RE: Trailer Trash, 66 pt 3 (Patreon)

    After their run, Tabitha sat with Elena on the front stoop of the Macintire household for twenty minutes while they waited for Mrs. Seelbaugh to return to pick the girl up. The acute ache from their exercise dulled as it spread out into a murky cloud of exhaustion but never completely dispersed, and the sweat they’d accumulated turned cold in a hurry after they’d stopped moving. The girls were too tired to talk much, so after a few more token attempts to lighten Elena’s mood and assure her that they’d done great and that this was a good start, Tabitha instead sat back and rested on her hands and tried to simply appreciate feeling this good kind of tired again.

    Mrs. Seelbaugh arrived, Tabitha helped pull Elena up, and they shared a quick awkward hug that was gross and clammy enough for them both to laugh about. Then, Elena was off—their shared early morning endeavor was over with, and now it was time for everyone to shower and prepare their outfits for the get-together this afternoon. Clambering inside the house with her nice new running shoes in hand, hobbling over down the hall and into the bathroom on deadened legs. Pulling off the damp sweatshirt and fighting her way out of the sports bra. The legs of her sweatpants clung to her skin and turned themselves inside-out as she tried to peel them off and she nearly lost her balance trying to step the whole way out of them.

    She felt… wretched and horrible, like an absolute zombie after returning to morning exercise after so long—but stepping into the shower made it all worth it. It had been three whole months in a cast, and she could finally immerse herself completely in the water without holding one awkward, clunky, mummified-feeling husk of an arm off to the side to keep it out of the spray. There was no need to use the plastic sleeve from a newspaper delivery or a bread bag anymore, and Tabitha turned a triumphant sneer at the remaining one hanging there from the days before, beads of water still clinging to its obnoxious plastic film.

    Because, now Tabitha could fully immerse herself within the searing heat of a shower again. Fully immerse herself—the sheer brilliant joy of having this simple pleasure return to her made her giggle and laugh to herself like a crazy person until she was also snorting and sobbing actual tears. Tabitha scraped her opposite fingernails along the inside of her forearm, she stretched out the hand that had been constrained in the cast to splay her fingers wide, she used it to catch the falling water, she reveled in feeling complete once again.

    Trying to shower while having one hand upraised to keep it out of the water made showering a total chore, and not having to do that anymore felt like it relaxed weeks upon weeks of tension out of Tabitha. She spent far longer than necessary in there indulging herself until parts of her began to prune, and when she did finally turn off the water and step out, the entire bathroom was clouded with steam. Drying herself off was once again a simple pleasure after having tried to do so without one hand for so long, and even wrapping her hair in a towel was once again just easy, straightforward.

    It feels insane how much you take for granted just living a normal life, Tabitha thought. DEFINITELY cause for celebration.

    To her surprise, she’d even considered masturbating.

    The correct mood wasn’t quite there, but feeling hale and whole once again almost brought her around. It was something she could allow herself to think about again, or maybe something she would have to rediscover—Tabitha felt sure her sexual psychology had changed quite a bit. In her past life she’d taught herself to achieve orgasm by disassociating. Because of her strong body image issues, and all of the personal self-loathing built up over the long years.

    For the first time in—ever? She felt beautiful, attractive, sexy maybe, but her mind didn’t quite know what to do with that just yet. What she wanted to do was retreat to the comfort of the familiar, pull up bookmarked erotica on her bracelet, and see if any of her old favorites did anything for her. The problem being, she did not have her bookmarks, or her bracelet PC, the saved smut of her future yesteryear had not been written or posted up yet, and indeed finding the simple privacy of even finding things like that again without having her own smartphone or personal computer became a daunting obstacle.

    Quite troublesome, Tabitha sighed to herself. I’m maybe getting the itch again—finally—but I don’t know if I can make the cookies. Or even find all the ingredients, back in this time period.

    She’d had more than half a year to determine that discovering or rediscovering her sexuality was going to have to be a solo endeavor. Tabitha was not comfortable fantasizing about her peers with the entire weird age issue going on no matter how she tried to justify anything, because that was a mental ick there was no way to scrub free from. Reading erotica instead seemed the safe and smart choice—but, the question was, would Tabitha still even be able to disassociate the same way she did before?

    SHOULD I, even? Tabitha wondered. Psychologically, is going down that path again what I should do? Is that the healthy route? Is there even anything else I can do, with my bizarre situation being what it is?

    Worries like that made even sexy thoughts lose their luster, until once again it felt like Tabitha was left with just the mild, annoying urge and nothing particularly actionable she could figure out to do with it. Getting herself off in the past had been done by removing the idea of herself from that fantasy, because nothing killed arousal for her like the visceral disgust and self-loathing of self image. Would that change, now? She’d made major strides in mentally allowing herself to be the charming young waif she could almost see before her in the fogged-up mirror, but applying that current identity towards lurid fantasies still seemed like a rather high hurdle for her to attempt.

    “Whatever, get over yourself,” Tabitha laughed at her hazy reflection. Maybe Casey will come over today? Hope she can make it. I should probably talk with her about some way of finding some uh. DISCREET web access. For self-discovery, of some kind. I don’t know that I want to completely just fall into my old habits there, but also—I dunno. I am STARTING to feel a little urge, there. Want to have something to do about it figured out, long before it starts actually bothering me.

    She hadn’t thought this would be so much of a problem.

    As a grown adult for so long in her previous life, she’d let herself begin to think of everyone underaged as innocent, chaste, and sexless. As if high school wasn’t hormones hell, as if sudden intense uncontrollable attraction, desire, naked lust couldn’t blindside teenagers like a puberty sucker-punch. It all made her very uncomfortable to think about, and that discomfort and avoidance made it easy for her to pretend it just wasn’t a thing, and that anything sexual was a total non-consideration for young people until they hit… twenty, twenty-two or so.

    Okay, so maybe some of that was also just my late bloomer mentality?

    Tabitha fixed a towel around her body, gathered up the crumpled running clothes from before, and opened the bathroom door so that the cooler hallway air hit her like a sobering slap to the face.

    She did kind of want to masturbate, but it also felt like one of those nasty areas where she might accidentally find a sudden mental landmine of absolute revulsion for herself, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to deal with that right now. Or, ever. It wasn’t fair that the cute boy she was crushing on made her feel like a creepy pedo auntie whenever errant thoughts began to inevitably color outside the lines she’d drawn up for herself. Even moreso, it really wasn’t fair knowing that all of the carefully curated private bookmarks in her browser were just deleted from existence! More collateral damage from the happenstance of time rolling back some forty-odd years.

    “Alright. Alright,” Tabitha dropped her towel and slapped her cheeks with both hands upon returning to her bedroom. “Wake the fuck up, samurai. We’ve got a city to burn.”

    Today was the day she was going to finally don her Avril Lavigne-inspired ensemble, because industry plant or not, skater-girl pop punk chic was absolute fire, and putting it all on would hopefully make Tabitha feel like a protagonist again. During the mortifying shopping spree with Mrs. Macintire she’d stood adamant against any underwear that seemed too much like lingerie, but Sandra had insisted Tabitha have at least one push-up bra to put into her dresser, and she pulled that rare garment out again for the first time now.

    Putting it on felt as weird as it had back there in the dressing room at Target—Tabitha was not used to this kind of bra. It felt wrong, even though it was supposedly doing what it was supposed to be doing. Seeing it paired with the beige-green cargo pants made things even more dissonant and wrong in the dresser’s mirror, as if she had someone else’s boobs strapped onto her own chest. When she pulled on the snug black tee that was intended to go with her skater girl look, she turned to see herself in the mirror… and then immediately grimaced and began fighting her way back out of the shirt.

    Something had gone wrong here—both items were bought back during Black Friday, the tee at the mall and the bra later at Target. But, she’d never tried them on together, and what she remembered as a tiny sliver of acceptable exposed midriff beneath this shirt hem before had somehow grown into more than a handspan of ghastly hideous white tummy visible when worn over the push-up bra. Either lifting the girls up and out with those padded cups just made that much of a difference, or she’d had a slight growth spurt—either way, Tabitha flung the tee away from her as if it had bitten her, and then stared at it with wary eyes from across the room.

    Bro, what the fuck? Tabitha wanted to laugh. Are you kidding me? There goes my whole KIM POSSIBLE look!

    She hadn’t been sensible enough to test all of the outfit combinations with the push-up bra, because her natural inclination each morning had been to instead opt for the comfortable familiar bras, and now it felt like she had to rush through her wardrobe to find the right match for today. Dragging everything out of her dresser, and then even going through the already-worn laundry from the past week, Tabitha quickly ran through every possible permutation of outfit just to see how things looked.

    The Art Club small tee was her tiniest shirt, and it somehow almost became an actual crop-top when worn over the dread push-up bra of breastly deceit. Which was no bueno, because bare midriff that blatant—as well as anything showing cleavage—were completely not in Tabitha’s comfort zone, at all. Whatsoever. The off-shoulder bridal top wasn’t even up for consideration, because that would make her bra straps even more glaringly obvious.

The long-sleeved pink top that went well with her hair was one of her comfy favorites, but its thinner fabric meant the cup lines of the new bra beneath became visible in a distracting way, which she did not like at all. On the other hand her burgundy long-sleeve shirt she normally avoided… actually looked really good here. No visible bra lines, had her looking a bit busty without being too ridiculous, it made her twist this way and that inspecting her body in the mirror and being pleasantly surprised with the effect. However… Tabitha had always hated how that particular shade of burgundy seemed to bring out the orange-ness of her red hair.

    Shit, Tabitha pursed her lips at her reflection. I am in actual crisis. This would look SO FREAKING GOOD, if I just had darker hair! I would ROCK this. It actually doesn’t really go with the skater pants, either… why does only this top go great with the stupid sexy OVER THE SHOULDER BOULDER HOLDER?! When this shirt pairs well with literally nothing else I have!

    “Uggggghhh!” Tabitha groaned. Do I just say fuck it, and learn to live with my hair looking SUPER fucking orange in some unfortunate color combinations? This pushup bra in this top really is working wonders, here, I mean damn. Miracles. Like, where did THOSE things come from?! The boys at least, they won’t even SEE my hair when I’m wearing this. That is, if any of them even show up today…

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/// I was supposed to go through all the chapter links and guide page stuff and update and fix everything for both fics yesterday... but maybe it will get done tonight! Hopefully.