(The sign had said 'For tune tell er' and I begged him for the answer. Which tune? Tell her what? Please explain, Lochie!)

Sometimes I think I just need to be reset. Not a single issue with my kidneys since I came back from the east coast or maybe the giant harsh antibiotics I finished in June did the trick. The younger Russian doctor is pleased and doesn't even bother mentioning his father's friends who do plastic surgery. Instead he takes my blood pressure, an action that makes it go up just by virtue of me looking at the cuff.

Stop moving, he commands and I am still.

One-twenty-nine over eighty-eight. He says blankly.

Is that good or bad? 

It's okay for now. I'll check again next week. 

He takes out the ear pieces and begins to pack up his bags. Mother of miracles,  I have a prescription for a new drug for my migraines that actually works. It's an NSAID. For all the triptan-pushing doctors in my life do it's nice to let them know a huge burst of potassium flooding my system at just the right time works better than anything I've ever tried. It's called Cambia and the only way I can remember that it is to call it Coheed & Cambia, which is dumb but if it works, then who cares?

Caleb figures I get the headaches because Ben picks me up by my head. I point out that's only been the past five or six years, I've had headaches since forever.

Well, it probably doesn't help then. He glares at me. He's worried and he's jealous and really, I can't help that. I have my own problems.

***

Don't let go
Don't let go
Don't let go
Don't let go
Don't let go
Don't let go
Don't let go

I climb up the steps and into the little camper. Lochlan follows. He smells like oil and sweat from fixing the motor (again) and he's filthy but he didn't want me to go home and go to sleep without seeing the finished result.

What do you think? He shows me the tiny kitchen area, pops down the table from the wall, and then steers me across the body of the camper to the 'bedroom' which is close enough that if the table is down you can stick your hand out and touch it from a lying-down position in bed. It's cozy and claustrophic and...and....PERFECT.

The bed has a beautiful crazy quilt on it. Which I'm one-hundred percent sure he stole from his mother's linen closet and will never admit it because I've seen it on their clothesline before.

Ooooh! The quilt! 

I knew you would like that. He smiles.

It's so neat in here! I want to live here!

Well, if all goes well, we will. He smiles more shyly now, like he has a secret. His eyes are almost black in the dark and he puts his arms around me and squeezes. What else do we need? 

A plant. 

Flowers?

No, a spider-plant. 

Okay. I will leave that up to you. We can put it outside on nice days and in the window on rainy ones. That's what I think he said, anyway. I don't know because he was kissing up my shoulder to my neck to underneath my ear and my heart was beating so hard I didn't think the camper would be able to contain it much longer. I wrap my hands up in the front of his shirt and brace for the full-body tremors as he reaches the sweet spot just under my jaw that almost makes me invariably burst into flames.

Oh. Yeah. That's it. BOOM.

He stands back up straight and welds our foreheads together. Green-eyed transfer of confirmations all around. This will happen and it will happen here. Soon. As long as we can hold out but soon.

My newly eleven-year-old completely unformed brain is yelling NOW NOW NOW NOW but only on the inside of my skull.

I wonder what his sixteen-year-old brain is yelling at him?

A head-on kiss feeds the fire and I no longer care about thinking or anything else for that matter. I'm glad breathing and heartbeats are automatic or I'd be dead right now. His strong hand comes up and holds my head just under that sensitive ear and he pulls away. I am breathless and ruined and so so happy to be alive right now right here. If this is love then I'm set. I never want to feel anything else or do anything else but be right here with him.

(Gosh. I wonder what he's thinking?)

But then he tells me and I don't have to wonder anymore.

I love you, Bridgie. 

But at the age of eleven I wasn't even sophisticated enough to know how to respond to this and so I whispered Yay! right into his mouth and he laughed and kissed me again and it took me days and days to remember that you always say it back and so I ran to the camper on a Thursday, late for dinner, rain pouring down, soaking me before I made it from my driveway to his. I threw the door open and he looked up and smiled from his seat on the floor, fixing a stuck cupboard door and I crossed to him, getting water everywhere and I threw myself down in his lap and kissed him hard.

I love you too, Lochlan. 

The grin he flashed still remains the biggest one I've ever seen him make.

It's barely sunrise and my legs are already rug-burning as I am pushed to the floor and then brought up halfway up by Ben, his hands wrapped around my whole head, bringing me in close against him in a vice-like hold, keeping me there while he moved and I was held still. I dig my thumbs in against his hips and square my own hips until he throws his head back, making the most unholy groan, squeezing his hands together around my head.

 I don't fear for my life, just my skin. He takes a step back and lets go of his hold on me all at once. I rock backwards away from him, landing on my hands and knees. He rushes back into the hold, pulling me up to a standing position using my head, smoothing my hair and smiling down into my face like I was his greatest experiment and then he becomes very serious.

I'd like to kiss you but I don't think I'm going to. 

Lochlan laughs from amongst the quilts (where we thought he was still sleeping). Me neither. Possibly not for days. 

Bah.

I had an early morning walk with Sam, our sweaters and a thermos of coffee to share. Down on the beach so he could administer private Saturday-church and after church counsel to me in his own unique way. He's very good at what he does and contrary to popular Internet lore, not interested in sabotaging or slandering Joel, nor is he trying to win points with me. He never pressures, we just wind up in the same place and then he steers me to see things I wasn't even looking at before. I don't think it's self-serving and I don't know if you can judge him based on arguments you haven't even heard but I love the fact that the Internet tries to be protective of me now.

Sam makes me cry sometimes with his words. With the fact that he had a front row seat for all of Jacob and I and yet he doesn't use it as ammunition. He worries. Maybe I don't blame him for that, maybe I do but he has his own thoughts about me and I don't agree with all of them and yet he is loyal and true and my dearest friend if you're counting the ones I can talk to without censorship. I know that sounds weird but they all have their own loyalties and preferences that get in the way of objective advice and constructive criticism, or they are fairly blinded by their own inner preoccupations with me or with each other. 

I know. Tough crowd. 

I did not say this collective living would be a walk in the park. It's a walk on the beach but a rocky, windy one. I have to take my time and hold tightly onto hands as they are offered and watch where I'm going. 

***

Internet rumors are swell, aren't they?

After leaving Sam I spent the remainder of the morning with the geniuses at Apple (swollen MBP battery and fucked up logic board that magically started functioning right there and then, dropping the price from a thousand for the repair to two hundred!) and then came home and threw myself in the pool where I floated face down until it got dark.

So I missed all the drama where you decided that since I was gone for half a day several things must be happening. For instance:

• I am pregnant.
• Ben is drunk.
• Ben has left.
• Ben is a specific Ben and you think you know which one.
• Lochlan is drunk or has left or is just an asshole, in case I didn't know.
• I am sleeping with Sam.
• I am sleeping with Duncan/Dalton/Daniel or August. Batman, John or Andrew. Gage. Keith. Matt! WTF. COREY. 
• I died and no one has my password to tell you. 

Except none of those things happened! I was just face down in the pool. Internet, you make me laugh. And you make me cry.

I'll break for you as I open up the sky.

Follow the sunlight down
Cry clear and loud
Heaven won't help us now
But it's better this way
Warm light wash me away

Piglet, I have ways of getting the information I need.

He grabs my ankles and pulls me up, holding me upside down over the bed. I squeal as the hem of my chemise falls toward the ground, over my head. I must look like a dog with a cone collar. Nice. He licks the back of my knee as I simultaneously try and hold my nightgown up around my hips with one hand and clutch at the denim of his jeans-covered leg with the other.

Jake! Put me down!

Not until you tell me. 

I can't explain it. We're kindred spirits in a way. 

You too fight constantly. You act as if each other is the worst thing you could encounter walking into a room. 

That's because he is immature. 

And you are?

Uh...less...immature. 

I see. So you and Ben just magically get along. 

Sometimes. 

I really don't understand this. 

We don't either but we have a very strong concern-bond for each other. 

How does that work?

He's been trying to get into my pants for a decade any way he can and I mostly worry that maybe he has a little escapism problem. 

Booze?

Sometimes. 

Well, I could offer to help him but I'm not getting any good information here. Can you be a little more specific?

He uses on the road. 

Toilet paper? A seeing-eye dog? What?

Drugs, Jake. Drugs, okay? 

Why is it hard for you to tell me these things?

Because I'm protective of him.

Mmm. Beauty and the Beast. 

Mostly. He's wounded. Don't push him.

I could help him. 

Ask him if he wants help. If he doesn't, drop it. 

Wow, I can't believe you enable him. 

I didn't say that. 

How about this? You have indicated that he may need a little more support. I will take that information and see that he gets it. Is that better?

Yes. But if you push him he'll shut you down so fast. 

Is this why you argue? You're trying to help him?

He needs me. He needs friends. He looks so huge but he's made of paper. Of glass. He's more fragile than...than anyone.

Than you?

No, we're the same now. 

From death?

Death. Yes. Death does this. It makes you clear and cracked and easily destroyed over dumb things like sunshine or pressure or frustration. Toilet paper even.

I could help you too. 

Then put me down!

He swings me once, sliding his arm under my back on the upswing, and gently deposits me back, albeit with my feet on my pillow and my head at the bottom of the bed.

Why do I get this feeling that Ben is far more complicated than everyone gives him credit for?

Because that's the way he wants it, but Ben is Ben. No one questions him, we just really really love him. 

Even though he's a giant toddler most of the time? 

It's part of his charm.

Triage.

Ben reminds me this morning that the last time he felt this way he dragged me off to Paris to put a halt to the perpetual tug of war and that when his ego takes a hit he tends to doubt life and everything in it. That leaving the tour due to the threat to his sobriety didn't feel like a milestone of comprehension, it felt like a failure and he came back expecting all the perks to be gone as well. Expecting it to the point where he still wakes up and figures he will see the unfamiliar walls of a cold hotel room and have no comforts whatsoever and he's amazed and humbled that we are here. That we waited and that we're not disappointed in him in the least.

I reminded him to get over himself and stop wingeing and let's get on with life. He laughed so gently I might have mistaken it for a sob but he agreed to find his way back before we all implode. The vultures are hovering, I tell him. 

I'll blow them right out of the sky, he whispers. 

Lochlan kisses the top of Ben's head as he goes by. He's on his way to negotiate a deal. Art for cash. Murals, this time in a big office lobby somewhere plain that should be pretty. Life imitates Cole. 

He gets to the door and then comes back and kisses my cheek for good measure and Ben and I wish him luck simultaneously without taking our eyes off each other. I feel like my gaze is a life raft and if I break it Ben will disappear under the surface again. I've almost got him back. Almost.

Pushing axioms off the cliff.

Close your eyes
Drive away the cloud that hides the light
And leave the pain behind
Dead alive
Find a way to bury all the lies
Escape the pain inside
‘Cause I don’t want to fall
Or let you go

Click. Boom. The moment when a record, like a person, crosses my guard and becomes familiar, anticipated. I still vividly remember when that happened with Ben. It was about an hour after I met him. Faster than Lochlan. Faster than Jake. Why can't I reach him now?

I've resorted to walking around the house behind him singing at the top of my lungs. I chose this album because it's a last-resort bitter-yet-hopeful, painful yet masterfully written account of how a heart breaks, precisely. Dark Before Dawn.

Indeed.

And he hates it because he can't hear the music (I have headphones), only the words and I'm singing them out as arrows, every one aiming for his heart but if you knew Ben he can block out an avalanche if he so chooses and today I'm the avalanche in his head.

Today? Lately. Since he came back. Probably since before he left but I didn't notice, I was busy having fun when I wasn't picking up the pieces of my heart. I keep tripping and I drop them or I smash into someone and they scatter everywhere. Under the jeep. Into the pool. Through the electric fence. Down into the shadows where I can't see them at all.

He is still sober. Not for long. Not at this rate, says everyone as if they know what's going through his head. But his head is thick. No one can see through it and I have faith that he hasn't reached that point and probably won't.

Oh good. A screaming, bitter song. They're punctuated with lovesongs and the timing is perfect.

He said yesterday that he wasn't prepared for the possibility that I would wait at all. I threw a book at him and yelled that he didn't know me, then. At all.

He said he did and that's why he's so surprised. And that he just doesn't know how to deal with it. I told him he could start by being Ben and that the rest would fall into place like it always does. He looked at me like I was crazy. I stood my ground until someone unhelpfully changed the subject to ease the tension. It didn't work.

It would have been easier. 

Unless you were waiting for an out, you mean. 

I wasn't though. I don't want one.  But I didn't think I would get a choice. 

But you did and it all worked out so what the fuck is this?

Dazed recognition?

Was I a stranger before?

Before? No. But you might be one now.

But I'm not. I'm me. 

My Bridget would have jumped. 

Well she didn't. But she still can if she has no other choice left. 

That's what keeps me paralyzed, Bee. That thought right there.

Time travel while I sleep.

Last night I didn't even wait to see if he really was going to live out there in the driveway in the camper (because somehow if he makes his space smaller things become clearer) when it got very late. I just took my things and went out to join Lochlan. He wasn't there so I locked the door behind me and tucked myself in and had absolutely zero problems drifting off. He put a thicker blanket on the bed so I wasn't even cold.

When I woke up at six this morning, I was in the middle of the big bed, face jammed against Lochlan's neck, Ben clutching my back to his chest, and Lochlan's arm resting on the side of my head, his hand wrapped around Ben's neck, his other arm tight around my back. Ben's chin was on the top of Loch's head and Loch had his head bowed as if he fell asleep kissing the top of my head and forgot to move.

Or maybe they were just comfortable this way. I know I was. It made it very difficult to get up because I didn't want to. I didn't even need to. Sam took the dog with him to church and the kids have nothing on today and so it was nice to drift back off for a while.

I try to keep those moments in my mind when we sit in front of qualified folk who ask us to reaffirm our priorities for ourselves, as couples and as a trio. I try to keep those moments in my mind when I detect things like doubt and mistrust and resignation in voices I love so much. I try to remember how it felt to wake up to such tenderness when they rip each other apart with words that must be the truth but weren't deployed to hurt, just to clarify, that they're sorry for the collateral damage done but it's inevitable, unavoidable. A shame.

I try to remember why I locked myself in the camper in the first place and how I can do things right from now on but I always seem to be up against more than I can handle, as if fate is a game and I am the dice, rolled, cursed at and responsible for every move they make.

Deja too.

Father forgive me cause I know
Exactly how I spread my soul
My idolatry is in the pocket of my coat
I make promises
I could never keep

Ain't it a ghost machine
Ain't she a ghost machine
I'm still haunted by the faces on her screen
I swear she's gonna make a dead man out of me

By the time I made my way back across the driveway Lochlan had moved to the camper, now freshly painted and then painted again from red to white. Five coats, lots of swearing but I would have taken that any day over absolute silence.

The worst part was when I went to bed to read. Ben was in his studio, oblivious to the entire world but Lochlan never showed up. I finally figured out where he was and I took my pillow and went outside and knocked on the door of the camper waiting, my pillow in my arms.

I thought you were getting all your affection elsewhere these days.

Not all of it. Just a little and it's poor quality.

Didn't stop you though, did it?

I'm sorry, Locket.

But you aren't. Get in here before you get cold.

He holds the door and I duck under his arm. He wasn't sleeping but he sees my pajamas and my pillow so he turns the light off, pulls his shirt over his head and then pulls back the covers on the little bed. I crawl in and he strips to his boxers and gets in with me, wrapping me up tightly against him but facing me away. I can feel his tension, I can feel the frustration and I tell him again that I'm sorry.

Are you sorry for seeing him or for hurting me?

Hurting you.

Then you haven't learned anything.

I didn't sleep with him and he wasn't there when I slept.

Such a small comfort, Peanut. I feel like I'm going to implode. Why can't you listen to me? Too many years of being told what to do? I ruined this love because I had to be a parent first, is that it?

You're not at fault for any of this, Lochlan and he gets credit for nothing. This is all on me. 

Then change it, Bridget. This gets harder all the time. Not easier to accept. Not familiar. It's just hard and it hurts and I don't know what I can take over what's already been done. Caleb can't save you. He can't even comfort you properly so why bother? Why keep the past around only to be destroyed by it time and time again? You survived Cole's anniversary. You didn't have to write about it, it wasn't causing issues, let him go already. Let Caleb go too. Give me a chance here to get ahead of the ghosts and the devils alike.

Give a cuddle, get a nap (currency isn't what it used to be or maybe it's just my lucky day).

Watching the rain like it's a fifty-cent novelty show at the theatre during the daytime. It's hard to believe my world will ever be green again, for it's always nuclear-sun these days, blown out bright white causing us to squint constantly. It hurts. It induces headaches and sun dogs and hallucinations that we're all okay because the sun is out.

Well, it isn't out anymore.

And no one is ever okay, are they?

When the rain started I lifted up my head, looking up through the skylight from where I sat tucked into the arms of the devil. He followed my gaze and then smiled and said Finally. He could have meant anything but I nodded and said we needed it badly and again I could have meant anything and he nodded back as if we were having the same conversation but we weren't.

I couldn't concentrate anymore and eventually he put me down alone and went to make some drinks and I stretched out flat to watch the water run down the glass. It was still dark for half light even, for once and my eyes relaxed and opened wide before closing to listen carefully for the sound and there it comes, quietly pushing into the room, into my head until I can hear nothing else.

When he comes back I must have fallen asleep because this morning I wake up to the big black blanket tucked around me tightly and a watered-down whiskey at room-temperature, weighing down a condensation ring that will ruin the finish on the bedside table permanently.

I could have prevented this, he said more than once, like he had all the answers.

Turns out he has the same amount as anyone else.

None.

I take the glass and take a huge swallow and then decide to just finish it. My insides sting and rebel against the sudden watering of my blood and I lie back and close my eyes again just for a minute while the empty glass makes a new ring on the table to finish me off.

Fighting back up to where I was before I fell in the hole in the garage.

Will you stop - will you wait a minute - please remember
Can you stop - can you just give me one minute to explain
I will not cause a fuss, I will not rock the boat - believe me darling
Oh what is, what was, it's all the same

They always tell me to say something when it gets really bad. I do and then no one listens. They say to tell them when something isn't working and they'll change it. They say to speak up when I feel something and they'll recognize it and alter it, fix it or show me how to work it.

I told them Joel isn't good, that all he does is dredge it all back up like seaweed on a perfectly clean beach and yet they continue to believe his charade over my gut feelings. They continued to insist that he was right, that it was a phase and that I would eventually come to a grinding halt against my grief-brick wall and that they were ready and waiting and that look, he was right. He was right. Insisting on it like Joel is the fucking moon.

But Joel is the wall and I ran into him at a million miles an hour and goddammit, I was doing great and then he walks in and it's 2007 all over again. I told him to go, that I would see him next at Halloween because I need to see who is right, me or them.

Sam apologized for not seeing things more clearly. Joel is a manipulator. I see that now.

Caleb apologized for not pushing harder for an RSVP of his perpetual, open invitations. I could have prevented all of this.

And Lochlan apologized for yelling at me for ruining my dress. Just stay put, would you? Would you just stay right here with me and this wouldn't keep happening?

Ben was busy and I don't think he noticed a thing. Hey, Bee. Where have you been?

Right here, Benny. Drowning in the tides of my own making.