Fastball.

Anyone could see the road that they walk on is paved in gold
It's always summer, they'll never get cold
They'll never get hungry
They'll never get old and gray
You can see their shadows wandering off somewhere
They won't make it home
But they really don't care
They wanted the highway
They're happy there today, today

Here, since we're being goofy today. This is one of the very few songs Lochlan will sing out loud. I have more to say but instead I'm going to be smart and just go dress shopping instead.

Sugar burns.

He declared the food fight officially over after a particularly violent ambush left Daniel with a fruit loop up his nose. Whoops. The kitchen looks like a talking toucan exploded in it, there is fruit loop shrapnel all over everything, in the plants, in my ears, my hair is candy-coated and the box on the table is empty now.

Daniel started sweeping up while I started trying to clean up from breakfast. He failed to notice when I put the milk away I found the perfect ammunition-a leftover juicebox that was open but still full, because sometimes I grab one when I'm on the go. No one else likes them. I don't like them either. I would have thrown this one out in a week or so.

I rose up from behind the fridge door and let loose all over him, squeezing the box as hard as I could. He screamed, running around trying to block the spray, finally taking cover near my laptop, threatening to hug it close and get it all sticky and possibly ruin it forever.

So I did what any self-respecting outlaw girl would do. I dropped the box, put my hands up and surrendered. I give up. You win.

It's not over, though.

Not by a long shot.

To keep.

Your Cinderella stories, for a price.

Jake used to tell me I could have made a career out of missing Benjamin. If only someone would have paid me.

He's probably right. I started waiting for Ben before his plane took off, I started marking days and counting hours before he was settled in and I decided I was going to take it personally within seconds of being told where he was going, and when he would be back.

Lucky for all of us, I have since changed my mind on that last point.

I won't take it personally because it isn't personal and it has nothing to do with me. On the other hand, it has everything to do with me and in my universe you need to be tough and you need to step up and swing for home because I can't. I don't care if you score, I don't care if you foul out, just make the damn effort on my behalf and you've already won.

Be my hero because you are my hero.

Ben has won his war, he just needs to clean up the collateral damage and that is what he has gone back to his battlefield to do.

Lochlan is taking good care of me, because he promised Ben that he would. He made similar promises to Cole and to Jake and for some reason I wound up with a great bunch of guys I owe my life to. Lochlan made some difficult and incredibly unpopular choices for our benefit, on our behalf, and I was too selfish and too blind to see that he did this for us, for Ben and I, that he knew I would hate him and he sent Ben away anyway, because Ben needs to get better so that Bridget can have her Happily Ever After finally, at long last. I didn't see that, and I'm sorry.

Heroes come in many forms, and I am a lucky girl. I'm just usually thinking too loud to hear you when you tell me.

Blink.

I never made it anywhere. We'll just call it yet another impulsive action that serves to prove that I still need heavy-handed guidance. Do you think they know what I need? I doubt it. They don't listen.

They act, however, and in an ironic twist of fate, Ben is going away and I am not. The next few months are clear, the opportunity is being taken and he's going somewhere to clean up his act. As in, he's gone. Now. Already. Seth moves fast. Not quite fast enough, however, because Ben got himself back into trouble right under everyone's nose and it took a lovely dramatic set of events for them to see how much trouble, precisely.

If you remember, it was a little less than a year ago that Ben went away to dry out and showed up on my doorstep four days later. This time things will be a little different and he won't be able to come home until he's finished. We get that. We can deal with that. Just fix him. Please.

In a further ironic twist, Lochlan will be staying here indefinitely now. He can do that (dumb freelancing) and I should be grateful, he says, that he's here to help out while Ben goes to Emotherapy.

Bear witness.

I'm standing here right now with plane tickets pending on my screen, fully charged phones and packed bags and I'm paralyzed and Lochlan, if you take this one down I'll never speak to you again.

In a nutshell, Ben's been drinking for days and I don't know why. Probably because he had a momentary wobble of self-esteem and decided that he wasn't tough enough and didn't deserve us and maybe Lochlan should be the one to just step in and take over finishing what Cole started and Jacob ran with but couldn't manage either. Last time I checked, any total moron could manage to have a family and a normal life but this isn't any normal family so silly me, I should know better.

Why aren't they strong enough? What is it about me that makes them fight like dogs and love like men and behave like total creeps?

Because gee, I don't know, Lochlan egged Ben on (just like he did with Jake) until he had nothing else left and then moved right in to collect the spoils. Only he doesn't want me to write about his actions because he would much prefer that everyone believes he is here in town, working hard to secure a future and pining for his own estranged fiance and baby girl back East and that he's here as a friend, and such a smart one so he can keep everyone and everything pulled together and then everyone thinks that BRIDGET is even more of a mess than usual or BRIDGET can't get her act together.

It isn't BRIDGET. And it certainly isn't BEN and TOUGH FUCKING LUCK, LOCHLAN, I DON'T LOVE YOU ANYMORE.

Please, God, just hear me this time.

Oh, and one more thing.

Don't follow us. I don't know where we're going yet but you're not invited.

Because I thought I could handle it.

Last night I woke up to angry voices. I went down to the den, and lo and behold, Ben is there with his fresh bottle of whatever, and he and August are in each other's faces and Lochlan is standing away from them, arms crossed, staring out the garden doors into the dark like he's looking for something, and then when I made my presence known, Ben lurches out of August's airspace and heads for me and they were all over him before he could get to me.

I yelled Leave him alone! and then Loch somehow figured he could fix this. Whatever this was. I don't know. I was hardly even awake. He pushed me out of the doorway and shut the door and I heard August yell at Ben to figure out what he was going to do and fast and Ben yelled back that he had it under control. Lochlan just listened with me and stared at me. I could have slapped him but instead I took one look at him and pointed out how what they worked out doesn't work and they should just leave us alone. Then I walked away from him, down the hall, made it almost to the kitchen before I lost my nerve and went back and went through the door behind Lochlan as he walked back into the den and I went to hold Ben and he pushed me away and said Don't let her see me like that, get her out. I'll hurt her. I always hurt her.

Only it wasn't the slightly confident Benspeak that I know by now when he's had just enough to soften the edge on his life. It wasn't anything I've heard before and I waited while my brain was sorting out what my ears told it they heard and when all the words were in order and straightened out and the consonants and endings were added. I waited too long and by then he was screaming at them, staring at me and really to lurch again, fighting to get to me, probably to slam the door on me so I wouldn't have to see him.

This time when I turned to leave Lochlan was in front of me and he put his arms around me and I caved in. This time I could hear Ben yelling that I should have gone with someone who was normal and maybe it isn't too late, that he's so sorry he couldn't take the pressure and he got greedy and then Lochlan put his hands over my ears and I couldn't hear anything else, but I knew that Ben was still screaming because I woke up this morning, still in Lochlan's arms with Ben's voice was still in my head but he isn't here and I need him and I think they've taken him away from me and if they did heads are going to roll. Probably mine first. Oh, too late. Nevermind.

Good enough.

Apparently a few rather quiet days at home with fresh snow and extra fruit were needed, and sorely. They helped to shore up the eroding mental strength required for me to just deal with things people deal with every day. Maybe I keep myself in a bubble too much. Maybe I should just listen.

The flu is not the flu and I'm not pregnant. I'm taking some amazingly kick-ass iron pills that in order to make me feel human and have energy, first they must suck the life out of me and leave me miserable, ready to vomit at the first sign of heat, oxygen or hell, pick something. I have to eat more. They told me to take with food. Apparently coffee is not food. I now take with bagel.

I don't plan to address the whole pregnancy topic with you anymore, internet. If you were around when I was pregnant two years ago then you get that. If not, then next time work on your punctuality.

This morning also brough the sting of hot tears of disappointment, when a tiny little story I had a lot of hope for made it's way back to me from a publication I wanted to be a part of. It's funny, too. I was just describing last evening in an email how this industry is not for the faint of heart and here I am, faint of heart like nothing you've ever seen before, smack in the middle of trying to call it a life. This story was very close, rather personal and it was out for four months and the letter said they considered it and then considered it again, and ultimately they passed on it.

Par for the course, but the sting is still always there and always fresh. In amongst the vomitish, overtired, non-pregnant, freshly-ironed tearful feelings for a Monday morning, you might just catch a glimpse of what keeps it going.

I sit on my knees, hunched over to the ground, my hands cupped around a tiny candle, keeping the flame from the wind. That stupid flame makes me get up, dust off my skirts and take another goddamned iron pill, write another story that's going to take me on a rollercoaster of hope and accomplishment and failure too, and spend another day raising my children without the genetic shackles of faint hearts and fragile egos. Stomping out the fire that licks up my skirt because as always, I'm standing too close.

Back on the horse. I am the lone ranger. Only I'm not lone, nor do I range. Do I range?

I do ramble, I know that much.

Level with the weather instead of still under it.

There is some random blessing in having the guys around tonight, piled into the living room, sprawled out on every soft surface they can fit, playing Halo Wars. Even if my presence is only useful in the sense that, every fifteen seconds, someone calls out to ask if I'm sure the internet says that in the fourth mission, the skull is next to the bronze statue, on the steps near base two.

I should start making things up.

Okay, it says for this one, it's next to the gilded unicorn, at the top of the hill west of the stone turret.

What the...unicorn? There's no unicorn here, Bridge.

Keep playing, it must be there somewhere...

Believe me, I've resorted to treachery and misinformation only out of sheer boredom. I must be feeling better.

Don't rush this, baby.

She said
I don't know why you ever would lie to me
Like I'm a little untrusting
When I think that the truth is gonna hurt you
And I don't why you couldn't just stay with me
You couldn't stand to be near me
When my face don't seem to want to shine
Cause its a little bit dirty well
Don't just stand there
Say nice things to me

Hmm, it's Saturday, it's still dark out and I still feel like someone ran over me with a tractor. There is a dirty guitar sound layered from the speakers that makes me check my phone every fifteen seconds because I think I hear it ringing but it's not. This is why most of the boys use conventional rings for their phones, since my penchant for using the bridges of my favorite heavy alternative songs (not the one quoted above, for it's pop) end up blended into the mix, getting lost.

It's okay, what I miss I will catch with the blinky light that tells me I missed it. My phone is just like a butler, only it doesn't bring me orange juice after sex. Which means Ben is my butler. Sorry, mom.

I'm in skinny jeans and a big black hoodie today with my fortune cookie long sleeved T underneath. Saturday socks. No, really, they say Saturday on the soles. I have my corporate sellout cup from Starbucks pushed in front of my nose and my coffee is almost gone and why I'm posting before anything has happened instead of after things happen so I would actually have something to write about is anyone's guess.

I have stopped wearing earrings. Every five years or so my body rebels and I wind up pulling out all the steel and going bare. Then I poke a whole new round of fresh holes and begin again. Right now the only thing left is the barbell in my tongue. Maybe I should just stick with the tattoos and be done with it. They don't get red or migrate or drive me nuts. They just are. A living canvas. I didn't even tell you about the latest one. Choose your words, choose them wise. Tiny but profound, it makes me happy. The grammar sucks but the sentiment blows my mind.

As it should.

Words are what it's all about, and I have so many. Take a large pin and stick it in my head and I will burst into a silent explosion, letters raining down in a ten-mile radius of devastation, covering everything.

You'll be able to read it perfectly.

At the bitter end, I lost my nerve.

Heaven help you.

There is always a song in my head but today it plays slightly muted and it skips a little and jumps here and there, I can barely hear it, almost like how when you duck under the surface in pools that play music you sometimes catch a melody but it's always full of bubbles and distortion and I know my hearing is bad but is there a point to piping songs into water in the first place?

I vote no.

August and I are drawing cartoons again, music on low, a fire stoked high, not so much talking as just hanging out, no obligations, no personality clashes, no egos to coddle or soothe, just space and time and sharpies with fine points and the scanner somehow legoed to my laptop long enough to make files to send to Ben's phone and every hour or so I get a one line text message that says ahahahahahahahaahaha and then another hour goes by and another message arrives with some variation in the number of those two letters. Ben and Seth have gone somewhere private hopefully to remove Ben's head and re-position on his neck, but straight this time, I think it gets habitually cross-threaded and he holds it up with effort. I wouldn't be surprised in the least if I see him later today and his eyes are level pools with the bubbles in the middle, showing he is straight and true. While that would be nice, it isn't possible because humans are human and princesses are notoriously princess-y and life is amazingly unpredictable at best and so in the future I think people would be best served to learn how to deal with change and how to expect the unexpected and why you should never try to put a box around your life because just when you have it all taped down and secured against the wind you realize everything is going to change and you just wasted all that tape.