts like toothpaste like Janet’s and her chest wasn’t overflowing her top like Amanda’s did.
Odette was a pretty face wrapped up in a mess of blonde hair poking out of a dark lump of a hoodie. Her spindly legs poked out of the bottom almost cartoonishly.
And she was talking about video games.
Theo’s best friend had become exponentially easier to talk to because she’d turned herself into a giant stuffed animal—one stuffed with snacks instead of fluff.
Okay, maybe there was some fluff in there too. A lot, actually.
“Can’t wait. I’m available whenever I’m not working—you know that,” Theo replied, less eager to have a screen and a gigabyte internet connection between himself and Odette, for once. “Need MP boosts?”
“Oh, absolutely. There’s literally no MP regen late game if you use armor that boosts sun magic.”
“No idea what the devs were thinking on that one.”
“Me neither.” Odette passed him another handful of crackers.
“Thanks.” He took them. “I’ll help. Might take a week or two for those.”
“I’ve got prep work to do anyway, so no big deal. After that, I was thinking we could do the quest as a duo. Fewer people keeps the mob HP low, and I stand a chance of clearing them in one shot if they have reduced HP and lowered defense from paladin provocation?”
“I might need to re-enchant some armor to resist undead, but sure.”
“I’ll help. Wait!”
“Hmm? Wait, uh, you want me to. . .”
“Mhmm. I’ll catch it.”
“You’re one and one.”
She shrugged.
Theo shrugged too. “Here goes. . .”
“Omn! What? No! I can taste the salt on my tongue—so close!”
Theo laughed. Odette’s reaction to missing a cracker was glorious. And seeing him laugh made the blonde’s smile come out again as well. The two wound down together afterward, letting the silence marinate in their newly made plans and the hardy laughter.
After a break, Theo spoke up, head leaned against the back of the couch. “Oh, and you don’t have to—help me with enchantments, that is. I’ve got a buddy that can get the smaller pieces for me, and the big stuff’ll only take a few rolls to. . . Uh, Odette?”
The blob of black cuteness was pouting at him.
Theo blamed himself for it immediately. He quickly combed through what he’d said, settling on what logic told him was the most offensive thing he’d brought up recently.
“Umm, I-I guess I won’t re-enchant my armor?” he amended.
But Odette was still pouty, her lips all puckered together, jowls pushed out like she’d stuffed her cheeks with food. Crackers, perhaps.
She placed the near-empty box on the floor beside the couch for what she was about to say next.
Oh no. Must be serious. . .
“That’s not it,” Odette said.
“I’m sorry. . . I’m not following,” replied Theo.
“ForeverAge 2 was just one thing I wanted to talk about. The other thing is a lot harder. It kinda deals with what you just did—when you said you’d get your friend to help with enchantments and do the rest yourself.”
“I didn’t want to burden you—”
“I want you to burden me, though.”
“That. . . makes no sense.”
Odette huffed and puffed.
“Sorry, I—”
With a speed Theo couldn’t react to, Odette rolled onto her knees and walked herself closer to him; close enough that a passerby wouldn’t hear their conversation, but also close enough that Theo could swear he heard her heartbeat over Amanda and Janet’s carrying on in the kitchen. He saw the outline of her breasts from his raised angle: her cleavage, a better sense of a chest being a “shelf”.
Odette became more of an upset woman and less of a friend which—understandably—intimidated him. He wished she would either hate him enough to shout at him from a distance, or be sweet enough to sit closer. Having her close enough to whisper her utter disappointment in him was like cozying up together so that she could drive a stake through his back.
And he was already breathing like his lung had been punctured.
“I-I—. . .” Theo’s brain worked overtime. He rattled off the first and most offensive thing he could remember that he did. “I didn’t mean to see anything at Fresh Farmer. Promise. I-I mean, I did see something, but I’m not sure if I—. . .”
Odette blinked. Her amber eyes didn’t seem on fire anymore. She’d flipped a switch and gone back to normal—how could she do that?!
“Huh? Saw something at Fresh. . . Oh! That! Oh, well, that’s the third thing we’re talking about—I tried to make my list in order of importance.”
“The Fresh Farmer incident isn’t important?” How could it rank lower than ForeverAge 2?
“Not as important as. . .” Odette trailed, sighed, sucked in a deep breath, and placed her phone on the table next to the couch. “Not as important as you having a big, dumb crush on me, okay?”
Their conversation no longer filled the whole den. It shrank into ten or so inches of space between Odette’s lips and Theo’s ears.
Theo, having no words, simply emoted. “Oh.”
Odette spoke. “I’m sorry, but—. . .”
“I-I understand. I’m a creep who shouldn’t be so infatuated by—. . .”
“I shouldn’t call your crush ‘dumb’.”
“Oh. Oh? Uh. . .”
“It’s just. . . it’s frustrated me all day, because I can’t seem to wrap my mind around it. I didn’t know it existed, first of all, but then it seemed really, really important and then it became the only thing I could think about. But for the life of me I can’t. Figure. It. Out. Ugh!”
Theo’s head felt empty. Nothing he said seemed more important than Odette venting her experience of the day. He stared at his knees, listening.
“Can you. . . help me understand it?”
“N-Not sure if I can. I’m not the most experienced.”
“Is it like friendship?”
“A little? But more than friendship, too. You want to spend more time with someone you have c-crush on. . .” Those words were about as uncomfortable on his tongue as Amanda’s soup had been, burning so much that he rushed to get them out.
“So it’s ‘best friends’, then?”
“It’s best friends, but extra.”
“Sexual?”
Theo felt his whole body tense up. He wished Odette wasn’t mere inches from sitting in his lap when she said that. He wished she didn’t smell so good. He wished he didn’t feel the way he did—while knowing that it felt amazing to feel everything he felt for her.
“S-S-Sometimes, but not always. Definitely n-not exclusively. You can want romance without sex,” he answered.
Odette clapped her hands onto her exposed thighs and groaned. “Like-liking someone is harder than doing Nightfeller’s Verity—without DawnGuard weapons. Why doesn’t it make sense? Hmm? Who decided to try to take something so complex—something that some people might not even feel—and attempt to label it with some silly word that people nod along to and talk about like everyone is supposed to get it?”
Theo was struck by Odette’s words, though not in the way he thought he would. He turned from his knee gazing to watch her, feeling for her protectively. “You’ve never been in love with someone before? Ever?”
“I’m not sure if I have. I don’t know the feeling—Janet asked me the same thing and I didn’t have an answer.” Odette raised her chin, catching Theo’s eyes on her. “But you feel that way for me, don’t you? You like-like me?”
“Can you please call it ‘romance’? When you say ‘like-like’ it makes it sound weird.”
Odette squinted her huge, amber eyes and teased. “Could you please call it ‘like-like’? When you say ‘romance’ it makes it sound weird.”
He snickered. “I’ve been countered.” Then he looked elsewhere as he usually did when he was thinking of what to say. Only, when he looked to the side, he found something that made him snicker a second time: a lion-shaped, organic, cheesy cheddar zoo animal cracker.
The one she’d missed when he threw it at her. . .
. . . in her cleavage.
“What?” Odette whined. “Are you teasing me now?”
“No, no. You’ve uh, got a little something. . .” Theo pointed at his own collarbone.
Odette looked at Theo’s chest, realized what he meant, then sat back to look at her own. She found nothing and looked back at him for guidance. Theo all but whimpered.
“I can’t see it. You get it,” said Odette.
“You don’t mind if—”
“No big deal. Get it.”
And Theo, following orders, pinched at a spot high on Odette’s breasts and extracted the lion with his index finger and thumb. He was proud that he didn’t start trembling nervously until after he’d handed Odette what she hadn’t seen when she looked. He wholly suspected that his touching her chest would derail the entire conversation, but instead found that Odette carelessly tossed back the cracker and returned her attention to him.
“Thanks,” she said.
“Y-You’re welcome.” Why can I still feel how warm and soft she was on the tips of my fingers?
“You were saying?”
“Oh, uh.” He was indeed saying something and figured he’d best get back to saying it instead of questioning how something so large for him could mean so little to her. “I mean, sometimes romance is complex. Sometimes, it feels like affection. Other times its protection. It keeps me from being honest other times, but then at times like these, I-I just feel like I wanna spill my guts to you about everything.”
“That. . . makes no sense,” she replied.
Theo scratched some of the afternoon scraggle on his cheek. “I didn’t think it would. I’m trying to explain it, but if you’ve never experienced it, it’s hard to talk about.”
“Which is why it’s dumb.” Odette started, charged. Then, she calmed herself down with a single breath. Theo couldn’t help but admire how well she processed her emotions, especially when compared to himself. It was like she could be a different person in seconds without trouble. “The only way to know it is to feel it. So if you haven’t felt it, you’re blind—you constantly need someone to protect you and to steer you and to guide you through it and you never know if your next step is going to be off a cliff or on a landmine.”
“That’s weird. . . Being in love with someone actually feels a lot like that to me. I wish I had a guide.”
“I wish my eyes worked. . .” Theo was about to console her, but she threw her head back against the couch and kept talking. “I don’t want to always burden everyone around me by needing their help. I wanna do things on my own, you know? I want to make soup and go shopping and drive and not need to depend on anybody. That’s what I wanted.”
“But?”
“. . .”
“Amanda is cooking the soup, we shopped as a team, and, well, you actually drove today so I guess that’s progress.”
“Yea, sorta.”
“I mean, I’m far from an independent person,” Theo spoke, turning into Odette, his back to the door of the den. “but even people who are independent usually have people there to support them. Being self-sufficient doesn’t mean being alone.”
“I want the option to be alone, even if I never have to take it.”
He was quiet. “Why?”
Odette’s eyes bugged, like she hadn’t been expecting the question. She became quieter, reducing the inches between herself and Theo, hiding her face with the proximity.
“Okay, so, uh, I h-haven’t always had the option to be alone because of some medical stuff when I was a teenager. Like, some of the issues were disappointing. Some of them were scary. My whole life had to change, and all that, and—well, it was mostly that I had to live a really sheltered life. It’s depressing. I’m not bumming you out, am I?”
Theo considered what Pari had told him before they left to go to Fresh Farmers. He felt hollow as he heard Odette’s side of the story. “You’re not,” he lied. “Go on.”
She continued after a pause.
“Well, a lot of those medical issues are under control now, and I don’t have to be as sheltered or as cared for. I didn’t have the option of being alone before—my whole life would be about someone taking care of me. But now that there’s a chance I can get to be normal, I really want to try to be. That’s all. I want to be strong and dependable and good at normal life stuff like cooking and shopping and driving.”
Theo felt relief. The story had a warm, hopeful ending at least. “Thank you for sharing that. I think I understand you better now.”
“Really?
“Yes. I think I still need to get good at normal stuff, too. So does everyone I know—except Pari. She seems to have it all together.”
“Right? If I could just be half the person she is at her age, I’ll be happy. . . But thank you. You listen really well,” said Odette. She leaned back to beam a smile at Theo, her eyes a little pinker than usual. “You know, this is the second time today you’ve reminded me of my brother, Jules. We’d always sit on this couch and talk about stuff and he wouldn’t try to fix it. I could tell him anything, even gross, teenage girl stuff, and he would—. . . Theo? Theo, what’s wrong? Are you hurt?”
There it was: the dagger she got so close to drive into my heart. . .
Theo clutched his chest, laughing off his bleeding heart. “Oh, nothing. It’s. . . how do I put this? When you have a crush on someone, you kinda don’t want to be compared to one of their siblings.”
“Why not? I love my brother.”
Which meant she loved Theo, by an extension of that logic. He would have been happy to hear it if not for the whole “brotherly” aspect of the love. “Romance isn’t something you feel toward family. So if I remind you of your brother—”
“Which you do.”
Where did she find that second dagger? How many more could she possibly have?
Theo cleared his throat. “If I remind you of your brother, then by necessity, it means you have no romantic interest in me at all—”
“I don’t. I thought we discussed that.”
A-A longsword this time? A longsword wrapped with barbed wire. . . How can she look so innocent but be so devastating?
She continued. “I just don’t have those feelings. Like, I even remember Jules and Summer bringing over boyfriends and girlfriends and being told ‘Oh, you’ll know how it feels when you’re older’—and here I am, years later, nineteen-years-old, and I still don’t know how it's supposed to feel. . . I want to know, though.”
“W-Well, uh, okay then. How about this: when you feel romantic feelings, you want them to be validated like other feelings, yea? And when they aren’t acknowledged it can hurt a person a little bit.” Odette was nodding so Theo kept talking. “And I know your feelings and I don’t blame you for having them. But when you say that I’m like your brother, it would normally feel really good, b-but in the context of romance. . .”
“Crap. I’m hurting you, aren’t I? This is one of those cliffs I can’t see.”
“I think it is, yea.”
Odette brought both her hands to her face, sucked air through her fingers, and gave a muffled screech.
Theo leaped back, distancing himself by an entire couch cushion at the sudden outburst. “What?! What is it?”
“All day people have told me that the way I see things isn’t how others see things: first Janet, then Mr. Quinton, then—”
“Wh-Who?”
“Mr. Quinton. He buys apples at Fresh Farmers.”
“A-Alright then?”
“He thought we were boyfriend and girlfriend.”
“Ack!” Theo wheezed, then coughed into a closed fist and sat up again after being thrown by the nonchalance. “A-Alright then.”
“Anyway,” Odette started, then reached down beside her for the box of crackers. A huge chunk of Theo’s unease was allayed at the sight of the crackers. If the two were on eating terms, it meant he hadn’t utterly ruined everything. “I thought all you guys were exaggerating, but now I think I’ve been stepping on landmines for a long time. I’m. . . sorry. I’ve been super ignorant.”
“Hmm. . .”
“And I don’t know how to not be ignorant, not without mine-detecting goggles.”
“Well, I’ve been ignorant too. Like. . . I just assumed you know exactly how people see you and don’t care because, well, that’s just you. You don’t seem to worry about how people think. But based on how it sounds, you are able to act like that because you can’t tell how your body and personality affect others.”
“I can. I’m not dumb.”
“Platonically, familially, and even sexually. . . but not romantically.”
“You’re right. I’m dumb.” She began to snack again, depressed.
“Give yourself a break, Odette,” said Theo, chuckling. He wanted to hug her but refrained, feeling unmoored but happily floating in the nuance of their relationship. Theo couldn’t stay seated, though. He went to his feet and began to pace, his mind churning as he moved about the space, trying to understand. “Like, you know how earlier, before we left for Fresh Farmers, you said that you didn’t drive because you thought that cars were screaming metal death traps?”
“Yes.”
“But then I saw you, just hours later, driving an ambulance around the Fresh Farmer parking lot.”
“I was terrified.”
Theo stopped off to the side, catching Odette’s eyes on him, waiting on his words. He had to make sure he said them right, so he ran them through his brain over and over again before speaking. “When I saw you driving an ambulance—a literal screaming metal death trap—I admired your ability to face your fears despite being scared. It’s one of many things that I admire about you—just like I admire Pari’s maturity or Amanda’s motherliness or Janet’s. . .”
“Cuteness?”
“Sure.”
“But?”
It was time for him to reveal a bit about himself. Odette deserved it after all she’d revealed to him. “Think about what getting the Staff of the DawnGuard means. It’s just one item on its own, but having it opens the door to hundreds of hours of dungeon grinding with my best friend and all of the fun and weirdness and exhaustion and frustration that will come with it. It’s one thing, but it’s potentially other things. Potential, I guess.”
She was nodding, so he kept going.
“Having a crush on someone is like getting the Staff of the DawnGuard. It’s a nice feeling on its own, but it’s never just the one feeling. It’s every feeling. It’s everything that could potentially be all at once—all the joy and sorrow and pain and pleasure and all the memories condensed into every second you spend with the one you have a crush on. It’s a lot to process. It hurts so bad when you think you’re about to lose it for. . . whatever reason. And it’s why I act weird around you.”
“Because you like me?”
It hadn’t felt like a confession until she asked. “Y-Yea. Because I have feelings for you.”
“. . .”
“You don’t have to do anything with them. I didn’t mean to imply anything. I-I just wanted to be honest because you were honest and because—”
Back pedal. Back pedal. Back pedal!
After his confession, Theo suddenly became aware that he was in a room with the woman for whom he had these feelings, and that, worst of all, he was himself, in his own body, which was experiencing those feelings even as he disassociated himself long enough to make sense of them. He was struck with a sort of dysphoria when realizing that he could train his rational faculties on a problem well enough to dissect it only to be confounded by those feelings when he saw Odette—the infinite potential he’d just espoused about—perched small and finite atop a sofa in her den.
He wondered who it was sitting in front of him: his embodied hopes and fears, or his guild buddy and best friend.
A potential, or a woman. Was there even a difference?
“I wish. . .” Odette said, voice small. “I could feel what your words meant. They were pretty words.”
Theo stopped stammering. “Th-Thanks?”
“I just don’t feel them. . .”
“Understandable.”
“And they sound unpleasant. Like, maybe that’s why they call it a ‘crush’. If I thought that much about anything, I’d feel like someone was standing on my head.”
“Hehe, yea.”
“Especially after ‘bottling infinity’ for so long, or whatever. . .”
“It's the worst.”
“Are you sure you aren’t just lonely? We could, like, snuggle and stuff. It’s way easier to fix loneliness.”
It’s the woman in front of me, for sure, Theo thought. Then, he snorted and chuckled as he answered truthfully. “I might be a little lonely, yea. It’s hard being the only guy sometimes. You ladies always do things that amaze me and I kinda just stand around sometimes, off in a corner, waiting to find out what we’re doing next—”
At those words, Theo was shocked to see Odette bounding up from the couch and launching herself at him. He staggered backward at her weight and nearly toppled over. She had her legs wrapped around his waist and her arms around his neck—a full flying squirrel styled leap and snatch, making him the luckiest tree branch in the world.
She was everything when she hugged him—warmth, kindness, extreme and unconditional acceptance. He didn’t feel worthy of it, but her whole body wrapping against him like he wasn’t a creep or a pervert made him feel less like, well, a creep and a pervert. More importantly, her hug acknowledged his feelings—which was a miracle, given Odette’s difficulty with seeing romantic landmines.
Once he caught his balance, he noticed how light Odette was. How small and easy to hold. Her boobs were big, but the rest of her was so thin that he didn’t struggle with her weight as much as he struggled with balance. His hands scooped under her knees and his upper body leaned back to offset her weight on his front. It worked, however awkwardly.
“I’m sorry I hurt you,” Odette said. Theo just about replied but she shut him down with a glare. “Hush. My turn to be supportive. Anyway, remember how you saw the cheesy cracker in my boobs and took care of it for me? I need you to do that for me all the time, except do it with romance, not with cheesy crackers.”
Theo’s brow sank with understanding. “Y-You want me to warn you when you aren’t seeing how your actions affect people romantically because you can’t see them?”
“Yes. It tends to be a problem for people with big boobies.”
“Food getting lost in your cleavage?”
“No. Romance,” she giggled. “And I don’t want to hurt anyone—especially not people that are close to me. One day, I want to understand enough to avoid it myself, but for now. . . I’ve got to depend more on my friends. I’m sorry to ask more of you than I already do. . .”
Theo could feel Odette’s giggling now, her weight shifting slightly as she puffed cute, little sounds through her smile. It filled him with light to be holding her as she did that.
“I will absolutely help you,” Theo said. “You can trust me.”
“And don’t lie and pretend you’re okay when you’re not. It’ll drive me crazy if I think you’re hurt but you won’t let me help you by being open about it.”
“I promise. . . Though speaking of which, you don’t have to be so hard on yourself either—like when you don’t know what romance is, or how to make chicken soup, or anything else. You were acting differently today, not your usual confident, sweet, thoughtful self. I bet it’s because you kept biting off more than you could chew so you could try to show yourself how “independent” you are. Go easier on yourself.”
Odette sat up in Theo’s grip, speaking into his shoulder. “Fine. I promise to depend on you and your big brain and all my friends no matter how much it annoys me that I can’t do stuff on my own. I guess. Maybe. . .”
“You can be annoyed, silly. Just. . . pump the brakes before you get into negative self-talk. You don’t want any of that. Trust me.”
“‘Pump the brakes’?”
“Yea. Like, stop yourself before you go too far. ‘Pump the brakes’, like you would in a car or, uh, ambulance.”
“Ah! Car brakes. I see.”
“What did you think it was?”
“A-A different kind of pump breaking. . . Erm, nothing. Nothing! I’ll depend on you, okay?”
Hearing the reluctant admittance made Theo’s heart flutter. He held her around her middle, hugging her while standing, her body feeling natural against his.
Finally, finally, it felt like he’d come to the bottom of something.
He was no closer to having his feelings recognized by Odette, but knowing that they might never reach her the way he thought they ought to was oddly liberating. He’d feared expressing them because he feared what her reaction would be. Now that she’d reacted with complete and total ignorance, it almost felt silly to worry so much about an Odette that would tear him down for harboring such emotions or, worse yet, pity him because of them.
Odette was his friend. He’d been uncomfortable admitting that before because he’d secretly wanted more from her.
But that discomfort, like so many of his other worries, was wrong.
He held her, feeling new potential in his heart. Not the start of a romantic relationship, but the start of something new and equal and honest between them.
“I love you, Theo,” Odette said, her voice high and thin and sweet.
The words rang through his soul like a song on cave walls. He felt a pang of loss.
Okay, so maybe he didn’t have a completely impartial perspective on their relationship yet. He still loved her. Still wanted her.
Odette’s tits were mashed like melon-sized stress balls against his chest and her crotch was flush to his abdomen, legs wearing him like a belt. He felt a familiar blend of embarrassment and excitement and loosened his hug to signal that they should separate.
“Okay, time to stop the hug. Let go,” Theo said, suddenly nervous.
“Hmph!” Odette pouted, burying herself further into him.
“Odette. . .” said Theo, trembling. He released her but she remained attached to the front of him by sheer will power. “Y-You need to let go. This is really awkward.”
“You aren’t feeling romantic feelings, are you?”
“N-Not quite. It’s, uh, something else—. . .”
“If it’s not romance then I’m not hurting you, so why let go? We never get to snuggle together, Theo. It’s weird that you’re the only friend I don’t hug on a regular basis, y’know?”
“I-I think there’s another reason. . .”
“What?”
“Y-Your, erm, y-your front is, well, very, very squished up against. . .”
“Wait. Theo. Don’t tell me that you’re always looking at my chest because. . . You feel that lonely and left out! I can’t believe I didn’t think of that either—all of the girls get full access to my boobs for hugs, and you’ve been constantly left out because of those silly like-like feelings. We cannot have that. It’s just not fair.”
“Your teasing is not appreciated right now. A-And you’re back to saying ‘like-like’ again? Odette get off! Get. Off! I-I—. . . Mmphrlrlrlr!”
Theo saw nothing but black, his face brought down against Odette’s oversized hoodie. However, his chin jabbed into his collarbone from how far forward his head was forced when Odette pulled him against her body. He felt unparalleled warmth on both his cheeks and had difficulty breathing through the thick fabric. But no fabric was so thick that he couldn’t tell exactly what he was being pressed against.
He just couldn’t bring himself to believe it. Couldn’t process it. Couldn’t “logic” his way out of the truth of what he was experiencing:
Being nose deep in Odette’s huge, soft shelf of breast.
“You know you’re welcome to my boobs as much as my other friends, right Theo? I see you all exactly the same. You never have to feel shy about asking for them, okay? So long as it isn’t romantic since I don’t see anyone that way. Or sexually either, now that I think about it. There’s nobody except. . . O-Okay, maybe there’s somebody. . . but that’s a different thing from this thing—”
“Mmmph! Mmph! MMM!”
Let go. I can’t breathe. And hearing that you have sexual chemistry with someone is TMI. Let me go!
“Exactly. . .” Odette swooned. “Enjoy, hehe.” She shimmied her shoulders, sloshing he breasts against his face.
As much as he complained, Odette’s chest was softer than he’d imagined. Squishier too, but also firm. Oh, and they were so big. Cuddly and enveloping breasts whose fullness was an enigma all its own. There was an injustice taking place where he knew that he was, once again, more fortuitous than he deserved. An overwhelming sense of inadequacy swelled up before, curiously, deflating.
He just let himself enjoy it. . .
He had never, in approximately twenty years of living, gotten this intimate with breasts as big and comfy and consuming as Odette’s. Plus, Odette’s romantic blindness was once more coming in handy, as she wasn’t about to be hurt by any complications due to lust or romance. She was seeing their embrace as simple teasing, a momentary cure to the loneliness he was feeling.
So he chose to agree with her way of seeing things and went along with it—which boggled his mind, of course, but not so much as his mind boggled at Odette’s amazing breasts.
I love you too, Odette. . . he thought.
But then, having lost a sense of sight and a sense of direction, Theo’s footing slipped and he tumbled onto the floor of the den with Odette in tow. She scrambled around on top of him, cheering like she’d just won some game. He felt her tiny body orienting itself across his flatter canvas. When she pressed herself up onto her arms, she was beaming, and her enormous knockers slunk down as she straddled his waist.
“Five minutes,” said Odette. “Five minutes each day to snuggle if you want. And they don’t roll over, so don’t w-waste-th-the—. . . A-ACHOO!”
Theo frowned, his face covered in spittle. His arm was trapped beneath Odette’s thigh so he hadn’t a choice but to take the sneeze to the face.
“Sorry,” Odette said, sniffling.
“I-It’s fine,” Theo replied, face contorted, already breaking his promise to be honest. He figured a sneeze didn’t upset him so much as it inconvenienced him. . . and grossed him out.
“Oh! Right! That reminds me. The third thing I wanted to say,” Odette said.
“C-Could you let me up first?” asked Theo.
She did, and he climbed to his feet, using his sleeve to clean his face. Odette looked up at him too cutely for him to be upset. She went up to her feet as well and waved him down. He leaned without suspecting a thing, eager to hear what it was she found so fascinating.
She cupped her hands beside his ear and whispered. “My, uh, my boobs make breast milk and that's why I was on the floor in Fresh Farmers. They got a little out of control. I’m sorry if I worried you, and if you were worried about Amanda and Janet, we think they look like that because they’ve been in contact with my milk for a while too. They should be fine.”
Theo pulled away, in too high of spirits to see the look of expectation on Odette’s face. Why wasn’t she laughing? She always gave away her teasing with laughter.
Something heavy pressed down on him.
“Uh, what?” he replied, clipped.
Of all of the infinite possibilities he felt when he was with Odette, breast milk hadn’t once entered the picture. It was a far-fetched concept. Odette wasn’t pregnant and he hadn’t seen a pump or hose anywhere in the house at any point. The fridge wasn’t full of bottles. There were no babies around.
The solution had to be simpler than that.
“Theo? You good? Need to sit down again?” Odette asked, tilting her head.
“You guys okay? We heard a crash. And dinner’s ready if Theo would hurry up and set the table like he said he would. Uh. . .”
Rushing into the den were Amanda, Janet, and Pari. They had all come running to check on the duo after their fall. Odette turned to beam at them, though their eyes all rose to Theo. He knew that they were seeing an utterly baffled look on his face, but he couldn’t bring himself to scrub it.
At a distance, he absolutely saw a difference in his friends:
Amanda didn’t just have larger breasts, but her hips surged out more than usual as well.
Janet had a competitive chest size to Amanda, but had her beat handedly in hips, thighs, and presumably booty (which he couldn't exactly estimate without them turning around).
But Pari. . . He could tell from the front that Pari had extra tacked on in the back. She easily beat out both Janet and Amanda combined, while maintaining a modest chest.
The whole day at Fresh Farmer flashed before Theo’s eyes, ending up with the same Odette laying in front of the freezer. The simplest answer was that the freezer was leaking.
But according to Odette—and the heaping mounds of evidence stacked before him—the one who had done all that leaking was. . .
That whole thing about “pumping” and “brakes”. Had she thought it meant a broken breast pump?
It made sense when he thought about how young she was when she first got sick and how much she was sheltered from the outside world, including driving.
He mouthed the phrase a few times voicelessly, almost a prayer. “Pump the breaks. Pump that breaks? Pump the breaks. Pump that breaks.” If he said them fast enough, he could hear it, the blending of the word in the middle.
She’d misheard the phrase the whole time.
And she thought it was referring to a breast pump breaking because that’s what she knew the most at the time. And she needed a breast pump to help deal with her lactating. . .
Odette turned to look up at Theo, her chest surging away from her round face from his perspective, looking so much bigger now that everything was clicking for him.
His voice cracked as he uttered the words, “Oh my god”, and went to sit on the couch to ruminate further as Odette sneezed once more.
How were lactating breasts not as important as ForeverAge 2? thought Theo. How was it the third thing on her list?