Evenings on the front steps.

Firstly, JT (I don't call him this but I've heard it so much as of late it's starting to seep in) here has glasses for reading. Which is sexy but I cringe thinking that because I recall saying something similar a few years back when Cole got his glasses. These boys, their eyes are all shot by the time they're 36 or 37 years old, it's a rite of passage. In any event, Jacob picked out the neatest coppery-gold perfectly round frames. He looks scholarly already.

He looks good and I feel naked today. I miss the eight inches of hair I had cut off a few hours ago. My hair is better long but sometimes you just need to start over.

And for people who asked recently about our old tradition of Jacob reading aloud to me in the evenings, he still does, two nights a week or so, especially now that we have the time again. It's a calming ritual and quaint too, old-fashioned and peaceful. You have to be incredibly comfortable with someone to be able to listen to them read aloud for hours on end, you have to have confidence to read in the first place and every now and then we'll find a conversation or share a laugh or a nice moment and talk a little before he resumes reading from the page.

We've slogged through most of Hemingway now and a couple of Stevensons, some random poetry collections and now we're reading Right Away Monday by Joel Thomas Hynes. It's funny and sad and touching and just about puts me on the floor with the antics of Clayton Reid, a character if I ever heard of one. He's a Newfie and the book is written in the first person, complete with the accent, and that accent is written so thickly that you can just about hear it out loud.

And I thought Ballads was rollicking.

Especially when Jacob reads it. Jacob speaking his native tongue without hesitation gives me warm fuzzies, as he's been off the rock so long he's begun to pick up his h's again, and he's even started to use my instead of me in the possessive sense. One of his most endearing qualities is the fact that sometimes he'll get very excited talking and no one can understand a word. It's awesome.

Exactly like the book.

I hope that never changes.

And Clayton? Could be any one of Jacob's friends from back home. He's sweet and awful and impossible and you feel for him and you'll fall for him too.

I can't wait to see what happens next, I'm headed out to the porch now with a pitcher of iced tea and the book as we speak. I hope Jacob has his glasses all polished up and is ready to begin.

She's mine.
I wants her.
She's the One.
-Clayton Reid.

Onlyness and alwrong aren't words, you know.

    Save my love through loneliness
    Save my love through sorrow
    I give you my onlyness
    Give me your tomorrow

This morning I'm mourning things like Jacob choosing teaching over carpentry because carpentry isn't a steady job but watching him build new stairs into the yard yesterday and him covered with sawdust and dirt has proven to be how I like to see him best. It's uncomplicated, hands-on and instantly productive. It's peaceful, without politics, without overcomplicating what should should come so easy but doesn't. He is happy, though and looking forward to the fall, to the routine and to all the new ideas he'll be able to exchange, to the ways he'll be able to steer his deep philosophical, spiritual discussions with a fresh set of faces each semester.

He says when he retires he'll pick up more carpentry but for now he's only going to be shaking the sawdust out of his hair when time permits, and he's got a lot of work planned for the next two months on the yard, the house and on helping things back to as normal as we ever knew, or something akin to level.

If you place a level across my soul it tilts crazily to the left and the bubble all but disappears. Which used to be funny but it isn't anymore.

I want my bubble in the middle.

This morning went well. Therapy is therapy, though I think watching other people drink real coffee while I had decaf, still with caffeine but less put me in my chair with a tiny chip on my shoulder and I had to be dragged out of my head several times. They're all so proud though that instead of the instant progress I would fake in the past after a bad time today I just spoke of slowly getting back to a good place because...well, eh. the apathy. I hate this apathy but I'm possibly almost conditioned to accept it now as part of the process.

Mostly because trying to get around it, well, we all know how well that worked.

Yesterday I wrote you a goodbye letter, internet, but I didn't post it. I didn't delete it either, I just left it saved with a million other half-hearted entries never written. Some contain too much info, some contain nothing at all, all of them abandoned as I change my mind like the weather here, where a new set of circumstances roll in from the west across the sky in huge roiling waves and suddenly you're forced to rethink your plans and your wardrobe.

This post isn't a keeper, it's going nowhere and I'm just going to keep typing until whatever wants to come out will come out. Or not.

I had a cigarette this morning.

We made it all the way to Freebird on Guitar Hero. Jacob used to sing that to me before he would leave on a long trip. Well, he'd play it at the table, we'd always have everyone over for a big dinner before he'd take off for remote corners of the world and he'd sing it to me, directed at me, about us. Such an awesome song. This is why over thirty years after that song coming out, people still yell for it to be played at shows. No matter who the band is.

We got a dog at Christmas but I didn't bother telling you.

I'm feeling good about the house changes but a little stressed because all of our money goes to therapy which I keep sabotaging anyway so what little is left over should go to house things but we keep doing other things. And also, major renovations while we're living in the house mean a mess. I get stressed out over messes, even as I have mellowed in recent months as to what is important and a spotless house isn't nearly as high on the list as it was when I was trapped and had little else to worry my days away with.

I haven't run in like, forever.

Jacob looks good driving the suburban. I missed the truck but not as much as he did. His dad was thrilled to take over the big red beast of a Ram that Jacob sent out and feels so much less conspicuous now and also, parking, so much easier. He wasn't meant to be part of the consumptive class.

There is one month of school left now. Hard to believe soon we'll be sleeping in a bit and running around in the sun instead of waking to alarms and hurrying to get a warm breakfast and clothes on and walking the beaten path to the school three blocks over. It means I won't see the church every day but that's alright. Jacob is home so I get what I wanted. I always get what I want, eventually. Kind of like Jacob. Thankfully we want the same thing, the happily ever after. Even if we have to kill each other in the process.

I'm not sure what else I can pull out of my recent stream of consciousness today, so maybe I'll just end it pointing out that the rain, thunderstorms and tornado warnings continue and we have been working to keep warm and dry and up. Because Bridget needs to be up. I'd feel up right now if I cared, but I don't. Today is a just a very quiet, very stable morning and just riddled with soft places to fall should I have any negative thoughts but really there's nothing in my little head today except Tim Hardin lyrics and some foggy memories I can't quite reach without trying and I'm not going to try, because this is better than whatever they would try to bring.

And now if you'll excuse me I had an offer of a quick nap in Jacob's arms and I think I'll take it.

Holding faith in four hands.

For an end to all further pointless arguments on what's good for me and what is not, I would pay a king's ransom.

For an open-minded understanding of loving sad music and writing sad stories I would give my whole heart, except that it doesn't belong to me anymore.

I didn't last so long yesterday. His voice, raised in anger admittedly leaves me shaken and afraid and I turn inward and I don't talk and I don't want to sort it out and I just want to be away-away. The silence scares him.

The absence scared me more so I went and sought him out.

It was a first!

(I am a slow learner.)

I opened the door of the den, hesitantly. It's a quiet door, he did a beautiful job. I took one step out and looked toward the kitchen, I didn't hear anything and I looked toward the back door and he was there, at my feet. Sitting on the floor with his back up against the wall turning a key over and over again in his fingers.

What are you doing?

Trying to not hover.

What is that?

It's a key to the den.

You have a key?

I didn't want any repeats of the last time you locked me out.

So why didn't you come right in?

I'm trying to give you what you want, Bridge.

Do you even know what I want?

No. I don't. We never seem to get that far.

I want time.

Oh God. Time alone?

No, just time. Less help. No rushing. Just time.

I want you to be happy. That's all I want. I don't want you to wake up scared, or fall asleep scared, or ever be caught in this place you're in now. And I'm sorry for what I said. I didn't mean to point out the sacrifices I had made, I meant to point out that you take the first place in my life and everything else can wait because you are what matters to me. I didn't mean anything else by it.

I know. I didn't mean to tell you you could leave.

Yes you did.

Maybe I did. Sometimes I think you should. You'd be so much happier away from this, Jacob.

Then you have no idea how in love with you I am, princess.

Okay, now, hey! Look! Boundaries. I'm stopping right there, but know that much aw-ing and kissing ensued and I wound up back in the cage of arms that he keeps for me and I felt like less of a lunatic for much of the remainder of the day and possibly like butter by this morning because of his attentions and I know we're fixing fuck-all with sex but for the affection whore that I am it's exactly what I needed.

Tomorrow I have to go eat crow with Joel for breakfast but he will have a fight on his hands. What he's done is prepare, with my help, a positive-outlook plan full of lists and instructions and all kinds of wonderful things I am to do for distraction. Which is where the drive to eliminate miserable writing and painful songs came in. Constant daily reminders and exercises in being a Happy Bridget. Ways to get my hooks in to prevent my chemicals from drowning me with their ineptitudes, a way to circumvent history. Blowing up Pandora's box and changing my history as it happens. It's work and I keep trying to coast without actually doing any of it. I keep fighting it, we both get discouraged. Why do I fight it if I want to have a better life? Because that's what people like me do.

And I can do this.

What keeps me humble is looking into Jacob's pale blue eyes and knowing that he alone isn't enough to do it. Coming to terms with the fact that all the love in the world and all these huge romantic gestures and the effort he has put into living with me, which must be next to impossible and yet he does it anyway, isn't going to magically erase all the bad things about me.

Knowing that he still wants to be here, even as I test him and bend him and shut him out and try so hard to let him in and he never knows which end is up and yet he's gone hands off and he feels helpless and vulnerable and yet he's a stone soldier for me, he doesn't yield. Ever. His love is so strong for me.

It hurts like hell to know all this and try to love him as much as I possibly can and wondering if he'll ever understand how much that is and how much more I wish I could give him or how that love will surpass any description I could ever make for it, in this lifetime, with my useless, pointless words.

This morning as I hung in the crook of his elbow on the edge of the bed that he had taken up the entirety of with his tormented sleep I thought about everything we have shared in the past year and how that very first night we spent together we peeled back the layers you keep intact for friends and we stood naked, unprotected and exposed in front of each other and put our trust in being able to move from friends to lovers with no bullshit or we wouldn't move a muscle any further. I needed to know I wouldn't be hurt again and Jacob needed to have something real. We made a promise to each other and then we exchanged hearts for good measure, and we agreed to raise my children together.

We became the Unsinkable Reilly Family.

Only this time I figured out how to rescue myself.

Which, according to Claus, is really remarkable. That's as excited as Claus ever gets, so it's something, for sure.

Key.

    Sing it for me, I can't erase the stupid things I say.
    You're better than me.
    I struggle just to find a better way.

    So here we are, fighting and trying to hide the scars.
    I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.
    The lonely road, the one that I should try to walk alone.
    I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.

    You're running like me.
    Keep moving on until forever ends.
    Don't try to fight me.
    The beauty queen has lost her crown again.

    So here we are, fighting and trying to hide the scars.
    I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.
    The lonely road, the one that I should try to walk alone.
    I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.

    Goodbye.

    So why are you so eager to betray,
    pick the pieces up, pick the pieces up.
    So why are you the one that walks away,
    pick the pieces up, pick the pieces up.

    So here we are, fighting and trying to hide the scars.
    I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.
    The lonely road, the one that I should try to walk alone.
    I'll be home tonight, take a breath and softly say goodbye.

    Just take a breath and softly say goodbye

Lately I've been buying skeleton keys as I find them on our antique-store explorations. This house came with precisely one key to fit eleven locks and I'm hoping as we go along to have a key in every keyhole and get this house restored to full Victorian glory, eventually.

No, make that nine locks, there are new doors from the kitchen to the back porch and to the den because Jacob broke the old ones and so he built new ones that were even more beautiful, just with new, conventional locks.

The keys I buy that don't fit wind up in the bowl painted with roses that sits on my dresser to collect my rings and stray bobby pins and quarters Jacob uses for his magical tricks.

These keys become vintage daydreams, unlocking doors in houses I've never been in and will probably never find. Worn smooth and cool from thousands of turns they're talismans of a historical sort, protectors of rooms that hold lifetimes of secrets, and someday the keys that do fit this house will be the same to someone else.

Because everyone has secrets.

So so many secrets.

None of them are secrets, though. Most of them are just things no one ever sees. All of my life everything has remained hidden. Steeped in denial I conduct myself with a pretty-on-the-outside attitude that has taken me to some amazing places. It's funny though, how no one would envy me my life, beginning with parents who demanded perfection and got enforced compliance, then a husband who demanded violence and got compliance and now it's...what is this?

Compliance and a whopping case of obsession. Addiction. The kind of thing you can't turn with a key to lock away. You can't unlock a solution and you can't just walk away and leave the door open or who knows what might happen?

Remember when I said we had learned how to argue? I think I may have jumped the gun on that one. I guess we learned how to bicker lightly without dragging in other issues.

But fighting...well, fighting isn't bickering. Fighting is all claws and teeth for us, frustrations that leave us saying things we know will hurt so bad but it feels so good to put it all on the table and get it out before it starts to eat away at our souls.

Everyone is always so surprised when Bridget has an opinion.

They prefer the doll.

And I don't get it. Jacob wants me to be strong, he pushes me so hard to get better, to fight for my own happiness and then he sabotages me and knowing him the way I do it's not an accident. He wants to be in charge. He wants to make the decisions and he wants to orchestrate all of it and then he turns around and cries out when comparisons are made to Cole.

I fired Joel this morning. No worries, no one listened to me anyway, I'm sure it will be one of many more times that I get fed up and stand up and pull on my red raincoat and collect my things and walk right out the fucking door and watch Jacob vault across the waiting room, Mr. Damage Control, who has taken to sitting right outside the door instead of going to the bookstore and having some fun because Bridget is very seriously damaged and needs help and he's the man who throws the boomerang back because it never lands where it's supposed to. And he wouldn't let go of my hand when I tried to pull away because I was going to the truck, I'll wait there, I have my own keys and I promise I won't try to drive home but I fucking hate Joel, Jacob.

And Claus comes out with his hushed-doctor voice and talks right over Bridget's godammned little messed up head and they decide I'm going back in and I say I will but only if Joel comes out and Claus frowns at me and I tell him not to say it.

Joel wants the music gone. He wants the journal gone, he wants everything gone that Bridget uses to drag herself down into the dark because it's counterproductive and oh, hey, is Jacob ever on board with that and Claus didn't say a word because he knows but he failed to back me up and I'm not going to be told what I can't do. Without certain things in my day odds are I'm one step away from opening up the window and throwing myself out of it. Music isn't going to be absent from my ears until they're useless and Joel thinks he knows me but he doesn't and arghhhhh.

He isn't worth this. And now Jacob has started back in with the softly-engineered, gentle guilt asking me if I want to get better and I asked him which side he was on and he yelled at me that he had rearranged his whole fucking life to be here and to help me and be here for me and I'm doing nothing.

Only he's wrong. And also, I thought he was here because he loved me so, so much. What the fuck is that about?

I'm spending time. Because time is what I have and when it's all gone I'll feel better. When time has run out I'll be okay and it won't be rushed and it can't be forced and Jacob can't love it away and he can't scream it away at me and he doesn't get it. I'm wasting time. I'm making entertainment because the hours go slow.

And we aren't speaking because while he was throwing verbal hand grenades to try and hurt me and force me to smarten up I was declaring nuclear warfare.

I told him I never asked him to shut down his life for me. That he doesn't have to be here, that I never wanted him to put his happiness and normalcy on hold to deal with the likes of me and if he didn't want to be here, well, then he could leave.

A long time ago when we had a similar argument and I levelled some very awful words at him he did leave. This time, though, he didn't.

I bet he considered it. I bet he turned it over in his head and thought about the possibility of going home to the rock, or of finding someone who was level and kind and an academic match for him and he'd have his happy cookie cutter life where they would say grace at the table and his wife would actually eat instead of pushing food around and maybe she'd even be plump and have no dark circles under her eyes and she'd never act less than perfect and she'd host garden parties and at night they would sit and rock in their chairs on the porch and we'd all die of boredom watching that take place but Jacob would be thrilled. Fucking thrilled.

Of course if he did that he's have to give up the emotion junkie, the sex maniac, and the most beautiful girl in the world, all names that have been thrown at me since breakfast.

And he can SIT IN THERE ON THE PHONE WITH LOCH OFFERING ME UP FOR GRABS IF LOCH THINKS HE CAN DO A BETTER JOB because hey, I can HEAR THAT, HONEY but in all honesty, I don't think he's going anywhere. I just think he's looking for reinforcement from people who know me well, and Cole is dead, so no one can ask Cole.

I don't think Jacob has a sweet clue what he should do.

That makes two of us.

I will however, give him about an hour before he gets scared and breaks this door. Because time is the key to unlock Bridget. Why can't he understand this?

Ten apples up on top.

When I opened my eyes this morning I was on my back, sandwiched between Jacob's elbows that he was resting on, smiling at me lazily, cozily. His beautiful blue eyes cross when he's tired and I made a mental note to book an eye appointment for him. He's been having trouble with night-driving for a while now and reads a million and twenty-nine hundred words a day, so I am not surprised by this.

The thunderstorms. There is no rest for the wicked. There's something so delicious about being woken up in the dark hours of the morning when the sky is at war outside our window, his lips on my shoulder, his hands, well,

Oh the places you'll go!

It makes me laugh, and not in a Dr. Seuss, you're so clever type of way.

He can wrap one hand completely around my thigh and make his fingers touch. He's electric, energetic and ambitious and I'll never push him away in favor of sleep, I'll just catch up in some other desperate way. It's the year 2007, hasn't someone come up with instantly-rested pills yet? There's a pill for just about everything else.

I'm not supposed to have coffee anymore. Maybe my eyes cross too. I get them tested religiously every two years because I'd be terrified to lose my sight. I could live without my hearing. When it's gone I'll roll out the songs I have filled my head with and sing them to myself for the rest of time. I'll feel Jacob's voice through his skin when my ears are useless for anything other than captive bead rings.

Speaking of which. I noticed I was earringless on one side last night. Asymmetrical. Which means Jacob probably ate a bead and then the ring fell out. I'm sure it happened last Tuesday in our rush to consecrate those hard wooden steps. He's eaten more than a few pieces of jewelry in the past year. It's almost become a sport.

He says none of the jewelry tastes as good as the one tiny spot in the hollow of my throat that is perpetually warm and smells of his patchouli but tastes like roses.

I have a feeling Jacob has never actually eaten a rose, not that I would put it past him looking at him through my rose-colored glasses, knowing his romantic bent is a mile wide, I just think they taste gross. Because I checked. Because it's impossible to lick the hollow of your own throat and his tasted like soap and I said Oobleck and he laughed and laughed. I had a fleeting thought maybe we matched taste. I guess not.

Unsure.

(I'm having an awful time with words and with boundaries and I don't feel like talking about how I feel anymore for this day so...here. Figure out if it's a memory or one of those juicy short stories like from a magazine you take to the beach. Answer is at the bottom, no cheating.)

    It was....uncharacteristic to say the least. And I don't know what I will find.

    I shove the shifter knob hard into fourth and squint at the faded grey ribbon ahead of me. It stretches west and I know I have to crack the whip if I want to be on sand by nightfall.

    I roll my window down with my left hand and stick my elbow out, resting my arm on the uncomfortable edge of the window frame. My cigarette crackles quietly as I take a long drag and then I impatiently tear it out with my left hand, tapping it in midair as my old Volkswagen counts miles with it's worn tires and overhot engine. I look in the back and check to see that I do have my denim jacket and then I resume my bored stare through the windshield, a smirk playing around the corners of my mouth, too timid to reveal itself in full. I let my hand go slack and the end of my cigarette bounces off the pavement in a shower of sparks behind the van as I speed away. I haven't smoked in years but for this trip it seemed as necessary as packing my gas card. Priorities don't come easily for me.

    I wipe the back of my hand across my ear. Damn mosquitoes! Were they following me? I had expected to encounter only rude drivers and truckers on this last-night odyssey, not a legion of the bloodsuckers I had come to despise. Maybe if I lean a little harder on the gas I could make them a recent memory. I fumble on the seat next to me for another cigarette. If I have to chain smoke all the way to the coast to keep the mosquitoes at bay, then I have a full pack and a new zippo and a six-pack of diet 7-up to keep me from turning to dust along the way.

    Dammit. I spill ash on my blue t-shirt. It was my last clean shirt for the trip and I had hoped to stay somewhat presentable. My hair is windblown into knots and parted haphazardly. My jewelry, left behind. My favorite jeans are baggy and cinched in with a borrowed belt to keep them up and the jacket stolen from an old boyfriend back in high school. My bag in the back is stuffed with previously worn clothes and dogeared romance novels, I have hours to daydream but no time for laundry or second guesses. I have no home and I wonder if I will find a new one tonight or if this is a wild-goose chase that will never end.

    The smirk surfaces at last and I turn the radio up loud, singing along with Don Henley while I make an attempt to shake the ash off my lap. Done. Suddenly I spot the sign for the exit I need. Begun as a boring chore, the endless twilight drive becomes a real-time emergency as I sit straight up, smash the signal knob and glance over my shoulder before changing lanes. In seconds I am off the freeway, headed down a forgotten highway from which I can now get my first taste of salt air. A few choice words later I find the dirt road hidden behind the younger roadside trees, unmarked, the road to what will ultimately be my salvation or my demise.

    His phone call, haltingly made in the dark of the previous morning left me in knots as tangled as my hair. Asking me if I would come. Telling me he needed me, now, an urgent cadence in his voice, his breathing harsh in my ear as I softly console him. He just kept repeating that he wanted me.

    And yet I paced up and down in the driveway for over an hour tonight, kicking the dust, tearing out weeds, and staring at the van as if it were an eight ball that I could shake and turn over and etched into the undercoating would be my answer. Is this the right thing to do? Do I go to him after all this time?

    Fuck it.

    Yes.

    Yes, I will come to you. And you'd better fucking be there when I arrive, unlike the last time I tried to meet you and you never showed up, but somehow you snuck past me and broke my heart and now I'm giving you one last chance to fix it.

    I reach the end of the dirt road and the view stops me in my tracks. The fiery golden ball is slipping into the ocean in front of me. It never fails to take my breath away and at the same time I find the strength to give a heavy sigh as I cast my eyes around and realize I am still alone.

    He isn't here, he didn't come.

    I sink into the wet sand, no longer caring if my jeans stay clean or even dry and I slam both fists down together in front of me, a sob escaping with the force with which my hands strike the beach. Tears follow their path down my face, painting lines in the light coating of dust from the long drive and I smear them from their patterns until my face is filthy and now I am crying hard at his betrayal and at my naivety to trust him again after hurting so much for so long.

    An engine drowns out my sobs and suddenly he is there, screaming my name as he jumps out of his truck and runs the rest of the way to where I sit. He falls to his knees beside me in the surf and suddenly I am desperate to be next to him, to be pressed up against him. His hands are in my hair, holding my face, touching me all over in his attempts to gather me into his arms. He kisses the tears, my cheeks, lips, eyelashes and ears. He tells me over and over again that he's here now, that he missed the turn and was five miles down the highway before he realized he had gone too far.

    He whispers that he is sorry. For what happened when I left, for the time since, for everything. And I don't hear him over the crashing of the waves but it matters little, because in his arms I am finally home.

(If you guessed that this is a true story, you're right. Only it wasn't about Jacob. The man who fell to his knees in the sand? That was Cole.)

A most pathetic exchange.

My extra-long, extra-soft weekend is just about over. I think I'm all favored-out, I'm peopled-out and I'm not thinking very hard today, I'm trying to close the holes in my own armor before today's first visit with Joel at the helm. Dr. Important Joel, who is probably the kind of man who writes PhD. after his name when he signs the guestbook at a wedding, and I'm guessing he practices shooting his cuffs in mirrors as some men do because it appears to be a studied talent. No less devastating to Bridget, who likes that sort of thing, but far too practiced to be natural.

Sometime this morning while I talk with Joel and Jacob exhausts the nearby bookstore, Loch will make his exit. I told him it was time to go, that he didn't come out for me, he came out for him. I lost him yesterday and by nine o'clock I assumed he was visiting friends or checking out old haunts until I went out to get the lights and there he was, sitting in a chair with an empty case of beer at his feet.

Loch is hardcore, whereas a case of beer would have buried Jacob somewhere in the hundred acre wood, wiping every last trace of Flogging Molly lyrics from his brain forever, Loch simply gets sweeter and a little slower and usually a lot more open. He isn't an open kind of guy otherwise. I was about to be treated to his slurred confession, the likes of which he rarely ventures into.

He smiled at me in the dark.

Oh Loch, you're fuckered, aren't you?

Not anymore. I've just about come out the other side.

What in the hell is going on?

Come and sit with me, Bridgie. Just for a while.

Okay. Tell me what's going on.

Are things okay?

No, but they will be.

What about Jake?

What about him?

You love him.

So much.

Then what was the rush for?

We were tired of waiting. You know this story. Come on, it's time for bed.

You should have had more time to play around, more time to have fun.

Please don't, Loch.

Maybe we should have had another go-round, princess.

Loch. Enough.

Like we did just before you got engaged to Cole. My God, it was better than high school.

Stop it. That was sixteen years ago.

It should be a prerequisite when you get engaged.

No it shouldn't.

What's this?
There was Jacob, poking his head out the door.

Loch's had too much and he's nostalgic.

No, Jake, I've had too much and I'm wistful.

About?

Sleeping with your lovely wife. I was hoping for a crack at every year or more.

Loch, you'll get a crack alright. Across the head. Maybe you need to get some sleep.

And maybe you should stay out of this, preacher man.

Yeah, I think I will.

Jacob actually went back inside. I was stunned. He trusts us both.

Bridgie, I wanted a life like this. With you. I was the first one to love you. I taught you things.

A million years ago. What the hell happened to everyone just being my friends?
 
I never fell out of love with you.

No, don't.

You make it impossible not to. The little blonde, so pretty and bubbly and fragile, who has worked her way into everyone's heart. Everyone cares about you.

Then why can't it stay caring?

I don't know. How do you steal everyone's hearts?

I don't. I wanted one and I took it.

Bridgie, he's rebound guy. You two are too intense, everyone's simply waiting and holding their breath.

They can stop. I love Jake. There's no rebound here.

If things don't work out, do you have a plan?

Yeah, I die alone. There won't ever be another man like Jacob for me. He's extraordinary.

He must be.

He is, Loch.

But if it doesn't work?

Hey, Loch, did you know I had this conversation with Ben already?

Ben's a fucking pervert. He just wants inside you.

And you?

I want the whole package. You and me, we have always belonged together.

And here I thought we had platonic down to a science now.

You did. I just kept quiet.

This is the last thing I need right now, Loch. I need your friendship, I'm running out of friends.

With all due respect, Bridge, you don't have any friends.

Stop it.

We all want the same thing. You wonder why Chris and PJ are well into their thirties and single? Oh and in the summer when you dress so sparingly spending time with you is like winning the lottery. You don't think they whack off to your face at night in their dreams? You have no friends. Just a line up.

Just then the screen door banged open again.

That's enough, Loch.

Jake, you see it.

We'll talk tomorrow. Jesus, Loch.

Jacob waited for Loch to go inside and stagger slightly down the hall to the guest room and then he locked up behind us. We went to bed in silence upstairs and I lay in Jacob's arms and cried.

Friendless.

An inevitable truth, because not once did Jacob deny it. He knows. Hell, I imagine I knew too and just refused to let the idea bloom in my head because my boys have been such huge helps to me and such comfort and fun over the years. I was hoping that hidden agendas weren't so rampant. I was convinced men and women can be friends. Loch was the last person I would have expected this from, the very last and I don't want to lose him but after an admission like that things are never going to be the same. Things have never been the same anyway. This is not my life anymore.

Now I just have to get everyone else shitfaced and throttle the truth out of them too.

A hole where my heart should be.

Things have quieted down. The sleep, comforts of my friends, time to talk and do little else, as chores and errands and babysitting was divided and conquered easily leaves me on sure footing. Which is good, I need my wits about me, Loch's presence puts a kink in Jacob's armor as they unwittingly try to pull rank on each other-Loch for time served as my friend, and Jacob for his role as my husband. They only thing they seemingly agree on is that they both want to help me get back. For now it's just the way things are but having Loch drop his plans and fly in for a week and hearing about his sudden change of heart and apathy towards any personal relationships outside of us is disheartening and weird. I just can't deal with it today and he won't say much so for now it's comfortably strained, if that makes sense.

Claus opened his office to Jacob and I on Saturday afternoon and we talked to death. I put the rest of it out there, the remaining horrors I had kept. Claus is here for Jacob to lean on as much as he's for me. He's well-paid and over-qualified and no bullshit. He's also on the verge of retirement which is where Joel comes in. Joel's too young. I don't trust him, but Claus is hoping for a long and slow, successful transition because he said this time I'm not going to orchestrate my progress.

I've been put on a meal plan. Which is interesting. My weight has dipped amazingly low. (The number I posted here has been removed, fuck you). My periods stopped. A lot of things stopped. I am still going, however. Such a fucking mess. I can go escape with headphones and being held and then I really don't want to face anything else. I feel ashamed and weak. I feel sad and fucking tired. I feel guilty.

And love, I feel love when there shouldn't be any. Jacob's here. I tried to break him on Saturday and he didn't budge an inch though I know his soul is screaming for anything but some of the things he had to hear. Continuing to let it out in bits and fragments isn't helping. Claus wants us empty, clean slates to work towards substance and strength. He is amazed and I'm so buoyed by his pride in my progress but at who's expense, Jacob's? Is that fair? Is it right? Is it time?

Attempt, if you will, to remain positive like I must.

Jacob has been nothing but loving and reassuring and so protective. He's sad that he didn't try to look past me and see for himself, instead he chose to trust me and I was so untrustworthy. He's sick over it and I already dealt with the shock, years ago. Alone. And that might make me stronger than I thought overall but it still leaves me mind-breakingly weak. His words, when pressed for a reaction, gently, Jacob looked up with his eyes so drained and he said we had just progressed from heart-breaking to mind-breaking and that he's just...stunned by the admissions and by the memories I keep, right under his nose. And the worst part is I shut it off, I shut it down to keep him safe. Again.

Claus is surprised I am not worse. Joel thinks I'm still holding out. He's right and that's why I have trouble with him. Jacob thinks I'm a wounded bird, and Loch, well, Loch thinks life should start over.

I will only worry about my Jacob, the rest of them can take care of themselves.

Best friends forever.

I've had a lot of time this weekend to study Jacob while he's awake and while he's asleep. Maybe it's because I'm spending a lot of time sitting and listening or just thinking or being caught-up on sleep and awake early in the mornings. I have more time to watch him, to enjoy how he does things, or listen to his words. A passive, undetected observer of a phenomenal man.

Part of what has always drawn me to Jacob is the conviction with which he talks, how he says what's on his mind, exactly what he feels, without any fear of reprisal or reproach. He just lets it out, he always has and it's beautiful. He has a way of putting things into a perspective that can gild ashes and turn sand into castles. It's rapturific.

Instead of keeping his mouth shut a million years ago he simply smiled at me in that pained way he gets and he said I love you. I think you should be with me. Even though I was already married. He didn't care, he was telling me how he felt.

This weekend I listened as he told Lisabeth a bit of our history, how he fell in love with me in one night and then we settled into being close friends with a remarkable tension that smothered us alive and it was a long, arduous test with spectacular results, because being able to marry his best friend has been his greatest joy. He regarded me with pride and I was digging my nails into my hands to prevent the unpreventable tears he moved me to.

Call it a love-in, call it cheesy, he's absolutely right. It is the most amazing feeling in the world to marry someone you know so well, having gotten to know them in a personal sense with a closeness free of the romantic attachments, free of the expectations of being in love. Oh, shoot, I know we were in love anyway, I know it wasn't fair to Cole and I know we teetered on the edge of right and wrong, taking turns waiting for each other to slip so we could make our very own oops-moments. I know he wanted me. I know I wanted him and I also know that we made incredibly good friends too, and that's what we fall back on when sometimes we suffocate each other with the love part.

We could steal each other's popcorn at the movies without asking, he's always given me his corduroy jacket before I told him I was cold, we'd feel like skating or going to the bookstore at the same times when no one else would. I knew all the foods he liked and all of his embarrassing teenage secrets. He knew of my still-raging unrequited teacher-crush from junior high, my fear of live lobsters and secret fear of heights and he was one of the few people I ever told that I was being hurt.

All of this gives us our foundation in a new marriage where we thought we were starting on the first block and had nothing to fall back on. We keep forgetting but not forgetting, if it makes any sense at all, how well we do know each other and how caring for each other as friends has made us slower to take offense and harder to rile as lovers.

We've learned to argue, at last. Just in the past two days, finally. Somehow. My God.

Jacob has just about caught up on his own sleep, finally letting go of his penchant for lying awake at night gazing at me with loving worry while I slumber carelessly in his arms. Aware of his concern every waking moment but right now my sleep is of the dead variety. Hard and long, drugged and stupefied. With vividly fucked-up dreams and nightmares I wouldn't wish on people who most definitely deserve them. When I wake up he's there, murmuring his shushes with his lips on my skin, arms keeping me safe and grounded on earth with no danger of bad thoughts carrying me away. Not complaining or deferring when I want more than a hush from his lips, when our needs take over us again and again.

By being my friend, Jacob knows without a doubt not to take it personally that I have issues about wanting to be on earth. Issues with knowing how to grieve, issues with change and issues with him having to coexist in the headspace I occupy. It's a tall order and of everyone I have ever known he would be the one I choose, because he is so strong. Because he tells me how he feels. He has never done that with anyone other than me and it means something incredible.

And watching him sleep, shower and make love to me gives me an appreciation for and a thorough thrill fed by a decade of coveting his magnificent body, since I had already captured his heart and his mind. His muscles were the icing on the cake, if icing came in packs of eight.

Being in love with Jacob is an endless gift. Not only because he can support my entire weight in the palm of one of his hands but that he can support my soul with the strength of his heart, a visible feat since he wears it on his sleeve for me and I carry it safely with me when I leave his arms.

Sitting beside him while he speaks of his love for me, occasionally raising my hand in his to kiss it or playing with my earring, I can hear it, I can see it and I feel it. It's captivating, having moved several of our friends into appreciative silence over the past few days.

I let him in, finally. I trust him. I told him everything I've been keeping from him, in some misguided fashion to make myself appear better to him in hopes that I would be worthy of him. Instead I had left him with questions that made me seem unworthy and now those questions are gone and he sees me. All of Bridget. Everything, good and bad and painful and difficult and wonderful and he's still here and still in love and confirmed as a permanent fixture. Cogs I left in our gears out of fear that were destructive have been removed, and he sees all of me now.

He told me that all of it would have helped if I had just gotten it out sooner, and he was concerned that I would willingly make myself out to be a monster when I clearly wasn't one, for his benefit. Touched that I wanted to be perfect in his eyes when he tells me I have been nothing but perfect, always and forever to him. He's relieved, again, that the rest of my past is on the table because it's one step closer to our future, our own history with our own memories, none of which are stolen or forbidden or the least bit disgraceful.

Okay, maybe some of them will be disgraceful but that's sanctioned disgrace. Because I married him, after all. And somehow I fell in love with him all over again, just now.

And the thing where he traces his thumb along my bottom lip? He still does it, possibly at least once every day or so, and it still knocks me fucking flat. Breathless.

Afterglows and farkles.

    So sacrifice yourself
    And let me have what's left
    I know that I can find
    The fire in your eyes
    I'm going all the way
    Get away please

    You take the breath right out of me
    You left a hole where my heart should be
    You got to fight just to make it through
    Cause I will be the death of you

The steel horses have arrived. And on them the unlikeliest group of city-cowboys ever. They went to the grocery store as a group and I can only imagine the looks they got as they milled around picking up steaks and ice cream, Ruth and Henry passed from shoulder to shoulder and zoomed up and down the aisles.

That would be Jacob, Loch, Sam and Ben with the kids, while Lisabeth, Erin and I stayed home and pondered the lilacs and looked at photo albums.

It's not a sunny long weekend, oh no. It was a spare three degrees this morning when Jacob turned me from spooning with him onto my back, pulling me underneath him for some quiet and gentle love, holding my head so hard against his shoulder when I started quiet-screaming that I left a mark. Later on he got up and went downstairs to hurriedly build a fire in the woodstove and then came back upstairs and we had a long hot shower together. When we came downstairs again the whole house was warm and Erin was making pancakes and bacon.

So cozy. I wish I could keep her but she has a life, a very good and stable one.

I'm waiting now for Jacob to decide he needs a motorcycle. He's the last holdout, even Sam rides. I'm betting cash money that over dinner the topic will turn to bikes (again) and he'll give me that sly grin that confirms my suspicion. I thought the return of the old truck would keep stars in his eyes for a while but I may have been wrong.

In any event, it's really nice to have some happy times. Some quietly happy, no-dark-allowed times with my friends, who are my family. The whole wild bunch of them.