Hide your fantasies.

Since I never push cake away, as mentioned last week, I have found the ACTUAL first two signs of the apocalypse.

1. The Leafs made the playoffs. (I won around eight hundred dollars in bets from that right there, PAY UP, BOYS!)

2. Jerry Cantrell CUT HIS HAIR. Which just...oh my God. What if the next time I see him I don't recognize him? Some things just should not change. Someone hold me.

If there's a third sign today, I don't want to know. Yes, I realize Stone Temple Pilots fired Scott, I kept hoping that if I refused to acknowledge it, they might take him back, kiss it better, make things right. It hasn't happened BUT IT WILL. Eventually right? Not like they haven't done this a couple of times before.

Guess who's home?

My very first scenic oil-painting attempt was in 1985. Cole was painting on the patio of his parents house and I was sacked out inside (out of the sun) clicking around the cable channels and I stopped on an episode of The Joy of Painting.

Ironic.

I watched all twenty minutes of it and then I stood up. Fuck it, I thought. I can do that.

So I went out and asked Cole if I could do a painting too. He thought that was great. Seventeen and fourteen painting together. I turned my easel around so he couldn't see it and demanded all of the bright colors. He pointed to the paint and asked if I needed any help.

I didn't. Of course.

I was finished in an hour, thanks to Bob Ross's epic shortcuts. Fan brush dipped in semicircles on the canvas? Great palm tree leaves. I used a big fat brush to blend, blend, blend until my rainbow sky was perfect. And then I turned my canvas around to proudly show Cole my tropical beach painting.

He lied and said it was amazing. I thought it was amazing too until I took a painting workshop a few years later and then came back and thought, what an abomination!

Lochlan had a whole different view. He thinks every little thing I think, draw or write is an unspoken wish that should be picked, harvested as soon as possible, fulfilled. All signs are true. She needs something, he thinks. Every damned time.

You want to go somewhere warm when you grow up? No more cold, east-coast rainy foggy seashores?

No, I'd rather be at a cold seashore with lots to see and do than lie on a beach somewhere under a cliche palm tree soaking up the rays. SO boring.

That abomination now hangs in the laundry room of my parent's house in Halifax. My mom thinks it's 'cheerful'. I'm going to have to ask her to take a picture of it so I can show you.

And that brings me to my next point, because unlike most days, I have one.

Ben does not like to do 'things' when he is not working. He is happy lying...under a cliche palm tree soaking up the rays.

Boring. Gah.

I got into it, got rested up for a whole two days before getting restless with a capital B. I was wiggly, fidgety, disruptive and distressed. I would have climbed the walls if they had been made of actual building materials instead of hard woven grass. I would have gone for a walk if only there was somewhere to go outside of the circle of sand. I would have gone for a drive but we were boated here from a larger island with an airport. I contemplated making a big SOS in the sand for a plane to take me away but then I realized I didn't really want to leave Big Ben the Sloth behind so I finally went for a swim.

Ben was dripping off the edge of the hammock, asleep in the sun. I sprayed him down with Sunblock 3000000 before I changed into my suit. Then on my way past him a second time I opted to cover him with three towels instead. He's not awake. I don't have the heart to wake him up, I don't get to see him much when he's doing nothing. Come to think of it most of the time if he's not doing something he's asleep.

The water was cold comfort. Not only was it freezing but growing up the boys left me with an incredible fear of what's under the surface. I have difficulty being in deep water because of the Loch Ness monster...which I will leave to your imagine but it's REAL and it has red hair and it can hold its breath for an eternity, or what seems like an eternity to a perpetual child so nevermind. Adding to all this baggage,  I'm not supposed to swim alone because I also have a gift for being unable to gauge how tired I'll be for the swim back.

Since I can't outswim my frustrations I come back into shore. I march as fast as I can up to the cottage (which takes about fifteen minutes in deep sand and I look like a graceless walrus doing it, thanks) to find that Ben is awake! He is inside the master bedroom pulling our things out and packing our bags.

Which..what?

Hey! I tell him. (Maybe we can do something?! Hey let's do stuff. Wanna snorkel? We should snorkel. Wanna slow dance? Maybe we should eat first. Let's play cards. My brain is doing that but my mouth is all cool and just says Hey.)

Fucking mouth. Traitor.

You don't have to say it. Our time is up anyway. 

What do you mean? (For once I'm waiting for him to talk. Like, completely.)

Three things. I have to get back to work, I am acutely aware that removing you from Lochlan for any more than a couple of days is dangerous for all involved, and yes, I've been around long enough to know the story of the tropical beach painting and precisely how you feel about languishing under a palm tree for much more than a couple of days. I just...I just needed a few days with you. Alone. Somewhere sunny for once because jesus, living in the rain forest is tough, bee. 

I shrink down to thimble size, drowning in a tiny instant sea of guilt and remorse at high tide. I don't even know if he can hear me from down here but I try anyway.

I'm sorry, Benny. 

He turns and smiles at me, picking me up between his thumb and his forefinger. Don't be, baby. I know the drill and I got what I wanted and you got some sleep and we crossed off a bucket list item and it's good. Okay? Relax. Besides, we can fight on the plane the whole way home if you want or we can just watch movies again. 

(Because NO. The plane is stocked with Tim Burton movies and just NO.)

I think I'll take a boat home, Ben.

But what about the leviathans and sea monsters and giant-

FINE! FINE! I'll go on the plane! Just no more Dark Shadows. 

Sweeney Todd?

Fuck, no, Ben! 

Frankenweenie?

Well....maybe.

(For those wondering about the bucket list item, it was not renting a private island. It was having sex in a hammock in broad daylight. So there. Yeah yeah, hi mom.)

Sober/sunburned/submissive.

So we had all of the alcohol removed, asked if we could just plan to eat al fresco for the rest of our time here, every meal,  traded bad jokes with the staff (who are AMAZING) and spend all of our time melting into the hammock. It's gigantic. Ben got up once and I was flung up over the clouds and caught on the way back down, that's how big it is.

They're going to have to burn it when we leave.

We've almost made up too. Almost. I see it on the horizon anyway. So in honor of not planning to waste another second away from that hammock, away from him, here's a rare repost, from my archives that I took down when I had grand plans to stop writing the blog. I'm still here. Still writing. Enjoy. Maybe see you tomorrow. Maybe another repost. Muhahahaha. It's cheesy and amazingly naive, given the circumstances but you can read it anyway. If I could change the past I certainly wouldn't start with revisions of my writing.

Sunday, April 20, 2008
To hold.

If there's one thing about me that you know for sure, it's that I only skip a day of posting when I am away. So, sorry, but I was away yesterday.

Getting married.

I got married, Internet. I married Ben. Sigh. Do you want to know what he said that changed my mind? He told me this:

Maybe you would feel less like his if you were mine.

He told me that the night he came home to find me sitting on the floor in the front hall covered in ashes and sobbing my heart out, and it's a sentence that I couldn't argue with if I tried. I don't want to try.

I haven't slept since forever. I haven't stopped smiling. I...I don't even know where to begin or how to explain or why I feel as if I need to continually justify this rather Elizabeth-Tayloresque turn my life seems to have taken.

A third husband, and all before I am even forty years old? Ben will be forty this December and for the record I am soon going to be a blisteringly ancient thirty-seven. Thirty-seven. Told I don't look a day over twenty-six. Do I believe them? Not on your life.

We started with prenuptial agreements and promises, through most of last week. Priorities. Me finding out that Ben started a trust fund in the children's names and they're wealthy because he didn't know what else to do with his money. And he can't touch my future earnings and I cannot touch his. We're just keeping things the way they are. His lawyers are paranoid, mine are not hopeful but we laughed anyway, after I found out he is way wealthier than I thought he was, and I have far more money than I did the last time we traded financial secrets, which would have been sometime long before I paid off his motorcycle and then to retaliate he put the money back in my account.

The ceremony took place last evening out by the creek on Nolan's farm, near picnic rock where Ben proposed. The children were there. The guys were all there. The woods were full of love and support and we recited our simple vows to Sam and cried a whole bunch and maintained a sort of incredulous joy that leaves me tearful even now.

We ate and drank and danced and cried and laughed and it was the most wonderful night ever. He...he's amazing. Giving and generous and caring and vulnerable to a fault. But instead of bringing out the worst in each other somehow we've managed to harvest the best. None of it is difficult or painful or unreal. All of it is beautiful. He's real. He's alive, he is healthy, he's forthright and passionate about the little things. He doesn't want to fix me, doesn't care if I am weak, he just wants to be with me.

He slipped his giant silver ring on my finger because he didn't have rings and told me I had to give it back, that we'd get real ones. I had to clench my fist all night to keep from losing it and when he noticed, he said we would go out and get them today. After lunch.

He asked if there was anything special he was supposed to know about being a husband. I told him I require a large glass of orange juice every night around eleven and he reminded me he said husband, not butler. I reminded him he said he would be the butler.

We've said a lot of words recently, we've dug deep and dug in hard, and a lot of that is so private I'm not writing about it, just know that we are very serious and this is very important and it wasn't a whim, in spite of our pretenses to make it appear to be one.

Ben is surprised at how this feels, far more wonderful than he ever thought it would, coming from someone who always viewed marriage as 'just a piece of paper'. It's never just a piece of paper. It's supposed to be a lifetime commitment to another person, through thick and thin, something we already have. Now we have the paper to prove it, that's all, a formal promise of commitment. A plan for a future together. No matter what.

He said he finally did the right thing. I said me, too. I'm not taking his last name and he's not adopting the kids until they are ready to have a say in the decision, though he is more than willing right now. We aren't moving very fast at all, despite what it seems.

He seems brave enough to be the man of this house, though sometimes he is as fragile as I am and I wonder how he ever wanted to be with me. He says he always wanted to be with me, that he was always vaguely sad that I didn't feel the same way before. I let him in on a little secret. I did, and quite often. I just never let it find the light of day, I never said anything. There's a ease to being with him that has never existed with anyone else. He's Ben and no one else is.

When I told Ben that he walked out of the room. Too cool to cry in front of Loch, I think. He came back and brought me with him to hold.

Everything's going to be okay.

Yeah...cheeeeeeeseballs.

A bitter half-decade and a private island with wi-fi.

I had all sorts of plans to post yesterday but then Ben did that thing where he walks in and says How would you like to...

And then I'm given fifteen minutes to pack, organize who's in charge of the children (Caleb, Loch or PJ depending on who has the most work so PJ hahaha) and have to round everyone up, hug them all and then I'm boarding a teeny-tiny plane and pretending I'm famous.

Which makes Ben laugh and laugh but really the only coping mechanism one has in these situations is all-out ham. Also squee! Because blue water!! Sunshine!!

Besides, he doesn't get it, he's not a mere mortal like the rest of us. Trips for him are shoving 5 black t-shirts into a bag and having someone wait on his every whim for months on end. Plan ahead? This guy? Never!

I'm not complaining. I'm in a place where I can exist in a string bikini.

(And sunblock 100 1000. We sparkle!)

But at this rate the best coping mechanism will soon be Xanax because it was a rough flight and a long day so instead of posting last night I got smashed at dinner and went lights out.

Because I CAN.

MAYBE HE LIKES IT.

And...maybe I'm still drunk this morning come to think of it. I don't even know what time it is. I don't care. We're having a little getaway, just me and Ben. This trip is to mark five years married to the biggest doofus on the planet (his words. For me.)

Five years!

Jesus.

I'm guessing later there will be a medal-presentation ceremony. He glared at me and told me they'll be giving him his medal first, because they are handed out in order of suffering.

Or dickishness, I said.

He laughed and told me that's what this trip is. A chance to make up for things because things have not been great and we are horrible and difficult and completely brutally honest with each other in a way that somehow makes the glue hold when the seams stretch. As far apart as we can get we're alike in ways that really freak me out and make me glad for him because in spite of his ridiculous view of life, he's good for me. Grounding. Safe. Sobering.

Okay well sometimes he's sobering but NOT RIGHT NOW because champagne! I have it.

(And he's been on the phone for half an hour. Working, with apologies. So yeah, I'll finish his champagne too because I told the staff we were dry and still they brought it 'in case we changed our minds'. Good plan! I'll deal with them when I finish this glass. Maybe.)

Charlie, you were right.

(I seem to have a reprieve from the hives of late, and therefore the allergy pills. Those pills leave me fumbling for words with which to even greet my boys so hurry, let's write while we still can.)

Lochlan didn't appreciate my turn as businesswoman yesterday. I was hoping to miss him as I came home, planning to change quickly and then track him down to show him I was still in one piece, though Caleb opted to suffer me through a two-hour lunch at a place that wanted to serve every course as a teaspoon of this or that with a dribble of contrast on a plate so large I found it comical by the third course and annoying by the fifth. I was called Mrs. C____ the whole morning too and he never corrected them even once.

I did, every single time.

The morning was too long.

So when we got home and Mike opened the door for me to exit, Lochlan was standing right there, having spent the last half-hour cleaning up the bikes and scooters for the kids, waiting, visibly. He was polishing his tools up to put away and he nodded at Mike, scowled at Caleb and then attempted to put on his 'it's okay' face for me as he took in my outfit, my white leather pencil skirt and black lace fitted sleeveless top with the white matching jacket. Black ankle boots, black bag. Crimson lipstick worn off. Hair straight. Lochlan lies and tells me I look nice when I know he wants to tell me I look like an alien and I point out I will change real quick and make him some lunch.

He mutters Not quick enough and goes back to tightening the seat on Ruth's bike. It keeps creeping down but I know his good arm isn't strong enough anymore and he's too proud to ask one of the others to do it for him.

I return in eight minutes flat and his mood improves considerably. My ripped jeans, eight years in, a navy blue t-shirt with the Beatles on the front, ponytail, no makeup, pink converse.

There she is, he says and smiles. For real this time.

I think I'm done here anyway, he says as he hits the button for the garage door and ducks out as it closes. You don't have to make me lunch, I can handle it. 

I look at his filthy hands. By the time you clean up, I'll have it ready, I tell him. Really I want to say Let me do it. Let me make this up to you.

When he comes back, still with dirty hands because it won't come off and it never did, I have two grilled cheese sandwiches and a bowl of sugared blueberries out for him. Coffee. He eats it so fast I don't get time to sit with him and then he asks me to consider the fact that whatever payday we'll get from the Devil might not be worth living in hell.

I think of my thousand-dollar leather skirt I didn't pay for versus standing in the rain trying to run a con to get a free meal and I wonder if he's right.

I hate it here too, I admit and Lochlan breaks into little pieces, all over the floor.

We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing.
                ~Charles Bukowski

Bored meetings. No time.

And then I found out how hard it is to really change.
Even hell can get comfy once you've settled in.
I just wanted the numb inside me to leave.
No matter how fucked you get, there's always hell when you come back down.
The funny thing is all I ever wanted I already had.
There's glimpses of heaven in everything.
In the friends that I have, the music I make, the love that I feel.
I just had to start again.

I'm having coffee outside this morning and making notes. It's cool but I already stole John's hoodie that he left in our house yesterday, finding it looped over the back of my dining room chair, forgotten in his jovial dinner-drunk that he gets because over the years those of us left unscathed by addiction are pathetic lightweights and it makes me nothing but thrilled. A beer and a half and he loves everyone and forgets all his stuff. Then he goes home across the lawn and goes to bed.

Proper, good.

Besides, it's a Lamb of God hoodie, one of the hundred-dollar ones from the Metallica tour of 2009 that we saw. Should I keep it? I would except it's down to my knees.

Caleb is frowning at my attire. Sorry, I didn't think to be outside on my own patio that I needed to do much more than make sure I was dressed. Who cares what I'm in?

He does.

Besides the hoodie I have a black tank top. pink plaid flannel pajama shorts on and Ugg boots. Just because they were by the door. I wouldn't leave the grounds in them on anything but when it's too chilly for bare feet they work well.

Do you want to get ready?

I'm unemployed.

Yes but you're still required to attend the meetings. 

Whyeeeeeeeee?

Because I gave you everything, remember? Now you have to keep a tight ship. Plus you employ a lot of people who are depending on you for their own living and I don't accept you letting them down. 

They would not mind if I appeared in my pajamas to approve funds. Besides you're there running the ship anyway. Don't think we all can't see that.

It's respect, Bridget.

Take my name off everything.

I can't do that. Only you can at this point.

I hate you.

I have cake at my house.

I love you.

I'll be back to pick you in up twenty minutes. We can make up the time on the road. 

Why doesn't everyone come here? Why do we always have to go downtown?

Never mix work and home.

Even though you do it daily. Pot-kettle much?

At this rate if you don't start putting a little effort into it, I'm going to put you in a pot.

I hate y-

Cake.

Nevermind.

On eating Ptichye Moloko with my fingers.

• Lochlan started to make noises today indicating he might be suffering from abject normalcy. This is rarely something that goes away on its own and accounts for just about every rash or impulsive decision I have ever made, save for two.
• I paired my hearing aids with my phone. Just because. I also paired the cookie jar and the vacuum cleaner with the phone for fun. I don't even know what that means, save for the fact that if I did do it correctly, this will mark the first time ever that I spelled vacuum the right way in print so that completely negates the whole concept of hearing my phone calls from inside my head. What..we're not even going to GO there tonight.
• I spent the dinner hour with Caleb and the kids ignoring pasta in favor of Jenga. I did not win even once. Caleb finally told me this is what life would be like but also with more designer garb and transcontinental trips thrown in, more staff and less angst. More evil too? I asked quite innocently and he frowned and got up to put away the dishes. 
• I went home to have dessert with Ben, who thought we should share only I was like CHOCOLATE GIVE IT ALL TO MEEEEEE and refused to give him any and he pretended he wasn't hungry but I knew better. I ate it all. I feel terrible about that. Sort of. Okay, no. It was delicious.
• I learned Robax Platinum and generic Loratadine tablet are together the OTC equivalent of six margaritas quite by accident when I forgot I took an allergy pill and popped a muscle relaxant before bed last night (because boys and tired...body parts and NEVERMIND) All was well until I got up around three to go to the bathroom and almost keeled right into the fireplace.
• I know all the words to our entire Mastodon collection (which is slightly incomplete at five albums worth, I believe). They tested me. No, no, Mastodon didn't, Corey and PJ did. I think I passed. They looked a little surprised. They told Ben and he was all Pshaw, no way and then he quizzed me and now he's walking around all spooked and weird. Because first the chocolate and now this and he can only be thinking Who are you and what have you done with my bumblebee?

The bearded girl.

They left this morning. I said goodbye, they cried when they hugged the kids and me and Caleb, and they made a few completely on point cracks about Neverland and also the joke that never gets old about when Ben will stop growing already.

All of the boys were gracious. It's tough to see our parents getting older, suddenly needing naps smack in the middle of the afternoon (oh, wait, nevermind) and doing bizarre things like ordering chocolate cake at a restaurant and then eating one bite.

If I ever reach the stage where I eat one bite of cake and push the rest away, it will be heralded as the first sign of the apocalypse, and you'd better take cover.

In other news, today is the annual Haircut and Shaving of the Beard day for most of the boys.

I hate it. Like them wild. They tell me since I don't have a beard I don't know how uncomfortable it gets when the weather warms up.

I point out that the weather never actually changes here, and that if I had a beard I would never EVER cut it, and instead I would adorn it with colorful beads and tiny braids and maybe a resident mountain beard-goat or two to frolic within it and keep it under control but otherwise I would spend my days tripping over it, swinging from it and generally using it as a broom. As clothes. As a blonde security blanket.

(I would hide cake in it too. But not just slices. Whole ones.)

This is where forever gets us (four more hours).

His magic camera captured me, defects and all. Some exquisite fading, fragile beauty like crumpled paper, smoothed flat too many times to pass for new, ribbon so badly frayed it has taken on a whole new texture but good enough to giftwrap and hope that the small details would be overlooked in all the excitement.

If he were still alive today, I wonder if Cole's pictures would look like the ones Andrew takes of me on his phone while we wait for the others to get ready to go?


Cole's parents are here and I'm losing my mind.

I should say Caleb's parents, I suppose, since it's not like Cole is here to show them a good time. Cole's in a box in the ocean on the other side of the country. As far as possible from me but a safe place too, one I adore. So I sort of did him a favor.

The hardest part is watching them correct themselves when they apply the father title. Sentences to their grandchild(ren) begin with Your father would have been so proud to...I mean, this is terrific.. and I turn around and roll my eyes at myself because this is so much harder than I thought it would be.

It's easier to go to them.

Ruth and Lochlan want nothing to do with the charade of playing roles, of making things easy. Caleb tried to insist on something to Ruth and she turned around and shouted You aren't my father! and walked out of the room, leaving a silence behind that I cut into slices and passed around, making sure everyone knew there were seconds if they didn't have enough the first time. Then Henry wanted to go too because anything Ruth is doing is always more fun than hanging out with adults, unless they are PJ or Ben who aren't adults exactly but very oversized little boys.

So I let him go, and Caleb unleashed a controlled quiet fury at me that almost knocked me down.

But I can play this game too and I turned the whole thing around with my own charm, which I don't exhibit much anymore because then everyone screams unfair and manipulative and also: intoxicating.

I would love to be intoxicated right now but that would be a Very Bad Idea and I think we've had enough bad ideas for one week life.

I wasn't going to mention they were here. It's not as if they're staying on the point (they're not, they're in complete swankiness  at a downtown hotel so they can shop while they're here) and really I try not to write about people who haven't given me express permission to do so.

Except for Loch, Caleb, Ben and all the important people in my life. I write about them anyway because if I didn't all you would get would be a daily outfit of the day from Duncan or Dalton (jeans, button-down plaid shirt, cigarettes and beards every. single. day.) or transcripts of alternate Wednesdays when Danny and Schuy cook, throw dance parties or fight and make up.

I don't think that would be much of a fun blog.

They leave tomorrow morning so this is the last big evening together, complete with a family dinner planned at one of the few remaining restaurants downtown that hasn't banned us for food/fist fights and can hold nineteen people on very short notice.

Not many left.

(I mean restaurants, not fights.)

The funny part is this time Cole's mom looked at me for a few moments and instead of the usual You really should have married Caleb wistfulness she usually buries me under, she said I always knew you and Lochlan were two peas in a pod. I'm glad you're back together. 

Thank you.

We're perpetuating a thin farce here, trying to go for normalcy when instead we should just fly the freak flag high and cop to the polyamorous/carny/monsters/musicians/communal freakshow we're really running. Normal never existed. Normal is the fantasy I made up in my brain when the daydreams came true and I had nothing left to wish for.

You're incredibly special to all of them. 

I nod. They're all incredible men, Cole and Caleb included. 

Thank you. 

For what? (Ripping out both of your son's hearts? Perpetuating the fraud of fatherhood on someone who turned out not to be a father at all? Ruining their lives? Standing here pretending neither one of them was/is a monster?)

For seeing that Caleb is not alone. I know he doesn't deserve it sometimes but it's gracious of you to include him in your lives. I know it can't be easy.

(UNDERSTATEMENT.)

I wouldn't shut him out of Henry's life or mine for that matter. He's family. 

That's as much as I can hope for. And I have two beautiful grandchildren. It's everything I could want. 

How do you do that? 

Do what, dear?

Manage to be so thankful for what you have instead of fixated on what you've lost?

Drowning in sorrow isn't going to bring Cole back. Or Jacob, for that matter. You can't fix what's behind you. You can only see what's in front of you. And right now in front of me I see a beautiful girl struggling to please everybody but forgetting the most important person of all. 

Who?

You, Bridget.

Bridget and the midnight vulgaritics.

(Title stolen from one of Henry's favorite books as a toddler. Matthew and the Midnight Tow Truck. He refused to donate it to the school's book sale this week. I can't say I blame him, it's a rollicking read.)

Ben was game to sing last night.

He sang the song to me while he removed my clothing, one button at a time. Sliding satin over skin, smoothing words over hurt feelings, burying our argument in a melody torn from his throat in time with his heartbeat.

He lifted me up by my elbows, pulling me against him, keeping me there. When he ran out of words he used kisses instead. Ben's kisses are like clouds. Stormy and fierce one minute, soft and breathtaking the next. His affection is like the weather. You're either freezing, never to be warm again or you're so warm you wish you would just melt down into the grass and dissolve, hating yourself for wishing it was cold again.

Ben, I- Oh, there goes the hand again. Fine, cover my mouth, I can wait.

Oh, except I'll forget what I wanted to fight about because.

This.

Feels.

So.

Good.

Oh my GOD. The only way it would be better would be if there was cake.

***

Hours later he tries to turn me over for more. My elbows, knees and eyelids weigh a thousand pounds now, but I'm up for whatever he can throw at me.

Instead he changes his mind, collapsing against me. Too tired. Have to sleep.

You can sleep when you're dead, Jake. 

He lifts his head up and looks at me. I can't even check the alarm on my face. I've never done that before. Called someone by the wrong name by accident anyway. I've done it on purpose many times.

Is that why you're with me? Because I'm as big as he was? A physical replacement?

Actually you're bigger. I can't help it. It's four in the morning and my emotions have been right inside the top edge of my skin for hours. I start laughing. Ben is a license to breathe and remember that life is supposed to be fun. So why we struggle so hard most of the time I don't understand at all.

He takes a minute to process all that information and then opts for grace.

I knew that, he grins and winks at me in the dark.

I don't want to know how. 

Easy. You didn't whistle when you walked until after I fucked you.

Classy, Tucker. 

I know. You're lucky on all counts, aren't you?