Shots fired.

Caleb's having the stitches taken out of his face later today if all goes well. He's mightily impressed by all this. When I point out that he is lucky, that it could have been worse, he looks at me and says it still could be.

What in the hell do you mean by that? I ask him and throw my empty coffee cup at his head.

Jesus Christ, Bridget! How much damage are you two going to do to my face this week already?

Not enough, apparently because there's still stupid noises coming out of it! GOD! I turn to head back inside for a fresh cup and walk right into Ben. Ben the stranger, who has all but moved into the second tinier suite of rooms off the studio downstairs that wasn't ever supposed to be used for anything but has seemingly become his home.

Okay, Bumblebee? His arms go around me and the mixed messages leave me wishing for a rockstar translator. Or at the very least some sort of impulse generator.

Okay what?

Are you?

Am I WHAT?

Are you okay?

Define okay.

Not fatally wounded? I guess. 

Ha. Whatever. Is there coffee left? Bye. 

I head around him and hear him ask Caleb what's 'wrong' with me but I don't hear Caleb's response. I don't want to hear Caleb's response. I pour a new cup, find sugar and milk for it (curse you Sam) and head straight through the front of the house looking for that alone time that saves the boys this kind of mood from me. Mercifully no one's on the porch so I head down to the grotto where the sun is streaming in between the branches making everything magical. Maybe not quite dry yet but magical anyway. I haven't spent enough time here. Everything is covered with moss. I curl up in the chair and take a sip and scream when a voice behind me speaks.

Can't a guy get a little privacy anymore? 

It's Dalton. He's sitting on the rock wall directly behind me, coffee cup and empty plate beside him, nose in a book.

I'm sorry. I didn't see you. 

That's the point. You stopped using this place and it's too nice to let it go to waste. 

It's all yours. I'll get out of your hair. 

Not if you need an escape. 

I need a lob-

You've got to stop saying that. How about instead of running, you stand up for yourself? 

I look at the ground. I think I did and they don't like that. 

Good girl. 

Don't say that. 

Sorry. I just don't want to see you get railroaded. 

Please tell me that isn't sexual. 

What? Oh, God, no. What I mean is this is your house and I see you struggling to find a way to fit into it sometimes. Someone is always watching you and following you. 

They kind of have to. 

Why?

In case I hurt myself. 

You're not going to do that. 

What if I do?

What if you don't? 

Yeah. What if I don't?

Then you live happily ever after. 

Where is the happily part, TJ?

It's coming. Gotta be patient, Bridge. Geez. 

The most atypical Monday.

Yesterday I feel like I posted as if every day is some flippant pool party. It isn't. Two minutes after Lochlan climbed out of the pool he and Caleb were engaged in yet another perceived slight, shoving each other back and forth, up in each others faces, Caleb tall and stronger, Lochlan more agile and braver than anyone. They wouldn't have noticed had I drowned at that point, and eventually I went up to the house, bringing all my things. That's how you know I'm not coming back.

***

I spent this morning by myself getting dirty, weeding the garden, spraying the tomatoes with copper, moving statues and concrete blocks around until I was happy with the arrangements of the day, hanging windchimes and bells, eating radishes straight out of the dirt and collecting enough basil leaves to dry that I'm not sure I'll ever need the rest, actually.

How long is it before you can subdivide a lavender plant again?

I have so many plans but not enough energy or patience. I also am bound by the weather. I've taken to doing just as much gardening in the pouring rain, in my raincoat and my rubber boots because I hate the heat. I don't want to be in the sun and yet the warmth of the soil is what is going to make everything grow.

The corn is almost as tall as me now. I'm so excited I could burst. I have a freezer full of cherries I don't know what to do with and every time we turn around there are more ripe strawberries. We're eating them as fast as we can.

When I ran out of energy and things to fuck with I came inside and PJ passed me a cold lemonade. I showed him the basil and he said he watched. I asked why he didn't help and he said it was my thing, that maybe it's good for me to just get out there alone. That he had a good eye on me, only losing me once when I went over the hill near the swing to check my experimental trees (one olive, one lemon, thank you) but I was right back because they seem okay, so far.

He asked what I wanted for lunch and I told him he could decide so he picked Mr. Noodles and I wondered if somewhere in Japan there's a ridiculously unpopular Mrs. Noodles and he said that's the shrimp one because of the pink package and we laughed until we cried. It wasn't even that funny so it must be the heat. Maybe it's the tension. I don't know. I need sleep. The coyotes kept me up last night and no, that's not a euphemism. They howled all night with their tiny high-pitched plaintive wails that always make me wonder if they are babies but then I am told that's what they sound like, even full grown.

Sunday.

It was hot this morning before I finished breakfast (homegrown strawberries and raspberries and coffee) and so I changed into my pale pink bikini with the ruffles and a gold tiny horseshoe necklace and skipped church in order to worship at the house of chlorine and concrete.

Seems fitting, as the weather recently has been terrible and this week is supposed to be hot sun, so I broke out my new bottle of SPF 150000000 and a big floppy hat and have plans to hide out under the covered lounge chair every day.

Sam understood. He said consensus seems to be in favor of us spending some time apart. He returned to church today in his board shorts and a flannel shirt (because he's adorable like that), planning to talk about being perfect imperfect. I know that sermon. I've heard it before. He isn't worried about us-us. We'll be okay. He said me throwing myself to the wolf to take the pressure off probably wasn't the greatest idea but I think now that it was as I lower myself into the stinging blue water, my scrape screaming through the rest of my flesh, Caleb watching from the side with concern, his bare chest a rainbow of bruises in the shape of Lochlan's fists and the odd stair-step. We look like catastrophic accident victims at summer convalescent camp. We look tough, like survivors.

That's what we are.

I do one lap on my back and stop at the ladder. Caleb says I should do one more and I swear in his direction and get out. I'm a weak swimmer. I'm not a warrior. I'm not a fighter. I'm a withstander. I'm a with-stander. I'm a shadow sewn to the heels of a Peter Pan with red hair and freckles who I see step out of the patio doors suddenly. He walks down the steps and shields his eyes from the sun and I lift mine up to shield them in case he signals to me, one band in place today on my finger because he is indecisive and took the other one away again upon suggestion. He takes off his shirt, and empties his pockets and then begins to run across the lawn. He does a handspring over the fence and then cannonballs into the pool with a holler, showering both the Devil and I with lovely cool water.

He surfaces, shaking his head hard, his curls coming loose from their grasp on his skull, forming big circles again before they get soaked again when he floats on his back.

Literally. This is the best, he says and it's very hard to disagree with him, in spite of everything.

He looks it over carefully as I talk.

It's Swiss. You can probably take his initials off the back if you have access to a small grinder. 

Or I can repurpose them with other words. What should I use? You are the wordsmith.

I only know one other name that starts with X. 

Which is?

His brother's middle name was Xavier. 

I was thinking xenagogue. Do you know what that means, Bridget? 

No. I feel helpless and small standing near Skateboard Jesus. I feel transparent.

It's a tour guide, a person who conducts a stranger, as it were. 

(Oh, perfect.)

So you bring me an expensive watch, and in exchange I will give you priceless advice. Watch your memory thief. 

Why? 

Do thieves only take the things you want them to take? 

No. 

No, of course not. They take the things that are precious to you. Irreplaceable, valuable things. They violate you and leave you with holes that can never be filled. You ask for your lobotomies, your do-overs, but you don't know the price of these things, Bridget. Think hard before you let the thief in amongst the gold. 

What if it's too late? 

I don't think it is. What if the Devil comes looking for his watch? 

He won't. I'm sure he's already bought a new one. How do you know it isn't too late? 

The carnival girl is alive and well. Takes the watch off a rich man to give to a poor man. That's exactly something you would do and something a blank slate wouldn't do. And now if you'll excuse me, he checks his watch, I'm late and I gotta go. He jumps on his skateboard and is gone against traffic with a wink, hair flying out over his shoulders, worn backpack snug against his shoulders. I try to follow his progress but I've already lost him in the crush of trucks and lights.

(A very) Civil war.

I fell asleep wrapped around Ben. I found him in his big chair in front of the board, doing nothing really, not even listening, and I climbing into his lap and shoved my knees down the sides of his seat and wrapped my arms around his neck and fell asleep like a festival-weary four-year-old without a word.

I woke up in a Lochlan and Ben sandwich, safe in my own bed, two bands stacked on my finger, Ben's arm across my head, his hand wrapped around Lochlan's head.

Sigh.

Mentally this morning I am exhausted. I have concrete in my veins. I called Caleb to make sure he was okay and he asked if I was okay first. He said he got hammered a second time in one day via the stock market thanks to Brexit. Loch took my phone and hung up on him. Loch figures there will be another Scottish referendum now but first there has to be a Bridget referendum. We've got to sort this out because he can't go barging around using his temper as a weapon.

Oh, like you're using sex? He asked. He's clipped and tired too this morning. Everyone else holds their breath. You could reach out and pluck the point like a string this morning and play a lead that would break your heart.

August reminded him oh so quietly that this would be difficult if only for exactly these reasons. Sex is a weapon. And a tonic. And a curse. And a drug. And a reason. And a nightmare. And a panacea too.

(I'm amazed at how open these discussions have become. Like breakfast table conversation, all casual-like. Christ. Shoot me please.)

I want her back the way she was. 

Which year? 

Jesus. He thinks. 1981. 

(Before. Before everything. Everything except him.)

I burst into tears again and he folds me into his arms and says No, don't, Bridgie. No more. I don't think you've got anything left. You're going to dry up and blow away.

Sam asks if we'd like to come and have a tea out on the porch. Sort some things. Get a refresher, as it were, with he and August together. Joel called to come but we turned him down. Lochlan nods. I lost my cool. 

You didn't have any to begin with, Red. Ben tells him. And I don't blame you. She is worth more than anything on earth to me and I don't know how you do this as it is. 

I didn't get a choice, Lochlan says.

FUCK.

Got my ring back. Got my Ben back.

Only took fifteen hours of intense negotiation, hostages included.

Utopia indeed.

Update: Nevermind. Loch says I misinterpreted a concession that Ben didn't coerce me into going to see Caleb, and that the ring is back, the Ben will not be and that I need to listen better. That we can pawn it with the watch and fund the future, probably, if either of us survive the present but probably not because we'll probably both explode from stress and heartbreak. That Things have to change, Bridget. This isn't working. It's killing both of us and we've come too far to let this happen now.

I'm going to bed. Alone. Somewhere where he isn't. I can't breathe. I can't think anymore. I just want everything to stop for a while.

Breitling for sale. Cheap. Well, maybe not. CXC engraved on the back, though I can sand that off.

We're just home from the hospital this morning. Let me choose my words carefully here. Lochlan knew I was relatively intact and safely locked in our wing and so he went right past Ben and over to the boathouse. Word has it Caleb came out to see him and took a tumble down the steps, ironically raising his arms to protect his head and scraping his face quite badly with his watch, which he then gave to Lochlan, because he no longer wants it, it is cursed or dangerous or something and so it will be pawned off cheaply. Loch said Caleb told him to sell it for a hundred bucks. I think we can do better than that but he won't see any of it.

I got off easy, my leg is just one big long scab this morning and it didn't even actually bleed ever. Caleb required fourteen stitches and the attention of a plastic surgeon. He also had a host of body contusions from his fall that were not in need of medical attention but they put him on an EKG and kept him for observation for a few hours after the fact. He will be resting for a few days and is never allowed to see me again because I shouldn't be around people so clumsy.

That won't hold but I appreciate the sentiment.

I don't appreciate Ben's banishment though. He's gone. Done. Lochlan said it's over. That whatever goddamned games Ben is playing with me have ended now. The absences. The drinking. The sharing. The psychological warfare. The oneupmanship. All of it. Finished. Take off the ring. You've now had three marriages end now, call it official, this is done, kiss him goodbye, he's over, no, stop crying, Jesus CHRIST, Bridget, kind of order that I don't even want to think about right now.

I could have said no before we left the house. It isn't all Ben's fault.

(They will tell you it is because of the damage, because I'm not responsible and that ruined people don't have to be accountable for anything. I don't think that's quite right.)

You'll change your mind later. You love him too. 

I love him, Bridget, but I love you more and I can't do this anymore. 

I made him go. 

That doesn't matter. 

It's me you can't trust. 

I understand that. 

You chose poorly, I think. 

You let me worry about that. 

It was a real bad fall, was it? 

The worst. I felt so helpless.
 

(Oh that? That's not the mark of the Devil. It's the mark of his ten thousand dollar watch.)

DON'T. Just.. I know.

(I think I've been branded.)

Neamhchiontach. You're here.

I don't know why. I'm not ready to forgive you or start this again. I'm still so angry with you and we haven't really dealt with any of -

He takes my arms and walks me backwards gently until I am pressed against the door. Ben doesn't say a word but he hasn't missed a move, watching from just inside the alcove. Caleb's fingertips slide around my head, behind my ears as he bends his head down for a kiss. Pinned like a specimen moth. I can't breathe. He slides his fingers flat underneath my jaw, lifting me up by my head, sliding me up the door until we see eye to eye and then he stops, leaving me pinned there, one hand still wrapped around my neck, cutting off my air before sliding the other down around my hip, underneath my thigh, his Breitling scraping deep against delicate skin. He steps in even closer and brings his other hand down under my other thigh and I can breathe again but not for long.

Another kiss and he asks how long we have. This is the routine. It's hardly changed in decades.

People in my family live forever, not so sure about yours, I tell him defiantly, sadly even as he removes one hand again, this time to pull my dress up further. I scream and the hand comes back up, not over my mouth but around my neck, squeezing just enough as his mouth presses against my ear.

Hush, baby. No screaming. No noise. You know how to do this. Ben won't let anything bad happen to you.

And he pushes my chin up away from his mouth, kissing along my throat as he drives against me. I can feel Ben's eyes crawling over us like darkness and it hurts. I can feel everything and it hurts. The betrayal. The permission. The violence of this. The same way it always is. I try to leave and he keeps me here, his hand still around my face, now centering it right in front of his, nose to nose while he almost (but not quite) loses his breath.

Stay with me, Doll.

I wrap my arms around his neck and he takes us to his bed. I am not tied down but instead left comfortably on my back on the mink blanket I love so much. His elbows frame my head as he kisses me softly.

Do you want Ben here?

He decides.

Caleb lifts his head and looks back toward Ben. I can't see him from here. I hear him say he's fine where he is. He never pushes me too hard. I get overwhelmed easily.

If you change your mind, you tell me, okay?

I nod and my eyes well up almost involuntarily. Caleb scares me more when he is understanding and generous, kind, almost. It would be easier if he had left me up against the door and choked me into submission. Then I would know exactly how to feel.

What's wrong, Bridget?

Ta tu fos ar an diabhal, ta me fos an neamhchiontach!

(Lochlan's been muttering it under his breath for weeks now: Ta se fos ar an diabhal, ta tu fos ar an neamhchiontach! He is still the devil, you are still an innocent! is the gist. I'm just repeating it back to Caleb. You are still the devil. I am still the innocent!)

You haven't done anything wrong, Baby. Ben is right there. Caleb sits up and they look at each other and I lose my mind.

I need to go. I want to go home now. Benny- I start to struggle and Caleb holds me down.

Soon. 

Now!

Not yet.

I push against his hold but I know better. He loves the fight. Eventually I settle back on the fur and stare through the skylight at the trees. At the strawberry solstice moon. It can't save me either. Not from this. My only defense is to pretend I don't care.

Ben settles back in his chair in the dark (crisis perverted) and Caleb resumes our show. I'm not moving but I don't dare fall asleep or then there would really be hell to pay and I can barely afford the portion I get now.

On the way out Ben swears and asks Caleb if he's capable of ever sending me home without injury and Caleb asks what the fun would be in that, truthfully. That he does it to remind Lochlan who's boss.

On the way across the driveway Ben asks me if the cut from the watch hurt and I tell him with Caleb it's better to feel pain than fear. I don't wait to see the look on his face and head straight inside.

On the way upstairs Lochlan finds us (he's holding my phone) and asks me where the hell I've been for the past three hours. I direct him to Ben and keep walking.

I hear yelling as I close the door to our room so I lock it for good measure. I keep locking doors as I walk through rooms and down halls until I get to the bathroom and then I lock that door too. I strip out of my dress in front of the full length mirror and turn. His steel watch strap has cut a deep gouge across the outside of my thigh and underneath my leg. I think I need stitches. I don't know what I need.

Feels like a Wends-day.

Today was the last day of classes proper and now suddenly I have a child in grade twelve and one in grade ten. I don't know how that happened. They are still technically writing exams and a week and a half away from report cards and the official end of the school year though so I will save my momgobsmackishness for that day. Until then I will remain in denial because it's nicer here, isn't it? The good snacks are right where I left them, no one's taken all my money and I don't spend all my free time ferrying teenagers who don't even belong to me all over town.

Sigh.

I know, the next time I blink they'll be in their forties and jetting off somewhere exotic so for now I should enjoy the dirty jokes they can actually tell now at the dinner table without repercussion and the fact that they bring me an Internet digest each day with all the news I actually want and funniest bits so I can avoid the terrible parts. They suggest new sushi restaurants and movies we might like and teach me how to get places I can never remember how to go because I'm directionally useless and they have discretion the likes of which few people even understand, let alone possess. They are protective of the collective (We should have shirts made. I think I love that slogan) and I'm so proud of them that when I open my mouth and talk about them glitter and rainbows just fucking beam out everywhere.

But I don't do that on the Internet because PRIVACY.

***

Lochlan worked for a couple of hours this morning while PJ, Gage and I did heavy chores and then I met him at New Jake's borrowed bike for a freezing cold and rain-threatened drive up into the mountains and lunch at a found picnic table of expensive french food far too nice for an actual picnic table, though we both refused to admit we were frozen solid, leathers or not. We cut the trip short and came home and stripped down to swimsuits and then hit the sauna, something I rarely use because I am my own hot flash lately. Loch loves it because it keeps his bad arm from throbbing when it's about to rain, like on days similar to today. He cranked the heat right up and I lasted maybe seven or eight minutes before I felt like I couldn't breathe and had to leave, opting instead for the hot tub. I can do at least ten minutes in the hot tub but mostly I like to lie in the freezing cold air in one of the big double loungers beside the pool, wrapped in a damp towel like a forgotten wet burrito.

He was in the sauna for over an hour. I think that's like brain-damage duration levels. When he came out he looked at me wrapped up in my wet towel, feet sticking out the bottom and said we should have Mexican for dinner.

Definitely brain damage. Lochlan hates Mexican food, truth be told. But he was just happy that we were there together, just me and him for the afternoon, no one else to weigh in on what to do, where to go and what to eat. Compromise is hard enough with two, incredibly tough for three and virtually impossible with eight or more, usually seventeen on average.

We're not having Mexican for dinner tonight. I'm making grilled cheese sandwiches and chicken noodle soup.

NOYB

House is empty
Fade out slowly
Go out your own way
Go out and get what you need
For if you don’t stay
There’s nobody watching you bleed
Ghost is what you are now
Out there where no one can see you
Gone out in the dark
Somehow I could still feel you

Lunch with the Devil, and he pulled my chair too close and he stared too hard and he spoke too harshly and he was a little too cutting with his thoughts today and I choked on my cold soup and hardly touched the salmon course. By the end I wouldn't look at him at all and he softened and ordered gelato from some invisible childs' menu and he asked if Lochlan had become this much of a pushover, finally, after all of our exploits.

(What a word.)

We've always been freaks, I tell my ice cream when it arrives. You haven't been paying attention. 

***

A walk with Batman to inspect the grounds. He's kind of amazed at how green my thumbs are considering the simple facts that I can't walk and breathe at the same time and that the moment I cease all movement I fall asleep and that includes and is not limited to floating on my back in the pool and receiving oral sex (but not at the same time).

Bridget, I don't think you need to complicate your life any further with trying to change any perfectly good relationships. 

I would say the same thing to you. And I continued to show him the cherries, grapes, corn, carrots, raspberries, strawberries, beans, tomatoes, peas and pumpkins that show such promise to come, all the while completely ignoring the very cautious and gentlemanly avarice that he was trying so hard not to reveal.

***

August is candid, transparent. He takes two chairs facing each other and then pins my knees in between his once I am seated. I call this the Trapped position. He calls it the Paying Attention position. Either way awful unorthodoxy always works.

What happens when you and Sam move to a more intimate level? What happens when his feelings get in the way of his ability to counsel you? What happens when he can't separate his personal from his professional opinion? 

You tell me. I am grim but fierce. I think sometimes August forgets he's the original Judas to Jacob's Jesus.

That's different, Bridget-

Afraid Sam and I might be closer than you and I?

Not really. The dynamic of your relationship with Sam, sexual or otherwise is completely different than ours. 

Right so can everybody stop worrying now? I'm glad everyone thinks I go from 0 to 60 just like that. I wouldn't hurt Sam! I don't need any more complications in my life and I'm not looking for trophies or redress so I don't think you should all be standing around holding your breath. 

Lochlan practically rolled out the red carpet for you.

He's done that so many times, August. I don't usually write about it. I try to keep him pure. He's my golden boy, I never ever want people to think poorly of him. Maybe I goofed. Everyone thinks Ben is the permissive one but really they both are. Lochlan just worries more about my feelings. Or maybe it's that he worries about his own. I fall in love too easily. It's dumb. I would worry too.

Do you want to talk about it?

No. 

If you change your mind I'm here. 

Are you still here-here or have you changed YOUR mind?

Whatever you need me for, Bridget, I'm here. 

***

Duncan was crass as always.

Don't ride the Preacher, Baby. Keep it sweet with him. Take it out on me. 

This isn't open for discussion, Poet. 

It's just a reminder that I'm here. Nothing complicated about it.

You're so complicated it's sick. 

I don't see how?

Of course you don't. You aren't already married to two people. 

Somehow I think they would prefer me over Sam. 

Then go sleep with them! I slam the door on my way out. Objectification is much better as an idealization than full realization. I know nobody thinks that but trust me, it is.