Lost in translation.

The dinner party was an easy cleanup thanks to the barbecue and everyone eating everything. No leftovers save for a tiny bit of cake and every wine bottle in the house emptied and rinsed and packed into a box by Dalton, who is good at those things. When they were all outside on the porch I wiped down the counters and tables and then I went upstairs to sit in the walk-in closet and I opened my envelope from Caleb.

Three words on the page in his handwriting. Those very predictable three little words you think of when someone says think of three words.

Not I am fine.

Or How are you?

Or even Just a minute.

Or help me please.

It said I love you.

I just don't understand what he means.

Oh there it is. Plain as day. The catch.

Revealed during lunch, just as my plate is placed in front of me and I contemplate asking the server how I'm supposed to eat what I thought was going to be a Reuben sandwich and some fries and instead is some sort of deconstructed essence of bread possibly with a drizzle of something precious and a curlicue piece of carrot on top. The fries are organized vertically, in a glass. There are eight of them.

This is not food, this is sculpture and I don't know why in the hell Caleb can't just take me to A&W like all the others and then I can horrify him with how positively fast I can pound back a bag full of giant salted onion rings and still walk out of the restaurant under my own power.

I pull out a french fry and bite into it suspiciously and he starts to talk, only I missed the beginning of his thoughts because with great dismay I realize the fries are parsnips because the menu was in a different language so I merely pointed at the list provided and hoped instead of asking because when I ask it's almost as if I am giving the staff license to spout contempt. And I wasn't about to let him order or he would be all champagne and caviar on me and I can't eat those things for lunch anymore. Too rich. Too much.

Sort of like Caleb.

But parsnips are the unholiest of vegetables, in my big list of what vegetables are good and what ones should just be ignored, avoided or outrun entirely.

Suddenly I catch him saying ....and what has he done for you recently except cause more strife?

Oh...WHAT? You want to know what he's done for me.

If he isn't good for you or to you, then what is the point exactly?

This is not your business.

Sure it is. You're the mother of my-

Leave Henry out of this.

He looks down at his napkin. He has finished his carrot curl and whatever abomination of a vegetable he was given. I apologize. I want to know that you are being looked after and that you are happy. Aside from the boys coming to the new house, and it being almost summer, I mean. If Lochlan can't find his common ground with Ben anymore than that puts an extraordinary amount of stress on you. If he can't make an effort-

He's fine. I lie.

How fine?

Fine.

I see. Smile and nod, right, Bridget?

I smile at him. God, I'm such a brat. The server comes back and I tell her to take my plate. She frowns and I ignore her. Caleb makes a note of my one parsnip bite of lunch and frowns too. Great. Frowny faces all around. Parsnips bring everybody down.

I see how you place all blame squarely on one and not the other.

Ben is justified in-

What? This was Ben's idea! Ben's bright ideas rise and set with the fucking sun, don't they? As long as he's shining everything's a go, one too many bad days and everything is off. We can't live like that. I had to make a stand.

You could make a bigger stand, Bridget. You could end their contest. You could have the happiness you deserve. He reaches out and touches my face. You could show a little gratitude for the life you have been given.

I stop arguing and nod. I get it now. We're not going to mince words forever. Some of them must be swallowed whole. The house he bought is going to cost me dearly.

Caleb reaches into his breast pocket and removes a small deep-grey envelope. He places it in front of me. There is a small letter b engraved on the front. Great. He special-orders his stationery now.

I pick it up and tuck it into my handbag. He stands. I know. You have to go. Read this one after your dinner party. Please. You know where I'll be.

Vanishing points.

So the plan as it stands now is to move the big electric gate from the end of the driveway to the top of the road proper. Possibly even rerouting the driveway so that it isn't so close to the highway. Right now it's almost beside the actual road, as in when you turn off the highway to drive down my street, my driveway is right there. It's almost it's own road. I'm not sure if the city will allow that due to municipal work and such but Caleb assures me money can buy anything.

When he says that I always point out his marital status. He will retort that it's just a matter of time and we drop the whole thing and pick up the features of the new house instead. Like how come our porches and patios are all wood-trimmed and next door is all glass panels and who the hell picked that color for the kitchen floor tiles, they must be a genius and taking turns looking up the rangehood over the island cooktop or touching the natural stone feature walls throughout.

The plan is for Schuyler and Danny to sell their beautiful little house upneighborhood for what they paid for it, to get out from underneath their crushing mistake of a mortgage, and Christian (!) and Andrew (!!) will sell their places to move into the new house. Corey (!!!) is going to sublet his condo and give it a trial run. Sam (!!!!) is considering swapping his parish digs for a housing allowance and is waiting for approval for that before he can even consider living here.

I have been walking around smiling for days due to these wonderful turns of events.

Batman did a little financial postmortem on Caleb's wheelings and dealings and said Caleb has a knack for coming out ahead no matter what. Caleb has paid Batman in full plus interest for his uh..mafia bailout and has liquidated so much besides that he's now sitting flush on a pile of Robert Bordens taller than the pine trees out front and then some. He still has a lot invested in Ben. He still has the remains of the umbrella company (which is technically mine now I suppose) and his profits from his newer forays into venture capitalism. He plays the stock market. He does consulting. He works pretty much twenty-four hours a day and he's very very good at what he does so it was less of a surprise than you might have expected.

I don't care, I was busy trying to ascertain how the clear glass washbasins in the master ensuite are sealed. Because I will be forever curious and eager to learn about all things construction thanks to my hundred-year-old castle in the grass back home (Huh. I wrote home. It wasn't home but I will leave it in.)

Caleb walked around behind me with his shirtsleeves rolled up, hands in his pockets and a genuinely pleased look on his face.

Does this make it better? He asked at one point.

What, exactly?

You'll have everyone here.

You did this just for me?

No, I did it for the land. For the dollar figure. As a side benefit, I get to see you happier than you've been in weeks. Can you fault me for that?

No. I admit it and then there is the sound of a doorbell and he smiles and turns away, heading to the front to see who it is. Probably Sam, he was going to come on his lunch hour and see what everything looks like.

As he walks away down the hall Caleb calls back to me, Now you've truly got yourself a commune, Princess and I frown at myself in the wall-to-wall bathroom mirror. This is not the commune I imagined. That one had chickens running loose and I would ride around the yard naked on a motorcycle while the boys fixed their cars and chased ten toddlers around. We would grow our own vegetables and be off the grid completely.

This is some sort of completely different commune with expensive marble floors, Macbook Pros, guitar sponsorship, two very refined children and a bunch of fortysomething hipsters with portfolios and nice boots and new trucks instead. The obligations to and reliance on the outside world staggers me. It's unwelcome. I thought there would be more camper-vans and cookouts involved. More stars. More iced tea. More time to spend together instead of time spent apart.

I guess sometimes when wishes come true it's not always in the form you pictured. Sometimes it's something else altogether. But it's still very very very good because I like it when we're all here. All home.

All in, as Lochlan said the other day. Yes, all in.

B sides.

PJ has put on his epic little-boy frown. Can't hardly see it behind his full beard but I know it's there. I reassure him that he is not moving again. He can keep the suite downstairs. He's very happy there. He is plotting his future there, or something, since I have graduated to not needing care and keeping twenty-four hours a day save for certain scenarios as detailed in the rules that they have about me/for me. I need to be escorted when on the grounds or at the water. Otherwise I am free to confront bears in the woods, play in traffic or just stick close to home to wallow in my own misery as I see fit.

At this rate I should just walk around naked for all the privacy I suddenly have.

But I don't like it much and frankly if PJ wanted to move to the new house I'd probably shut that down with some sort of fairytale emergency just to keep him close by because he's my big bearded shadow. I would grow a beard just to lead the PJ fanclub but when I tell him that he pretends to be touched but mildly horrified at the thought of a beard on my face because wow.

That would be something.

Checking for the blast (here, then, take this instead).

She once believed in every story he had to tell
One day she stiffened, took the other side
Empty stares from each corner of a shared prison cell
One just escapes, one's left inside the well
And he who forgets will be destined to remember

He came back today, cleanshaven and freshly shorn. He rivals Henry for his military cuts only Ben's hair is finer and less likely to behave, haircut or not. He looks like my Ben again. His eyes have dark circles, his irises see ghosts when he closes his lids over them and his brain is ruined, pickled and fried like carnival food, having seen too many things he would like to forget and now he exists in a space where he lives for himself, owning no one anything at all, while at the same time needing an almost debilitating unspoken amount of reassurance and support. He has been through as much as I have but that isn't why I'm with him.

I'm with him because he demonstrates a clear ability to comfort me. To love me. He can hold me and smile and everything vanishes. He is kind and sweet and incredibly silly and passionate too. He's a good hockey player and an okay guitar player. He can make me laugh with enough in-jokes that we have our own language that we send each other messages in and no one else knows what is going on. Ever.

I'm with him because I. love. him.

He does not give up even when the going gets tough. He doesn't back down but he'll back off to keep the peace. He keeps everyone on an emotional leash that helps him navigate this new blown-out tilted world we live in.

He's certifiable. Crazy. Hilarious. He's started food fights in each and every high-end restaurant we've ever visited (across the continent) and been banned from almost as many hotels for throwing furniture, people and drunken rages (sorry). He has always paid for the things he's broken and then some.

He does not fit in my car but he'll drive it anyway because I suck at things like overpasses, parking garages and drive-thru lineups. He crunches down with his knees around his shoulders and pretends to hold his breath while he steers with his fingertips. He'll talk in a high breathless voice until he gets out. I laugh so hard I cry.

He loves me, in a time where I am incredibly difficult to love, selfish and ignorant, to boot. He ignores all that and just says some day things will be different. While he says that he's busy eating my lip balms because he HATES when I wear them. He literally hates kissing me when I'm slathered in sticky, slippery gloss so if he eats them then I have nothing to wear. It's not working, I just buy more. Someday he's going to die of pink glitter poisoning, I can feel it.

I hope I'm a thousand years old and don't hear them when they come to tell me that he's gone. That's the only wish I have left is that I don't outlive any more of them, but especially him because he is different, he is mine and I am his and frankly I don't care what you think of our arrangements or my love life or polyamory or communes or musicians or circus rats or anything else.

He's downstairs now teaching himself Nothingman because it's a song I can sway to in place and he laughs when I do that. He notices when I do that. Not sure anyone else ever has.

And he doesn't like to be written about because he only cares what I think of him. No one else. So that makes it seem as if he is absent, or forgotten or lesser somehow.

Don't make that mistake anymore, okay?

I asked him about what happened with his devastating plans and the camping trip and the loss of his courage and everything else and I'm satisfied with the answers he gave me, whispered into my hair where all secrets go to hide.

At least the ones that don't belong here for all to see.

I know I haven't said much about the purchase of the house next door. I've been very busy juggling hearts and I haven't had time to even think about it and then Satan sends a message this morning telling me it is closing day and did I want a tour now that he has the keys?

That was fast. Doesn't it take longer to move furniture out of a house that size? Apparently they were mostly out the door anyway and the staging was all that was there, removed the day after the sale was approved. We probably could have gone in before now but Caleb is in no rush.

Also, change the locks first. Always change the locks first. I was going to tell him this until I saw New Jake heading out with him this morning. Jake will look after putting new locks on and then Caleb can pay him for doing so. Unless Jake goes to live in the new house too and then it can come off his rent. Don't ask me what their plans are, I'm never told anything until it's too late to change anyway.

***

Fortunately for him, Lochlan did not have his cat that swallowed the canary expression on when I saw him. His look was pure concern.

Where were you last night?

Theater.

You could have messaged me.

I don't think that would have been appropriate. Besides, I left my phone on the desk.

Are you okay?

Why wouldn't I be okay?

I can read, Bridget.

Then why did you ask where I was?

He looks up at the sky abruptly. It's an exasperated, almost eye-roll. Because I was hoping you would have a little more to say than this. Don't shut me out.

What would you like me to say?

Have you talked to Ben?

I really wish people would stop asking me that.

Does he know you know?

I'm guessing yes, since he can read too. In spite of everyone's assumptions that he can't.

When are you going to talk to him?

If and when he brings it up. It's not an issue. He didn't go through with it. Everything remains the same. If you want to push him around then that's your problem. Don't make it mine.

You want to stay with someone who would give you away.

I want to stay with someone who considered being unselfish and letting me out if I wanted out but in the end couldn't let go? Hell yes. Yes, I do.

I'm not sure who is more fucked up, you or Ben.

Then we make a good couple. So if you're so perfect, why are you with us?

Can't let go.

Then you understand him perfectly. And me. Are we done here?

He nods, eyes glassy, words forgotten.

Good. I have a house tour to get to. Want to come? It'll piss Satan off.

Sure. Just give me a minute.

Okay. I soften and try to smile for him and it fails. What a mess. What a godawful fucked-up mess.

Transparencies.

Today's bad joke involved walking past microwave egg poachers in a store and discussing the merits of hunting eggs out of season, or perhaps on crown land but only for their yolks. But not just any eggs, radioactive ones. It was a halfhearted and vaguely overtired joke sacrificed in place of simply discussing anything else at all, because sometimes that is what we do.

***

Last night I was cornered between Ben and Duncan halfway down the hall. I put my head down and Duncan gently took the forbidden bottle out of my hands and took it away, leaving a kiss slammed against the top of my head, bruising my brain. I didn't fight him. I let him take the alcohol and the kiss. Ben took the laptop and tucked it under his arm and into his other arm he tucked me and we went downstairs where he sat me down on the big couch while he hooked my computer up to the big screen and then Jake in all his former blonde Viking glory filled the fifteen foot wall while his voice filled my ears.

I don't cry when I watch him anymore.

Well...much, anyway.

Ben turned off the lights and locked the double doors and turned my head away from the screen with a kiss. A kiss that became something else and he worked his way through my clothes until I was free of everything and I put my arms around his neck and turned my head back toward the screen as Ben moved against me and there was Jake, watching us, smiling innocently, benignly, not knowing how to read the future yet except for the predictable parts.

When Ben stopped hours later, he rested his mouth against my ear and he asked me if I wanted to leave the movies on or if I was finished watching and I didn't say anything but one tear ran out of my eye and down into my hair and he brushed it away and sat me up and pulled my clothes back together and rearranged his own clothes and then he sat back down and pulled me in again, close to his chest, wrapping his arms around me, kissing the top of my head over and over again, squeezing me every time Jacob said my name on the screen.

It was like a party game except instead of drinking shots when I hear a specific word I get stabbed in the heart every time. And I've died a million times over here tonight but we keep watching. It's a montage of Jacob, six hours of smaller videos strung together chronologically of everyday moments, not big ones, just ones from the times when I would turn a camera on him when he was doing normal things. Sometimes he responded and sometimes he ignored the camera. Sometimes he made faces and sometimes his annoyance was written right up front for me to read first in his expression.

Sometimes he didn't even know he was being filmed, like when I was watching him warm up for a hockey game, doing laps around the rink. I see him turn back briefly to say something to Ben and then he turns away and Ben calls something to him. Jake turns back in a flash, launching himself into Ben's net. They go down swinging, brawling and in the background you can hear me say He's not worth it. Jake, come on, Ben's nothing to you. and I feel Ben's jaw tighten against my head but we just keep watching because we're masochists now and it's in the handbook, the actions we take to grind it in good and keep on going.

***

I arrive in Caleb's kitchen promptly at nine, in my battle-stilettos and a pencil dress (armor) so tight I'm seeing black spots at the edges of my vision but he won't take me seriously if I show up in jeans and a t-shirt so Pepper Potts is the only way to go.

What in the hell was that?

Did you talk to Ben?

Yes, I talk to Ben all the time. Now tell me why you tried to keep me from going on a one-night suburban camping trip?

Did you TALK to Ben?

Why don't you just tell me what I need to know and we'll go from there.

Caleb frowns and crosses the kitchen to the cupboards, pulling out two glasses. He pours three fingers of whiskey into one and drinks half of it before asking me if I want some. I tell him it's nine in the morning so he thinks for a moment and pours one finger in and hands me the glass. I return it to the counter and ignore it while he drinks the rest of his in one gulp. He looks pale.

I didn't want you out in the fucking woods with a pyromaniac who can't handle conflict and an indecisive drug addict with all the wrong bright ideas even though his heart is in the right place. What happened, anyway? Caleb looks up, dazed, distracted, and not at all like he usually does.

We camped. Then we came home. I smile. And then Ben and I spent last night watching ghost footage and fucking on the theatre floor. He's very good-

Bridget. Jesus Christ.

Why don't you just cut to the chase here? I have things to do, Caleb.

Your husband was going to tell you that Lochlan could have you.

What?

Exclusivity for Lochlan. An offering. You were to be a gift. Ben doesn't want to stand in the way of your happiness, if that's what he's doing by holding on to you.

I find the glass and drink the whiskey without returning his gaze. It burns and I feel alive and dead and somewhat blindsided and more than a little disappointed. So you didn't want me to go because...?

I didn't want that sort of disclosure to take place in an unsafe location.

You didn't want Lochlan to win.

I wasn't even thinking that far ahead. I know that Ben just wanted privacy for the three of you but it was a bad idea from the start and I'm glad he decided not to go through with it.

I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and hold out the glass for more. Yeah, me too. He fills the glass this time and I drink half. How did you know what he was planning?

He came to me and asked for help.

And you told him to give me away?

The look on his face smolders, burning a hole into my soul. No, Bridget. I told him to do whatever he could to make you happy. And not be selfish about it. That's what he came up with.

You told him not to be selfish? That's the pot calling the kettle black, isn't it?

You would be surprised. He looks back into his empty glass. He didn't tell you any of this, did he?

No. I say it softly. I don't think I can take any more, Caleb. It's a plea. Shut up. Shut up shut up shut up.

He really loves you, Bridget. The fact that he doesn't want to let you go is comforting.

We haven't been getting along so well lately. Things have been rough and I always put Loch in the middle and I-

The bad times will pass. They always do.

When?

When things are better. You both need hours of therapy and a good swift kick in the-

Nice.

It's true.

What's in this for you?

Hmmm?

Why would you tell me this, since apparently he changed his mind?

I want you to know the kind of person Ben is.

I know the kind of person Ben is. That's why I married him instead of Lochlan. Or even you.

Was I in the running?

I'm leaving now. I need to go home and sober up for lunch.

Good plan. By the way, you look lovely today.

This dress is killing me.

You should wear it more often.

Only you would say that, Diabhal.

Child all the way.

Oh, now this is a toss-up.

In one hand? A deep grey envelope inviting me down to the boathouse to discuss my camping trip because apparently it wasn't sanctioned though no one made a fuss because the children were present and wow, how adult we can be when reminded and how childish when not.

In the other hand is a stolen bottle of white lightning and a laptop full of videos of Jake.

Just guess which one I'm choosing.

See you on the other side of two hundred proof.

*self-destructs*

[Update. I have a passenger! He gets no fucking moonshine. Ben's not allowed to drink anymore. And I don't know why he would want to watch my home movies but hey I won't look a gift-Ben in the mouth.]

Synecdoches.

And he still gives his love, he just gives it away
The love he receives is the love that is saved
And sometimes is seen a strange spot in the sky
A human being that was given to fly

Home again, just after lunch today as the rain began to pour down steadily and the temperature, though mild overnight, dropped again mid-morning. My teeth were starting to chatter when I spoke and my shoulders shivered uncontrollably until the heat in the truck kicked in full on the way home. I reached a point where I just couldn't get warm anymore.

At one point Ben zipped me into the front of his hoodie, wrapped his arms around me and exhaled on the top of my head and still, the sides of my knees were cold. At another point I was sitting as close to the bonfire as humanly possible and Lochlan started to yell because he was worried I would catch my hair on fire (it's happened) and I moved back because the heat wasn't reaching me anyway.

I ate smoldering, charred marshmallows without even blowing on them first. When I slept I dreamed of being a hotdog on one of those stainless steel rolling racks because then I would be just toasty and done to perfection (that's what I imagine a tanning bed is like) and I woke up colder than I have ever been in my life, in spite of sleeping wedged between the human fireball and a man big enough to have his own independent climate control system onboard. He keeps it set far too cool though and the fireball is generally too hot to touch comfortably.

So there you have it.

Next time we go I hope it's warmer so I can complain about the stifling heat and how Ben's skin is icy and wonderful because he's the undead or the living dead or whatever they used to call him that was funny before too much time passed and we actually had to distinguish between those kinds of things.

Last minutes.

Seven o'clock on a Saturday night and Ben walks into the kitchen and says simply,

Little bee, let's go camping.

Who?

Caleb's got the kids for movie sleepover so I figured you and I would go. Go pack your boyfriend and let's get going.

He turns and walks out of the room. If I know Ben, he'll put his truck keys in one pocket, a guitar pick in the other pocket and proclaim that he is ready to go. Not sure he's ever really figured out the whole tent + sleeping bags + food part of the deal. Ben doesn't actually live in the reality he claims to. He lives in a different fantasyland, where camping equipment just falls from the sky for him to use. That hasn't changed in twenty years.

I take off, scrambling. Sleeping bag. Check. Tent. Check. Food. Check. Run down the driveway to the boathouse and kiss the kids and tell them where we will be. Check. Urg. Phone isn't charged. Will do that on the drive in the truck. Check. Sketchbook and pencils. Check. Extra blanket in case it's colder than the forecast. Check.

I am waiting in the front hall with mostly everything when he returns with his guitar case and he looks around.

Where's Lochlan?

I don't know? Camper, probably?

Go get him. Come on. We have to get moving to get a site before dark.

I thought you were being sarcastic about bringing him.

No. I wasn't.

You want him to come camping with us?

Yes?

Are you going to kill him in the woods?

Only if he tries to kiss me again.

He doesn't do that. You do it to him!

Oh, right. Okay, I'll only kill him if he doesn't respond to my advances.

You've a very hard man to figure out, Benjamin.

I hear you like guys like that.

Just..wow.

That WAS sarcasm. In case you were wondering.