The relief in the end of this week is tangible, palpable and there's nary a hint of suspicion or alterior motives or even future-grief. We slept so hard last night Lochlan had to pull me out of my dreams by my fingertips, a tenuous grip on an imaginary girl. Reality-Bridget isn't me, I am fantastical-Bridget in the burgeoning light.
He kisses up my throat, arching my back up off the warm bed, into his arms. His fingers are in places I don't discuss and when I cry out, Ben lands a hard, lingering kiss on my forehead before leaving. I reach out for him to stay but he won't, though he won't be far.
He said one night in passing that trying to share me at once was akin to trying to eat the same chicken wing. Lochlan laughed out loud forever when he said that and now every time someone suggests we go for wings they elbow each other and laugh again.
Sigh.
(Fun fact: up until a couple of years ago the boys would remove the bones from chicken wings for me because I don't like meat with bones still attached. Thankfully I've become a savage since then.)
I truly wonder if I were six feet tall if things would be easier for them. But I'm not, I'm five feet tall and they get what they get and it's kind of funny that I'm game now and they're not, when it used to be the other way around.
And just like that Ben is gone and my focus shifts back to the red curls as Lochlan hooks his chin against my shoulder and takes me into his arms. I forget everything. My name. That I was cold a moment ago. That there ever was a life in between the Midway and now. I hope there wasn't. I hope it was just a dream and this is the reality I will fall back into, a whole-life fantasy hinging on a magician with a wide-open heart and a penchant for telling me to eat my chicken because I'll need the energy to stay up all night with him and make so much love we won't know what to do with it all.
Yeah we did. We gave the rest to Ben. He comes back and I am given to him like an offering and he takes me whole. When he eats a chicken wing he eats it bones and all. I never expect to come out of this bed in one piece but that is maybe why the magician sticks around. It's a trick. It's an illusion.
It's exactly where I want to be on a Saturday morning. This place between dreams and real.
