I scream, you scream.

Our third child has decided to step in and fill some pretty big shoes this morning. Oh yes, that Jack of all trades, master of none Daniel has determined that nothing will keep the annual homemade ice cream festival from continuing.

Ben makes ice cream. It rarely works out. Everyone seems to adore it nonetheless.

He uses no professional eqipment. I don't think I've ever seen him wash his hands first but it's been a thing for him and the kids since diapers were also a thing. So, like forever, the third week of July their entire lives. This might be the first July he misses in its entirety.

But we still have Danny and Danny brings his doubtful, curious and handsome A-game to every moment of my life because he is the sweetest guy around and I only kiss up to him because he has never ever been the first one to release a hug. Ever.

And that, my friends, is something you all could learn from.

But then I would never get anything done. Like washing all of these dishes from making homemade ice cream. Not sure how he gets all the glory and I get the shitshow but I'll take it.

Attachment theory.

I was reading. I went around and gathered up as many hugs as I could hold and Lochlan still hadn't appeared so I changed into one of Ben's big t-shirts, turned off all the lights (save for one in the kitchen above the stove and the one on Lochlan's night table) and went to bed, book in my arm, eyes heavy.

He dropped his full weight on me and took my book, tossing it to the floor. Hey. 

Hey stranger. 

Never. Always familiar. I got hung up helping Sam.

Noble cause?

Girl problems.

I laughed out loud and he smiled. Love that sound. 

Enjoy it while it lasts. I can't breathe. 

Sorry, he laughs and pulls himself up so that his elbows are holding most of his weight. His forearms are planted on either side of my head. He bends his head down for a long kiss.

That's what was missing. 

I think so too. I give him another one and we trade off and on for a while before I realize he's not supported by his elbows again.

Loch!

Sorry! There. He pulls the covers down and lies beside me, pulling me in tightly against his chest, working kisses from my mouth out to my jaw. He reaches out and turns off the lamp and then pulls off my t-shirt in between pulling his clothes off. His breathing is quiet and harsh, his curls are in his eyes, his teeth sharp against my cheek. His hands are hot, red-hot, burning into my skin but I don't care.

He pulls me up into his arms and pulls my legs up tightly around his waist. I dig my nails into his shoulders and he presses so hard into me that I cry out. He reaches up and covers my mouth and then leans me back all the way until I am flat on my back and he is over me again. He puts his head down and pulls his arms down around me. Faster we go. I reach up and grab onto his curls to keep him close and he leans up on his elbows again, putting his hands on my cheeks as he pounds me right through the sheets. We don't talk. We kiss but mostly we move together in silence.

Finally he climbs back up to a sitting position, pulling my legs up into the air so he can watch my face. He is too far away for my liking but he leans back further, moving slowly, watching me, lifting my hips easily. His hair is in his eyes again and his smile could melt steel if his hands didn't already. He slows down even more and leans forward again, holding me down, picking up speed and I pull myself up, arms around his neck and at last he slides his arms around my back and begins to melt us together in a blinding spark of magnesium and charcoal. He lets go of me and I am instantly cold, my hair stuck against my forehead, my breathing ragged, caught. He bends his head down for one final long kiss and then he tucks me in his arm against his chest and he is asleep in seconds.

I watch him until my own eyes become too heavy again and I join him in dreams, back at the fair, where surprisingly enough, it's daylight.

Great day. No time. Here!

Today featured all kinds of really really good things. Like:

Air conditioning.

Spaghetti.

A fixed barbecue, a fixed garden hose and a bathed dog, all courtesy of yours truly.

A found five dollar bill.

Chocolate FREAKING cake.

Presents.

Balloons.

And a boy who turned twelve.

TWELVE. 

Oh my God. What?

In time to tee off with the pumpkins (a phone call from Ben).

I spent almost two-and-a-half weeks angry at Benjamin. I woke up, flip-flopped and got scared. Maybe it's a dream. Maybe he's dead like the others. You don't know what my mind does to me sometimes. It's a horror show rollercoaster ride. It's a bad dream. It's a whimsical, uncontrollable beast. It scares most everyone and that's why I have a team. Not just some friends but two dozen knights on high alert.

Because I'm unpredictable and run on flames and sugar.

Again, we know who to blame for starting all of this and we know who to blame for ending it. But when the chips have fallen there is still the burning question left.

What do we do with her now?

I woke up afraid and I made sure that it's fully and clearly understood that I miss Ben. A whole lot.

He called the night before I actually admitted this out loud and told me three things, you see.

The first thing was that he loves me, so very very much and he wants to be better. He wants to be a well man so he can be a good husband and a good friend and a good stepfather too.

The second thing is that he wants me to do exactly what he set in place for me the morning he proposed that we marry Lochlan. Because Lochlan is permanent, carved in stone and so should the need arise for me to be handed off to someone else well, let's just make it formal because alone=bad, Caleb=bad and anyone else would be a total fucking trainwreck.

(I could give you concrete examples of this but instead just remember Joel.)

The third thing is that he will be home at Halloween.

(That's right boys and girls, this is a sixteen week residential program where instead of just getting off whatever destruction train he was on, he's going to learn to rewire his brain to cope with stress and fear in other ways. The part he always walked out on before.

Oh, send me. I could use that. Except that I don't listen.)

Halloween? I asked three times (because I don't listen, you see) and by the second time instead of repeating why it would be so long he began repeating that I was okay now, safe from him. Far from him and his alter ego, who is full of rage and doesn't give a fuck.

He spoke of the letter. The one I never got to read. He said the only nagging fear he has is that if I revert to Lochlan completely for four months straight will it strengthen the bond so much that we'll have nothing left for Ben when he comes back? It was a similar message to the one left for Lochlan on his voicemail because once again Loch refused to be the bearer of bad news and told Ben he would have to tell me himself how long the program would be.

So he did.

He asked for some sort of promise that I would be open to taking him back if he can do this.  Not when but if. I asked him, didn't he have any faith in himself and he whispered no, that he left all his faith in me and that he hoped I would use it and do the right thing when the time came.

This is what Lochlan took issue with, I believe.

Ben asked me to thank Batman, who covered the cost of his treatment up front. He told me not to spend too much time with Caleb and then he said he would try to call back on Tuesday and wish Henry a Happy Birthday.

He said when he comes home he's getting a regular day job again and he's going to do things differently. He said he misses both of us. I reminded him gently that Lochlan isn't cooperating at present with our Three Musketeer Manifesto and Ben said he knows and if he was in Loch's place he wouldn't either but he also knows that everything will work out because we're special and a little crazy and a lot wounded and he can't wait to be home but he won't be home until things work properly inside his head.

He said at the end of the day I deserve a man who has his shit together and he would like to be the first to present that concept to me.

And in spite of myself I laughed. I laughed until I cried.

I miss Ben.

Twilight comes and the house quiets down and I stop coping, stop distracting. I can spend all day long telling myself he was being a creep and he lets his ego get in the way and he thinks he's invincible except when he doesn't and that I don't like him when he's like that because he's sweeter when he's not so sure of everything.

I could tell myself I'm moving on without him and will cross the bridge back to him if or when I ever see him again but let's face it. I'm not moving on, I'm standing perfectly still and a butterfly landed on the hood of my sweater and the sharp intake of breath from John when it happened told me everything I needed to know.

I passed him my phone. Take a picture, I pleaded. Hurry! 

But in his quest to get the perfect shot the butterfly flew away.

Kind of like Ben. Try too hard to get him just right and he'll take flight, the grounded inebriated cocky pilot who lost his wings but oh that's okay, he still has that career, that stupid guitar and a head full of ideas for the next great hook that will never see the light of day and oh Jesus, I miss him.

I miss him so much. No one gets it, no one appreciates it. They just see my loyalties search and fumble for the next place to land, just like that butterfly. They see my intense history and penchant for revenge-affection and they see the love my boys openly exhibit and they assume that I don't care.

I was told not to care, not to waste any more time fretting and hoping and waiting but I'm standing here looking at my watch and I'm counting that it's day one of week four and I've had enough. I miss everything about Ben but most of all I miss his now. His in-the-moment. His smile. His hands. His stupid broken heart.

And yeah, I miss his big ego too.

I miss how rude he can be with his jokes and I miss how cool his skin feels. I miss seeing his fight play out in his eyes and I miss his boots in the middle of the floor and finding guitar picks in odd places like the sugar bowl, the soap dish and on the cat.

I miss his insistence on my doing whatever I need to do to be happy no matter what. It's permission, it's liberating, it works.

I miss his weirdness, his out-there opinions and his spur-of-the-moment food fights. I miss laughing. I miss falling asleep with my back pressed against his chest, a wall of bones and flesh with that matching broken heart keeping time with mine.

I wish he would call me. I wish he would write again. I wish he would just come home. I don't care if they haven't fixed him yet. I can fix him but no one has any faith in me either.

All/most.

Lochlan's just-before-sleeping and newly-awake states are mirror images of his drunk one. The words roll out uncensored, unchecked and unvarnished. He doesn't bathe everything in logic and common sense. It's where I see who he is instead of who he wants me to think he is. I don't understand why he feels there needs to be a difference between the two, I'm pretty sure that's habit more than anything else. As long as she's okay, happy/fed/warm/safe/stimulated/learning then he could rest easy in his role as the Responsible Adult, something he mostly faked and constantly slipped from, a tenuous grasp that turned out to be non-existent and he wasn't actually holding on to the right rope after all.

He says things like:

Almost there. Last time he was gone I got you out of here and you thought you were in control. So close, Peanut brittle. So close. 

I wasn't going to turn down this chance. So you can tell me I'm being disloyal but I'm not here for him and we all know it.

I think they all think I don't matter but look at me. Where am I and where are they? 

and this:

I'm sorry about Ben's letter, Bridget. I am but I'm not but I am. You once asked me to let you go so that you and Jake could be happy and I did. I hated every second of it but I went and tried to live like a regular normal person because I knew it was the best thing for you. Why won't Ben or Diabhal, for that matter, do what's best for you?

I'm too tired to do this now so I shrug. I don't know. I close my eyes. Lochlan spans one hand across the small of my back and wraps the other hand around the back of my head, clutching me to him and we fall asleep the way we always used to on the cot in the trailer that wasn't quite thirty inches wide.

Now the bed is seventy-two inches wide but look, I can still feel his heart beating harder than my own. I feel his blood pumping through his veins across his skin against mine. I smell toothpaste and kerosene. I feel his breathing slow to match my own and I fight to stay awake so that I can watch him sleep, because it seems as if that's the one time he isn't fighting everything and everyone.

What he wants is so simple and straightforward. It's not much to ask for, as he has never been one to ask for very much at all.

Cold play.

I'm listening to the radio. The announcer speaks of a new Arcade Fire album on the way. I look at Duncan. Didn't the Arcade Fire break up?

No, that was Alexis on Fire.

Why is everything and everyone on fire all of the sudden?

They've all been burning for years. You live in your own little world, Poem.

I like my little world, Dunk. It has all of my favorite people and things in it. 

This I know, Poem. Happy to be a part of it. 

You like my dress?

Sure do. What's the occasion? 

I thought it would billow out the most when I'm floating face down in the water for hours on end before you all find my body.

So mellow-dramatic, Bridge. Too heavy for such a beautiful day. 

Let's just roll with this, Poet.

Okay, then you have to wear those big crazy boots with the buttons all the way up with your dress and you'll float about fourteen inches below the surface and that will be extra creepy. 

Oh, good point! 

Except that you'll never make it across the yard. I'm not PJ. I can run fucking fast. 

Yes that's why I haven't bothered. 

I thought things were better. Well, relatively speaking anyway. In spite of Ben being away. 

You can say it you know. He's in treatment. Not on vacation. 

Bridget, if life was a lot sunnier for you all the time maybe you'd stop living in the shade. Say he's on vacation or tour or whatever you need to say and think to make it easier and then you go and do what you're going to do. Wringing your hands and wallowing in missing Benjamin isn't going to make it easier. It'll just make you miserable. 

But miserable fits like a dress, Dunk. 

Yeah, one that looks terrible on you, frankly. 

Here, this better? I give him a big goofy smile, all teeth.

I don't know. Take your dress off. Be easier to tell.

Making sure I don't miss Ben too much by wearing his pervert hat?

Someone has to be that guy. 

Yeah I just didn't think it would be you. It should be Ben. My smile melts back into a scowl but at least my cheeks don't hurt anymore.

Ah well, it was sure pretty while it lasted. 

Littlun.

ARRGGHHHH.

What they should have done is sent me away for a few months, keeping Ben instead and then they could have finished their Lord of the Flies reenactment here without me. Once and for all.

Every day a struggle, every day a stand. Lateral moments. Same old shit.

Pffft.

I was planning to audition for the Moulin Rouge in Paris (they have auditions in Vancouver this Saturday) but the artistic manager said that dancers need to be at least 5'10". 5'8" if you're really good. Sigh.

***

I spent most of today drawing plans for a new painting. A green bottle fly or a skeleton of one. Flowers. Etc. etc. Lochlan is excited because he pushes me to step out of my comfort zone when it comes to art and I usually go quite willingly. I sat in a big holey sweater (usual wet bathing suit underneath) and I ate red pistachios and drew and listened to Metric/Nothingface/Metallica/Wye Oak and I didn't talk much and I think that sort of drives them into certain ruin because everyone was very helpful with laundry and dinner and even enthusiastic when I told them I was plotting to dye my hair baby blue just because if it's turning white anyway then why the hell not but then I decided I might be kidding because the damage would be sad after I just spent the better part of a year not touching it so that it would be shinier and it is so I can't touch it now. Still sad though. I love pastel hair.

***

Sam and Daniel are home. I wasn't going to say anything because out of desperation Lochlan took away the letter Ben sent home for me and burned it before I could open it and I'm guessing he must have listened to the message Ben left on his voicemail last week finally because he's kind of skittish and uncertain and I flipped right out.

Loch! That didn't belong to you!

But you do!

We spent the next three or four minutes in a rage-filled staring contest before James Hetfield's voice fills the space in the middle and I realize I can't win this. I'm not in charge. I'm definitely not in control and there's only one weapon I seem to have and I can't play fast and loose with that right now but maybe it's the only thing that makes him see clearly from my perspective.

Yeah, well, if you need me I'll be down at the boathouse. Got a birthday to plan for my son.

Bridge- he makes a grab for my arm but PJ says his name almost imperceptibly. Let her go.

Yeah, let me go. I wink at him and turn on my heel. I don't feel victorious, I feel like shit.

Here I am
On the road again
There I am
Up on the stage
Here I go
Playin' star again
There I go
Turn the page

Under privilege.

Lochlan still hasn't listened to Ben's voicemail.

I still have a headache but it doesn't seem as awful as yesterday and the day before that. I made rice and some delicious rosemary and pepper chicken in pitas with cherry tomatoes and spinach and the boys sort of devoured everything and now I have to have a backup dinner for Sam and Danny who are due home any minute now from the airport courtesy of Caleb who dispatched Mike to pick them up.

What a guy, hey?

I see where he's deploying his favors though, squarely on Ben's team by seeing to Daniel's safe return. I'm not sure anyone could actually blame him after Lochlan spent the morning turning Caleb's screws by asking him what he thought of the sunset last night, how glorious and spectacular it was and how it was too bad Caleb had to watch it alone.

Caleb didn't miss a beat, telling Lochlan he's been thinking of taking me to see the sunset from a new and unfamiliar vantage point, instead of the same old discount view from Loch's helicopter grip, and that all I have to do is pick a city or an island or a landmark and he can make it happen with a phone call and that he really wished with all his might that everyone had the means to offer those sorts of dreams to me, but alas he knows how hard Loch has to work in a month to get thirty dollars and that's the cost of two beach towels so at least he and I have a place to sit after we've come out of the water.

That's important, Caleb said with a wink. I thought he was going to earn a punch square in the neck for that one but Lochlan somehow kept his shit together.

I shook my head at Caleb. No sunsets. No trips. Stop it. I said it with my mind but he still answered out loud.

Again, Neamhchiontach, he started it and really these shitty comments are the only assets this guy seems to have. Enjoy those beach towels.

It's been a very long day.