Just like that.

We're in New York.

Home later today. Flights are screwy. Doing my best.

Pick a painter.

Uh. Hassam.

American. Pick someone else.

What are you doing?

You'll see.

Van Gogh.

Figures.

What do I win?

He's French, right?

No, he's from the Netherlands.

Damn. Keep going, princess.

You want me to name a French painter?

Yes.

Gauguin!

Where was he born?

Paris.

Okay! Pack your shit and for the kids, we're doing a fly-by.

What the fuck, Benjamin?

You want to go to Paris, I'm taking you to Paris.

Are you okay?

Have I been drinking? No. Can I read? Yes. I'm taking my wife to Paris because she wants to go and if you think Creepface is going to laud that over any of us, you'd be wrong, bee.

You don't have to take me to Paris.

Maybe I want to. Besides, you travel better without warning. And I have four days so let's get a move on.

Seriously?

Seriously. It will be worse than one of those 14 countries in 14 days things, I'll tell you that now.

No it won't.

Why not?

I get to see you.

And?

And Paris!

Jesus, it's about time you showed some enthusiasm.

We don't have to do this.

We don't have to do anything. Instead, let's do what we want. Let's go see a fucking Gauguin painting.

Why, Ben? If it's only to get back at Caleb-

No, bee. Life is short. And everytime you empty your head, I remember that fact.

In disposition. In decisive.

Show me where forever dies.

Somehow preferring to letting the children do all the talking on our trip up to the lake with Caleb parlayed the day into an extended engagement and I wound up tucking them into his guest room just past eight, when they caved in and almost fell asleep over slices of pizza outside on the tiny balcony at my favorite table, watching the traffic and the lights across the river, still mired in their delicious sand and sunscreen smell.

Once they were asleep three servers appeared with our dinner, just after ten with a perfect view of the approaching thunderstorm. Wine. Salads. Tenderloin. Cake. Water, after I asked twice and then shot Caleb a look because unless he says it they don't hear it. On cue they vanished out the door and he cleared the table, sleeves rolled up to the elbows, humming songs I only learned yesterday, packing the dishes back into the box that would be collected tomorrow by yet another series of paid-for help. Oh, if life were only like that box, and we could pack up all the dirty memories and distasteful items and have them taken away.

Aside from asking for water, because I was dying of thirst and refusing to touch my wine, I didn't say much. I watched him because he spent the day watching me without seeming to and I let him ask questions I didn't answer and he called me a brat because I wasn't playing nice and I didn't care because sometimes he's not going to get everything he wants. And I don't plan to either.

I sat there in a chair that costs as much as my car, still in my stilettos while someone brought me dinner that I didn't have to cook. I don't have to lift a finger there. I could admire a French painting and be on a flight to Paris the next morning. I could wish for the beach and be given one. I could ask for escape from the hell inside my head and get it and never come back. Though I don't think he would take a mother away from her children, I'm not a hundred percent sure. I would hope he wouldn't. I'm sure he'll now tell me he won't.

Unless I fail to play the game, which rages painfully on. The only thing he gained from all this is the honor of fatherhood that all of them crave so privately. Oh, because according to Lochlan, fathering a child with Bridget is pretty much the brass ring in their lives and since there were only two rings, the game is over. But maybe it's not and they hold out for that ultimate connection. Caleb has been playing with them, teasing them with horror by hinting that perhaps he is Ruth's father as well. He isn't but why would they believe me at this point? There's no one left to back me up but I was never defended in my life until Jacob fell into it and then kept falling, right through my fingers because they fluttered so badly I couldn't hold on to him.

I pointed out we could have testing done and then what would change? I'm still forced to endure Caleb's dangerous presence and everyone else is forced to watch me founder around for purchase on life. I've got the moments down, I think. Overall I'm doing spectacularly poor. I can talk your talk. Optimism. Hope. Faith. Looking toward the future, living in the moment. Working hard. Making improvements. Making headway.

It's bullshit.

All of it.

I'm sorry.

Ben being perpetually absent leaves me falling hard into old habits and comfortable fears. I'm terrified of Caleb and attracted to him at the same time. It's an easy place for me to be within his reach, scared for my life and aware of the mind-breaking sexual tension there. His Coleisms that burn into me because I keep my hands in the fire.

It only got worse as I got older.

Just thinking about him makes me outwardly flinch. The goosebumps flare up and my brain goes into hiding and Cole's little survivor-girl kicks right in to high gear, because he taught me how to slay a man with a look or a touch and then he regretted it only in the moment where I found my voice and ripped his life away from him.

There is only so much one person can take and I'm at the uppermost limits of that. You sit there and throw money at it and it doesn't make it any damned different, okay? What has she got to worry about, anyway? They fight over her. Yeah, well, I worry that when I'm gone they'll still be fighting over my corpse and my children will get ignored. Because I'm a distraction, I can't remove myself from the picture. I won't try. I'm so fucked up. I worry that they'll kill each other without me around as living example of the hurt they can evoke in each other. When there is nothing left to fight over, these boys will still fight on principle.

Caleb wants that loyalty, he wants the lap dances and the fatherhood and he wants to make me his. Hell, they all do. I'm not dumb and all of it with different plans and different wants and different futures. It doesn't matter.

(I stepped outside the lines I drew. What good is a line you can't cross, anyway? And I stood on the wrong side of the lines and I put my hands up over my eyes without prompting and I began to count. I counted until the sounds fell away and the numbers became hypnosis and I knew for sure everyone would have a hiding place by now. Especially Ben. Ben needs a little extra time because he's so big, he can't fit in the places I can, like the pantry under the shelves or the cookie cupboard or the bench in the hall or the dumbwaiter or the little space under the attic stairs. In spite of his size, I found him first and we stopped playing the game altogether.)

They think it's a phase. They think I've lost my mind and I have. Cole took it and hid it somewhere and I looked for a while but then I stopped because it was more fun playing hide and seek with people than with the contents of my own skull.

I'm hurt by that.

It's not, he's not a phase. I know my actions maybe speak for me because I don't say enough but everyone's waiting for Ben and I to stop playing and be serious. To give up on being married because my God, she picked him out of everyone? The freak. The one who's never around. The one who lives in his own little world as much as she does? It won't last. Besides, look what happens when she's with Caleb?

Yeah, well, fuck you too, and thanks for your support (rhetorical, as always, Bridget, for you are self-soothing again).

The night I met Ben, we went skinny dipping and then Cole called me in from the water was the first night Ben ever went camping in his entire life and forgot to bring the tent part of the deal. He brought his guitar and a Gameboy and lots of food and beer and cigarettes and extra strings even, but he expected a cabin because he drifts along like that and doesn't actually ask. The girls he knows would expect a cabin so he figured there was a girl going, there must be a cabin. Cole offered him space in our tent and it became a tradition after that, he would forget his tent forever in order to spoon with me as soon as I fell asleep. His security blanket, he said.

We forged an easy friendship, to great surprise. The other guys were slow to warm to Ben. He marches to his own drummer, keeps time with the metronome in his head that never quits and serves as his heartbeat and he sticks out like a sore thumb. He looks scary. Handsomely frightening, instead of frighteningly handsome. Very good looking but hulking, scowling. His angel voice is hidden in layers of surging screams. Most stations skip playing all but his softest creations and he doesn't say much. Just like I don't so much, not anymore. We have stuck together like long-distance glue for a while now and eventually the guys saw that we did connect well. For all the nights we closed down bars and sang in taxis and collapsed on couches, meeting up the next morning to agree on greasy food, even when he would take some girl home, he would still appear at the table within 20 minutes of a phone call from me. He's looked after me when we've been out in sketchy situations and he had the really hard job of standing between two friends and being the deciding factor on a lot of issues between Cole and I. When I left Cole for Jacob, Ben took it personally and picked a side. Cole's side.

Then he lost his mom, his best friend and his father in the space of eighteen months and he checked out on me, becoming someone I didn't recognize anymore. Someone I was afraid of, suddenly. Someone just like Cole only scarier. He came to me once, when he got the call about his dad, and I held him while he cried, sitting on the floor of the apartment he had been kicked out of the day before for nonpayment of rent because he couldn't remember to leave post-dated cheques when he'd go on the road. I sat there surrounded by beer bottle caps and pizza boxes and I hung on so tight while he ranted and rolled at all the bad things I had ever done to him, in lieu of saying he would miss his father. That was the only time he's ever shown any emotion concerning his parents and then he asked me to look after Daniel because he said he couldn't.

Ben started spending more time away, and when he was here he was adversarial and spending too much time with Caleb. He started doing things that he shouldn't have been doing.

I had to let him go. I tried to help him and he took his rage out on me and I finally came to the conclusion that I was more of a problem to him than any help at all and so I cut him loose in spite of loving him, and kept his brother close because Daniel founders something awful. I know Ben was grateful after a fashion for that. He would call me maybe once a month to tell me that he loved me and I make the wrong decisions, always, and I told him I would be here but that I wasn't going to make any effort to be his friend anymore if this was how he had changed. We made a few stabs at repairing our friendship over the next two years but it was pointless. He had started drinking, started using, would be due back from tour one day and not show up for weeks, with no account of where he had been.

I waited for the call every minute telling me that he had died somewhere on the road from a drug overdose and apathy combined.

A call did eventually come but it wasn't for his death, now, was it?

Fuck. I don't know where I'm going with this.

Yes, I do.

we're so much alike, it's fucking stupid. He says I make him laugh. He gives me free reign to go fuck up and then come back to him and I do the same for him. Trusting in boomerangs. I don't trust that he'll ever come home from his trips and he doesn't trust that I won't change my mind and fall in love with someone else while he's away and yet outwardly we will tell you we trust each other because we don't have much choice. We won't allow for that choice.

He's always going to come home. He always has come back to me even when there was nothing of me here to come back to. When I hated him. When I was barred from even speaking to him. And I have no interesting in falling in love with anyone else because I've had the offers of money and trips and that easy life and someone who would always be here and I could be content in arms that would never vanish from my life.

Whatever.

Because even with Ben's disappearing act and his angry, beautiful face and his weird ability to live on pizza and guitar picks and wool scarves and my lip gloss, even with his history of not being able to ride on the wagon because he is too big and keeps falling into the road, even with his history of pain and misery and self-gratification and immaturity and uncontrollable emotions?

He is still MY Ben. My capital-B. My Tucker. And I am his.

For the record, I left my children at the loft with Caleb last night, kissing them good night and coming home to an empty house that featured John sitting on the front porch, since he lives at the end of the street, to make sure I did get home safely and he walked back down the sidewalk after I came inside and locked the front door.

The children were treated to a lovely car ride home this morning at eight. Same servers as last night, but with pancakes and fruit for breakfast with Uncle Cale. He let them eat in bed while watching cartoons. Which is lovely, I know he'll just box up the dirty linens and have them sent away. Just like everything else.

No accountability. None whatsoever.

Ever think that I'm the one using him for time with Cole? Atoning for the sins of the past so that I can clear a path to the future? Allowing Caleb access to the children, playing nice instead of playing hardball and putting up with him licking me with his eyes all damned day and night is a means to an end and nothing more.

Ben knows that. And I love him for it. Even when I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. He seems to know the method to my madness, even when I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. Just like he instinctively knows that he won't fit in the corners of my head when we're playing hide and seek. That, and he makes me laugh.

I don't care if you get it. I'm just emptying my head.

For a song (St. Cecelia, please move over).

Now the dark begins to rise
Save your breath, it's far from over
Leave the lost and dead behind
Now's your chance to run for cover

I don't wanna change the world
I just wanna leave it colder
Light the fuse and burn it up
Take the path that leads to nowhere

When I die, please make me Patron Saint of Music. Does it matter if I'm not Catholic? I suppose I could go charm the pope. Ben's been talking about taking me back to Venice, we could arrange for a short side venture and I could arrange all my favors like gondolas along the canals.

Don't laugh, I've done bigger things.

Here's the joy of new music. Any new music, doesn't have to be things I have mentioned recently, but it does have to be something I love. I have high standards for music (stop laughing, Lochlan). I have difficulty understanding how subjective it is, but I remember that fact, and the joy of new songs comes with the promise that the melodies and words will attach themselves to happy memories, or remain neutral.

A lofty expectation, I know.

Heading out now, the kids and I are going to the beach with Caleb (who reads my posts. Arrrrrrrgh.) and he decided to take a day off. I'm trying to be gracious. Are headphones ungracious? Do I care? I have a feeling the bikini with the ruffles will pretty distract him from whatever evil he plans to cast over us anyway. I'll just play song lyrics in my head and pretend he's not staring at me.

Three years was really long to wait.

O.
M.
Goodness.

There's just nothing better than new Breaking Benjamin music. Run, I heard it's only going to be up for a day.

Worth the wait. OM NOM.

Ah, sorry. Music makes me giddy. Especially the good stuff.

Pinching berries and dreams.

Angels on the sideline again.
Benched along with patience and reason.
Angels on the sideline again
Wondering when this tug of war will end.

My apologies, for I have been remiss in writing.

This house turned ninety-five years old exactly this month. I'm guessing it's this month because it would have taken a few months to build, they wouldn't have started until the ground thawed out twelve feet down and they would have had to be done before the cold weather came.

Therefore, August.

I say it's a hundred years old because I'm not a nit-picker on details like that.

Looking at the calendar I see that in exactly four weeks from today, Ruth and Henry will start school, grade 5-6 split for Ruth and a solid grade 3 class for Henry, and also the first time Henry will have the same teacher Ruth had for that grade. We have our supplies and gym bags and will head out hopefully on Friday to get new backpacks and shoes and a few sundry outfits. Both children seem to wait forever, wearing the same clothes for what seems like forever before they explode in sizes. Henry's into the 12-14 sizes and Ruth is in 10, mostly for height. Henry's a brute, Ruth a tiny ballerina. They've had a rather quiet summer, thanks to most of their friends being off at day camps. These two prefer to stay home and hang out, read, play outside, walk the dog and have a little computer time. We watch movies and bake when it's not too warm and explore the city and enjoy each other, mostly.

It's been kind of nice, though I have some bizarre reverse guilt that I didn't insist that they get up every day at seven to go off to camp all day. All the mothers working outside the home are wishing for this and I'm wondering if it's okay for their development if I just let them have fun. Unstructured, total fun, the kind you can only have when you're a child in elementary school, the kind you never forget.

On the other hand, I do have some actual guilt going on because in between Ben-visits, we're been doing hardcore renovating. Painting rooms that had been left the same for years because the colors weren't too bad, adding ventilation where before there was none. Putting up a new fence that I can't see over because the old one was falling apart. I opted not to go with the wrought iron in the back. Not private enough. I chose wood instead with copper accents and we did it ourselves.

The most recent spate of improvements leave me walking around the house with a smile on my face. I took the sheers down. I had washed them all and hung them up and then decided they ruined the airflow and were ugly besides. Down they came. All my work hemming them. Instead we'll enjoy the view and when winter comes I'll reconsider. I threw all the windows wide open and was thrilled to breathe in the elm-leaf filtered neighborhood vibe, those hot summer afternoon quiets when everyone disappears to cooler places and slower activities. I picked the strawberries off the hanging basket by the back door and I felt like it might be summer, finally, after a long six weeks of waiting, hoping, starting false.

Ben did go back yesterday, in time to start work today and I figured he would go back Sunday so I agreed to work for Sam most of yesterday, bringing the kids with me so they could play outdoors and run around the sanctuary squealing. I might not have agreed to do that had I know Ben wouldn't be leaving but no less than twenty minutes after we arrived at the church Ben showed up, and Christian and Duncan too, to help Sam with some painting and odd jobs.

It was kind of nice. Like a group effort. Something I haven't seen there since Jacob finished the addition and the roof. Ben and the boys even kept working right through lunch when Sam stopped to take the kids and I out for a bite, because that was my payment for helping in the office.

And yes, I cried when Ben left last night. Like a baby, to the point where I was turned into Lochlan's arms and I could blubber into his shirt and no one said a word about it being dramatic or silly or pointless, it's come to be expected and thankfully I'm allowed to keep it. The immediate reactions seem to soften the long term effects somehow. Today is better. Tomorrow and the next day will be busy and then Thursday quiet and Friday busyish as we go into another weekend where I won't know if he'll be home or not because he doesn't tell me, just in case I look forward to it and then he can't make it. He would really prefer me to stay away from the Keebler elves and I would too.

And so for now, things are good. We have cool breezes and fresh berries and this beautiful house to live in. That and unlimited long distance. Weird the things you wind up grateful for. Or maybe it's not so weird.

Ha! Normal! As if.

It's a beautiful day and I am stuck in the church office.

Do I get extra points for this?

Functional freaks.

I only wanted to try
To find my way back inside
My imitation of life

The longer I live, the more carnival stereotypes I see and the closer I feel to my own kind. Living within the boundaries of normal, but not normal by a long shot. Outside chance, they call from the red and white striped booth with the spinning wheel. Are you the betting type? A question dripping with dare and courage, an unmistakable challenge.

Would you pass that up?

Me neither. I smile as I dig with one grimy hand into my back pocket for one solitary final coin. Luck be a lady tonight, he calls and he gives the wheel a spin.

Suddenly the sounds close in, and the lights blink faster and faster, harsh against the dark. The noise and the calliope, that fucking evil calliope overwhelms me and I stumble, scraping my knees in the gravel and the dust of the road upon which the fair was constructed.

The coin rolls out of my hand across the dirt. I reach for it blindly and then suddenly a hand closes around me, pulling me back to my feet, practically wrenching my arm out of the socket. I cry out and then I am in arms that are cool and tight. I open my eyes to see Ben smiling at me, dressed in his carnival best.

He hands me back the coin, and I play on.

He spins the wheel fastest, and I always win.

Holier than thou.

First order of business today? We're going to ready the office. Ben is moving his desk into the room, stealing one of the comfortable dining room chairs because the office chair bites and generally is thrilled with the room that I made him. We're both a little hesitant because this means when he works at home he'll be on a different floor and away from the family. He's already away from the family too much but at the same time, it's imperative that he have a place to zone out quietly at home. Privacy at home. A luxury in this house. I think it will take no time at all for it to become his favorite place in the universe.

Second order of business? Go see G.I. Joe. What a fun movie. Non-stop action and adventure. A little romance. A lot of muscle and tech. A few moments of breath-holding and a great creepy medieval tie-in that ran smoothly through the entire film. A surprise or two. Worth the price of admission and honestly? Better than Transformers 2 because Transformers had more cheesecakeryfake and G.I. Joe has a quiet confidence that makes it easier to digest. You couldn't always tell when something wasn't real and that is a huge plus, in my book.

Quality plus heart, for the win.

Not so impressive was the terrific trailer for Shutter Island. I want to see it, of course, but it's wise to note that G.I. Joe is rated 14A, so the trailers will be questionable for kids. Henry covered his eyes, bless his heart. I do that when Leonardo DiCaprio is onscreen as well.

I jest. He's perfectly wonderful as an actor.

Sometimes.

Sometimes he's holier than thou, like my title today.

I have issues with people who learn of a topic and then foist it upon everyone else like their way is THE way instead of learning to apply it to their own lives. I don't need to be preached at. I don't need to have my face rubbed in your knowledge or Life As You See It. And I don't mean just any topic, but big life events that change one forever.

Don't you think when it comes to big life events, everyone has their own way of managing? They, after all, are living their own lives, all around you.

I've encountered it everywhere. In dating. In getting married. In motherhood. In religion. In widowhood. In mental illness. In sobriety (not my own). And I never ask for advice, except rhetorically (and that's only because when I start talking I rarely shut up).

I never give advice, unless it's with a massive, obnoxious disclaimer to remember who the advice is coming from. I've quietly done the things I wanted to do as a mother with young babies (cloth diapering, sling versus strollers, homeschooling) without the need to bully others into my choices or wax loudly about how my way is better and I know more than you do so you must listen to me. I played the role of a minister's wife and still swore through a couple of church meetings like a sailor on shore leave instead of projecting my intended stereotype like a free movie in Market Square, never once expecting others to watch themselves like they would in a service.

I've become a widow twice over without accepting the paid engagements to speak or write on how to overcome adversity and pain and continue to move forward when the person you put all your love into and hung your heart on is dead and cold. Without accepting the wellmeaningsers who think I am their project and they can fix me if I'd just listen. Ditto mental illness. You've read extensively about a topic and think I fit? Great. Now keep it to yourself.

I do.

I write here, I hope, with my own personal story and you can read it and walk away knowing I wasn't trying to shove anything down your throat. I write about MY feelings and MY experience and I'm sure it's frustrating if you come looking for help and I offer none. That's not my place. Go build your own damn character. I seem wrong? Right. Because I'm not you, I'm me.

And don't ever, EVER tell me you know exactly how I feel.

In fact, just strike that sentence from your vocabulary forever, because it's possibly the worst thing you could ever say to another human being as long as you live.

There, advice. Take it. It's what's for breakfast.

Patience fails.

Today is a day for a fresh cup of rich dark black coffee and a tiny rickety corner table in a cafe downtown. I have an unlined notebook and my fountain pen and while I wait, I write. I don't carry my laptop very many places, I prefer to travel a little more lightly, though you'd never know it, I carry giant bags, a holdover from the days of sippy cups and extra books/jackets/wipes/toys. Everyone hands me their stuff to hold when we're out. Me, I'm always holding someone's hand and my phone, so there's no extra arms for more things.

The pen glides smoothly over the clean paper and I smile at the page, because it's tightly packed with my unique block-printing that runs slightly uphill, the sign of an optimist. A lie I no longer believe.

The rain hits the window with force and puddles between the bricks of the sidewalk outside. I see blurry people rushing to and fro. I become mesmerized by the sheets of water pouring down over the glass and fail to notice August has joined me at the table until it bumps when he pulls his chair in and I startle back to reality, back to the warmth and dimly lit room and he shakes his hair back from his face and pulls his sweater off the boy-way, which is to reach up behind his head with both hands and pull. I love watching that. It looks neat. If I do it, I'd have earrings and hearing aids flying everywhere so I just watch instead.

I catch Michael Buble playing across the sound system, just for a microsecond. It's a strange choice of music for a Friday morning in a coffee shop but I imagine they are tuned into one of the CBC light stations that cranks out steady music that guarantees not to offend. The thought makes me smile again because I gravitate to oversexed, chaotic alternative metal that offends everyone who doesn't love it and I've never cared that I look like I'm cold, like I don't even listen to music at all, let alone immerse myself in it constantly, banging back and forth painfully between classical and that metal and sometimes mixing them together. I love noise and heart. Both kinds of music hold both absolutes, for me, at least.

August orders a coffee and a muffin with fruit from the server and then smiles at me. He is a variation on Jesus himself. A beautiful man with long hair and a no bullshit attitude mixed thoroughly with mellow. It's now been almost four years since I first met him, standing behind Jacob while I stood outside and tried to channel up the ocean and turn it into the sky somehow. He was watchful and carried a confidence that was overshadowed mightily by Jake and his movie-handsomeness. Everything paled under Jacob's halo.

Oh crap. I hear Shawn Mullins playing. One of those songs that I focus right in on and then become sad, almost unconsciously and I ask August how his day looks, if he can make it for dinner tonight, if he thinks the rain will stop and if maybe he's talked to Ben, or Seth at the very least, to get the barometer on how the building excitement might be affecting Ben's resolve. August gives me a perplexed look before disguising it with his news. He knows.

I reach up in frustration and pull the other pen out of my hair and the knot untangles itself, curls resting against my back. I let the wall come down because I feel like I'm about to cry and I have warning again, whole minutes with which to prepare and to either hide my face or find somewhere private to go. Before the tears would just come, suddenly, like a water main break on a busy street and they would stream down my face and I wouldn't feel a thing because I don't feel anything anymore and yet I feel everything sometimes, at a higher level than most. It's the tightrope. I thought I had it mastered but then I wobbled and the crowd gasped, because..she does this stunt without a net, stupid girl. One false move and the show will close forever.

August grabs for my hand and misses as I pull up my bag, coat and notebook in one shaky move, I stand and tell him I'm sorry and then I head out into the rain and run across the sidewalk to my car, fumbling for my keys, which are in my bag, buried at the bottom under the GI Joe toys from a trip to Burger King last week and all of Ben's notes from writing he was doing when he was last home and with despair I see that the ink has run because they are sodden now and I find my keys and feel a river of water running over my toes because high heels in the rain are a guaranteed disaster and I finally get the door open and jump in and slam it against the weather and suddenly the city noise is gone and then the other door flies open and August gets in and closes his door and he just stares at me.

The music.

I know, Bridget.

I'll be happy when I can't hear it anymore.

No, you won't.

Then I'm never leaving my house.

We both know that's not reasonable.

Neither is this all the time, August.

It's getting better.

Oh, don't bullshit me.

I don't.

I look up at him and he's staring back. Convicted. Reassuring.

Better, huh?

Yes. Every month I see improvements in you.

I'm getting over them? What if I don't want to?

This isn't a bad thing-

Oh, stop right there. I've heard all that.

Then you tell me.

Tell you what?

Why getting over them would be wrong?

I don't want logic right now, August. I don't want a session with you. I wanted a cup of coffee but I don't think I'm up to it. I'm sorry.

I'll call Loch to come get you and take you home.

I DON'T WANT HIM HERE! (Fuck, I kinda went off there. I didn't mean to.)

August waited for me to self-correct and I did because he doesn't need that. Composurecomposurecomposure.

I'll drop you at work and go home. I'm fine. Really.

I know, Bridget.

I drove him the two blocks to his office and he sat looking out the window at the blurry people on the sidewalk and then he turned to me. I was studying the lights up ahead. He was studying me. Green yellow red. Green yellow red. Green yellow red. Stop, Bridget. Slow down, Bridget. Go, Bridget.

The guilt is normal, you know.

He leaned over and kissed my cheek and got out of the car, slamming the door and running through the rain until he was safely inside the front door of his building. He waved once and then went up the steps and down the hall until I couldn't see him anymore.

There's nothing normal about this, August.

I said it to thin air as I checked my mirrors, and then looked over my shoulder before pulling away from the curb.

Nothing normal at all.

I came home, opened the back door and all the lights were blazing. There's only one person who turns lights on and never turns them off as he leaves a room.

Ben is home. I didn't expect him this weekend. What a tremendous and much-needed surprise.

Funny how I have no guilt when it comes to him. He's like the antidote or something. Something wonderful.

Everything okay?

It is now.