We're going to light it up, Peanut.
I nod, too terrified to speak.
Just trust me, like you know you do. Have faith that it'll be fine. I'll keep you safe.
I nod again.
Say something, Bridget. Please.
I think this would be a beautiful show at Christmas. With the snow falling outside.
It sure would. Maybe we should come back and do our own.
But that's fantasy-talk as pies float through the sky because we can't do this on our own. The backers are shadowy men from other countries with point men here. This operation is huge with almost one hundred performers and another two hundred behind the scenes. We have contracts that don't benefit or protect us, codes of conduct and people who sew our costumes, and I don't have to anymore which got difficult as Lochlan kept growing, and kept getting bigger and stronger and I didn't grow at all.
Les nuits ne changeras pasLes soirs quand tes plus la
Même si ca fait mal
Sois mon animals
Sentiments brutal
Les nuits ne changeras pas
And it would have been better at Christmas. In summer people are hot, bored and impatient. At Christmas they are warm, emotional, generous and ready to suspend belief for things that defy reality so tenuously. They're looking for magic, and they'll pay whatever the cost.
***
You remember that?
Of course. It's the last time you said we'd light it up. Exactly that same way.
And we are.
We are. I nod. Hell yes, we are. This summer we'll mark five whole years married to each other and it seems sort of a small, ridiculous number when you factor in our history, that I haven't gone a moment without thinking about him since I met him at eight years old.
We should be on year thirty at least but no one said trips don't have rocky sections, where you're not having a good time or maybe you even find a better destination and sometimes you get lost and you end up doubling back and you get back on the right road and continue on your way.
We don't celebrate the number, in any case. We kind of tried but it seems disheartening and disingenuous to be all Happy Third! Or whatever. Like an excuse when this is nothing like that. Nothing about our love has been normal or average or predictable. Not a goddamn thing and I love him even more for that. He never tried to make up for Cole, or one-up Jacob, or assert dominance over Ben, or even shut out Caleb, who watches us now from the fringe, just inside the darkness of the night.
Hell, yes, you are, Caleb agrees with us without even catching that huge mental paragraph of history that spans over forty years at this point, a history he can't buy, no matter how much money he has and so we did things differently and it works, goddamn it and we're not apologizing anymore. Lochlan has no jealousy left. He burnt it all up, spent it wildly, let it die down and smoke out.
He trusts me here and so we have a guest for Christmas because my heart has these defects now from being put back together in a hurry, huge holes that are empty spaces and there's one that can't stand it when anyone is alone.Which isn't exactly true but some people being alone upset me more than others, the Devil more than anyone.
Light it up, Neamhchiontach.
I nod, speechless again. That's the plan.