You're all the things I've got to remember.

When I was fourteen, sometime long before Lochlan decided he couldn't carry history for us and sometime before Caleb decided he now had an open door to continue the abuse he started when I was ten years old Aha released their number one smash hit that still sees people stop and smile when they hear it even now. 

But today was the first time I heard it (I don't have the original, I have an unplugged version from a couple of years ago) and it made me cry, here as I wake up early and start laundry and un-decorating, drinking coffee and playing music before the whole house wakes up as is my favorite time of day because it's the only time I can let go in the music and my brain takes a break and lets my heart drive for a while and no one expects or needs anything at all. 

And then I realized what I need and the music hurts all the more. 

Happy New Year. 

Wait:

! 

There. Almost forgot the false enthusiasm.

It feels sad this year. It feels like it's full of too much wishful thinking and frightening unknowns. It feels like it might be more of the same and yet less of everything. It feels weird and alien and I took down the 2020 calendar and I dearly loved that year, because my children were home and safe, my boys were home and safe and everyone in the greater universe backed the fuck off so I could catch my breath but then I still couldn't keep up and I feel completely helpless when I watch people flout the rules and then completely despondent when they don't and I worry it will be like this forever. 

Only once or twice did I worry that we might get sick. Only once or twice did I need to drop what I was doing and leave an area. Once in Canadian Tire and once in IKEA. I never returned to either place. I have a tendency to go out and run my errands the moment the stores open. I do the grocery shopping at seven in the morning. I go without and I wait and I figure out other ways and I've cooked so much and we've dropped even takeout for the most part just because of the traffic. I drink too much and pass it off as nerves and I think too much and pass it off as grief and no one can fix it. 

No one. 

Jake could have and I don't know why. I don't understand why no one else can help me, why no one else can make me feel safe and secure now and even if he walked through the door he wouldn't be able to pull that off these days because I don't trust anybody anymore and that's weirdly his fault and not Caleb's, not Lochlan's, not Trey's by any means (Cole, that's Cole. His nickname returned in a fond wistfulness and won't go away now with the boys and it sort of freaks me out) and not Ben's. I never trusted Ben, he made sure to be the crazy friend my whole life and even that was a lie as he turned out to be the most sturdy, trusted foundation I think I ever had at any point in my life and it's hard to separate us now for completely different reasons than it used to be.

This is why they say stay, wait for me to get up, wait and we'll go down and have coffee. Don't go in there, Bridget. Remember the blast? There's nothing left that's safe in your head and so just stick with us. And I do but then in the dark they go digging through the papers that coat the landscape and dig up the smallest things and rip them out of my arms, changing them into something else and I have to write it down on a new piece but there's nowhere to put it, no way to organize it into a system because all of that is gone. 

In the dark they turn me into a little monster and if I fight they gaslight me all to hell and back.

It's okay, Bridge, they'll tell me, a reassurance pouring all over the floor but for the holes. I watch them and it looks ridiculous.

No it's not okay. None of this is okay. 

I can't do this without them, Bridge. This is your army for a reason.

Then you can't be mad that they're here, Lochlan. 

I don't know what to feel anymore. What can I give you? What can we do? 

Bring him back because I need to talk to him. 

He's not coming back, Sweetheart. He's gone. 

I don't think he's gone. 

If he wasn't gone do you think he would be able to stay away from you? 

Sure. I would. I would run so fast. 

It doesn't work. I think we've all tried that. 

Worked for him, then, didn't it? 

I don't know what you want me to say here. 

Nothing, I don't want you to say anything. 

Why don't you listen to some music, and then we'll have a nap later.

And so here I am. What a GREAT idea.

***

I didn't think it was such a huge disintegration, at first.

 I know it's a feature of very big holidays when you have lost someone in a violent way, that they are harder and there's more baggage to lug around as you make your way through the world and maybe tomorrow I won't be so sad but it's striking to me to mark these days passing like everything is going to be great and wonderful because you don't know. We never know what time we have and that's what I don't trust. That's what sends me running, screaming, and I feel like that fear isn't something that can be contained in my brain or my heart, as it tries to help out but is mostly useless, chasing after love and affection like a blind stupid fool. I am afraid of everything and they promised I'd be so much better by now but Jesus the hard parts were in the single digits and now it's 2021 and I feel like it isn't. Not yet. I'm still here and they don't want to wait and I don't want to be alone and

I don't want to write anymore of this. Not now. Just know that I called Sam first and he's coming and I called Joel and then I called everyone else and they're calling others and everyone's coming in to celebrate 2021 without quarantining Jesus fuck because emergencies are somehow like that. Take on me, indeed. God my brain is fucking fucked. I'm sorry.

 

(She's a she's a lady and I am just a line without a hook.)

I am drinking the good coffee that Schuyler dropped off yesterday and watching Hardy Boys reruns on my ipad on the big circle couch by the woodstove. If I sit in 'my' spot you can't see me from any door. The stove is too big and it sits in the centre of the room but the only thing in this room is the couch and the stove and the rest is windows and the big patio doors that open all the way across and it's pouring right now so it's perfect.

I had a mad ridiculous crush on Shaun Cassidy which ended simultaneously as the show went off the air and I met Lochlan and the others all in the same period and suddenly I had the real life Hardy Boys to follow around. 

(Nothing has changed since, except I drink coffee now, I didn't until I went to University and then I had one every morning with classmates when I arrived. Cream and sugar and then I dropped the sugar later, only bringing it back briefly when we moved here and I discovered English toffee syrup but I weaned myself off that again because my sugar consumption is rather legendary as it is without physically adding it to regular things.)

My feet are comfortable propped up in the lap of the Devil, who is drinking coffee (also the good stuff) and reading on his own ipad or whatever he does online, I don't know. Maybe stare at the markets until they bloom or shrivel under his medium-blue gaze. 

Hard to believe he's one of the original Hardy Boys, the Frank to Lochlan's inevitably younger, more impulsive, passionate and far shorter Joe. Frank is so irritated with me right now. I wouldn't accept his Christmas gift, wouldn't make any plans with him, have (in his words) left him hanging out to dry, throwing water on his sails, he is now floating in the doldrums, directionless, rudderless, no line on the horizon-

Jesus Christ. I love a New Year's Eve arguments that's just all angst and sailing metaphors. I try not to laugh because it seems cruel but then again he put me in this position and godfuckingdammit if I'm not going to fight my way out with my words, for they're the only weapons I can truly wield that will fatally impact him. I don't have anything else against him. Heck, if I even look at him straight on I'm probably doomed.

So this is better, trust me. 

Why don't you join the guys next door at their fondue?

And fifth-wheel it? No thank you. 

I believe the kids are going, and Batman and Jake. No wheels. Just nerds.

My teeth hurt on the name but to cover my expression I move my feet and sit up, putting my ipad on the table. I can't concentrate on my show when the albatross is spooling up here, blocking the flames. 

He thinks and then says casually that he might stop over for a few. 

I nod and get up. More coffee would be good. 

Want to do resolutions later?

I don't know if I have any this year. I just want to find ways to make Ben's life easier and keep him moving towards one hundred percent. I turn and stare directly into the dark at the Devil who returns it too easily. That stare that sets people on fire and it doesn't touch me right now. I can deflect if I'm focused elsewhere and right now it's Ben. 

I'll do everything I can to help. 

I know. 

Bridget, this is going to be a better year. 

I hope so. 

I promise you. 

I don't think you have that kind of power. You can only control your own actions and I really hope you don't plan on hurting anyone in 2021. 

It was an accident. 

A surprise punch on a concrete ledge is not an accident, it's an evil I didn't think even you had in you and you're the very definition of it, especially to her.

Bridget-

I think I'm going to go see if Ben is awake yet. It's getting late. 

When I got upstairs I bit my tongue, realizing that those are the kinds of words which bring nothing but despair and while I like to stick it to Caleb every chance I get, matching his cruelty is not who I am and I turn and go back down but he is gone. So I call him and it answers to the sound of wind. He is driving. Speakerphone.

Change your mind? 

Where are you off to? 

Just picking up some things off the list since the weekend will be busy and I figured you could use the help. 

I'm sorry, Caleb. I didn't mean to make you feel worse for Ben's-

Bridget, I'm thrilled that you stand up to me now. Call me on my bullshit. You're getting so much stronger and I love every second of it. Keeps me accountable. I'll see you in a bit. Be home by twelve and we'll talk.

He ends the call but I don't feel better.

There's a heaven above me, baby.

Twenty years old and I screwed up. I borrowed some quarters for the cost of a smile and I called Caleb. I pushed too far and now we're fighting and I don't know where Lochlan went or if he's coming back and I can't pay for a room because he has all our money and I can't do our act by myself and he always said not to go it alone if anything ever went wrong, just to call home and get somewhere safe and we'd figure the rest out later. I've got my clothes and my makeup in my backpack and I figured the bar was safer but maybe it's not and no one's going to ID me, too pretty to turn away so I go all the way down to the corner and sit by the phone. I put the backpack on (not leaving it on a chair right next to me, wolves are circling and I don't know these ones) and dial the number. He picks up on the first ring. 

Hello? 

I take a breath. Hi, Caleb.

Bridget? Is everything okay? 

I bite my lip. Guns and Roses is ordering me not to ever cry over the sound system and I'm trying to obey them. I'm trying to be tough but I won't win any battles. If I could Lochlan would still be here.

Bridget. Say something. Where are you?

I shake out a smoke and a match. Bartender won't stop staring. 

Uh. I have to think. In a bar. They have a payphone. We had a fight-

What city, Bridget? I can come to you. I can get a plane right now. (I made the right call. Caleb is twenty-nine now and already has a lawyer job at a really nice firm with so many perks my head spins.)

I don't know-

The receiver is taken from me and hung up. Lochlan's back. Looking fierce, angry and scared all at the same time. Christ, Peanut. I turned around and you were gone. This was the last place I went in. Don't they know you're underage? He says the last part loudly, like anyone's going to give a shit in here if I'm of age. Probably like it more that I'm not. Wouldn't surprise me. I take a drag off the cigarette. I'm shaky and I have a laugh at how relieved I am to see him, even though he hates me. I don't know why I came out with him. We're never going to get along. We have moments where I think I'm going to tell Cole that's enough, I'm going back to Lochlan, but then Lochlan is Lochlan and I remember his incredible contempt for me and his inability to deal with the guilt or the carnage from our past and so yeah, it won't work. I am too strong for him. 

The phone begins to ring and ring and Lochlan just gets louder to compensate. He's giving me a lecture here in a shitty eastern seaboard bar while I suck on a stale cigarette, tears rolling down my face. I don't look twenty but no one steps in to see if everything is okay. Everyone loves a tragedy. Everyone wants to fix a broken girl. None of this shit matters.  

The bartender reaches between us and picks up the receiver, hanging it up again and then taking it off the hook. Not his first rodeo but a strange lovers quarrel nonetheless. Finally he shows a shred of decency. 

Need a cab or something, miss?

I'm good now, thank you. I take another shaky drag while he stares at me. I nod at him and then he gives a long slow gaze to Lochlan, who nods and meets his eyes and finally he turns away to go back to keeping his napping bar. No one in here has enough energy to do anything else, it seems. 

I'm not the bad guy here, Bridge. But you didn't have to agree to come out. 

He's angry about my earrings. They are tiny diamond studs, round ones. Lochlan frowned and asked me why I was wearing them when we got here, when I put my hair up. When we stopped moving and started looking for a crashpad. 

I don't take them off. 

When did you buy those?

Caleb gave them to me for my birthday. He said twenty was such a huge milestone, I should have something almost as beautiful as me to celebrate. He made me promise to never take them off. 

Are they real?

Yeah, we can sell them if we need to. Back up plan, right, Lochlan? 

Sure. Yeah. He's fighting to not look angry as he nods at me.

He said they were half a carat each so that's something, right?

Mmm hmmm. 

What's wrong?

What did Cole say when Caleb gave you those?

Nothing.

Why not?

It's like a pattern.

What's a pattern?

Caleb comes over and then after he leaves he comes back with a present. 

What do you mean? Why doesn't he just bring the present when he arrives the first time?

Guilt. 

For what?

Not....visiting more often, I lie. 

Then he would bring it the first time. What are they really for, Bridget?

I told you. 

No, you haven't. And now you've sounded the alarm and you have to call back and tell him you're fine, we're fine, you made a mistake and I'll talk to him too. I don't want him to come and get you, Bridget but if you want to go we'll leave. 

I want to go. Anywhere else. Also I want half the money. I had to borrow money for the call. 

You're right. I'll make sure you have more. 

Lochlan.

What?

Do you know I'm four years older now than you were the first time we went out on the fair? I'm a lifer. This is my ten-year anniversary and we're on a better gig now. You can let me help make decisions. 

If everyone's in charge no one's in charge, Bridge. 

I didn't say anymore. He's right. I never heard that one before, I tell him. 

I just said it. It's from me.

Oh. 

He wipes the tears from my eyes and replaces my crushed week-old cigarette pack with a fresh sealed one and then for good measure he takes a wad of bills out of his pocket and divides it, giving me half without counting. Granted, I'm not dumb, he gave me the small bills. He kept the big ones. The fifties. The hundreds. I get ones, fives and tens. 

Thanks. I roll it up and put it in my bra. The cigarettes go in the pocket of my green hoodie. It goes all the way across the front of the shirt. He takes the backpack from me and carries it in one hand, taking my hand in his own free hand. 

You don't need him to rescue you, Peanut. 

You left me on the sidewalk. 

I walked ten feet away and when I turned back you were gone. Jesus. I was so scared. I wouldn't just abandon you on the sidewalk. If you don't trust me by now, after everything, then tell me what else I can do? 

****

What city was that, Lochlan? The one where we took the ten-week contract and had the fight about the earrings?

Jesus, Bridge. Why?

I'm curious. 

New Haven. I think. Not one hundred percent on that, though.

Thank you.

Don't write about it. Please. 

Might be too late.

These are not in order. Sorry.

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 pas

Les 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.

If I go crazy then will you still call me Superman?
If I'm alive and well, will you be there holding my hand? 

I finally found a comfortable spot and he ruined it within minutes, waking up, shoving me underneath his weight, crushing my mouth against his with a kiss in the dark followed by his hand wrapping around the back of my head to keep me there, his other hand sliding down around my body to bring me up close. That kiss was it and then he was inside me, every thrust so fierce I would let out an uncomfortable cry. Jesus Christ. This is too hard, too deep, too fast. I try to give him a safe word but I don't want to wake up the others, sleeping soundly all around me. The cries wake them up anyway and they move in to block, to comfort and to join. The wolf pack. Different in the dark as they devour their prey. Content to leave whatever's left and hunt again, night after night while the sheep has a thousand lives, her flesh matted with sweat, with the cloying residue of one love gone right and one missed altogether. This one, the one with the medium blue eyes never does let up, save to move his hand from the back of my head to around my throat, and I miss the chance to breathe but I never had it. He squeezes his fingers tighter, he pounds me harder still and my cries vanish into the night as he peaks into an explosion, mercifully letting go as soon as it's over. I don't want to be a bystander, I want to be a participant but he leaves and the spot is cold suddenly. 

It's shame that drives him away. It's me that will bring him back. I'm not concerned. I couldn't leave him to sleep alone, apart from us and this is what it cost.

Besides, his place is immediately taken by the favourite. The one with the striking colouring, telltale freckles and the most tender heart, after mine. The one who makes a huge effort to make it fun, make it good, make me come before he gets going and then again right as he does too. His arms are a safe haven, a gift and I unclench my whole body, suddenly racked by a bliss I can't describe as he moves surely over me. His cheek rests against my temple, his kisses taste sweet, we have a practised, subliminal response to each other, our bodies fitting perfectly. Nothing hurts but nothing is too light, everything so hot and intense we simulate daylight there, for a moment, blink and you've missed it. When he finds his own bliss within me he makes that sound I love more than anything, that sound of pure euphoria and contentment, the signal that everything is okay and he remains, he won't leave, settling in against me, pulling me in tight against his chest, putting his hands up around my head again, this time in protection instead of lust. Within the hierarchy of the wolves it isn't the largest that it is the leader, it is the one I love most.

He said I could be a little soaked sheep in wolf's clothing and he's not all that wrong.

 I've been enjoying the heat, truth be told. Usually I am too hot, blankets thrown off, one single layer under a coat because if there's two I will die, far away from the fire, honestly moving after ten minutes of snuggling because I can no longer breathe, bare feet in January sort of deal and now since I actually got cold I've been changing my tune and wearing wool and I did indeed advocate for that bathtub by the woodstove but due to privacy concerns it was quickly vetoed. 

But we could put up a curtain? I mean ma and pa never minded-

Ma and Pa Ingalls did not live in a commune. 

That's it. I'm writing the early years. Little Commune on The Prairie. Ma and Pa in their wild years before they had Mary. 

Perfect. 

Oh, just you wait. 

Ben offered to draw me a bath upstairs in my big bathtub. That's where I swim. He can have the lukewarm pools. I need the scalding water or ice cold, no in between. Ocean Bath Ocean Bath Bath Ocean. I only have two modes and the switch can't get stuck in the middle. It's just not possible. 

We're about to go dark, I think, for a few days. Not lights (GOD I HOPE NOT) but connectivity. We take life offline for big holidays and reconnect with each other instead. Wrap up the year and oh what a year it was. The rounds of presents and sitting by the tree and the big fireplace talking long into the night, taking long walks around the neighborhood and sleeping criminally late (GOD I HOPE SO) is about to begin. 

Also my bath. It's about to begin. So bye. Merry Christmas!

Wild Pacific Solstice.

 The power was out for an extended period from yesterday afternoon to sometime in the wee hours of the morning which means I woke up to four thousand blazing lights and a hundred beeps and boops from all of the technology kicking back up and we're still getting things back online. We're still cutting down trees and finding broken things in the garden. This was a quick and dirty doozy of a storm and I saw it coming and got dinner on the table as fast as I could and just as we were finishing up the power went out and after a few minutes we had all of the auxiliary power things back on. Not enough things. Ever. I worry about the furnace, water heater, freezers, fridge. This is mostly  for lights and wifi and charging. We deployed the lantern cupboard. We dug out the chessboard and Jenga and the boys eviscerated the brand new box of Quality Street chocolates with Henry coming on board to enjoy. I figured out the one flavour no one could place and then THEN we found the chocolate legend so we knew what was what. 

It was hazelnut, for the record. 

I'm currently not allowed outside to see if there is any more property damage. I'm a little worried about my studio as sometimes the heat isn't reliable in there and if my paints freeze I'm not sure if they'll still be good to use when they thaw. Also the trees on that side are plentiful. Lochlan said my grotto in front is basically caved in. Everything is coated in a thick layer of ice over heavy snow that I hope goes away soon. 

My phone is back at one hundred percent. I've had coffee and a pear and a hot shower and my period kicked in at last which means I can do everything the boys do but I do it while bleeding. That's the joke and there I was in my boots and parka hauling trees along with them last evening. I may have to go suck on an anchor or take a vitamin though because now I am down for the count.

I didn't sleep. All I could think of was Revolution. The show that came on when we lived in the prairies where the power went out and just never came back on and it's a frightening thought how much I like easy lights, easy heat and endless hot water. 

(I can boil water on the woodstove yes but it takes a long time and eight feet away from the stove it's like you're standing outside. But yes, I will go get a bathtub and put it right in the kitchen just in case. Just for next time.)

I was out on the patio steps checking cameras and window glass and seeing if the gazebo made it through when I realized too late how fucking slippery it was with a straight path down to solid concrete and so I came back in. I can finish later. Everything seems intact. But I got cold and now all I can think about is being warm. I put on my beaded fur-trimmed mukluks (also from the Prairies, Metis specifically) and a big sweater and my merino leggings and I'll nurse a second cup of coffee while the sun works hard to boot up too. 

Everyone can tell me I've gone soft and that I wouldn't last an hour after the apocalypse but when I rough it everyone tells me to enjoy some luxury and relax. Make up your damn minds.

But that was it. The shortest day is now over, along with the longest night, and now we get to tick the minutes back toward those ten pm sunsets again. I can't wait.

Glass houses.

The temperature is starting to drop and we've had to empty the pool anyway since it's still open. Luckily we did it  a while back after the work got pushed to the new year for the glass room because of some serious communication issues between um...me and everyone else but they came around quickly and so we'll resume sometime toward the end of January with getting the pool a room of it's own. My not-snowglobe will be rustic and natural and probably in full force by dinnertime, at this rate, as it's supposed to snow a ton and it's been raining forever so it'll be an avalanche Christmas and messy and awful and we've locked the gate and no one's going out for a few days and so perfect storm indeed. 

Don't worry. Ben has been making full use of Batman's pool in the interim, until ours is ready again. Batman has an actual indoor pool but it's a very small lap pool so Ben swims back and forth and does his water workout and someone sits in one of the big chairs nearby and keeps him company. The pool is a small rectangle in a room surrounded by huge plants and windows that slide all the way open in the nice weather, much like my kitchen windows to the patio side. It's not really big enough for more than one person though and Batman doesn't care for it all that much but boy am I happy to have a backup pool right now so I didn't have to back down. 

The ceiling wasn't tall enough on the enclosure for the other pool and I hated it so much. I hated the glass too. The whole thing was ugly and terrible and I had a vision of a Victorian greenhouse and they had a vision of a utilitarian....pool enclosure. I pointed out that for resale value and to always make something extra special if one has the chance we should make this spectacular and now we need more permits and had to order special materials and it adds a lot of time and waiting (and money) and I had to bring Emmett back in to run interference with the company because they don't like me. I tried to be nice and sweet but I wasn't going to 'wait and let it grow on me' when it was so ugly. 

(They again assumed, as all the workmen do, that I was someone's temporary girlfriend and tried to talk over and under me, which pissed me off even more but I really want the job done and so I asked if we could all just start on a fresh page but they remain bitchy and moody.

Oh, geez, guys, you have not SEEN bitchy and moody.)

In the meantime It's Christmas and there's Batman and you know how this goes. I tried to blow him off a bit and it didn't work at all. He is very happy to have all this company and the very deep very small pool is finally getting more use than ever before.

These even colder skies.

This morning I woke up with my favourite Christmas song in my head, which isn't actually Where Are You, Christmas? to everyone's surprise. It's In Like a Lion (Always Winter) which I love to sing and Lochlan says it's like going back in time and he doesn't really want to hear it but singing is better than silence and frankly I need all the help I can get. The third favourite is I Celebrate the Day but it's a little bit crushingly Jesus, even for me. Then Walking in the Air. I could go on but no one cares.

And the rumours are false. I'm not a great singer, especially without the in-ear monitors because I can't hear myself. Maybe good if I push for compliments but only with Ben's endless coaching over the past twenty years can I even get the courage at all to feel as though anyone would want to hear it. 

I'm not going to go up under the viaduct and belt out anything from Titanic, though I desperately, absolutely want to, with all my heart. 

Instead I am the secret-starlet, content in my postage-stamp fame on a zoom screen or in someone's memories from twenty-five years removed, hazy and sped-up ever so slightly, a moment captured with a series of photographs using a flip flash on a drugstore camera, half buried in the sand and forgotten at the end of a twentieth century summer.

***

People want me to say things. I don't know what you want me to say? We've hunkered down quite nicely. I have a cold but truly it's been a runny nose and a dry-air slight cough for almost two weeks now and it's one-hundred-percent dependant on the humidity in the house, going away completely when it's good or I've had a long hot shower. When it gets super-dry it's worse. I need to drink more tea, find a way to sleep without being taken down at three hundred yards, a moving target with a sight on my back for their tranquilizing, killer dreams. I need to learn how to relax. Maybe that's why I love singing so much. It's a time, like when I treasure-hunt on the beach, where I stop thinking at all and just focus on the task at hand. 

I hope everyone enjoyed the service today. Fourth candle, bitches. I'm afraid to look.

Two minutes of terror (like seven minutes in heaven without the closet).

Sam made a last minute addition to tomorrow's podcast/zoom in that he's opted to insert a hymn by some special guests (snort) and he decided I would sing it and Ben would play his acoustic and...not sing at all which wasn't entirely fair. Instead of Ben doing everything because Ben is a trained professional and I'm a decided stage-frighty hack suddenly. 

We put on our Christmas best, lit a hundred candles in the big booth and strung tiny green lights everywhere. Christian filmed it. We took eleven tries to get through it this morning because Ben assured me we could one-take it, almost clearing it in eight but then Ben decided to burst out laughing at my hand gestures and then for the next two takes we kept cracking up in the same spot. 

We performed Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel. Thank God it's short. And then I was actually ready to sing so we also recorded a lovely and fun version of Baby It's Cold Outside (which we've done many, many times live, if you can even but now it's committed to all eternity) which I don't know what we're going to do with. Perhaps there's an album in the works and in the future everyone will have a faded green record in the stack by the hi-fi that looks dated as fuck. Holiday Classics by The Collective. And when you play it-surprise! It's half doom metal. 

I mean, it could work. 

And now it's seven already and I'm still in my Valentino and stilettos (and false lashes shhhhHHHHH) because I have a theory that I'm louder when I'm tall. Lochlan points out it's actually the opposite and since he started picking on me for zero reason Sam has tagged him to do his own number later today and wants to stream a church variety show now. We're fucking doomed. This is awesome. His congregation is never going to appreciate the sheer amount of talent he has around him, but frankly that's okay.

God, I hope Lochlan picks something Elvis. We're already calling him the Red King, a term I haven't heard for a really long time.

Laundry lists and sleepy men.

 I have to start from scratch. Probably locally. I'll have to call around and he can figure it out if he wants to go around and get his things, for when I went to pull the trigger the shipping was only FedEx and it was $85 Canadian and that's freaking bullshit for what I ordered, which amounted to half a shoebox sizewise and would have cost me $30 to ship with tracking and insurance. And I emailed and they can't do any other shipping methods so oh well. 

It's fine. I don't care if he gets his pen, he has others and he has a whole pack of field notes in the drawer but he likes the Yamamoto ones so much better. Stuff it, I tell him. Use what you have! 

I'll do it myself. Is the cart still there.

No. I emptied it in protest. 

Cale sighs for a long time and then doesn't say anymore and I go back to going through receipts. Silence reigns for the better part of the afternoon and I finally stand up to leave and he startles so hard I am shaken. 

Sorry, was daydreaming, I guess. 

You know what they say about disassociati-

Neamhchiontach, don't. I just haven't slept. 

Ooh, come join my club. We meet every day behind the treehouse. Though you'll have to learn the secret handshake and we have badges to pin on your shirt and-

He pinches the bridge of his nose with one hand. There's a fix for this. Stay tonight. 

What's in it for me? 

He stares at me. It was a joke and he took it as a challenge. Anything, everything. Name it. 

I want things to cost less and get here faster. 

I know you're minding not being able to shop properly. 

It's tactile-

I know, Bridget. And no one can help that right now. So what can we do to help that? 

I have no idea. 

I do. How about a sleeping pill for two and we tuck in at eight and watch shows until we can't keep our eyes open? 

Each other's or our own? 

He was out like a lightbulb at ten and I read long into the night, travelling through brief sleepiness into wakefulness, then homesickness, followed by the inevitable strange contentment. I finally turned the light off in the single-digit morning hours and got about three hours of rest, his arms a vise around my back, breathing so soundly I knew he was really out and not just hoping I would think he was asleep so I would fall asleep too (both he and Lochlan do that independently) and when I woke up again I untangled myself from him and he woke up. 

What time is it? 

Five. 

You going home?

Yes. 

Dammit. 

Sleep. 

Kay. Go straight up. 

I will. 

And I did as promised. Lochlan was still asleep, spooning against Ben, and I ducked into the shower and slept with my face against the wall for another fifteen minutes, dreaming of stationery before getting my morning sea legs and rinsing myself clean. Fresh and blowdried and perfumed, I come out and they are both awake. 

Sleep? 

Yeah, I lie. Caleb's really tired so we watched some dumb crime show and he was out almost instantly. 

Lochlan nods. I do a few twirls on purpose as I put on my underthings, just so he can be sure I am fine. No bites. No scratches. No mental distress. I'm good. Just unsettled, as always. 

Come back for a snooze and we'll get up later?

I'm almost dressed. Come with me, let's have a picnic. 

It's still pouring, Bridge. 

We can take umbrellas to the gazebo.

What if we had breakfast in bed? 

Okay. 

Seriously?

Who's cooking?

I will. Take off your stuff and crawl in. I'll be back in twenty minutes. 

Loch jumps up, pulling on pajama pants and a green t-shirt. I get a hard kiss on the forehead that almost knocks me over and he is gone, down to find the coffee and the eggs, not nearly as tired as he seemed a minute ago. I think the rain is heavy. I think it weighs us down. 

I tell this to Ben and he nods. I think you're right. 

(I ended up making breakfast and we ate in by the stove Lochlan cut his finger not insignificantly and so Ben nursed him through getting sufficient bandaids and antibiotic ointment while I made the eggs. He's okay though. It doesn't require stitches but I was able to convince him to use one of the butterfly bandages I keep on hand just to keep everything together while it heals.)

(And yet Lochlan's been using the same chewed-on stub of a wooden yellow Dixon pencil I believe since I was fourteen.)

(If anyone has any insight into the weird gene that makes one adore stationery supplies to this extent please remove it from me, I waste a lot of time on it, thank you.)

 I ran downstairs to give the loaves of bread a knead in order to facilitate their second rise and now I'm back upstairs in Caleb's wing trying to knock off an end-of-year stationery order from an online shop that has far too much neat stuff including shimmering ink with glitter and so many beautiful pens and notebooks I've been working on this for days and am no closer to deciding because Caleb, in his infinite, generous wisdom, told me to order whatever I wanted for myself and now I'm paralyzed with too many choices and so this is probably never going to happen. I even tried to narrow it down to just getting what I need but then I think fuck it, I'll get what I want and then they add even more nice things and I keep filling a cart and then unfilling it again. 

Of course I know exactly what I want. I like shimming inks and broad-tipped fountain pens with inlays and retractable medium ballpoints too but not the slimline metal ones. I love copper and brass housings but not translucent plastics. I have mechanical pencils by the dozen so I don't need any of those and already have paperclips on order from another place so I won't get those and I did a notebook inventory so no more paper and my planners arrived even after I balked at the cost of the hobonichis and decided on a couple of good Leuchtturms instead (one yearly planner, one bullet unlabelled) and if I stick it through then I will get a Hobonichi for 2022 (and probably a Midori 1 day 1 page to accompany) and I'm fairly certain my custom planner won't be here until February but it's a For Life kind of purchase so that's okay too. Planner starts on the 28th of December and I will muddle along for the first month or two just fine. 

If only I could figure out what to get because honestly I actually want a whole heaping load of stuff.

Get all of it. Please, Neamhchiontach. Just buy the pens already. He needs ink and wants a new Visconti pen and a couple of Japanese notebooks for his EDC and goddamn, why he waits until he is out of everything to do this, as always but he pointed out he depends on his assistant to think ahead and keep everything well-stocked and read his goddamned mind.

If only, I think to myself. 

Indeed, he says out loud.

Crazy stupid early.

The best part about Wednesdays are that we're all up at such an early hour it promotes a loose kind of insanity and so Ben and Lochlan have adopted their best falsettos and are trading off on Emotion. I swear to God this is my guilty pleasure song, I've written about it before, one of many, hilariously. I wore out the Samantha Sang original when I was seven, literally wearing the song off the vinyl 45 and then got hella confused in my twenties when the Bee Gees released their own cover and I'm never one percent sure I got it right. Of course on that playlist it's followed by a raft of Belinda Carlisle's greatest hits and I make no excuses and I plan to spend Christmas torturing PJ with the help of these two and their high cracking notes and inevitable bursts of laughter. 

I'm a broken record, truth be told but I maintain it's so nice to see Ben laugh. It's nice to see him able to remember songs we pull out of thin air and it's amazing that he has very little lasting damage here. Maybe I can't stress enough how much of the day is taken up with rehabilitation, with an all hands on deck kind of participation only this Collective could pull off. It's like this is why we're here, together. If ever we were looking for reason or purpose or answers maybe it was this and not me, specifically and I'll insist on that for the rest of my life now. 

You know, when I'm not being teased for my ludicrous taste in music as of late. Jesus. I hit all my marks all fall. When something that comes out that is super heavy tugs my listening ears I'll let you know and in the meantime this is the way. 

 

Nevermind.

It's National Cupcake Day and I sit here and wait. Where is my cupcake? Are they hand-delivered? Is it a virtual email thing? Will someone show up and hand one to me, sitting beside me to devour their own? What nation are we talking about specifically? Does this mean there is a Cake Day too? (Oh, there is! But not in my nation but I still missed it, or did I? I eat cake a lot so I don't remember, exactly. It's my favourite thing. A cake means a celebration or an event. I don't think there's anything much better on earth than a forkful of chocolate cake. I don't even care if there's icing but frankly every day should be cake day. In every nation. 

What are you doing? Lochlan comes in and I am just sitting. Hands on either side of my coffee cup, waiting for my pretty-muffin.

It's National Cupcake Day. 

Which nation? He asks. God, we share a brain. I should go rewire a compute while I'm on the inside. 

Not sure. Probably America. 

Oh. I don't think he has anything else to say, and so he heads to the Keurig. Did I tell you I discovered Sumatra beans for the thing and now I like it again? Yes. I am ridiculously picky and not at all picky with coffee. Literally the greatest coffees in the world are the ones in tiny white styrofoam cups that people hand you when you're cold. Don't ask me why and I've had coffee in France AND Italy. But yes, my standards are low. But not so low that I will get coffee from a chain from a window or anything. That's not coffee, I don't know what that is, but you go ahead if you like it. 

I need a cupcake window, that's what I need. 

No, not muffins. Pretty-muffins is just another way to describe them. Muffins with hats is another thing we say sometimes. Does it matter?

Are you cranky?

Maybe. 

Not enough sugar?

Never enough sugar. 

Are we being literal? 

I don't know, I've lost track of the conversation. 

Want some toast?

Yes. 

I can put cinnamon sugar on it-

Oh, lord no. Cheese will be fine. 

We can go get cupcakes later. 

This house is full of fancy Christmas desserts and baked goods. I think the cupcakes can wait. 

But what about the day? 

It's not Cupcake day in Canada. 

What is it?

It's Tuesday.

Not zombies because I'm so zombied-out.

 I'm really struggling with blogger. Holy. Every time I start a post I have to go out and remove all of the weird formatting that's already in place when I start. My header is now a decade old and I don't know how to change it anymore. I'm so sorry. I'm not a web person. I'm not a tech person nor am I a smart person and I feel like any attempt to change anything breaks everything so I may as well leave it alone. 

That's a metaphor for life right there. 

The dog and the cat are laying together at my feet. There's a huge fire crackling in the woodstove and it's still dark, now ten to nine and this blows my mind. The rain's pouring in sheets down the glass outside. I wanted to have my coffee and do my writing in the gazebo but truly it's terrible out there. 

It's December fourteenth. Holy. I snapped my fingers and two weeks flew by. It feels as if Ben's birthday was a thousand years ago. It feels like ages. I've been baking and wrapping and organizing too, something I like to do before Christmas, clearing out stuff that just sits, stuff we haven't touched, old clothes, ill-fitting things, surplus bedding and dishes, coats and boots and tools and I get a truckload and donate it to one of the charities that actually puts it into the hands of people who need it without them having to pay for it. And then I still feel bad. Not sure about the guilt. I guess it comes from being exceedingly poor and hungry too and I will never ever get used to this. 

Maybe it was the raincoat finally wearing-through that triggered this. Maybe it was something else. Maybe it was because this weekend we finished To The Lake/Epidemiya (after a gap where we just couldn't seem to get through the last three episodes, because we had to watch other things)

And wow.

Honestly. It's sort of somewhat hilarious. We went into knowing it was a Cannes selection, and that it was a Russian zombie series. Well, yes but no it isn't. Aside from the hilarity and the absolute horror (CHRIST) it's a great piece on the human condition, human psychology when everything is stripped away. Just, damn, it was fucking weird and I loved it and there better be a second season though I don't know if I can get up the nerve to watch it. 

Then we caught up on The Mandalorian. Then we started Alice in Borderland. We also have to finish The Expanse and I still want to go watch the last episode of Salvation because we abandoned it and I hate doing that. 

I tried to read a Kurt Vonnegut book and failed miserably. The one I started in JULY and absolutely HATE so I'll read the last page and stick it on the shelf and pick up the second in that now-years-old detective series from Stephen King so I can clear those maybe over Christmas. 

I also promised myself I would paint more and sing more and draw way more so I'm going to do that too. 

Gosh, in that case, I definitely have a busy day ahead. I'm glad it's raining though. Makes it more magical somehow altogether. I used to live for sunny days but that's a fools errand here on the coast.

My heart was glass, you dropped it/Zero Jesus.

The sun won't come up. We needed lights (headlamps, actually. You need both hands on the still-exceedingly-icy stairs in spite of all the money we threw at them) to navigate the trip to the beach well after seven this morning. I guess the days will get shorter and shorter for another week still and it sucks, for I have resorted to lifting up my skirts and running flat out after the sun, which hasn't shown itself through the rain. I will chase it, hair flying, desperate tears leaking from my lashes, and fail to succeed, being pulled back, swallowed up in the cool embrace of the long darkness. 

Once on the beach I turn off my lamp, pulling it from my head, threading it up over my elbow so it stays safe for the trip home. Lochlan turns his off but shoves it up on top of his head. It can hold his hair back while he helps me search for treasures in the rain. 

He has a backpack with him. In it is a blanket, a thermos of hot coffee, an empty paper bag for the glass and shells we find,  and a flask of irish cream to add a little sweetness and a little evil to the coffee (everything tastes better outside) Also, he says he has breakfast in there but I don't know what it is.

 We wave enthusiastically at a couple of kayakers from down the village way, who paddle close to shore because in this weather I'd hate to see them very far offshore, frankly. You get to know the colors of the boats after a while and then see them on top of people's cars or racked up on fences and behind garages and boat houses as you take your own kayak trip along the waterside. 

Lochlan spreads the blanket on the log furthest from the encroaching tide. He pours two cups of steaming black coffee, lacing each one with a strong pour of the liqueur and handing mine to me, handle towards me. I take it and take a sip. He's right. It's better. I settle back against his shoulder and watch the waves. The sea is calm this morning. The rain makes lazy dots on the roiling surface and he says ten minutes. That's so I don't squander my chance to actually drink my coffee, usually daydreaming to the point where I must pour it out, wasting it all. I notice he has set up his lamp, hanging it from a branch stuck in the rocks, making a sort of lantern, adding an exceedingly touching, cozy atmosphere to our breakfast picnic. He pulls out a container of orange slices and one of hot cross buns, already split and buttered. 

He laughs. Do your remember this? 

He forgets I brought it up when I saw the bag of buns drop into one of our grocery carts last week. Of course I remember. 

Second or third summer we went out, it was a different route and there were hardly any shops around, the sites were so far out of the towns we had a hard time keeping fed. You can't exist on candy apples. We tried.

Lochlan walked all the way into one town and back in the sun early one morning, having had enough, returning only to have his efforts feed us for almost a week straight. A bag of hot cross buns and a bag of oranges. You would think we would never eat those things again, let alone seek them out to have together but simpler times and deja views are always welcome in our world, a world lit by a stormy sea and a gently swinging lamp, a day forsaken even by the sun.

If this is the long haul, how did we get here so soon?

I didn't find a raincoat. Surprise. I looked online briefly but I'd like to touch it first. I have issues with scratchy things, hence my love of flannel, velvet and sherpa. It has to feel soft to the touch and soft against my skin with no scratchy finishing on the inside (hence the fully reversible one I had before-all seams were covered) and needs that cute pointy hood and I'm actually thinking something in a color might be nice instead of black. Black is hard to see in the dark and when is it not dark and raining in Vancouver?

The good thing is Caleb didn't push too hard, simply asking the sales people in each shop if they had something like that but they of course did not because I always want the unicorn and they'll always show me the llama with a horn hat. 

And then this morning I broke a mirror. 

The last time I did that so many bad things happened it was seven lifetimes worth of the wrong kind of luck and I am not anxious to repeat it. And I should have known. It was a cheap mirror with a flimsy handle and it broke off the handle and smashed to the ground. I threw salt over my shoulder, crawled under the dining room table and out the other side and spun around three times counter-clockwise. I'm going to blacken the shards later and bury them in the yard at twilight. 

I already dug out my rabbits foot and I never stopped carrying my St. Patrick coin. 

I'm the most superstitious person you will ever meet and the very last thing I need right now is seven years of bad luck. I was even patting myself on the back for driving into town alone last night in the rain to pick up our Friday night take out (Canadian Chinese SO GOOD) but no one could go and then I couldn't find parking and ended up four blocks away (in the dark, whole strip closed JEEZ) and then had to wait half an hour past my pick up time in the shop itself while two men almost came to blows over masks and I moved to stand right beside the door with very wide eyes and they finally cooled it, one leaving to wait outside and I wonder now if I've been exposed because the restaurant is tiny and I was in there so long but I got home safely and everyone was mad that I didn't take someone and I simply pointed out that I'm a big girl. 

Sigh.

Oh and I bought Taylor Swift's new album, Evermore, since it's a companion to Folklore and now PJ says I have to definitely give up my metal cred, that I don't fit the mold anymore. 

Did I ever? Too tired now to care. Just going to listen to what I feel like listening to and Jesus Christ, Padraig, I have a hundred gigs of eighties love songs on my phone, did I ever hold any cred with you for real?

Sorry, Bridge. I was only teasing. He looks crushed but I can't deal with that right now. The album has a song on it called Coney Island and I wasn't about to pass it up. But really every song is good and I support good music. PJ should know that.

Rain

Stop tell me where you going

Maybe the one you love isn't there
You're going under
But you're over it all so you don't care about all that I had to see
Watch you wait until you come around

 

 Ay, fuuuuck. This song slid right into Les Friction's String Theory and I was singing along quite pathetically anyway and now it's a mess (I'm a mess, I mean) and I had to stop halfway through a WORD because I could no longer breathe. Lochlan says I have a way of singing some of the sadder songs that would make a man's heart break from eight hundred miles away and I think he's full of shit but then again, I can't hear myself sing without the monitors in my ears so I have to take his word even though I don't want it. 

 

I'm at work this morning. Opening Christmas cards to the Devil as he left quite a stack of mail for me to deal with and I'll be earning my dollars today which is good because I have Christmas bills to pay and I also took three of my rings in to the jeweller this week to have them resized and repaired from where they squish out of shape when Caleb squeezes my hand way too hard and that isn't free (the repair or the squeezes). I'm heading out to pick them up today when I run Caleb's errands so it all works and I can do it on the boss's dime.

 

Jesus, Bridge. 

What?

 

Nothing. Please stop singing. I love to hear you but not like this. Caleb gestures to the stereo. I guess Lochlan was right. Good. It's better to have the upper hand when it comes to being this close to the Devil anyway, a man who puts on one drop of his favourite aftershave and I'm a puddle on the floor. 

 

I mean I was a puddle but anyway, now I'm back to business. I finished paying the bills for him for this week, including the one for the snowglobe and I am more than a little surprised that it cost as much as it did, but also not at all surprised. He needs me to pick up a leather flight bag he had repaired (thankfully on same block as my goldsmith) and a book he wants to read, as well as pick up some specialty grocery items that aren't available in any of our usual haunts because he loves his Christmas traditions as much as anyone else.

I go to put on my raincoat only to realize it is wet on the inside too. Did it finally wear right through? I've been wearing the same long black reversible raincoat since I started university. It always looks good and has huge pockets and a pixie hood and wow, suddenly it's dead and I guess that's it since it takes forever for me to buy clothes because I hate shopping for clothing and it has to have every feature I want or forget it. I am awful with buying clothes. Jesus, just give me something to wear, I am the least picky person you will ever meet.

I'll have a shop send some over for you to try on? Or we can go and fetch one today. 

I have a lot to do, I'm not coming back and going out again.

I'll come with you then and we'll just stop in somewhere along the way.

 

I'm still getting paid, right? Even if you're running your own errands? 

 

Maybe. We'll see. 

 I feel like things took an abrupt shift as of late and we have changed. We haven't given up, per se, but maybe we shoulder a heavy acceptance of life now that we previously fought so hard against. An acceptance that weighs less with affection, music, distraction, a deep breath. A fresh hot cup of coffee. A well-built fire or a light snowfall. 

It's as if silence has replaced the noise and you look around wondering what happened, or maybe what stopped and then you realize it's fine. It's better. It's over now.

Leaving the house (noise) now requires masks and lineups and instruction barked unsurely but we're all patient and dutiful. We wish each other well and safe, even strangers. Staying home (the silence) brings a wonder and then a familiarity for the scars we bring now, part of our outward appearances, part of our lives. Those deep breaths only seem to come with effort, patience and reminders. The snow doesn't come at all and the dark pushes in around us like hungry wolves, cloying for a nip, a scrap, anything they can get. 

If you blink too slowly suddenly you have grown old, suddenly the fight isn't as important as getting everyone out alive, suddenly that breath is everything you ever needed and you feel stupid for having wasted so much time to take it.

Everything looks different. Especially the stars.

I could post about Ben wanting to spend some time in the studio today, first time in four months save for a twenty minute tuning and fuck around session or I could post about the absolutely crazy amount of rain we're having or I could just show you my beach haul. Usually it's tiny bits of glass, garbage and empty crab shells, so this is something.

Rafter.

(You all like my food logistics posts. We have tried to sanction off meals and just cook for ourselves but it never lasts because a table with less than twelve people at any given meal just feels too empty and everyone wants to be together.)

I need a farm, gosh, my talents are wasted here. I grew up feeding cows, goats and rabbits, leading the cows to the milking machines and sometimes unknowingly to slaughter, being too small (and too traumatized) to hoist the chickens off the ground to hang them up, scraping bees off honeycomb, counting queens and then being sent to the river (full of leeches) or to the sea (full of monsters) to cleanup from being sweaty and covered with pollen and honey and milk. The irony is that I grew up lactose-intolerant. The agony is that I don't let that stop me. 

We went and did the big Christmas shop today. Because chocolate and cheese keep, the turkeys will remain frozen and because Bridget needed her brie and eggnog. We got some light fruitcake and shortbread cookies. We got extra veggies that can be frozen up until Christmas week too. I found halloumi (!!!) in the deli and we got enough stuff to do our faux 'pub-crawl' (house to house, with a course at each kitchen) appetizer night on Christmas eve. There is too much food on the point now and I don't have to grocery shop until after Christmas now. 

Perfect. 

I called the market back and asked them the size of the young farm turkeys they had and the biggest was twelve pounds and I didn't want to dicker around with trying to roast eight or nine turkeys that were lean or free-range or grass-fed, read to every night by the light of a full moon. I want Butterball stuffing-stuffed turkeys that are all jacked up and FAT and we found a fresh cache of them at the decadent grocery store way down on the other side of Caulfield and that's fine. It's a special event, a mega-righteous holiday and who doesn't need to buy one hundred pounds of turkey for Christmas? 

I took three boys with me. We got five twenty-pound turkeys after asking if it was okay to take that many without calling ahead (narrator: It was). These boys will lick the bones clean and be looking for more within hours. There are sixteen to twenty people so that's enough for two full meals, I reckon and I already checked my privilege on the way home, thank you, if you are about to ask. I tied it to the back of the truck so it bumps and smashes along behind us, making one hell of a racket just so I don't forget. 

We are blessed. And maybe it seems like I complain about the sheer mountain of effort required to feed and care for a commune of this size but I don't think I really do. I wouldn't change it, anyway and if it means only a few of us leave the point for provisions at any one time to protect the rest, then I will do it without complaint forever.

Schrodinger's monster (if you don't look behind you to see how close it is, is it even there?)

Come
I'll show every ghost in me
Take my pain into you

Not this Friday. Not next Friday but the Friday after that. That's all the time you have left because Santa is coming on that Friday whether we are ready or not. 

Someone replenished my liquor cabinet. It's now a cabinet plus a small corner of the counter itself and I don't know if I'm really happy, suspicious or disappointed. Jesus. I'll be a pickled princess by New Years and maybe it is for the best. It's easier to control and procure than the horse tranquilizers they usually find for me, and everyone knows the weight limits and upper maximums and in the event that I change my mind it's never too late to hand it off or pour it out. 

There's a brandy and two whiskeys, two vodkas, three rums, a tiny kahlua for Christmas-day coffee, or maybe Christmas eve and boxing day too, five bottles of mead and two red wines. 

And a twelve-pack of hard lemonade already in the fridge because I'm not the only drinker, of course. 

There are two gifts left to leave the house. Ruth's boyfriend's present and then a gift that must be mailed express to California for one of Henry's dearest friends and he always waits until the last minute and so he is chipping away at making a thing and hopefully it will be ready by Friday and I will pay thirty bucks so his recipient can open it on Christmas and hopefully not after. 

I don't have the turkeys (the market ALREADY CALLED US. WOW. SUCH SERVICE. MANY APPRECIATE but I don't know how many pounds of turkey I want. Yet. Soon. Today or tomorrow we will do the math. PJ does it, I check it.) or the dessert (who needs dessert? These guys. That's who. I'll pour another glass of wine, they will put back seven pounds of stuffing and four pounds of turkey (each) and then want something sweet to finish it off. 

Sometimes that's me. 

Ha. 

God. Starset's Everglow is playing and it's a weak song for the first three minutes and ten seconds and then it becomes something absolutely incredible and I've had it on repeat in my head all day now so far. Hope it stays. I wish I could play a soft melody on the piano followed by twenty-seconds of dirty-vocal screaming because I doubt there is anything better out there musically than this, right now. 

I am feeling better, thank you. Thank you to new and old readers alike who reach out to say hello whether I can respond or not. Sometimes I don't respond to every message (too many, too hard) but I see every word, eventually and I saw them last evening and I really appreciate it. I can be so deliriously envious of your ability to be pulled together and I can try to do the same and that's all I can promise. Holidays, logistics and overreaching schedules are easy for me, not so easy is keeping my emotions in check, getting any sleep at all and watching out for the holes that swallow me up so easily because I run without looking. Always have, probably always will. 

Much to their dismay.

Having a thing for tragic endings (he runs, wishing he could fly).

Stupidly what drove me out of euphoria there between Daniel and Schuyler was when a certain song came on their stereo. I was too touched out, too tired, too fragile at that point to get through it. We always make jokes about how long a human being can withstand torture. Tickling is long. Spoon percussion about ten minutes. Waterboarding at least a few minutes, but that song is almost two and a half minutes long and I can't do it most of the time, although a few times I made it but it's not consistent.

The one form of torture I can't manage is heartbreak, after all. That's why I'm with them here in the first place. 

Time for me to turn back into a little bird and fly away, Sky. 

Stay for the week.

Ruth has finals and I have to start wrapping presents. 

Okay, finish out the weekend th-

I gotta go. 

Ah FUCK. Schuyler smashes the button on the stereo and the swells of heartbreak are replaced by a crushing, claustrophobic silence and I can't move suddenly. 

Call Ben for me. 

Bridge, I-

PLEASE. I can't breathe. 

Daniel jumps up and wraps me in his arms, holding me hard. Daniel is the king of kangaroo care and I close my eyes. FUCK. FUCK. FUUUUUUUUCK. Not the way I want to end such a lovely mini vacation but it's like sometimes the wine wears off and the pleasure ebbs and the lights go up and you realize you weren't in a fairy tale after all. Just a nightmare.

Shhhhhh. His breath is against the top of my head as he sways gently, somewhere between a baby-rock and a slow-dance. 

Schuy joins Daniel, wrapping his hands around my head. Out through your nose, Peanut. He whispers it and I follow his instructions, trying to get my breathing back under control from the gulping, panicked breaths that take over before the sobs begin. Jacob is tearing through my mind in the dark, looking for me, tearing doors off their hinges, turning over furniture, leaving the carnage of our love everywhere for someone else to clean up, and it's taking years. It isn't fair. 

***

Back to reality, back to my glitter star tree-topper and the ornaments that I love like glass donuts and cotton-cotton candy and tiny big tops made of wood and paper, so fragile they join my heart in being unable to withstand surprise, momentary torture. Lochlan gives me the once-over and apologizes again for not joining us. He chose sleep, he chose to honour his schedule as Ben's watcher for the day and they napped on and off all day which he said was sorely needed. 

I don't sleep in the day and so I was absolved anyway. 

My hands still shake when I stop doing anything, a dead giveaway and Lochlan finally stops asking me if I'm actually fine and calls Schuyler. He just says Yeah and then listens for a long time, alternating between glaring at me and staring out the window. He looks so tired. His hair is tied back in a loose braid and his shirt and pants are rumpled. He sleeps fully clothed in triage-mode, whether it's me or Ben, and always will, I think. 

He ends the call, looks at his phone for a minute (old habits die hard, just like old friends. Or maybe that's enemies. Look at the mess you made, Jake.) and then nods. He stares at me for so long that I get uncomfortable, his face expressionless, focused. He's waiting for something and I don't fucking know what it is so after an eternity I narrow my eyes in outright annoyance, staring back and he abruptly laughs. 

You're okay?

Define 'okay'.

Better than ten years ago?

Yup. 

Better than ten minutes ago?

Yes, Locket.

Okay then. Off we go. 

 I would post but I can't post from my phone and Schuyler won't let me out of bed ahaahahahahahah happy Saturday.

SAMCAM.

 Oh GREAT. Sam got his hand slapped by...Big Church and has to go to Zoom Advent now, and for the rest of the year. They don't want him to get a fine, even though instructions were clear and exceedingly cautious and ten feet between twenty people OUTDOORS doesn't exactly meet the criteria of a 'religious service', it's more like weaponized hippiedom with a sprinkling of Jesus thrown in.

He's playing Freddie Mercury's In My Defence at top volume to protest. In between complaints about how he had it right. 

(I'm just a singer in a soooooong How can I try to right the wroooooong)

Matt says he's forever famous now on the small screen, and that it will be amazing. He can do greenscreen backgrounds and we can have communion in SPACE or still on the beach or even on the beach IN space but Sam says no one wants to tune in and watch him light virtual candles and it doesn't have the same effect. 

Right. 

Not sure he has looked in the mirror. He's freaking handsome. I told him it can be his OnlyFans account and he can have a button to click to make it rain. 

PERFECT. 

He still does not like this. Freddie swells, high emotion right through my kitchen. Lord. Sam's pulling a me. 

We're going to put it on in the theatre, I assure him. You'll be taller than ever.

Matt winks at me and pulls Sam in close. It's not forever, Babe. 

Excuse. 

me. 

what

BABE? 

I would write more but I just died of adorableness. I'm almost glad we figured out how to keep our hands off each other so I can admire all of this from afar.

(Spoiler alert: We actually didn't/don't/can't.)

A preteen Bridget and a distinctly FORTY year old man who should know better.

So much for the unplugged remainder of the week because noise. Construction noise. I'm super-adverse to loud sounds unless it's MUSIC, of course and so I was up out of bed like a rocket when I heard the trucks and I instantly turned to Ben with very wide, quavering eyes and he promised me that we will reschedule our break for when it's done but it's going to be very awesome and it won't take forever, Bumblebee so don't worry. 

About the title: Before the noise began, I was singing Hard Habit to Break to Benjamin, who was patiently correcting my lyrics, which I magnificently GUESSED at the age of thirteen, when the song came out, and have never bothered to correct since and I keep stopping and shrieking Oh my GOD Peter Cetera (lead singer of Chicago, I don't know if he's also the songwriter, why would FACT-CHECKING get in the way of a good yarn) was such an asshole! Hahahahaha and Ben has never laughed so hard since his accident I was afraid he would get a headache but he's fine. He's so happy. Knock wood. This is rare.

They're starting the pool enclosure today. It's like this glass barn that fits on top of the pool. Also under construction is a partial structure to give a little permanence to the hot tub/sauna/poolhouse with a pedway (covered) in between, so you can technically now duck out of the sauna and walk straight to the pool indoors but still see the outside because the whole thing is glass. Point Perdition is now a snowglobe and I like it so much (I saw a mock-up thing of it on Lochlan's computer), mostly because I didn't have to pay for it and mostly because Ransom isn't in charge of it at all. This is a team of other people and they have promised me they will be finished by Tuesday next week or maybe he meant the week after (oh no) and that's good because I don't like strangers in my environment even though they are outside. Apparently this is the largest one they've ever done. 

The poolhouse is heated, and well-stocked with a tiny kitchen with a fridge, bathrooms and cupboards so the men working have a break room and at least a warm place to eat their lunch and the boys took out the fence section so the trucks could drive straight to the pool part of the yard, which always astounds me that the grass doesn't get destroyed but they might put in a chipseal access driveway for that too, we shall see. Not the same people who are doing the pool thing. 

(Schuyler has promised this will definitely mean we can see the property from space now. When you look at Google earth it's a really old top view and half the buildings are missing.) 

Gah. Kill me now. I hate noise. I hate coming up for air. I (we?) haven't slept for a few days now. We were busy celebrating.  Now we have to stop and put on clothes. CHRIST.

The man in the burning building.

Ben is fifty-two years old today. Benjamin is a semi-feral cat with nine lives and he's run through at least fifteen of them but here he is still alive, still moving forward, still creative, crazy and cracked. Literally now, as he tells anyone who will listen how his skull broke open because his brain wanted to be larger and more prominent, as it should be.

He'll laugh and they'll give a sympathetic grin (because they're afraid of him, technically).

He is still in recovery. Still freshly minted, still taking inventory and still causing as much shit as he possibly can.

But here we are (a far cry from the now infamous pub crawl when he turned twenty-nine) and I am making prime rib for dinner and garlic mashed potatoes and not-whiskey but ginger ale that he likes suddenly and a chocolate cake with a set of silvery number-candles because I can't physically fit that many actual individual birthday candles on one of the cakes that I bake. Not on the top anyway and if you put them on the sides the wax drips all over my vintage tablecloth and that's not a thing to celebrate.

(We tried it once. It looked like a porcupine that melted. A day-glo one.)

Ben doesn't like it when I talk about his birthday. He never has so lets just say the whole rest of the week we'll be celebrating and so I'll be back in a few days. We aren't travelling, just unplugging for a few days, upon his (always granted) request. He deserves the world on a fucking spoon and we will give it to him no matter what.

Happy birthday big Ben. I love you to Pluto and beyond.

Audi, vide, tace.

He surprises me, pushing me onto my back, climbing up over me, my lips sliding down his marble shoulder before he pushes me down, following me all the way. He's taking his time, giving me a million chances to step back, to get away, or to return his efforts. The pause extends for so long goosebumps take over my flesh and he traces along my throat with his lips, entranced.

I thread my fingers into his hair, tightening them into a fist as his arms tighten around me, and the reward is a kiss, deployed slowly, softly at first before evolving into a crushing need as he pins me to the night, his weight keeping me right where he wants me. He moves in a crawl, and I keep my arms around his neck, breathing evenly against his chest as kisses hail down against the top of my head. My head is cool again as he moves away, thrusting hard, faster, reaching up to hold the top of the headboard with one hand and I stretch up both hands over my head, where he catches them easily with his other hands, a move that forces his entire weight down onto me, driving deep. My legs anchor against his hips as he tucks his head down against my ear.

Jesus, Neamhchiontach. His hand leaves the headboard to come down and wrap around the side of my head and I feel so tall and powerful suddenly, stretched out full-length underneath the devil. He switches gears suddenly, away completely, up on his knees, pulling my hands back down, threading his fingers through mine, palms together. Eyes meeting in the dark and yet I am still pinned to the eventide, scared I'll be left behind as he makes his way into the dawn. 

I love you, Bridget, and he is back, warmth taking over from sudden thrills, and I squeeze my arms, holding his shoulders as best I can as he picks up speed now, reaching down to pull my hips up against him. I tuck my head down against his chest again, afraid suddenly as his power takes over the sunrise, keeping it from me, forcing me back into the shadows with him between us. 

He bends his head back down, angling his hips and sets the perfect harsh rhythm that will see us through, allow us to catch a glimpse of a heaven we will never be rewarded with, all the while suffering the spoils of a good war nonetheless. He pulls me up against him just as I start to see that sunrise and I bite down against the bone in his shoulder just as he feasts on mine, breath held, limbs locked, euphoria washing over us like new rain and when I open my eyes, the sky is a murky grey light heralding the day but I can still see the stars.

Hiiiiii

Day drunk on a Monday because Mondays have become our Sundays. The tides are big and the moon is full and the wind just won't quit out here and so the only thing to do is drink mulled wine until my eyes turn the color of blood and my heartbeat slows to a shitty trance-tune cadence and then I'm going to attempt to help with dinner. It's Gage's night but he traded off because of a headache and so he is resting and Lochlan and I are stepping in and will whip up a stirfry with rice and peppers and steak. Maybe garlic bread too. We are good like that, we make sure everyone is well fed. It's one of my rules. I've never ever been an eat-a-bowl-of-cereal sort of mom. 

But I'm also not much help here. Being at least two sheets to the wind already, Lochlan won't let me hold a knife, or go near the stove, and so I have set the table, buttered the bread with garlic butter and have put out the good napkins too. I was allowed to measure out rice for the giant rice cooker (it's like space-ship sized, it's kind of hilarious) and now he would like me to 'be company' while he sears slices of steak and bell peppers and mushrooms in the big woks. 

So fun.

Winter night snow jazz.

We went to socially distanced Advent One on the Beach. Sam is so trendy and yet super traditional at the same time. I love him to bits. I didn't listen to a word he said though, zoning out watching his passion as he jammed a candle into the sand, lit it with his vintage zippo in spite of a burgeoning offshore wind and began to shout above the noise, all brimstone and saltwater and love. We held hands. All nine of us who attended from the point. We made a crowd, apart from other small groups of mostly two. We closed our eyes to block out the sun, tried not to shiver in spite of it burning our corneas (it was still hovering around freezing. That's why only nineteen people showed up out of a twenty-person limit*. Three services a Sunday plus the podcast is back. He is used to a few hundred people but this is a necessity.) and were exceedingly grateful that Sam kept it to twenty minutes, give or take. He spoke about this being a changed advent and yet we still wait for Jesus and we must do it with kindness and grace. 

Matt shouted Amen and Sam grinned and wrapped it up with a reminder that collection has moved online effective last weekend, as he mentioned and all the information is on the church website but if anyone has any problems they can swing by the church and drop off their envelope or he can walk them through transferring by phone.

This has effectively ruined the whole point of going to church for half the boys, pure heathens always up for mischief as detailed here over the years with everything from gravy lakes and tiny paper boats to live baby chicks or Lego in those plates.We are awful and hilarious and Sam's absolute favourites, he only wishes we attended more often because he says the church needs to catch and hold the imaginations of the younger congregations who only show up if they have nothing better to do. 

We did our part. I shrug. The church needs to stop being so imaginary and rigid. Bring it down a notch. Make it magical. Sam does a good job on that part but his is a microchurch in the grand scheme of things. I watch the politics and trends of it. I was a minister's wife and Jacob was on two different bodies that spanned globally trying to find ways to attract a younger audience for their message so I got a steady diet of ideas and experiments. 

(I mean, to be honest right now their best bet is to stock their pulpits with hot younger progressive men. It works like a charm. Sad but true. If you are young and passionate I will hang off your every word. If you are old and boring and just recite doctrine I'm checking out first, thanks. Sam is adorable. We only show up for that reason and I'm fairly certain a lot of the other folks do too. Life is short. Objectify your friends.)

(Oh my God. It's a JOKE.)

We came home and stuffed our faces with waffles, champagne (meeee) and hot coffee until we could feel our toes again, and congratulated Sam on a banger of a morning. Short, sweet and done is our favourite. Just for church, I mean. Not for anything else. 

Snort.

*(The twenty person limit is achievable through an online booking system. Log in, claim your free ticket. He has twenty tickets available for each service and allows for last minute cancellations in order to be as fair as he can be. He has ruled out attending altogether if you are sick or compromised in any way and has done a lot of triage tech support to help people listen along to his podcasts so he's fine. I don't know what other churches are doing, they left Sam swinging in the wind a little so this is what he came up with, apparently there's no blanket plan for the greater organization.)

*(We have decided to go every third Sunday to free up room, which kind of sucks during Advent but Sam said he can do a private service here since there's only twenty of us or so.)

Big plans, cheap planners

It's already a good day. I had a surprise tattoo offer from an artist I like that has an opening this afternoon. We have Chinese food takeout planned for dinner and then we're starting Bly Manor on Netflix. We finished The Haunting of Hill House and it was SO GOOD and now I'm anxious to keep it going. 

Caleb didn't try to keep me when I went to spoon in with him early this morning after a nightmare, handed off door to door to make sure I didn't go anywhere else so everyone's tired now and I wasn't cold in the shower which is nice, because usually I am. I have a new peony 3 in 1 bottle in the shower which is nice as usually I get stuck I'm hot or cold, no in-between lately and I spend more time putting on a sweater or taking it off than doing anything else. 

 Decorations are going up around the houses. Advent begins tomorrow. The presents have been sent out that leave the point and we even managed to snag a few black friday deals, or I did as I contemplated buying a Hobonichi planner with a Midori page a day book for my incoming leather planner combo but in the end I chickened out and bought a Leuchtterm daily planner and matching bullet journal which ended up being free (thanks Indigo!) and I'm satisfied with my choice. If I love it and last the whole year then for 2022 I will spring for the Hobonichi + Midori.

That's the plan, anyway. 

Really excited for my deep fried wontons tonight though. That will get me through the pain of this tattoo, anyway.

They hate it when I watch it. I watch it all the fucking time now. I can recite it word for word, songs too at this point. Someone please take it off Netflix already.

He's got the (whole world in his hands, sing it with me) fire roaring in the fireplace, window open, firescreen in place and a fully charged ipad on the tray across the bed. There's a very large glass of red wine beside it. A hazard, if you ask me. A necessity, if you ask Lochlan. 

I'm going to go get us a plate. You must be starving. 

I didn't eat dinner. I sat at the table though, taking up space. Staring at Ben who still hasn't noticed that I noticed that he's struggling.

K. I am noncommittal. Ben has been taken over by Schuyler and Daniel for the evening. I think (I hope, anyway) that he is just tired. Just heavy with the weight of the steps he must take, over and over again. Heavy with his pockets full of coins that all say different, encouraging things and feeling as if he is back at square one again and he worries we will be disappointed in him. At least that's what he told me the last time, jumping off the wagon, back for good. Wrecked in the head, destroyed liver and all. 

I'll take it. I like the broken ones best. Ben and I have a good long history now of being completely exasperated with each other and yet I love him with an intensity that sometimes he wonders (don't they all) if he even deserves. And even when he has given up on himself I don't give up on him and I won't. 

But I won't be satisfied with silence, either. 

When Lochlan's back I am knee-deep in A Star Is Born. I love-hate this movie. Everyone else just hates this movie. If only because the subject matter hits so close it bites at the skin on the backs of our necks and hurts with every single frame because legacy, in that movie, is bigger than fame, bigger than ego and sadly, bigger than love. Loneliness is a curse and a death sentence and Jesus, that poor dog. But I also sing along with the songs, which are incredible and the chemistry in that movie continues to blow my mind. 

And? Let's be honest, as I never am, here. It feels reallllllly fucking good to hurt for someone else for a change. 

Shut that off. Lochlan has that beautiful, angry clip in his voice as he returns with a plate of olives, peppers, tangerine slices and cheese. The minute I leave. Jesus, Bridge. 

But I'm off the deep end-

SHUT IT OFF, he bellows over my attempts to reach the notes. He wins. I switch back to the dashboard, where I am confronted with a plethora of cheesy Christmas movies and....Michael Meyers. 

Hey! Halloween's out! Can we watch it? 

I knew you would want to.

Awesome! 

Anything but a Star is Born. 

We should find the original. Kris Kristofferson drives his car off a cliff. 

Sounds uplifting. 

Pretty sure it's worse than this one.

Somehow I doubt it. 

Lochlan continues to glare at me and the screen interchangeably for the next several hours, not even getting jump-scared, he is so annoyed and he doesn't relax until about eleven, when Ben!! shows up for bed. Ben is full of affection and apologies, but I know it's temporary. Kind of like drugs. You get a few hours of feeling great and then you go back in your hole. It fucking sucks.

Its voice has given way to mine.

For every dream that is left behind me
I take a bow
With every war that will rage inside me
I hear the sound
Of another day in this vanishing life
Returned to dust
And every chance I've pushed away
Into the night

Time won't let go
It's got you in debt now
And it's got me crawling all the way back to the start
I swear that I saw you there
Your hands were reaching out for mine

Milestones this morning as Ben easily navigates the steps to the beach. In the dark, in the rain. Doesn't hesitate for a second, though I was on the outside clutching the rail along with his hand and John was directly in front of us, braced on both rails with both hands because he can reach. My job was to warn him in case Ben tipped forward, so he would have the seconds needed to plant his legs and take Ben's weight, keeping him from breaking his neck falling down the steps. We've put in stop gates on every landing. They are still way too far apart for my comfort.

He was fine. He would have been fine, and so John headed back up once we were at the bottom, giving us a little privacy for our sunrise walk, which consists of me obsessively checking the tide lines for glass and Ben zoning out completely in silence. He's already been to a meeting. I guess he's all talked out.

It's as if he isn't even there and I am alone and for his presence marking a necessary moment in my life he is as much of a ghost as anyone. I give up and put my headphones in. He won't talk, he's fallen back into his previous ways though I had really hoped that the hard knock that grew his brain just enough to snap him out of those ways would be a permanent difference, keeping him close, keeping him here with me, instead of always on a completely different wavelength. And for a while I got my wish, as is the way it always goes. Just enough contentment and blissful euphoria to make me let my guard down before everything goes wrong. That's how it works. That's fate or karma or bad luck or just me. I don't know. 

I turn suddenly, take out the headphones, the soaring chorus of the song still ringing through my skull and I find Ben, kicking driftwood into a pile, deep in thought.

Hey.

His eyebrows go up but he doesn't stop or look at me.

HEY FUCKER.

Now he stops. God, we have a strange relationship.

Can we do something?

Anything you want. Of course. Give her the fucking moon. Never consider it might not be yours to give. Or that it might not be enough. She'd rather have your soul, kept in a tiny box in her hands just for her and she'll never let it go because she's afraid to be without you.

Can we..go back to bed? Sleep for a couple more hours?

Sure, but you don't sleep in daylight.

I could try.

He stares at me curiously. I'm being a ghost again.

Yeah. 

I'm sorry, Bridge. I'm working hard at just being normal here.

I know what he means and it isn't what I would mean. 

Can I help?

You do, you just don't seem to realize how much. 

It's not often he admits anything like this and I'm in tears.

Ah Jesus, don't cry. 

This is rough. 

Yeah. But we'll be okay. He hands me his chip and we head for the steps. 1 month recovery, it says. To thine own self be true.

Last resort.

What did he put in your account?

Caleb is fighting his expression in the firelight. Struggling for chaotic neutral, as it were. His eyes glitter with glee and bitterness and possibly a smattering of victory and I want to walk out the door but instead I tell him, as instructed, exactly how much money Batman put in my account. This isn't a big secret. Batman is the original John Gage, offering Cole whatever he wanted in exchange for me and Cole didn't give a shit. Take her if you want her, I'm busy. So Batman paid Cole for the paintings he wanted and then gave me the money he thought was reasonable for me. 

But I was never his. 

And we've run through a few decades now living life and he never fails, a few times a year, to put a deposit in my account that makes my eyes water, whether I let him touch me or not. He was always the invisible saviour, my way out if things with Cole (or with Cole and Caleb) got to be too much and I had to run. When the kids came along the deposits grew. Now the kids are grown and the deposits haven't changed and I've still never spent a dime. I like knowing it's there. I plan to give it all back. There is no way to repay this man for the peace of mind he generously extended to me but I can try. I just couldn't give him what he wanted in life and dammit if he didn't even miss a step over it. 

At least outwardly.

If only any single other man on the point had that sort of strength of character we wouldn't be like this now. 

Is that fair? I don't know. Does it even matter? They all have their strengths. And their weaknesses. I am the only weakness Batman has. At least that I know of. He's still a stranger after all this time.

He's trying to buy back your affections. 

He's just assuring me the only way he can that in spite of my decisions he is still here for me if I need him.

You won't need hi-

Diabhal, stop. This isn't up for debate. Batman doesn't get to be judged by Caleb. Batman is the only true adversary Caleb's ever had. Lochlan is a lover, not a fighter.

(Besides Jake but Jake isn't here anymore. A sharp sudden pain rips through my chest and is gone as soon as I feel it.)

Fine. What would you like for Christmas? Because if you don't give me a list I'm just going to drop into Tiffany and-

A hot chocolate and movie night. Ending with a walk on the beach in the snow and a brandy.

We can do that every damn night all winter if you want. 

There's no snow. 

I'll get you snow.