You'll thank me later.

I found my brain, it had been poked full of holes and kicked into the corner. Weee. A lobotomy. Just what I've always wished for. And Jacob found his little wife and pulled her hands off the doorframe where her nails had dug in and forced her to drive downtown with him to attend her stupid session.

Today Joel wanted blood and instead I gave him tears. I went nowhere with anything. I sat in the chair and just held on to my stupid coffee cup for dear life and tried to tune him out. Jacob wasn't there, Claus wasn't there and I didn't want to be there. Every time he asked me to look at him it was as if I was seeing him through a window sheeted in rain and it was miserable and it didn't matter which direction he tried to take me in, I couldn't seem to go and so he stopped it early. He talked about his divorce. He's trying to make me trust him and I don't.

I don't trust anyone, for the record. Absolutely no one.

I came home and there was a message on the machine from Caleb to say hello to the kids and politely pretend that all is still well between everyone. The new neighbors left a bottle of wine on our back step, they make their own and they don't know us well yet and so I brought it inside and Jacob said it looked like it was shaping up to be a long day.

I hope not. But I have such a headache. It must be from the lobotomy.

    And if there's something wrong
    Who would have guessed it
    And I have left alone
    Everything that I own
    To make you feel like
    It's not too late
    It's never too late

    Even if I say
    It'll be alright


If I type really quietly maybe he won't find me in time to go to to counseling. I'd really rather not go.

Don'twanttogodon'twanttogo.

FUCK.

Ruthless thirst.

    You let me violate you.
    You let me desecrate you.
    You let me penetrate you.
    You let me complicate you.

Payback for Jacob's serenade waltz wasn't nearly so highbrow, because I'm not like that. I gave him what I have, I gave him what he wants. I put Closer on the stereo and he knew I was coming from three rooms away, late last night, circa eleven or so. I should have been in bed but I wanted him so bad everything hurt. Not a safe place for me to be.

He was so excited he met me at the door.

The fleeting realization that my nemesis, the chair with wheels was eventually repaired and is still being used because we haven't bothered to shop for a new one fluttered through my head. It would have to do.

It didn't do.

I didn't wear the cowboy hat either. I stuck to tried and true sweet lingerie because that's what Jacob likes best, things he buys for me.

He smiled at me.

I bit my lip.

And I got no chance to remember my lap dance, no chance to grind out on him, no chance to tease, as he simply took me by the wrists and pushed me down to the floor. And the song turned to mush in my head and my bracelet was broken and my hair pulled and oh God my head banged so hard on the floor at one point I had stars to keep me company while I tried to pick his apologies and kisses out of thin air. Because I don't like gentle sometimes, and the stars went well with the loud music and his relentless assault, his fingers in my ears and his thumbs in my mouth and his voice in my ear as he said things that made me smile, as he cried out more than once.

It sent me so far over the edge I was still falling when I woke up this morning. Everything is on fire. He is the perfect match, he just likes to pretend I'm not going to get away with anything, because he takes it first.

Which pretty much means payback was less something I could control. I have no concept of control. And he has more than just a romantic bent to him, a twist I won't even name but it's just dark enough to make Bridget so happy.

And we like it that way.

Today I have to add the errand of dropping my bracelet off to be fixed and Jacob has been struggling all morning to remember his name and wipe the smile off his face. So far he's been successful with neither.

It's okay, though. I can't find my brain.

Best Monday.

Sorry for the lateness of today's entry, I'm having a hard time putting this sort of morning into words because I'm speechless again and it's all Jacob's fault. But oh, do I feel it, the love that he holds for me.

Remember how I told you he is good at planning things right under my nose?

Remember how I said he told me he wanted our life together to be unforgettable?

Remember how much I said I dreaded Mondays (and Wednesdays and Fridays and most days that end in Y) because I find therapy difficult, Joel difficult and the neverending quest for mediocrity completely unreachable?

I didn't tell you how deeply offended Jacob gets when I seek out 'boring' and 'average'. That's the last thing he wants and he's taken those wishes of mine and worn them personally as insults.

And while he wore them he planned the next phase in his quest to keep his King of Romance crown. Because the last thing we're going to have is a boring, average marriage. I think he missed the point of my wish but that's okay.

It's more than okay.

You're SO not ready for this. I wasn't ready. Hell, I'm still not ready.

This morning I endured therapy, after a promise offered from Jacob that if I wore my prettiest summer dress he would take me out for breakfast afterward. I endured Joel and his false cheer and his professional overt familiarity and his stupid imported decaf and his awful habit of addressing Jacob when I'm sitting right there and so I attempted repeatedly to just ignore Joel and talked to Claus instead, as if Joel wasn't even in the room. I was quickly found out and suitably chided for my usual obstructions of justice. Same old same old. Let's just fast forward to when I could leave, stripped raw for yet another morning. Stick a fork in her, she's done.

While we were on our way to our late breakfast Jacob said he had a quick errand at one of the hotels, someone had left a package for him from one of the university conferences held there on the weekend. He said it might take a few minutes to track it down and I should come in and I can wander a bit in the shops in the lobby so I don't have to sit outside and breathe exhaust fumes (translation: I don't leave you alone anymore, ever. Which is okay, I was happy to keep him company).

Okay.

He poked around a bit, I suggested twice that he just go to the reception desk and ask, but he winked at me and went and poked his head in the piano bar that this hotel is famous for.

Oh, yeah, here it is. Just a minute, Bridge.

I turned to study some pretty blown glass in a window and then I heard him again,

Hey, princess, can you come in here for a second? I want you to see something.

Sure.

I followed him into the bar. It was empty, save for four people in the corner with instruments, I registered a drum kit, piano, saxophone, guitar. They nodded and smiled politely and I smiled in return.

Jake! There's a band practicing. Maybe we shouldn't be in here.

They're here for us, princess.

They started playing and Jacob asked for my hand and then I noticed the song was familiar. I was just about to tell him I knew it was Billy Joel when he started to sing.

Because this extraordinary man doesn't have a lick of self-consciousness in him, I didn't miss a word. He sings beautifully, nice and loud. He should have been a rock star.

    Don't go changing, to try and please me,
    You never let me down before,
    Don't imagine you're too familiar,
    And I don't see you anymore.

    I would not leave you in times of trouble,
    We never could have come this far,
    I took the good times, I'll take the bad times,
    I'll take you just the way you are.

    Don't go trying some new fashion,
    Don't change the colour of your hair,
    You always have my unspoken passion,
    Although I might not seem to care.

    I don't want clever conversation,
    I never want to work that hard,
    I just want someone that I can talk to,
    I want you just the way you are.

    I need to know that you will always be
    The same old someone that I knew,
    What will it take till you believe in me,
    The way that I believe in you?

    I said I love you, and that's forever,
    And this I promise from the heart,
    I couldn't love you any better,
    I love you just the way you are.

    I don't want clever conversation,
    I never want to work that hard,
    I just want someone that I can talk to,
    I want you just the way you are.

The absence of any self-consciousness failed to prevent his voice breaking on the very last two lines and so he whisper-sang them again, which I have come to love more than anything in the world and we stopped and shared a long, very sweet kiss before turning to applaud the band who bowed and then politely clapped for us.

We wound up doing bagels on the run, as we ran out of time and had to head back to pick up the children for lunch. I, of course, had the crow-flavored bagel, bested once again by Jacob, who puts my petulance in perspective against the Big Picture with his gentle demonstrations of how much he loves me and how much faith he has in us.

I think any doubts I had remaining got carried away this morning on the lilting notes of the saxophone. That or they simply vanished into thin air when I slid my hands down until they rested on Jacob's marble biceps and I rested my head against his chest so that I could feel his voice, being oh so careful not to disrupt his heart, which beats on his sleeve for me and is the strongest, most delicate work of art ever made by God. Completely unprotected and yet completely safe, like his iron wings. We're a study in contrasts and he's asking for so little and I make it so complicated. That stops here.

    I just want someone that I can talk to,
    I want you just the way you are.

Now please don't pinch me, I'm keeping this feeling.

Keeping it.

Forever.

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.)