Nice to look at, nice to hold.

This is why I love you, Bridget.

Moments after I froze, blushing madly, because he caught me dancing in the kitchen last night, by myself, which would have looked like a cross between someone caught in the twitches of a very slow and sensual torture and a spiritual revival as experienced by a hippie lovechild.

    It's hidden far away
    But someday I may tell
    The tale of metal tangle
    When into your world I fell
    Without you now I wander soaking
    Secretly afraid
    'Cause in your grasp the fears don't last
    And some of them have stayed

Sample in a Jar was on, and everyone knows I can't sit still during that song. It has to get out, whatever it is. My very own revival.

He laughed. He was still laughing this morning as he headed off the ghost of 5:17 and offered to run with me, which we did and he talked about a concrete trust in us that he didn't recognize before, which is what led him to not stop me when I took off in the first place because he knows he's better than anyone (the return of the rarely seen ego) and if I'm off trying to conjure up ghosts then he knows that I'm going to be unsuccessful at it. My time with Cole is over now. He's not coming back. He isn't Caleb.

Jacob thinks Caleb is a jerk, a creep and an idiot and hopefully not willing to be the victim of any more of Jacob's haymakers, and probably only sent the email to passively stir up some extra trouble and nurse his wounded ego. Jacob was incredibly sympathetic to his plight, pointing out that if I had written something about Jacob not being able to work his penis properly with all the readers I have, he'd dig a hole in the ground and then hit himself in the head with a shovel until he fell in it.

Then he laughed again, because he really doesn't care about Caleb and Caleb isn't Cole and so I'm going to stuff this subject into a rowboat and push it off mightily from shore and it can beach somewhere else. I'm done with it.

    You tricked me like the others
    And now I don't belong
    The simple smiles and good times seem all wrong
Jacob ran slower today and waited for responses and he got to indulge himself in the contents of my silly head quite thoroughly while we splashed through mudpuddles and squinted every time we headed east, since the sun slept in again and came up low over the city.

His official comment is that I'm doing well and I'm still on track to possibly resembling a human bean someday. Not his words, mine, since his were longer and so darned clinical. We'll see what tomorrow brings because I haven't been to therapy in two weeks. I hope Claus has a fresh notepad. In any case, there's a rather optimistic outlook to me and I'm intrigued by that. Since I have no reputation as an optimist, I'm just going to try it out like a six year old on a two-wheeler and strike off shakily down the sidewalk with my helmet askew and see what happens.

Miss trusted.

    Honey why you calling me so late?
    It's kinda hard to talk right now.
    Honey why are you crying? Is everything okay?
    I gotta whisper 'cause I can't be too loud

    Well, my girl's in the next room
    Sometimes I wish she was you
    I guess we never really moved on

    It's really good to hear your voice say my name
    It sounds so sweet
    Coming from the lips of an angel
    Hearing those words it makes me weak

I humiliated Caleb and to retaliate he's written Jacob a character-obliterating email about me. One riddled with just enough truth and just enough lies to make it hard to discern which is which. He played on Jacob's weaknesses and on my own admissions and my past with Jacob to cast just enough of a shadow of a doubt over last weekend and life in general to set us right back where we were when he called and it's the last thing we need right now.

He can be very eloquent, very convincing, and very much a game-player. He's intriguing, even when he's an asshole about things. Exactly like Cole used to be. Some days I can't even believe Cole and Jacob could ever be so close but then I remember Jacob used Cole as a means to an end and Jacob has me now and I just wish Caleb would leave me alone. It was wrong of me to seek him out for comfort and I will never be more sorry than I am right now, after reading what he wrote about me.

His account of what happened that night are vastly, vastly different from mine and it isn't fair. He's playing cards I forgot he was holding.

Coffee in bed.

Underneath a layer of snow turned hard as glass from months of frozen temperatures, under the ice and the filth from a full winter's duration my heart is still beating, thawing, patiently waiting to feel the sun.

It rained last night. Outside our bedroom window I could hear the pitter-pat of the drops as they fell, washing away the light grime from the house in the early morning darkness and Jacob stirred restlessly and I put my hand up and stroked my fingers through his hair while I listened and my ears were grateful for a sound I haven't heard in a long time.

He turned over, his arm coming down around me and I was rolled into his sleep reluctantly, wide awake in a city of sleepers. His other hand came up under my ear and pulled my face into his, an exhausted kiss left on my lips, abandoned halfway done in his slip back into whatever blissful dream he was having.

His unconscious comfort is welcome but sometimes ineffectual, as is Cole's ghost that stands like a sentry in the corner, always watching and waiting for me in my dreams.

I really wish Cole would go away now.

Sunday comics.

In the end Betty married Moose and then they turned Riverdale upside down.

Probably the funniest description I have ever heard of life in our neck of the woods. Credit goes to Duncan (fool on the hill, who never wants me to write anything about him) as told on a three-way call with Jacob to Andrew, expert out-of-looper and one of our longtime friends. In his defense, Andrew has been away for almost a year and has missed everything because he only called once during his travels and that was last night.

Unconditional.

So...Alice in Chains again. What a week.

No, actually this time I put it on the stereo on purpose because it was midnight and I wanted him to stop writing and quit reading and come to bed with me and the very last thing I do is nag people and so I turned on Grind and Oh my god. Surprise! Yes, it was a drive-by fully unsolicited lapdance.

Jacob likes those.

He gets a look on his face which I can only equate with showing a hungry caveman a butcher shop and a flaming barbecue.

Yes, it's an expression of total wonderment but it doesn't make me laugh like you're laughing now, it just makes me want to skip the teasing part altogether and go straight to trying to unbutton his shirt because hello, get these things off just a bit quicker, baby, please.

Someday he'll make my life easy and wear just t-shirts or something with fewer buttons. Button-fly jeans. Christ.

But he loves it to bits and he loves me to bits and most people would fault him for his weakness in me but I don't. And he doesn't. He loves me even when I need to try to control him in the only way I know how and I love him unconditionally even when he is ashamed to say he really loves it when I wind out and I can't get in control because I'm too far out of it.

It's a match made in heaven.

Shorn lamb.

    You're a head case with a smile
    Can't stop to make up your mind
    Education is so lame
    When you bitch and you moan
    You're a loose girl, I'm a guy
    You're a truth freak with a lie
    The situation is so strange
    It's a tv show*
Oh wow.

My seventies guitar hero preacher is no more.

Well, he is still somewhere around here, hidden inside the handsome man who walked into the house fully cleanshaven, with hair that's about two inches long if it's a millimeter. Looking like he joined the military to the point where I actually thought to ask if he had, since he never mentioned he was going to the barbershop, I wondered what else he had kept from me, perhaps enlisting?

Instead of his shaggy curtain of bangs and flippy curls around his collar and the awesomest beard this side of Woodstock, he now has a Major Haircut with a barely-there fringe now across his forehead that sweeps to one side and a completely bare face like a baby's ass.

The good news is he's still got a ton of hair. All the men in his family keep all of their hair to the grave.

Actually now that I've had a little time to adjust, he's a very very good looking man when he's clean cut. In a totally different way than the sexy rugged hippie looks that I adore so much.

And ears. Did you know Jacob had ears? Because I didn't.

*(Mark saw my 'lamb' title and started in with his Queens of the Stone Age Leg of Lamb rendition on the phone.)

Left unfinished, by request.

(I've had many requests for the Coast Diaries blog content that was posted before I was yanked unceremoniously off my storytelling high by Caleb's threats and since these entries were already posted, here you go. You're all perverts and I love you for that.

If you have absolutely no idea what in the heck I'm talking about just enjoy some early true fairytales. And one horror story, because good things don't come cheap and all words come covered with cheese.)

~~~~~~~~~~
Seven

It was a night that began on an emotional high. A night where he took her from her lover in a defiant display of wrath, his envy for what his enemy held evident in his eyes. And so he took what he wanted, again and again.

The air was heavy with the cloying smell of sweat and incense, the sultry heat of the summer night invasive, welcome. Her skin glistened with moisture, her waves recoiling into wild curls in defense of the suffocating warmth.

He tangled his fingers into her hair and pulled her head back gently until she was at his mercy. She smiled up at him willingly, breathing quietly, waiting for him to express his admiration for her body, which she had given him moments before, a tangle of sins fulfilled, lust, avarice and gluttony all brawling for first place in a night that saw a three way tie and plans for a rematch after some rest, after the heat relinquished it's grasp and invited a cool morning.

You are infinitely fuckable.

With one compliment he edified her the reverence with which he held for her form, his insatiability for her and thus introduced yet another deadly sin into their room that night. Pride. The one iniquity that would serve to wage a never-ending war against grace for the rest of their lives.

But not tonight.

The remainder of tonight would see sloth fulfilled as they slept deeply, the heat releasing them at long last, the oppressive tentacles retreating under the promise of a cloud-filled day.

~~~~~~~~~~

Warmth

He pulled the blanket around them both, and kissed her bare shoulder. She watched his expression as his eyes rose to meet her own. He traced her collarbone. She waited for him to speak, not daring to break the spell of the moment.

Stay with me.

~~~~~~~~~~

Muse

One finger slid from her hairline on the back of her neck slowly down, gliding over silken, alabaster skin until it met the tiny indentation at the base of her spine. She shivered with delight. Her head reeled with the effects of the wine they had shared, in a single glass.

She was sitting in the center of his bed wrapped in baby blue cotton sheets and smiling down at her hands as he whispered to her. She couldn't make out his words and so she tried to turn to face him but he stopped her, taking her shoulders in his hands and holding her still. He resumed his solitary exploration of her flesh and she imagined what it would feel like if he simply enveloped her into his arms, the chemistry between them so intense that she had become obsessed with him. As he had with her.

When he asked her if he could paint her she agreed, having played the muse once before, knowing her role well, noting humorously that they were both aware that his colorful Hofmann-inspired dabblings had nothing to do with the human form. She agreed simply to be with him. To breathe his air and coexist in his headspace. And when he laughed and suggested on a whim that she should be nude for the piece she turned herself inside out, taking her clothes off as of they were aflame. He passed the sheet to her and looked around for a chair but he didn't like the coldness of it and so he suggested she find a comfortable seat on the bed.

This exercise served not in order to produce a work of art but to solidify his promise to her that she could trust him and she was demonstrating that she did.

His fingers left her skin hesitantly and he stood with effort, tearing his eyes from her curves and storming back to his blank canvas, which rested on the floor, mocking him. Three square feet of rough white textures that implored him to create.

She asked him if he was inspired by her.

He said yes, but not to paint.

And she smiled again.

~~~~~~~~~~

Cold Comfort

She sat on the tailgate, sipping hot chocolate from a thermos, snowboard propped up against the bank, boots dangling a foot off the ground. She had removed her jacket and left her elfish hat and bibfront snowpants on, preparing to finish her quick break and head back up the hill for more punishment.

Just then he walked around the side of the truck and grinned from ear to ear.

You having fun?

It's a blast. You?

Best day of the season. You the only one here?

Yup. I can see most of them waiting at the lift.

Oh yeah, okay, I see them.

We're just fast.

Or very very slow.
They laughed together and he sat down beside her. She offered him a sip of her chocolate but he refused, pressing his forehead to hers instead. She could feel his cool breath on her mouth, minty from gum, slightly sour from physical exertion. His hair was damp, his eyes sparkled, set off by the snow, a blue she could drown in.

He leaned in and kissed her softly.

She pulled away, standing up, looking around for her gloves and jacket. He stood up and closed the distance between them, taking her face into his hands and holding it firmly as he kissed her a second time, letting his bottom lip slip over hers slowly.

Her knees were so weak she started to drop and he grabbed her arms to steady them both. She started to speak and he smiled.

I know.

Oh god.

Next year we're going out west and we're going to have our own room and I'm going to make love to you the whole trip and we won't even board.

Oh god.

Yes, it will be like that, I think.

I think if they saw us I'm dead.

No one saw us. No one is watching us.

God watches us.

God has bigger fish to fry.

Then kiss me again so I have something to keep.
He pulled us in close again and she could feel the stubble of his beard scraping against her nose, the woolly softness warming her face as he opened his mouth and put the gentlest of kisses on her lips. He pulled back with a smile that did little to cover the quiet discord in his expression.

They returned to the lift with our gear and got a chair to the top once again, talking about everything save for stolen kisses and future plans. They lived from one heartache to the next. Cold, to match the day.

~~~~~~~~~~

Blinded

No!

Shh, just let me.

I don't....

Shhhh, baby. Trust me.

With that exchange he covered my eyes. And then I was functionally blind and deaf, resorting to a darkened world of taste, smell and touch. I could feel his thigh muscles as they contracted, regular, flexing at exactly half the beats of my heart as it pounded, my knees buckled onto the floor as my body failed to maintain enough strength under his assault to even stay upright. He ignored it and kept going and I searched around inside my brain for a way to somehow partner the way in which the sensory isolation brought forth the remaining senses in a remarkable way with the uncomfortable unfamiliarity of his actions.

I let go of my hesitation and as my reward he bit through the skin on my shoulder as he came in a violent explosion of sweat and strength.

But the blindfold remained. He shifted his hand enough so that when he flipped me onto my back again I was still in a black room, and he fought his way back in while I pushed against him and tried to block his approach with what little strength remained in my limbs, which were twisted and pulled and exhausted from a night of experimenting with new and old.

He began a fresh onslaught and I tasted blood. In my efforts to internalize his touch I had bitten my cheek and not noticed. I asked him to stop and he refused. My shoulder was now bleeding as well, I could feel it and smell the iron-heaviness in the air and I begged him to let me up.

He refused.

When he finally fell asleep I extricated myself from his arms and went to do a damage report. Two puncture wounds which stood out from my pale flesh like marks from the impaler. I was victim to a vampire, a monster that should only be found in storybooks and scary movies, not in your own room.

I squeezed my eyes and returned to bed, once again blind, not to the moment but to the knowledge, the confirmation that he was my own monster and that he was real.

~~~~~~~~~~

Dunes

He pressed her against the weathered grey wood of the fence, wishing away their visibility to the outside world until they were hidden, far away from anyone who might happen to stray away from the boardwalk. Hidden in the dunes he had the perfect place in which to steal a kiss, and to make his need for her known only to her, the way it should be.

The way it was every Thursday afternoon when she would shyly wait for him there.

She smiled up at him, squinting through the sun, the glare off the white sand and his throat was full with his heart. Her hair whipped around her face in a golden halo and her eyes were full of mirth. He took her face in his hands and kissed her softly once, then harder, leaving her throat and lips streaked with a path of glittering sand from his swim. She could feel the cool ocean brought to her as a gift from him on his cold lips, a salty, gritty taste infused with his love for her.

Her favorite taste in the world.

She put her arms around him, sharing the remaining seawater that rolled off his broad shoulders in constant rivulets. He slid his hands down her back and into her bikini bottoms and pushed her into him so that she would know she was wanted, that he could have her at that moment if he wanted. She replied in kind by moving away slightly and touching him through his swim trunks. Her expression turned to frustration and he refused to acknowledge that life existed outside their hidden meeting place, instead sliding his thumbs once again into the sides of her bottoms, and he pulled them down just a little. She cried out for him to stop because they might be seen. He ignored her.

He fell to his knees and kissed down her belly, browned by the sun, and stopped where it met the white of skin that must be covered in public. Her tan lines made him crazy for her. She was covered with sand, damp and refreshed by the swim he had brought with him out of the ocean. She was dizzy with her own desire for him and weighed down with a guilt she didn't want to think of right now.

He inched the bottoms down a little more and she pushed his head away, modest in their sudden risks. So he changed direction because he wasn't ready to let go of her, not just yet and so he stood and instead wrapped his arms around her, kissing her deeply, reaching his tongue down her throat briefly in an effort to taste her soul. She pressed her body against him hoping that he would find her soul inside and take it with him when he left. He ended with a gentle kiss and then he turned and walked away, head down, not looking back as she watched him go, the wind enveloping him in a relentless voyage, drying the salt into his skin in a film that he would wear for the remainder of that day.

And she put her fingers up to her lips to shelter them from the ocean breezes, so that the heartless wind could never take his kiss away again.

~~~~~~~~~~

Spinning unbalanced.

Do I make a clunking sound like the washing machine?

The request for weekly written barometers has become standing (weekly? Try daily). A lovely little way for everyone to see inside Bridget's head so she doesn't run off with any sharp implements and dangerous epiphanies. Or any really really sad songs and a bottle of...oh, geez, I'll stop right there.

I'm like my very own three-minute tornado warning. A first for humankind. I'll be the test subject, God knows they couldn't have picked a fiercer, tinier tornado. I'm almost handleable. The post-apocalyptic cyclone girl, now with qualified supervision!

Firstly, I'm proud to say the kids are all registered for the fall at school. Still in elementary school, but Henry will be trading in his half days for a full day and I really won't know what to do with myself. I've had two extra little shadows for the past seven and a half years and really I'm finding now I can crawl so far inside myself when I'm alone that it's hard to crawl out when the kids get home. I'm going to get a lot done, but the kids are thriving and happy and this is very good for them. They continue to adjust amazingly well and I wish I could take cues from them in how to feel, sometimes.

On singing. Yes, every time I walk past Jacob he pulls me into his lap and sings come waste your time with me, he's possibly more happy to be enjoying our full spectrum of music than I am, though I wind up getting nothing done at all when he does that, instead I get done.

Snort.

That is not a complaint, by the way.

He also confided to me during one of our silly 3 am conversations last night that he absolutely loves the way I call his name when he's out of the room.

Jaaaaaay cub!

Aw. I'm the only person who doesn't shorten his name very often when I say it out loud. Everyone calls him Jake. I tend not to shorten people's names. It's one of my more uptight quirks.

In other also unrelated things, I'm very relieved to be out of the beginning rock climbing torture class. I got a refund with a doctor's note, because heavily medicated people with stress issues shouldn't climb. Maybe next year. Jacob loves his extra-super adrenaline junkie ice climb class. They're going on a field trip in a week and he's like Henry was when they went to the train station. Excited! Five years old! Maybe I should pack him a lunch.

Also unrelated-I have a new cellphone. A Motorola one. It's going to take me forever to figure it out because I'm not great with new interfaces, but my Samsung was not repairable. Probably because in my fog of grief and shock I sat at the table one night and fed the pieces to a full vase of green water and dead roses that I forgot about after Valentine's week.

And lastly, Cole's letters. Did I appear to be stalling?

Heavens, yes.

The damn unread letters. Jacob played bad guy and asked me what I would do if I had been able to read them and if they had been awful, mean, hurtful words.

I said I would be sad but I would expect no less, really.

Then he asked me what I would do if they had contained apologies and reminders that some of our time together was good, that I mattered.

I said I would be vindicated and that I would know for sure that he didn't hate me and that he wasn't a monster, that he was still the Cole I fell in love with on the inside.

Then Jacob looked at me pointedly and in his dry, impatient manner said,

Well, then what in the hell would you do different as a result, Bridge?

I didn't have an answer for that, and this issue was resolved. He's right. In the grand scheme that is my life it wouldn't change a thing now. Cole is ashes and dust and the 7200 days and nights I spent with him are a memory that is unique to me. No one shares them because the only other person who spent them is gone.

Sometimes Jacob knows exactly how to retrain my brain in the logic required to make a little progress. By the time he and I will have spent 7200 days and nights together we'll be in our mid-fifties and kids will be grown and hopefully have families of their own and we'll be on our own together.

I'm hoping that we'll downsize a lot, minimize most of our belongings and that he will take me to see the world he knows outside of here, the world he was exploring while I was spending the final 3500 days I had remaining with Cole.

I feel like I'm in an okay place. My sanity has covered the price for my heart and I still have a shred to hold on to. Bridget's a safe kind of crazy, content to take her pills as required, charm people to bits and chase a little drama here and there and I've found I talk to Cole just a little too much as if he's some sort of demon angel watching over me, warring for my heart against the guardian angel Jacob, but not in a negative way. As I talk to him now it's almost a quiet boastfulness, a gentle thumbing of my nose at him for the way it all turned out. Possibly the very same way God speaks to me, I bet. I wouldn't doubt it for a moment.

    Shout your name into the wind
    And sometimes I will think of you
    Shout your name into the wind
    And if you ever think of me
    Kneel down and kiss the earth
    And show me what this thought is worth
    I'll never hear your voice again

So the forecast is clear, no tornadoes in my immediate future, just a hell of a lot of ground and time to make up, because life is now and I missed the first tornado forecast but now I've built the cellar and it's fully stocked for emergencies and we're down to just trying to stay calm in hopes that Bridget isn't simply winding herself up into a funnel once again.

It'll blow over. It always does.

Right before the sun comes out.

The contents of Bridget's little head.

Jacob's making me a Reuben sandwich for lunch. I love Reubens. And ice-cream floats because I was making jokes about living in a country made of ice cream last night. Bonus points if you know what movie that's from.

    Do I have to fall asleep with roses in my, roses in my hands?
    Would you get them if I did?
    No, you won't
    Cause you're gone, gone, gone, gone, gone.
    When you're dreaming with a broken heart
    The waking up is the hardest part.

Today's musical accompaniment will be provided by John Mayer, who sang this to us from the stereo as we slow-danced our way to bedtime last night, and I noticed how black Jacob's knuckles are on his right hand as he held my fingertips to his lips and kissed them and he smiled at me. I was thrilled to notice that my heart flip-flops when he looks at me. Still. Forever.

This morning was a deviation from the norm by far. Claus had an emergency and so my session was cancelled for the week, he is secure in the knowledge that I have my own handy live-in counselor and so I thought I'd grab my run, since I usually have to skip Wednesdays now.

Jacob invited himself to go running with me, which is a rare event. He runs twice as far and twice as fast as I usually do. Oh, and he likes to run and talk. Am I the only person in the world who can't carry on a conversation while running? Please, I prefer to put all my capacity into breathing. The ragged raspy panting kind, which Jacob so lovingly pointed out that I sound like I do when we're making love, only without his favorite little noises and hums and lyrical quirks I express erstwhile.

Oh, now you like those? What happened to the mogwai references? I love it when the singer changes his tune.

Right. There's the difference between pain and pleasure, buddy. And I don't get any pleasure from running until I hit the rush somewhere between the last mailbox and the sidewalk that leads to our front steps.

Which are wet today. Melting ice.

Clearing roads. I spy pavement.

Clocks springing (wintering) forward in four days. Which means more sunlight. A weekend with almost double-digit temperatures forecast for five days straight ahead, a sun so bright I had black spots in front of my eyes for an hour when I came inside and so I couldn't write.

A curse from me, who wants to make this the final season in a year of discontent. We're very quickly approaching a year since Jacob picked up my snowglobe and shook it so incredibly violently that when the glitter settled everything was rearranged and looked brand new.

A year. Almost. Almost there guys.

Four seasons of bitterness piled on top of difficulties on top of baggage and yet, yes we're still going. Right down the road in front of you in our winter running gear yelling insults to each other like the most loving disfunctional human beans in the world. It's glorious, it is.

And it's going to be a better spring.

Oh yum. My sandwich is ready. See you tomorrow.

Mail call.

I'm just...floored here.

The longer I post, the more familiar/comfortable I get with sharing things with you, the more I feel open to public judgement, ridicule, scorn.

And the more I am surprised by you.

What I thought would be the nail in my coffin here over the past few days, expecting a flood of hate email or inbox viruses or whatever it is people do when they don't like you on the internet, and instead I got something else entirely.

A lot of cheering, a lot of support, so many virtual hugs I feel sheepishly like a teddy bear in a nursery school.

I love you all.

People were happy we fought our way out of the place we wound up in, people were happy to see that we've made repairs (both to the poor doors in this house and to our relationship), that we're continuing on without letting stress break us down and you all seemed to be overwhelmingly thrilled that Jacob finally threw a punch (or two) at Caleb.

I knew you liked Jacob better than me, anyway.

And that's okay.

I do too.