Don't explain; I think I get it.

It's finally raining. I was outside when the morning cracked open through the night and I'll probably be outside when the moon shoves the sun back down over the horizon to our west when it's time is up for this calendar square and it can rest until it's turn in the next one. 

Duncan stares at me while I ignore him completely. I know he's doing it. I wish he would stop. 

Glad you came back around. 

A boomerang. 

A second chance, that's all. 

Did you have fun? You used to call it a mini-vacation. 

I nod, in spite of my plans to be a hardass, maybe even pick a fight to lessen the hard part of leaving them. I did. Thank you for being a good host. 

Bridget, you're honestly the easiest girl to talk to. You don't play headgames or look for anything more than this. 

Screwed you right out of any potential relationships though. This isn't right. You're a waste of an incredible man. You're hiding out here, feasting on scraps. I never envisioned this for you. Somehow I don't think you saw yourself like this either.

So come down more often. 

Poet-

Bridget, the world is opening up. Do you see me running off to engage with it? I'm so fucking happy right here. No one bothers me. I'm closer than ever to my brothers and there are no hangups to worry about. My dream was a solid, low-stress life with no baggage and thanks to you I have that and a pool. 

Thanks goes to Caleb-

Who did it for you, so I'll give credit where credit is due. 

I really hope you're not going to make it to the bitter end with me and tell me that you lied too. 

Oh, like PJ did yesterday?

You hate the tags too?

Hate em. And my weird fears are getting electrocuted by a frayed patch cord, which can't even technically happen, and powerful women. 

Ah. Then this is the perfect place for you. 

Not really. You're pretty powerful in your own right. Just not at all in the way that I meant.

Are they all Outsiders? Well yes, of course. Leave my teenage daydreams alone.

(Besides, I romanticized the book and not the movie so it just worked to give them all a role and they still manage to fit those roles four hundred and fifty lifetimes later.)

No, I didn't sleep with Duncan. I went to my own room and lay in the middle of the giant double-king and listened to the eight minutes of rain we got, though this morning most of the rest of the point insisted it was only about three minutes, and so the other five was most likely the white noise from the ceiling fan but I'm fairly certain my teenage dreams can turn that sound into a cascade of endless rain in the dark.

Because I don't know about you but white noise is one thing I actually can't stand, whether it's the slight hum from a guitar plugged into an amplifier, air-conditioning in a truck, the sounds the fridge makes or static from a television, I just absolutely hate it. I also hate neck-labels in shirts, wet potato skin residue on my fingers and I can't even look at frayed toothbrush bristles so there you go. I don't know what any of this means. 

Add it to the raging fears of blooming teas...and what was th-

Peat fires.

Oh yes, added to the irrational fears and I would say you're probably....autistic. 

Since EVERYONE has a thing or a whole list of things like that, I'm probably completely normal. 

Not if they are strange, highly-specific things like that. 

I have never heard of a single person on EARTH say HEY! I love those scratchy tags in the backs of my shirts! Have you?

They don't bother most people.

PJ, you're a liar. 

Take a poll. 

I don't have time for that. Now please stop picking on me and fix the fan so it doesn't sound like that?

"Show a little faith, there's magic in the night" is my all-time fave from Bruce. Also Eddie Vedder could do this, easy.

Duncan and I have squared off at either end of the pool, and we're trading lines from Bruce Springsteen songs from his Greatest Hits album. Duncan's playing cool. He's been so far under the radar this summer I think he's gone into hiding and I'm determined to bring him out. He'll step in to assist in emergencies but when I'm in a perpetual bad mood or, as he calls it, a whine-machine, he tends to check out. 

This is why he's single. Because his looks are definitely not a problem. Actually they can be a problem and from here, I can tell his swim shorts are slung too low to look anywhere else and gosh, I hope the water drags them right off him halfway through Thunder Road and then my teenage dreams for the day will drown in thrills along with his incredible lack of modesty ever. 

Also, he might be single because he lit a cigarette once in the pool and the outcry was stunning and in that moment we realized how self-absorbed he can be. Hahahaha. He is wearing patches now, soaked with chlorine and trying his very best to quit. He doesn't think that's cool and doesn't know what to do with his hands if he isn't smoking or tucking a cigarette behind his ear like an Outsider.

Steal Bridget's licorice? Dalton says helpfully.

Hush, you. I admonish him. That's MY licorice. Also, Poet, that's whining. 

Yeah but it's me so I don't mind it. 

Wow. My eyes are big. What a jerk. A super-hot adorable jerk. 

I duck back into the pool, keeping my arms out, inching along the side, til I can get back around to the shallower end where the steps are.  Time for me to get out. My arms hurt. I don't want to hold the one heavy broken one out of the water but I don't want to get it wet anymore either since it never seems to dry and I'm honestly interested to see what's next after Springsteen season ends. 

Buckingham Nicks, he says.

Oh, score. I don't have to think for the words, then. I can trade off lines in my sleep.

Non-apologies.

Hey. 

Hi beautiful, he smiles so wide it puts the sun to shame. Lochlan is the sun right now. It's August. We've had no rain. No clouds. No indoor days. His hair has brightened to such an incredible pale strawberry gold I want to spin it into fine thread to sell, keeping him locked in a high tower so I can have it all. He is so striking when he lets it grow long and lets the curls go wild and it bleaches so quickly now, never quite darkening back to the brilliant dark red of deep winter's end any more. He has a little bit of permanent gold around his ears, in his eyebrows and beard. His eyes are beginning to fade ever so slightly. Not at the same rate as mine but I'm seeing him change and I think I love it, though when I look at him the very first thing I see is that obstinate thirteen-year-old Outsider with the rolled-up jeans, and t-shirt sleeves cut off, expression of total annoyance that slid so easily, charmingly into endless patience I was hooked from the first moment. 

This CD is amazing. (The Code of the Flowers. Ayla Nereo. I just can't turn it off, I'm afraid)

Right? 

You've got the words yet?

Mostly, yes. 

Wow. He nods in amazement. I can hardly hear him for staring at all of that gold. What did you need? Or are you just here to say hi? Stay a while?

I came out to apologize.

For? There goes the smile, behind the clouds. 

Now I understand what you went through with your arm. And also may we please cut this thing off? I hold up my pink mitt. I am so done with this cast. I discovered this morning that my plans to kayak are off, as I can't do it one handed. Ben offered to take me around but that's not the same. What saw can I fetch? The grinder, maybe?

I think you're stuck with it. 

Oh, I'm stuck with it and so I need it off. 

Peanut-

What's the worst that can happen? 

You fuck up your hand forever.  Leave it alone. Four more weeks. We can kayak all fall and winter. Once your hand is cleared for use.

This is maddening. 

Listen to music?  

That's all I do! And follow Ben around the grocery store directing. (No. Put that back. We'll need four of these.  You don't want to eat that. No. No you actually don't. Jesus, Ben!) Oh and watching tv. And trying to do stuff with my left hand. 

Sounds good to me. 

No, it's too hard. 

Remember what you told me? To let my body rest and heal? It was good advice. 

You cut your cast off. 

Well, I would have done it sooner but for your advice.

Hmm. 

What? 

Good for the goose, then it's good for the gander. 

Who is who?

The male is the gander. 

Then your saying is off. 

It doesn't matter! 

He laughs again. What can I do?

I told you. Get the grinder. 

He frowns again. Guess who's not allowed in the garage for the rest of the summer. 

Ben? 

Jesus, Bridge. This is a first world pro-

Oh, don't even go there. 

You know what you need? 

A monte cristo?! 

What else? 

Vodka lemonade and french fries. 

I can do all of this. Give me twenty minutes to clean up. 

Okay. I'll be in the garage when you're ready. 

No you won't. He laughs again. This is going to be a full time job, isn't it? 

Wait. If I hook up the sail to my kayak I can just zoom around with the wind-

No, Bridget. It would be irresponsible to go out if you can't paddle. 

If others go they can help if I get off course. 

Not going to happen. 

Day-drunk it is, then. 

That we can do. He winks and eight-year-old me can't focus on a single thing else, ever.

Regularly scheduled programming (5:44/8:47)

I'm back. Finished my coffee, my cheese toast and my singular chore of turning on the sprinklers out front, something I do every ten days for one hour because we're trying hard to do our part and conserve water. We're changing over as much grass as we can. What remains is just moss and it's mostly golden yellow of deep summer anyway. We are surrounded by people with lush green expanses of heavily daily-watered lawns because none of our neighbours up the road give a shit, as long as it looks perfect. 

Sigh. 

The sun isn't setting that much earlier, I point out unhelpfully to Lochlan, who has been pointing out the harbingers of autumn all week. Soon it won't be so hot all the time. Soon the rain will come back. The leaves are already falling from the trees that got damaged by the heat dome and I am as always amused by the fact that some American regions send their kids back to school like, this week. 

But it is, he smiles gently, softening the blow.

I don't miss the scramble for supplies, the clothes-shopping and lunch-treat shopping and endless homework, packing backpacks and watching the clock. Henry now enters the final six months of his program and he is pretty self-sufficient at twenty, showing up to have breakfast and then taking a late lunch, working on his school stuff from home, and then joining his friends on weekends, days off or online in the evenings to game or hang out. 

I will miss Ruth living at home, as she's turning twenty-two and moving out. This is going to be a fall of huge changes here and yet does anything actually change? I wanted my garden to grow like crazy and now that it is, I wish it was done instead of staring down the fall of canning and processing and freezing. I want fall to be here. I want to wear sweaters and drink flavoured coffee and nap while it rains. I want to watch scary movies and decorate with pumpkins (they are growing now. Four HUGE ones out there at the very end of the garden by the service road, which is finished and allows for deliveries to Schuyler's house, Batman's or landscaping/construction materials, of which there will be no more because I am so done with all of it. 

Matt has a different theory. You're just burnt out. 

I know this. I know he's right. I don't know what to do about it, though.

Jesus firesmoke.

Sam cancelled church today. He messaged me to see if I was going in the morning on Saturday night and I said only if everyone wore masks and he swore at me and then within thirty minutes he messaged the group chat and said he cancelled and was going to continue with zoom Jesusing because his elderly congregation is almost celebratory in their rush to get rid of masks. 

So we stayed in bed with Lochlan, Daniel, Ben and Schuyler.

Sam and I did, I mean. 

And Lochlan made up drunken limericks about vegetables and viruses, and Schuyler and Ben sang along with every Bollywood musical they could find (they've seen all of them, I believe, which is a huge accomplishment) and Daniel smiled sleepily and snuggled into the middle of a big crush and it was cool and peaceful and loving and warm. Lochlan and I put on a very early show on Friday night and we crushed it and the rest of them could hardly speak since. I love it.

And I don't want to leave, which is why I think Sam actually cancelled church. 

Anyway. I've cancelled Monday too, in preparation for the week. Because I can.

I hate the heat part 57385735833627294856542618.

Daniel strolled into the kitchen this morning with his half-full coffee cup in hand, languid smile all but melting off his face. I refilled his cup for him and he took a chair by the window. 

Near Caleb, who is in pajama pants and a clean t-shirt, having the most relaxing Friday of his life, I think. 

They exchange greetings, commiserate on the weather and the start of the long weekend being a challenge. No one here really likes the heat. You can't be in the water twenty-four hours a day and you can only take off so many items of clothing before you're just in a goddamned nudist colony instead of a commune, which is what we'll soon be, at this rate. 

Collective, alright. Collective penises. 

Until that glorious day appears on the horizon we settle for closing and opening different windows and doors at different times with a military precision, with plans to run ductless A/C to any remaining spaces that seem warm in the near future. It's a little frightening how warm it's becoming and I long for the days of keeping my towel around my sunburnt shoulders after a swim in the ocean because it would be freezing in my ears and under my hair against my skin. A hot shower at home to wash the sand away and a thick layer of Noxema on the sunburn (to cool it, now I'm thinking that was probably the worst thing to do but like the baby oil for tanning, it was a seventies tradition) and then dinner was always sandwiches and chips. Cold. Kind of like now only the oppressive heat comes inside and stays inside and we can't get away from it. Can't escape the forest fires, the smoke, the rocks falling off the grand wall of Big Chief, it's so fucking hot, can't store wine since it explodes. Can't let the dog go out without carrying him down the patio steps it's so fucking hot and I hate it. 

HATE it. 

So we're going to just disappear into the cool dimness of Schuyler and Daniel's room and watch Netflix and drink wine until it's over. 

Maybe we'll invite Caleb. Maybe we'll bring the dog too. Maybe we'll just have a huge pile in and everyone can nap until the winter comes back. 

This sucks. I was so looking forward to summer. Not this kind of summer though. Just the longer days and gardening season. This is completely uncalled for. 

(I know! First world problems! Except I'm going to throw up.)

Here not here.

I can't actually see and my head is splitting. I had an eye exam for the first time since spring of 2019 and they put drops in my eyes and I *almost* called PJ to bring someone and come drive me and my little Jeep home but then I said fuck it and just drove. It was only marginally blurry and impossible by then but I made it safe and sound. My new cute glasses will be ready in a couple of weeks and hopefully this time the prescription is solid gold and doesn't make my head hurt. Even the health insurance jumped on board and paid for $7 of it so I'm extra-thrilled. 

I can almost see now but the headache is crushing and it's thirty degrees and honestly I'm just going to tap out of this upcoming long weekend/heatwave now, I think.

The only time I see him excited anymore.

(I knew this was coming. If I make dates with the fairy boys Caleb always gets riled.)

I worked my ass off this morning one-handing my chores. Not because they put my name back into the rotation but because I am stubborn and I felt like I should just do my part even though if anyone else has a broken anything I will wait on them, spoil them, sign them off on anything more troubling than breathing until they are healed with a rehabilitation window and then ease them back in. If it's me than I will slide a big ziploc bag over my whole hand and just do whatever I would have been doing, had this not happened. 

And I am getting annoyed. My skin crawls. It's hot. Casts are horrible. I feel like it's melting. It never dries inside. It smells very bad. It looks ragged and hilarious. Apparently if it gets bad enough condition-wise it will be replaced and so after dinner I'm going to get them to run over it with trucks. 

But first? Ice cream. 

Caleb blocked the whole hallway and asked if I wanted to do an ice cream run. Is the sky blue? Hell yes I want to do an ice cream run. I've never said no. Actually, I have quite a few times but a perfectly warm sunny day with no plans and all my chores done just screams ice cream to me. 

Caleb got peach and I got coffee. Sugar cones. Extra sprinkles. They were melting before we could eat them and it was so good. I love those spontaneous lunches somewhere out of the way. 

It comes with a price, like all nice things. 

Is Schuyler a checkmate?

No. Not at all.

Is Daniel? 

Of course not. 

They're taking all of your free time as of late. You're back to avoiding me. 

Yes, as soon as I finish having ice cream with you I can get right back to ignoring you. 

And so I'm going to make an offer and I'd like it if you just take it with you and consider it. Don't tell me yes or no for a week and then you can decide after you take your time. Is that fair?

Yes, but if it's too outlandish don't expect a yes, Diabh-

Humour me. 

Of course. 

Seven days. 

I turn around looking for a girl climbing out of a well. Sorry? Seven days what?

I'd like to book a week's holiday with you. 

Where? 

Maybe just Whistler. Maybe the Gwaii. We'll figure that out shortly but it will be a private week for two. All pampering. All luxury. Just you and me. As much sleep and swimming as you want. Whatever you want to eat. Just time we can spend together. I'd like to make it an annual thing. 

Okay.

So let me know next Thursday or even Friday and we can decide where or you can tell me if that's too long or-

Diabhal. 

Mmm?

I said okay. 

You did. 

I did. 

Damn. I need to make some calls. Any dealbreakers?

No helicopter rides, no shellfish-only menus. 

That's so easy, Bridge. 

No heat. 

I got you. 

For a week anyway. Wait, when? 

Mid-September? How does that sound?

Perfect. I have no plans other than spending time with you. 

I get a gentle, almost-timid kiss and he is off the ground, flying along a million feet up. You made my day, Neamhchiontach. 

Thank you for the ice cream. 

Thank you for the company. 

There is ice cream on the cast now. Sigh.

Positive, generous love.

Daniel pulled me down into his lap the moment I came around to his side of the patio table. He is in the shade. His hair has gotten long, he's got on a white button down and khaki shorts, plain brown leather slides and he's pushed his tortoiseshell sunglasses up on top of his head. He looks like Ben if Ben were lighter in colouring and far more preppy. He looks freshly-showered and content and not at all like he spend the past three nights in the woods. I gave him time to see Schuyler and to clean up and get a good nights sleep in a real bed and now I'm here to atone for my sins. 

I am guessing you're here to own up to trying to steal my man. He plants a fat kiss on my mouth.

Wasn't! 

I know that. Thank you for keeping him company. And I thanked him for keeping you company. Another kiss. 

So you're good with it? It was only Saturday night. Not all three. 

Bridget, it's fine. Besides..it gives us fodder. 

Excuse ME? It what? Explain.

Schuyler finds you exotic.  

If you're going to imagine me as entertainment I'd rather just be there.

Then come visit us this weekend. I can get caught up. 

You keep score?

No, I was trying to play it cool. 

Can I bring my Lochlan?

Of course. 

He's far more exotic anyway. I'm just the runt. 

That isn't the way a single other living soul sees you, Bridget. 

You just made my day. 

Well you made ours, by agreeing to come back. 

Somehow it makes it less weird if I can cancel it out by bringing Loch with me. 

Why is it weird? Being alone with Schuy is a gift. I know it better than anyone.

Yup. You're right, Daniel. He's amazing. 

Then stop worrying. The next kiss hits my forehead. Now go rest up. No one's going easy on you this week. 

Jesus. 

Not even him! Love you. 

Love you too.