Found another Little Caesars and found a reason to go in (dinner) and we bought everything they had ready (hot-n-ready? WTF YES PLEASE) and brought it home and after fifteen minutes in the oven to get things back to piping hot (we don't live near town) we were happily eating. So happily. I'm currently plotting a crazy bread revolution. Because damn. Ben pulled me onto his lap as I was clearing plates and held a leftover box up with the other arm and said, she weighs this much more now. He was rewarded with the sort of adoring laughter that used to meet Cole head-on across the dinner table with the same crowd.
It kind of weirded me out but I was so sluggish from the pizza that my brain crawled along at the pace of a turtle and I let it be dismissed along with my hunger.
Lochlan used to look for the good in being hungry. He quoted Hemingway. He would have me count streetlights or highway markers or hours or stars until food. He sometimes had to stretch them out more than he wanted. Cole never wasted a minute on hunger. If he asked at three in the morning and I nodded that I was hungry he would go make something or go out and get takeout for me.
Ben is sometimes a lot more like Cole than anyone else but only in the good ways.
Or I mean mostly in the good ways.
Ben released me but took the plates when he stood up and told me to go check in on Sam and Matt to see if they wanted some of the pizza we had left and I went down and knocked on their door. No one answered so I knocked again. I heard Sam tell me to come in and so I went inside and walked down the hall looking for him. I finally found him in their bedroom. He was sitting on the side of the bed. The closet was almost empty, and so were half the bureau drawers and Sam was holding an open bottle of whiskey. I don't know if he had any but I have to assume he did.
He's gone. He's gone like Lisabeth and I'm alone now except for God.
And he threw the bottle at me and I didn't even duck or close my eyes.
It knocked me down and then shattered all over me and the wall in the process and Ben came downstairs and Sam was saying sorry to him but Ben told him to shut the fuck up and called for the rest who were more than a little surprised because Sam has been sober forever without so much as a flinch in the wrong direction. Even through the miscarriages. Through everything. I tried to point out what seemed so obvious and boy, was that dumb.
You really loved him.
No. I really love you. That's the problem. And I didn't drink it. Not a drop.
Everyone turned and looked at me as I sat on the floor in a pool of glass and whiskey and I didn't know what to do except wish there was a rewind button for life so we could say oops and roll it back and get another chance.
I believe him. He's a truthful kind of guy.
Now that he's upstairs in the kitchen drinking coffee with my army in the relative safety of the knowledge that as long as you admit your feelings up front you can stay here forever. Apparently that's all I ask for. Your soul (because I don't have one of my own) and your undying loyalty (because I'm scared).
