The rest.

By Tuesday I had had enough of Ben's refusal to stay straight and when I get frustrated enough, I usually melt down all over everyone like a little blonde volcano. There is nowhere to run. You're doomed where you stand.

The warnings had sounded for days. I'll not apologize.

Tuesday morning I went to three meetings, excused Ben's absence as scheduling conflicts and then to my surprise he actually managed to show up for lunch, a date we had planned as a little mini-getaway just for us. I had already ordered. Who eats lunch alone in LA? Bridget does, that's who, two days in a row, no less.

In other words, I didn't have any grace left.

I lit into him quietly and he put his head right down and looked me in the eye the whole time. He didn't make any faces or crack any jokes or order any alcohol. He just listened and we ate, sharing my plate and I talked. When we were finished he was still staring at me but I was as done with the conversation as I was with the seafood salad and I sat back until the sun was in my eyes and watched him.

Let's go home.

I nodded. He is sober, pale. I am red. Embarrassed. Tired. Flushed with the rage and frustration and sickness of being so incredibly angry with someone and I'm well aware he could turn around at any second and tell me to fuck off and go away and then he might disappear for six months. He's done it before. When we were just friends we fought just as much if not more and even without stakes we could find a way to hurt each other badly, repeatedly.

Within an hour we have a plane and we are saying our goodbyes. One meeting slated for Tuesday evening will be rescheduled as a video call. I call Ruth and Henry and let them know we will be home in time for dinner. They are elated. Lochlan wears his headphones on the plane. I resolve to finish whatever resentments off Ben and I have inflight so that it doesn't come home with us. While I am thinking that, Ben is doing much the same.

At no point does he tell me he couldn't deal with saying goodbye to Nolan again or with knowing that Jacob's third deathiversary was fast approaching and very little has changed. Ben's solution to that was to make a mess of himself knowing that I would step in and become the functional one.

Ben sees things that the others don't. No one else would have known to do that but he took the chance and he did it anyway.

To Ben the risk of not being able to stop drinking after he started was far less painful than the risk of letting Bridget climb down and jump into her black hole again. He doesn't want to find me in the cupboard or locked in the library or standing in the bathroom sticking pins into my hands or crying inconsolably through the night. He doesn't want me to be miserable.

What can I say? I guess I married a selfish guy. In any case we are home a day early which makes me happy and Lochlan got the gig which makes everyone happy and all is well on the corporate side of things which makes the devil boss happy and I am going around now battening down the hatches in my mind and boarding up the windows to my soul because it's going to be a rough weekend in there, I think. Quietly and without any plans at all. Everyone is here. Everyone is safe. Everyone is okay and so if you need me, I'll be in the concrete room with the angels right through Sunday, what would have been Jacob's fortieth birthday.

Thankfully I'll be there with Ben, mostly because he won't let go of my hand. That's good. I can't do this without him.

Monday evening (sparing change).

Batman calls as I am dressing for dinner, wanting to know what my plans are. I tell him there are fourteen of us going to a restaurant in Beverly Hills for dinner. I've already dressed, put my hair up with half a dozen pins thanks to the length instead of my historical two and stepped into my shoes. Then I stepped back out. Dangerous ones. I'll put them on when Ben gets back or when Lochlan knocks on the door to get me as soon as the driver is here.

Batman asks about Ben's frame of mind and I shake my head. He can't see me and so he continues to wait for me to find some words for him or a lie or something, anything in response.

Nothing comes. Eventually even the most patient men stop waiting. Patience is something that is lost so easily once found. It's a fickle friend. A curse.

Like me.

He wants me to come and see him instead. We could meet. He could maybe make some calls. At the very least I am to call him when I collect Ben. They can get Ben some help here. He likes it here.

California has always given Ben all of the ingredients to make and keep secrets. She is like a lover to him. He knows people. He has favorite places and he is probably at one of those instead of in the meetings he should be in right now. Dinner is another meeting. More collaborations, bigger deals, everyone working together and pulling in more talent and reaching further and counting more money and adding more clients and artists and producers and handlers and it's exhausting but it's been amazingly successful right out of the gate and the reason for that success right now is probably in some seedy bar down on the strip getting shitfaced because he can't deal with life.

I can feel my heart break when I listen to Ben plead for exclusivity in all things. I feel it break when he asks for time to get to know me, the way the others know me. I feel it break when I answer him because I can't change the past. And I feel it break when he walks out the door and says he can't deal with this. You say it's not my fault that he drinks? That it has nothing to do with me?

I say you're all fucking liars.

I find Ben and I don't call Batman back when I do. I had no intentions of calling him.

Monday mourning (this will take forever).

Summer girl
Set me on fire

I walked right into the men's room and asked Ben what in the hell he thought he was doing.

He turned around, zipped up and grinned his stupid, awesome grin that makes the pieces of my heart glossy and warm, softly rounding their edges as they melt.

Peeing? Is that okay?

The drinking. What in the fuck, Ben?

A guy in a blue three-piece suit with a soul patch walks in and does a double-take. He turns and walks back out.

Halloween was yesterday, buddy. Ben laughs at the closed door.

You should talk. I don't like it when he judges people for their quirks when his are so plentiful he pulls a wagon around behind him holding them all, like a little boy who refuses to leave his race cars at home.

He reaches over and locks the door.

I can wash my hands while you yell at me?

Yes.

I wait for him. I can't have conversations over running water. He dries his hands and looks in the mirror, raising his eyebrows, trying on a few demonic and hilarious expressions. I am biting my tongue so hard. I wish I could laugh but this is serious and he's still joking around when there are no jokes left to be told.

Finally he turns around again. I'm going to vomit, I hate how this feels.

Could you stop, please?

Drinking? Or making faces.

Both.

Sure, princess, whatever you want.

But I know he isn't going to and I'm right. We return to lunch and he smiles broadly for the clients and when the server returns he asks for another drink. We are still waiting for food. It's very busy here. Lochlan looks at me and I look away. Composure hangs by a thread, stretched across the table and wrapped three times around the rungs on the back of these ridiculous Queen Anne chairs. When I feel as if it's going to break I get up again.

Excuse me.

No one hears me. I'm never loud enough.

I collect my bag off the arm of the chair and Kenny grabs my hand.

Bridge? Where are you going?

Not feeling well. I mumble it and pull my hand away, stalking to the front door, planning to ask the host to call a taxi for me so I can go back to the hotel and pack and get the fuck out of here. Lochlan follows me to the front and before I can say anything he pulls me outside. We are asked if everything is alright and he tells them it's a personal matter, not to worry.

Not to worry. Ha. Bullfuckingshit.

Lochlan can't follow me anyway. This meeting is for his benefit. A job. Another big job that will keep his head down for months on end but a highly lucrative, visible job nevertheless. And Lochlan has finally reached that magical stage some of the others have already realized. Doing what you love for pay. They're going to make him work for it. They are nervous because he's a one man show, in spite of the company, and so they wanted to meet him in person. And Ben got him the connections to the job so Ben can sit there and pretend he's Mr. Wonderful all he wants. He can do no wrong, because his work (for this particular client anyway) is finished and he has already moved on to new projects.

I leave. I have my own meetings to attend this afternoon on Caleb's behalf and I really need to collect myself and remember why I came down here in the first place. For money.

I make myself feel better by eating lunch at a hot dog cart three blocks from my hotel. A kid in nicer clothes than Caleb asks me for change and I give him $20 Canadian. He gives it back and asks for my company instead. I smile and tell him to find someone his own age. He laughs and asks me if I know anything at all about this city.

I watch him walk away and I realize I hate it here.

Heading home.

And I wonder day to day
I don't like you anyway
I don't need your shit today
You're pathetic in your own way
I feel for you
Better fucking go away
I will behave
I'm doing the best I ever did
I'm doing the best that I can
Now go away

I don't need to fantasize
You are my pet all the time
I don't mind if you go blind
You get what you get
Until you're through with my life
I'm doing the best that I can
Now go away

More later. We might even make it for supper.

Drowning Halloween.

At midnight we opened the gates to the sea and threw the pumpkins into the ocean (okay, not really, pumpkins are heavy so they pretty much landed at the bottom of the cliff). Overhand, underhand, two handed and at one point I really thought the pumpkin was going to bring me with it when I lost my balance and was steadied by unsteady-Benjamin, who had this bright idea in the first place but wouldn't have been able to save my life in the condition he was in anyway.

Smashed, like the pumpkins on the cragged shoreline.

Within hours we were on a flight. He drank through that too and drank through breakfast and will now probably drink through lunch. Not uncontrollable, falling-down drunk, just a little bit too confident to be my Benjamin. A little too loud. A little too know-it-all. A little too rough.

He fits right in down here. Everyone's an asshole.

Let me love you too
Let me love you to death
Hey am I good enough for you?
Hey am I good enough for you?
Am I?
Am I?
Am I good enough
For you?

Smokescreen

I'd like to go for a coffee and a cinnamon roll at some cozy little place, curling up in a comfortable corner chair, watching a fire I'm not responsible for, watching people who aren't responsible for me, being visible and invisible and maybe just normal for once.

Instead I am packing for LA. The keeper of angels in the city of angels. Why? Who the hell knows? I don't run this show anymore.

Wallace and Bridget.

The room is a pale sea glass turquoise-green, with bare wooden picture frames and a bed frame that was stripped and sanded and left natural, because it looked so amazing he couldn't paint it again. A bowl of shells is on the desk. Hints of his favorite ocean are everywhere but it isn't kitschy, it's home. The only giveaway is the set of vintage midway photographs on the wall and the photograph of a teenage Bridget on the desk, embraced by that rusted Ferris wheel from four lifetimes ago.

My skin is cold from being outdoors early, as the sun was rising. I snuggle into the blankets and his arm slides down around me, pulling me in against his warmth. A sleepy kiss crash lands against my ear and he whispers Good morning, beautiful. I return the greeting and close my eyes. The house is quiet, the waves are quiet outside his window, thrown wide open, wind twisting the curtains.

I reach up and press that imaginary button again. Time stops, but only for as long as it takes me to exhale a single breath.

I sleep.

Surprisingly I wake up closer to a reasonable hour and he is nowhere to be found. The blankets are tucked tightly around me, my covered coffee mug on his bedside table, beside his glasses and a copy of Infinite Jest.

And a note that says Sleep in for a while, Bridgie. Just for once. Love you.

For crying out loud.

He didn't ask the question out loud. Jesus, people. After thirty-odd years together we don't have to say everything out loud. It's just there but I don't respond. Stop skimming and actually read the words. If you're in a rush, come back when you have time.

Otherwise you miss things. Trust me. You miss things.

Every chance I get/Nine days out.

Would you, Bridget? Would you miss me if I died?

Lochlan's arms go around me and his fingers are over mine at the keyboard but I block him and push backward until I am away from the desk and he is far from my words. Hurt films his eyes. He waits for me to go first.

You can't have that. That's Jacob's.

A sentence?

Yes. I'm sorry. Wait, no, I'm not. Please don't do it again.

I am formal and that would hurt more than anything else. I fight his stability, his unwillingness to follow me into the velocity of my emotions. I turn around when it's safe and he's not there. It's not a question of needing him to do it, it's a question of him not being so fucking perfect all the time. The only time you ever see a hint of imperfection is when he's frustrated. It isn't fair. I fell for his maturity and I stayed for his curls. He always has his arms out for me but he also always thinks I can do better.

My response to that is to do less well, just to be a little shit.

It changes with the weather. He is the fair-weather boy, after all. Make hay while the sun shines, Bridgie. Count the stacks later when there's no more to be had. Smile big and they'll empty their pockets. Smile big and you won't be hungry tonight.

He won't ask the question of me. He wouldn't dare. And yet it sits there between us like it sits between every boy I know, Ben included. Men who want to leave behind someone who loved them so much they cease to function properly, forever broken. It's an ego thing. It's a wonderment.

I don't answer that. I can't tell them how it feels. I don't know yet. It's not the same for Cole and Jacob. There's no equal division of grief there, honestly. Doesn't mean it hurts any less, it just means it's different for everyone. I don't plan to find out for sure though. Not for another fifty years and I'm too deaf to hear the news. Should I be so lucky as to make it that far.

* * *

Caleb arrived mid-afternoon. Clearly I am in trouble. I contacted his usual pilot to enquire after some flight times, specifically hours to prepare, the shortest notice I can give him, and how much involvement Caleb needs in my plans.

What I don't realize is that the boys have grown smarter over the years as I dumb right out and they are ready for this. The pilot calls Caleb and relays most of my conversation and most likely will receive a well-deserved bonus for his loyalty and I am clearly grounded. The upcoming week will be spent here as much as running away from my head and running from their faces would somehow make it easier because then I am distracted and I don't have to watch my mind inflict more punishment on my heart.

This is one of the first times they beat me to my own plans and I am rather surprised and completely speechless, as I have been able to slip between them and take off running as long as I can remember and suddenly I'm the one being stapled to the floor and they've checked and rechecked the locks on the door and there isn't even any point in fighting. I'm not going to be able to run.

The fluttering is ramping up. I am self-checking, watching my hands when I talk, when I clear the dishes, when I'm walking to the table and back. Lochlan is too and he really really hates the helpless fingers in the air searching for something to hold on to. He grabs my hand when I walk by and pulls me into his lap. Squeeze. I'm resistant. It's been a long day. Hell, it's been a long fall and we have as usual only gotten along when we can touch only I haven't touched him because I look for focus and that isn't Lochlan and the words aren't either right now.

I'm giving myself permission to be okay with that. Cut me some slack. I could have been in New Zealand by now. Still might, if I can find a break in the boys to slip through when they're looking the other way. Problem is, they never are.

You're such an inspiration
For the ways that I will
Never, ever choose to be
Oh so many ways for me to show you
How your savior has abandoned you

Fuck your God, your Lord, your Christ
He did this, took all you had and
Left you this way, still you pray, never stray, never
Taste of the fruit, never thought to question "Why?"