54321 (Nightwatch).

(Don't.)

Ben and I were in the living room. The fire was low, the lights were off. I was tucked into Ben's arm while his free hand traced my ears, lips, nose, forehead. His eyes are so black, it's as if they grow larger when it's dark. It's beautiful. It's frightening. His breathing is even. He doesn't seem tired. I am falling asleep staring at him. He could do this for hours. He will regularly do this for hours, as if he is memorizing my features. One finger across my eyelashes and then down my cheek. Under my jaw and then he leans in for a kiss. An endless one in which I need to relax completely and breathe through him or not breathe at all.

His skin is cool. He is gentle, no razorburning tonight. Time has stopped moving. The stars have fixed into place in the sky and everything has fallen away. I go to whisper something and his hand returns to my face as he pulls away to look at me. He quiets me and then rubs his thumb across my bottom lip and my brain begins to fight. Putting Jacob in his place. A shattery-slick doubling of Ben's image that briefly turns to blonde and then I struggle to bring it back again. The image locks on Ben once more. I take a sudden, deep breath and he tightens his hold on me and returns to his quiet explorations. Earlobe. Hairline. The white-line scar under my nose.

I feel his whole body tense and then I realize we're not alone and I look up, upside down and see Lochlan standing in the door, bathed in light from the foyer, red curls damp and shining.

Leave us. A growl from Ben. It's not a request, it's an order. His possessiveness is incredible to me. Sometimes it is larger than life. Sometimes it is nowhere to be found. I have not seen the pattern yet, it simply depends on the day. It depends on the weather and it depends on the moment. This is one of them.

Lochlan chuckles. I know that sound. That's his challenge. His I-can't-believe-you-think-I'm-going-to-do-what-you-ask laugh. Incredulous, but then he holds out his helmet in a mock salute and heads out into the hallway again, slamming the door behind him. I am just being held into another kiss when I hear the motorcycle roar off, up the mountain. Away from me.

Lochlan does that on purpose. Night drives because he knows I will remain half-awake. He never cared if I slept. The others would stand guard, count hours, demand to see the dark circles and then admonish me endlessly for my poor sleeping, concern taking a front seat to everything else. Lochlan always told me when I would sit, wide-eyed, counting stars while he drifted off, that when I got tired enough I would sleep and until then worrying about it would only make it worse.

Early in the morning in total darkness when Ben sleeps he'll let go and I will startle awake again, needing to see if Lochlan ever came home. I will tiptoe down the quiet halls and through rooms until I arrive at his closed door. I will never knock. When I am satisfied that he is safe, home and present then I will sleep. And only then. In Lochlan's arms wrapped tight around me but facing away from him, toward the window, a soft breeze touching my face, dreaming of Ben. This is the time I am given that is my own, without question.

Lochlan does not need to memorize my features, he already knows them so well. Nostalgia serves as the axiom for his emotions and the rules are set by the circus as always. Don't get comfortable. Pulling up stakes is a daily event. He is too worn out from work to see to it that I sleep, so never mind, here, give guard to someone more capable because you're a walking hazard at this point.

A kiss on the same cheek traced by his friend and I slip away when the sun comes up. Back to my life, away from the past.

I return to the present and climb under the quilts and Ben holds his arms out. I am flush against him and his hand cradles my head. Stay with me, he whispers in his sleep. I am captive, unable to even nod and so I remain still, my arms wrapped around his neck, trying to will my still-warm flesh to transfer heat to him. He is cool still, exhausted and unable to fight in his dreams.

I will stay awake and fight for him, too. I'm not sure if their terrors are alive or dead though. Probably both. Just like mine.

Albatross.

I wouldn't have shown you such mercy.

That is why you failed.

Jacob would always pick up the flattest pumpkin he could find at the pumpkin patch and pretend to shot-put it at Ben.

He would yell Fore. As if they were on the golf course.

Ben hates golf. He thinks golf clubs are stupid and once took an old electric guitar out on a nine-hole course. He was marginally drunk that day and was asked to leave repeatedly. Jacob finally picked him up and dragged him to the truck and brought him home.

I instructed Ben to go crash in the guest room and told him not to emerge for at least fifteen hours at which point there would be aspirin, coffee, juice and dry toast for him. The guitar was left behind in the rough (where he threw it) and never recovered. Jacob ruptured a muscle in his back lifting two hundred pounds of unruly Ben with his arms and next time offered to first knock Ben out and then drag him out by the fauxhawk.

Ben never played golf again. So when the lawyers invited the boys to play golf yesterday it was a pretty easy refusal. We went to the pumpkin patch instead.

Ben doesn't generally like to touch the pumpkins until the knives come out to carve them. You would think he would take his bull-in-a-china-shop routine and extend it to a pumpkin patch but he's very solemn about it and he always wants to choose the exact right one. The perfect one. The Great Pumpkin. And so we'll wind up buying twelve or twenty-seven of them by the time Halloween arrives. There are already three on the verandah and a few handfuls of decorative tiny ones scattered around the house. Which I thought looked amazing. Add in another dozen outside and people will soon start thinking Bridget is selling pumpkins.

Great.

Or maybe not.

Ben is out back with Jacob's old golf clubs and the gates wide open to the ocean. He is teeing off with the mini pumpkins, watching them sail off the cliff into the sea. The ones that aren't exploding on contact, anyway. A good two hundred yards, I would wager. I think he's finally figured out the game.

Hopefully the guitars will stay indoors but with Ben I never say never.

Well, not anymore anyway.

Thing one and thing two.

(If I spin the dial and count the squares going this way in the game of life, I can ignore Caleb's attempt to change a whole bunch of little nitpicky things on our custody arrangements, which sent us back to court. I can effectively turn a deaf ear to his attempt to squeeze me with a power play after I made a move to stop his bullshit. Things quiet back down and life returns to normal, albeit with a heaping serving of the usual quarter-century of coercion and sexual abuse that seems to be like infected oxygen to me.

If I count the squares the other way I can call him on all of it, deploy Batman and frankly wind up worse. Far worse. Once I open that door there is no closing it again and I'm really not ready for that. Hell, I still wake up every morning expecting to see Jake. Sometimes Cole. I'm not strong enough to hold down a single sheet of paper with my words and you want me to do what? No, go away now, please and I'll pretend I didn't hear you either.

Be disappointed in me. You won't be the first.

It's far easier to literally lie down and take it and I am foolish for thinking otherwise. I try to continue to preserve my dignity but it's like gilding mud as it's flying through the air.)

That's what's in my head while the boys are busy making other plans. Aren't you sorry you asked?

Ben took me out for lunch yesterday at a cozy little spot by the water. We sat and watched the boats bobbing in the wake of the ferries and we had hot bowls of chowder and talked. We existed in the moment. We paid far too much for a simple lunch but left holding hands. We had a few hours to breathe alone and be contended and in this day you take what you can get. Selfishly, hungrily. We've had a lot of small pockets of time in the past four days to enjoy each other alone. A first. A best. I can't quantify what it means to be with him and not have to be renovating/packing/moving/unpacking/transitioning/deflecting/defusing all the time. We're like hey, watch a movie? Grab a coffee? Take off all your clothes and go back to bed at ten in the morning?

Yes, please.

All of that. And that is nice and I don't talk about Ben alot because Ben is a constant. A quiet, level, hotter than hot constant and there is no drama I need to sort out with him (right now). He is all, just come lie in my arms and nothing else matters in the whole world.

He's right.

Good people.

Spent the morning in court. The arbitrator has labelled Caleb and I high-conflict parents. She said that's just extraordinary considering we've never been married to each other and really for the resources and the support we have at our disposal we should have our acts together a little better than this. That this case was being handed unconventionally because we're an unconventional family. She then yelled for forty-five minutes about how we could do better.

And that we are immature and self-indulgent, that we have failed to put the children first.

I was fine with all of the labels up until those last eight words and then I lost my shit and interrupted her.

I'm a good mother.

I have no doubt, Mrs. Reilly. But you need to be a good person. You cannot allow your extracurricular relationships to supersede the needs of your immediate family. Parenting is not a part-time job.

I shook my head vehemently but she just. kept. talking.

I stopped responding after that, and she softened just enough. I really don't care what sort of bias she holds against how I live my life. It has nothing to do with Henry, short of giving him male influence and support where otherwise there would have been none. She thinks I'm out running around the city going to Eyes Wide Shut parties and sleeping with all of my friends and I'm not but I am secure in the fact that my lawyers and Caleb's lawyers know what's going on and she needs to spend a little more time on our files before she decides how horrible I am.

Caleb probably already paid her off. My lawyer has filed to allow new arbitration because this one is not objective enough to oversee this delicate operation.

Had Caleb not decided to suddenly start making good on his threats of challenging our arrangements in the first place none of this would be necessary at all, but last night after begging me for an hour of my time (for reasons I still don't understand), he was a no-show, not calling or texting or anything and then this morning I get an eleventh hour invitation to appear at the offices for a full review of our custody plan via mediation, agreed upon by all the lawyers collectively because it's Friday tomorrow and they have weekend tee times or something similarly asinine.

Lovely.

But you know what? I haven't done anything wrong. I don't threaten Caleb. I've never told him that I would keep Henry from him. I've never used him for anything. I've never made his life difficult. So I'm going to hold my head high and choose not to be threatened by this because if push comes to shove I have trump cards I can play now. I have all of that evidence that he harasses me and he is cocky enough to assume I won't use it. I have security in that when I have had enough of this all I have to do is turn on that light and the symbol will play into the night sky summoning the real hero who can save the day because at the end of it, Caleb is a small fish in a big pond.

I have Batman.

He's a big fish.

(And I'm a good person, I swear to God, I am.)

Aghost (Like aghast, but more transparent).

A drive.

No.

What the fuck, princess.

It's just a drive. Maybe he wants to apologize. Things got out of hand.

Bullshit.

Forget it.

This is total bullshit.

Ben and Lochlan are talking over each other and I'm just standing there holding my phone with the email pulled up. The one from Caleb inviting me for a drive so we can talk. Just talk. One drive. One hour. Maybe out into the Valley and back or up toward the ski hills. It doesn't matter. Talk without touching me. Listen without a legal team standing behind me ready to bring down the hammer.

Hmmm. I think for a moment and decide I am game. Caleb loves to drive. He loves his little silver Nissan and if he says a drive then that's what it will be. Ben and Lochlan are not game. They are the knee-jerks. The look-what-we-just-went-throughs. The only difference is they always forget that Caleb went away before. He went away for a handful of years there between when Henry was born and when I walked away from Cole. I brought him back and God, it was so weird and then it wasn't weird anymore and once Cole was gone he became Cole to me only he isn't but dammit if he doesn't just have enough Coleism to pass for the real thing and if I squint, if I'm drunk, if I'm low or if it's a day that ends in 'y' it's good enough for me.

Only he never showed.

I waited for several hours, giving him all the time in the world, but Caleb never showed. I'm not sure if he developed cold feet or if something came up and he had to put out a fire business-wise or if he just thought better of it and decided it was too soon (it is) but he didn't come.

No one ever stands me up. I am in tears and this is ridiculous because he's a dangerous, obsessive psychopath and he shouldn't be anywhere near me ever.

He is also Cole, he is history, and he is dad to one of my children. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. I just wanted the part where he holds custody of my youngest child over my head like a flaming guillotine to go away. The scary parts where he does not have himself under control? Away, please, quickly, I am afraid.

Everything else can be left well enough alone.

Going to bed now.

Fuck it.

Riding the Subway.

Last minute stop for lunch. We're starving. Out of energy, out of time. Okay, Subway it is. It's always empty, always good though so we pull in and run inside and all I'm thinking is fooooooood. I need foooooood. So I ask for a foot-long sandwich. On parmesan oregano bread. No way in hell I could eat all that but I may try. Suddenly there's a lineup a mile long behind us. Phew. Got here just in time, Toasted? Yes, please. And to go, we're not eating here. We'll take them home.

Everyone watches as the bill is tallied. Ben is paying and he says really loudly,

You got a foot-long? Jesus, Bridge. You should have told me how hard-up you were before we left the house. I could have given you a footlong.

Only he said it with that grin just as I had taken a sip of my rootbeer. Oh woes, out my nose it goes.

Snort.

Ow. It hurt.

(Not as much as a footl-oh hell, you know how this goes.)

Placeholder.

Okay, Internet? Stop worrying. I'm not naive enough to think that this is the end of my woes. Not by any means. But maybe it's the beginning of the end of them. Let's just go with that. Caleb has his entire life invested in me being his singular focus, don't think I'm dumb enough to imagine a world where he just walks away from all that.

Also? Secrets. We've got 'em. Jesus help me.

In other news? Ben. Vacation. On it.

On him?

You betcha.

Abdicating evil.

What a difference a day brings, though I think I knew on Saturday, today has brought a bit of a deeper sigh of relief all around.

Caleb.

He can no longer threaten me. He can't threaten Henry, he can't do a damn thing except for run this magnificent business with the flair he has shown thus far, and be a good father when he feels like it, since Henry is already rich in fathers and doesn't need more.

He can't touch me anymore. Saturday's threats were a final taunt. He already knew it was over.

It will be a tense symmetry like it has always been. The boys will continue to farm their talents collectively and the harvest will be split equally. The relationship will remain cordial, effective and friendly. I still need to be able to deal with Caleb. I still will be working for him. The difference is he won't be able to hold my son over my head in order to spend time with me doing things he has no business doing.

I already have a husband. And frankly I have a boyfriend too, sometimes. That's enough. That might be too much for some of you but that's okay because this isn't your life, it's mine. And when I got the call from my lawyers today telling me that Caleb has agreed to my terms and the only counterpoint he requested is that he not be referred to as Satan hereafter in my writing or in person, I jumped for joy. If you know me, I don't do that. I never do that.

No more devil references? I think I can manage that. Unless they meant in all languages, and then I'm probably screwed.

One thing we're going to do is leave history buried in an unsuccessful cornfield in Eastern Canada, because some dogs are better left sleeping. Even Lochlan is fine with that. Good, because I really can't manage more than one event at a time anymore.

It took me a very long time to gather up my proof. Letters, emails, notes, witnesses, phone calls, video. Some of it was legal, some of it was not but Caleb's reputation means an awful lot to him and he did not wish to refute anything I had. He didn't wish to have his debaucheries aired in a more public eye, and he didn't wish to acknowledge how incredibly myopic he had become.

All of it was presented to his legal team. And then he was advised how to proceed. But he's a lawyer. He already knew. It just took a jury of his peers and a set of closed doors to really hammer home how tenuous his life, his career was becoming thanks to his obsession with his sister-in-law. He needed a very loud and persistent wake-up call. It has come. This is finished.

Maybe I was just lucky. I like to think I am. I put myself in some awful positions recently but it was time. Enough was enough. And I'm okay. I'm relieved. I will deal with my own proclivities concerning Caleb and my memories of Cole the best I can. That wasn't the right way. Nothing about that was right.

But who is going to argue with me? No one ever tells me no. Ben will not start to impose limits because that got Jacob nowhere but he won't turn a blind eye like Cole did because then things just get worse. So Ben acknowledges and allows and he fights with me anyway and then he worries himself sick and I couldn't do that to him anymore. Ben deserves better. He deserves everything.

But this was something I had to change on my own. Just like Ben said when he asked me to be with him: he couldn't fix any of my problems but he would hold me while I fixed them myself. Almost three years later he has kept his promises. All of them. Anything else wasn't a promise made.

I can spend as much time as I want standing behind my row of knights. God love them, they've done everything for me. Absolutely everything, fighting all of my battles, raising me, helping raise my children, holding us up when I have been a thankless, selfish little monster in return. Standing by me now as I have lost whole years being silent grief, unwilling to help myself or listen to them. Demanding that they fix this, fix everything, turn back time, bring me the good parts and make everything else go away.

It's been like surfacing at last, after diving into the deep blue ocean and swimming down until my lungs might burst and then staying there. For too long, until my head ached and I had not a single molecule of air remaining.

Rescue arrived and she surprised me. A petulant five-foot tall blonde with circles so dark under her faded green eyes you might stop and stare and wonder if she ever sleeps.

Well, she doesn't. Yet.

That might change.

(Do I really think this is the end of Caleb's provocation? I really don't know. I hope so. Maybe I'll just start with that and see what happens. I have to see him several times each week and I'm just going to take it one minute at a time.)

Please don't ask because I don't get it either.

(I am not a champagne and truffles girl, and I don't know why I'm telling you this.)

I think I proved it last night in spades with my tilty, beautiful belligerence that led to an abrupt reorganization of my dance card and saw the devil ousted in favor of the carnival comfort. The original freak. The one who doesn't look like a freak at all.

The big freak approved. Maybe, because just like me he chooses the lesser of two evils, and Lochlan isn't evil at all. Not in that way. Not in the way like Caleb is evil.

But anyway, back to the champagne, which seemed to be interspersed with heavier drinks that left me cursing the French bastard who invented stiletto heels and alternately chatting up the Russians like I did this every day or something. I don't. Jesus. I'm a deaf little freak girl who lives in the dark in a commune full of bearded musicians and artists. I have few interpersonal skills and endless affection. I hate to cook and I love to love and...and I don't belong here, so yes, I will take another drink, thank you so much.

At some point I was convinced the stilettos were the reason I was still standing. Propped up with beauty rebar, I was. Reinforced concrete blonde. So thoroughly drunk and really not able to even string two thoughts together when Caleb walked me out by the railing and put his hands up to check for the hearing aids and then smoothed my hair over the collar of Ben's suit coat. Usually I leave my hair tucked in. Now it doesn't matter, it just barely reaches my shoulders. I curse in his face and smile sweetly, swaying just a little and he smiles and leans in as if we are sharing secrets.

All I can think is that I can't feel my tongue anymore. I want to laugh but I can't.

Having passed the hearing aid and wardrobe check I am held closer while I stare out to sea. I could will it to splash over me now, drowning me. Saving me from him. Instead I am treated to his aftershave, intoxicated by the power positively writhing under his dress shirt. I am fluttering and I wish it would stop, but again, more concerned with my tongue and where it might have gone and where is Ben?

I hear him. He is singing. In the salon. Just to my left if I can push off from Caleb and walk straight through the glass. But I can't because Caleb has me in his arms and I am captive to his threats, sorry, to his 'suggestions' whispered in my ear, melting it with his laundered-money dirty soul, bending it down with his expectations, all of which are just as realistic as my fucking shoes. I still don't know what Ben said to him last week or where we stand or if there's any reason at all for me to be here right now at all.

I square myself in his embrace and focus on his eyes. No small feat. My useless tongue seems to be taking my other features with it to sleep. My eyes are all over the place, but not in the same place at the same time so I plant my hands on his chest and nod up at him.

Lochlan. I am still nodding, slurring. Ben. Not you, Cole. Sorry, baby. I stick my finger against his chest and I jab it in hard. Twice.

He laughs. Bridget, let's go cool you off a little. Maybe a long shower. He has my arm now and it hurts and I am being led down to the master suite and I don't want to go but my voice is under my tongue and I can't seem to pull it out. I see the hunger in his eyes but it's guarded for some reason. He has another drink and he gives it to me, saying it is juice, have some, sober up a little. I drink it down and then cough. It isn't juice. It's whiskey and lemonade and my new grand plan is to make myself sick, though I'm probably about to be sick anyway. Not drunker, oh, Jesus, no.

Congrats on the project and my condolences on the state of your personal life. I amuse myself saying that in a slur. I laugh out loud and almost fall down. At this point Caleb is holding me up, dragging me down the hall, eliminating a scene altogether when I think I would prefer to have one. I don't want to be alone with him. My kids are asleep in a stateroom at the end of this hallway, and what in the fuck does he think he's doing?

He opens a door and thrusts me inside and closes the door. What? Lochlan is waiting. Lochlan catches me in his arms and then Ben is there too and I am safe. Safe. I don't know why though, everything happened too suddenly. This is Lochlan's fault. I point at Lochlan and I tell him he should have trusted me because if I love you I will say so. I thank Ben for allowing me the chance to love Lochlan too and then I hit the floor.

I wake up late. The sun is licking the edges of the blinds and there is orange juice and aspirin on the table beside the bed. Ben's arms are wrapped around my neck. I am hot and sick to my stomach. Lochlan rolls over and smiles gently at me and I close my eyes and fall back to sleep for a while. Safe. When I next wake up I feel human and Lochlan is gone and I'm not sure if he really was there or if my brain has simply made room for him. Ben is kissing me, asking me if I feel better, anxious to start his day with a bang (snort) and I still can't feel my tongue.

I sit up and Ben sits up too. I lean back against him and his arms go out around me like a cage. I am not sure if it's to keep me safe from everyone else, or if it's to keep everyone else safe from me, I just know that something is off, something is different and inclined to be distant, he won't talk about it other than to reassure me that I am not a monster and that everything is fine.

I believe him.

I believed Jake too. He said this. He did this. 'Don't worry, princess. Everything is fine, just let me deal with it.' And look what happened, Ben.

It happened so fast. I am pushed away from Ben. The lamp hits the door and smashes into a million pieces. I can hear people running down the hall. Toward the noise. Toward us. I turned to Ben and he just shakes his head at me, desperate. Frustrated to the point of no return.

I'm not Jake, he says. Why won't believe in me? We're the freaks. Why would I lie to you, Bridge?

Caleb bursts into the room and smiles at the carnage. His work here is done. Payback's a bitch, Benjamin. You keep underestimating him, and I don't understand why.

This wins worst post ever.

Hi.

I'm here. It stopped pouring. I broke my finger when the fridge reached out and grabbed my hand, pinning it between the freezer and fridge handles which closed completely together and now my finger is all black and puffy and horrible and painy and I keep sticking it in PJ's face to say Look! Look how blaaaaaaack! and he recoils. And then my internet crapped right out. Then the cable went out and then @Shaw_Sean on Twitter got us rolling again because I wasn't going to wait on hold and use up forty or fifty minutes of my cell minutes to be told to unplug things I can't identify (A modern? Oh, a MODEM? Which thing is that? Lights? They both have lights. Is it rooter or r-out-er?) and Lochlan wasn't home to just fix it and then I collected the kids from school and just got settled down when the Welcome Wagon lady arrived! Because I FORGOT she was here in June and so she finally caught me home.

Now I have fridge magnets and possibly a vet for Bonham but nevermind all that. Seriously useful things though. A furnace guy. Pens even. Three new ones! I'm a serial pen-stealer. Ask my insurance agent. Or my lawyer. Or anyone who works at Safeway.

It's hard to type one-handed. Damned hard. And I have a huge headache and in two more hours Ben should be gearing up to come home and really that's all I want right now. Him. Home. With me. For days and days and days and days to come, right through to Thanksgiving.

That's all.

Wait. Advil. I want advil.

And I just made my daughter cry, listening to Relient K.

Great.

You cried wolf
The tears they soaked your fur
The blood dripped from your fangs
You said, "What have I done?"
You loved that lamb
With every sinful bone
And there you wept alone
Your heart was so contrite

(I should have written porn instead. MY APOLOGIES.)