I put all of my diamond rings in a little pottery bowl beside the kitchen sink and when I remember, I put them back on, but this is a safe place for them when I am washing dishes, about to head out the side door to do something like recycling or fetch a package from the deep freeze in the garage or about to exit through the patio doors to do a little lawn cleanup/sunrise gardening or even better, hell-bent on throwing my tiny body off a high cliff into the roiling sea.
Everyone says it's fine to wear my best jewellery and just enjoy it. Nah, fam. Missing stones, broken claws and bent shanks aren't my thing. It can wait safely in the little pot I made just for that purpose and also to hold the dog's Trazadone. I feel you, puppy. Lochlan keeps my tranqs upstairs by the bathroom counter but the result? Precisely the same. An agreeable sort of sleepwalking, a casual coma, if you will.
Jacob doesn't think that's funny.
Well, you're not here, are you?
He was my biggest champion. Literally and figuratively, fighting off the shady whims of the boys who always had their best interests at heart first but mine a close second and sometimes I think that they were more relieved than sad when he flew.
Of course they were. Don't be naive.
Oh, I'm the least naive person in the world, pretending to be the most naive. It's called self-preservation and again, if you knew anything at all about that, well then you'd still be here, now, wouldn't you?
He bites his lip not to swear his invisible words in my face while I take my sweet time stacking my rings back onto my finger.
Where are you going?
To jump off the cliff.
The water is two degrees. Can't you go in the pool?
So is your heart. And my skin hates the chemicals in the pool. You know I prefer the ocean. Everyone does.
It's not my heart I'm worried about.
Hey, mine's broken too if that's what you mean. Can't wreck what's already wrecked.
Where's Ben? Jacob is starting to mildly panic. He always tried to keep it from me the way a parent tries to with a small child.
I dunno.
BRIDGE!
I hear Lochlan from the orchard and Jacob rolls his eyes. He still here?
I nod with an evil smile. It makes me laugh, that Jacob reduces Lochlan to a lame joke, as if that would work.
HERE. I shout back.
Want to swim in the sea? Lochlan bursts through the door. The water's like three degrees.
Yeah. Just let me take these off. I pull all the rings off again, pile them in the little bowl and stick my tongue out at Jake for good measure.