Future Navy seal.

Christian's teaching me to swim. Or I should say, Sam did, in the end.

It's true. Christian had said he was tired of seeing me dogpaddling around the point to get back to the beach after being thrown off the cliff. He said I look like a terrified four-year-old the minute someone lets go of me. He said that should change and since we have a pool with a shallow and a deep end, it's time. Before Halloween, he says.

I have my red cross badges up to green. I'm not afraid of water, per se. Just the dark murky water that I can't see the bottom of. So he promptly threw me off the scary side of the cliff into the dark murky water that I can't see the bottom of and I screamed so loud something snapped in my head and then he proceeded to yell instructions I couldn't hear because I was fighting not being dragged to my death by the invisible monsters just below me. I frantically dogpaddled the whole way around back to the beach and then I asked him to fuck off and die.

(Rock climbing went much the same way, if you remember. He dropped my lines so I went plunging down the face of the cliff (a different cliff) and told me to recover. And Jacob punched him in the face afterward.

Christian is the only adrenaline junkie we have left who is as extreme as one can get.)

You'll be single forever. I tell him after the second throw. And PJ came out and told him the pool is where he can teach me and God help him if he scares me like that again.

I have a girlfriend, he tells me with a smile in the shallow end. My safe space, they call it with a laugh. The water's up to my neck. We don't do shallow, Caleb told me when the pool was being built. Besides, the children are taller than you.

Goddamn it.

He didn't turn out to be much of a teacher. Oh, and he's dating Erin (Jacob's sister) again long distance. They're talking, he says. That means dating, I tell him. They've done this dance before. I'm so happy I forget he's an asshole, especially when Sam offers to take over. We're both somewhat relieved. I love Christian to death but he's very heavy handed when it comes to me. It doesn't work.

No, I never dated or slept with him. That's probably part of the problem.

I would guess. I've known you since you were eight. At some point you're going to have to be brave, Bridget. 

I am brave! I cry.

Then swim in your precious sea, he says as he turns to go back to the house.

Sam is the complete opposite. I get lessons beginning with simple strokes, including him physically holding me up in the water, turning my head to breathe and my arms to do mock-crawls so I get the motion and the timing down. Then backstroke. Floating properly. Treading water properly. Proper dog paddle (fingers together, Bridget, or you're wasting energy!)

Oh.

Whoops.

Butterfly. Which is terrifying. But I can almost do it now. Kind of.

It'll be years before you're ready for the Olympics, Bridge. 

That's okay. I just don't want it to take half an hour to get back to the beach when Duncan can do it in three minutes. 

He's six three! And he'll take you with him anyway. 

No one likes that, Sam. 

Then do your front crawl and you'll be fine. We'll keep practicing but you did great. By Halloween you'll be a pro. Are you tired?

No, I'm good. Thank you for the lesson. But I wrapped myself in one of the giant pendleton towels we keep in the poolshed and curled up exhausted in one of the chaises and slept until lunchtime in the shade.

Sam said doubt is not the opposite of faith but I don't know if I believe him.

Caleb is aghast.

What have you done, Neamhchiontach?

Tempted fate and was rewarded, Diabhal. Why are you home so soon?

You planned this. I had to come back.

I was as surprised as you.

You admitted you and Ben changed the rules. You've been planning this for a long time.

I didn't know Lochlan was going to propose when he did but there was no reason to wait to get married once he did.

The word 'married' rocks Caleb visibly and he sits down heavily on the stool by the counter. What have you done?

I did what I wanted.

What about me?

What about you! What do you want from me?

Everything, Bridget. And now he's going to lock you down.

And rightly he should, maybe?

Wait until he leaves Ben out in the cold.

He won't. We've got it sorted out.

He looks at me with some indescribable rage. Bridget, you have no idea what's coming. He'll be worse than Jake. He's had that much longer to take care of you, to take responsibility for you. It's going to be something we never imagined and it's going to blow your life apart. 

He's fixing it. It's going to be the way it was. 

Between him and I and everything else it's never going to be that way again. He sold you a fairy tale but it wasn't his to sell. 

Whose was it? 

Pardon me?

Whose fairy tale was it?

It's yours, Neamhchiontach, but you refuse to take responsibility for it. And if you can't, I have to. It's not safe with someone who sets things on fire for a living. 

Reunion.

You were supposed to give me another month. 

I couldn't stay away under the circumstances. Neamhchiontach, what have you done?

Part II: Keeper of the flame.

(Life is real. We've made some big changes.)

I loved you from the first time I saw you, and I love you now. You're my fire, the fire that burns inside me and I want to take care of you for the rest of our lives. This is our second chance, Baby and we need to take it. Marry me. Make me the happiest man alive. You're the love of my life. My fire. Please.

He lets go of me, dropping to his knees, holding my hands in his. The quilt lands in the grass. My blood hardens in the cold and then instantly, painfully ecstatically liquefies once more. The fire roars through my skull, lighting the dark along the way, flooding out the monsters and the rage and the grief. The quiet that remains is striking and abrupt. I nod because I can't speak.

He opens the box, fumbling again. It's started to rain and the wind has picked up and the fire struggles but prevails. Fate.

Please tell me that's a yes, Peanut.

Yes, I whisper it because I don't trust my voice.

You saved my life. He slips the ring on my finger. It comes to rest on top of the band he gave me after we were symbolically married in a tiny private ceremony with Benjamin, years ago.

I hold up my hand. It's a heart-shaped diamond. Our second chance beats in ice and carbon. It's beautiful and it's time.

***

I don't like big weddings. Not sure if you noticed (snort). This one took place in Coney Island, on the beach in the shadow of the Circus sideshow. Then we went straight to the Wonder Wheel. It was the most perfect place I could envision on short notice to marry Lochlan (for real, FOR REAL this time) and it had to be right. We were there just long enough for our short ceremony and a bunch of rides and then it was done. Sam performed the ceremony. Ben stood beside me too. Schuyler, Daniel and PJ came to be witnesses and because we wanted them with us.

We had a picnic of hotdogs and wedding cake on the beach. Then we drove to Montauk and had a few nights of a honeymoon alone while everyone else flew home. We stood and stared at each other on the porch of our cottage rental wondering if we would be able to get along, finally, at long last now that we're together. Officially.

After a long time there Lochlan nodded. We'll be fine. I love you. That's all I care about right now.

Ben and I very deliberately, quietly divorced a long time ago (almost two years ago, actually) and I didn't say anything because I couldn't. The pressure is off him though he said he intends to continue everything as always but maybe not feel so much guilt if he winds up spending six days straight in his studio or falls off the wagon or wants to tour or something that causes distance.

The distance would still be felt if you're not here, I tell him and his eyes well up. He's still mine. He always will be mine. But he maintains he took the opportunity as a placeholder because he wanted this for us and I wasn't ready but it wasn't the grand experiment that he makes it sound like. He still loves me so. He just knew if he hadn't taken my heart when the time came someone else would have and our chances would have evaporated, maybe forever.  It's intense, this love with Lochlan. We're intense together and intense apart and there's that trouble of getting along and I wish I could see the future the way I can see the past. I don't know. And there are other factors at play here. I worry. I still have a lot of fear of the unknown. Caleb's threats don't fade. I don't know what happens next but the deed is done.

Lochlan and I are finally legally, legitimately married to each other.

OH MY GOD.

(It's not sinking in. At all. Pinch me. Wait, no, maybe slap me. Something.) 

Ben is going to be my boyfriend but only because that was one of the things I wouldn't budge on. Though he thought I should cut him completely loose I maintain that our hearts are (and our bed is) plenty big enough and somehow more weird if he isn't there. Lochlan is on board with this (Yes, surprise.) You would be too if you were him. He goes back to being Alpha everything and my precious little twelve-year-old heart is quieted. Happy at last.

Right where you should have been all along, Peanut.

But I can't see where he means because I'm blinded by the sun. It's in the shape of a heart. My heart. I got everything I ever wanted and didn't have to lose everything that was left in the process.

We're home! More tomorrow. I'm zonked and all I smell is plane fuel on our clothes so I need to go bathe and sleep. So happy to be home. Not happy to find Caleb beat us here by an hour or two but I'll deal with him tomorrow too, if he lets me.

I have so much to tell you.

Part I: The top hat on the bedpost (The most gloriously sweet cliffhanger ever*).

(Ben said Do this right, Brother and Lochlan told him he was way ahead of him. The best changing of the guard ever, and the only step we missed in all this love, all this time.)

In the dim light left over from sunset he pulled me out into the water. I thought maybe we would just stand in the surf up to our knees, make a mess that would mean clearing the back hall of people long enough to strip out of our wet things outside on the steps and make it up to our room in only skin without tracking salt and sand through the whole house, but no. He had other plans. Baptism by saltwater.

We walked until the water was up over my shoulders and then he pulled me under with him. We surfaced in a kiss, in the dark and then he pulled us back to where we could stand comfortably. It wasn't cold, surprisingly. It wasn't uncomfortable and it wasn't frightening. I didn't notice any of it save for him.

Lochlan wrapped one arm around me to keep me close and with the other he held my face up to his so that I would pay attention. And then he started to talk. He talked about everything while we went numb in the Pacific together, not caring. He talked about his feelings from the time he was thirteen to now. He told me all of things that paralyzed him. All of the things he hated about himself. All of the things he wanted for me and then for us and then for me again. He talked about his regrets and his shortcomings. His flaws and his gifts and what he wanted to give to me. He talked about love and what it means to him and what it isn't and what he thinks it should be.

These are the sorts of words that take years, even decades to formulate. As he talked I could feel my heart.  He keeps doing this to me. All of the broken, blackened, stapled and taped together pieces of it swelled and burst one by one, only to melt together in a slick cohesive red plush before exploding again. Over and over again it did this, at the end of just about every second sentence until it made a mighty gasp and started to beat really hard as one organ instead of the remains of my loves. Whole, rebuilt on promises that I don't doubt for a moment for the first time since I was little and believed that it would be easy to keep a promise. You just promise to keep it and you're good.

He spent his life in anticipation of this moment where he could tell me everything and here it is and by golly he earned the spotlight tonight. This is the greatest show on earth. One night only.

In the moonlight my blood turned to gold again and he took a shuddering breath and laughed, his forehead pressed down against mine as I finally start to shiver. He asks me what I'm thinking as we finally wade back in toward shore.

I couldn't find any words. It makes sense now. Everything works out. Everything explained. Everything resolved. Everything is better. Everything will be okay. Everything is turning out better than I had hoped. Everything is right here. Right now. But my brain couldn't operate my mouth and I nodded and shivered and cried and he cried and goddamn it, we'll figure it out.

I could regret the time it took for him to say these things, and the stony silence for so long when he refused to explain himself and instead took up last place when he should have been first in line but it makes sense now. I could regret all the times I've tried to hurt him for that silence, or tried to pay him back for turning his back on me, or begrudge all the wasted time and heartache we've endured for each other but then he holds his hand out, waiting for mine.

Everything happens for a reason, right, Peanut? Maybe we just had to be sure. And if we're not sure right this minute then I don't think we ever will be. 

Then he got down on one knee in the crashing surf and fumbled for a box. My head aches from the cold and my hands are numb. I can't imagine what his feel like but he has a deathgrip on the box.

A wave almost knocks him down and he grabs for my hands. Oh, that's good. I can't save you, stupid.

I really want this to be spectacular but I fear I may die down here, he says from his knees.

It will be spectacular wherever, I remind him.

Okay, pretend you didn't see this. He gets up and we head back up to the house but instead of heading to the house we head to the camper that is still parked by the cliff. He wraps me (shivering mightily by now) in a quilt, tells me the usual order to stay put before making a roaring bonfire. Then he joins me in the quilt, his arms around me, his head tucked over mine. Our teeth are making such a collective chatter I can barely hear his words.

Bridgie, I'm going to cry and ruin this. I've waited so long to do this properly and everyone keeps beating me to it. 

*(Part II will be a few days from now because we won't have wifi where we'll be. See you soon!)

Stained glass.

There's a huge ornate glass jar by the patio doors and every time I come in from the beach I empty my pockets into it. It's half full of seaglass now with the odd perfect shell or tiny driftwood sculpture in for good measure. I beachcomb like other people breathe, constantly turning over rocks, checking in the same spots day in day out and waiting without patience for the ocean to bring me new treasures.

Wish it was gold, Lochlan says as I unearth this morning's handful of glass from our walk, dumping it into the jar.

It is! It's worth more than gold. Each piece marks a moment of time spent at the shore. 

That jar represents half my life, staring at the top of your little sunburnt skull while you take fifty years to sift through every grain of sand until you've got everything you can find and then I still have to pull you away. 

I'm trying to figure out if this is a good thing or a bad thing to you.

I can just buy you a big bag of beach glass from the craft store. 

BLASPHEMER.

It would free up our entire future though. Imagine how much free time you'll have, Peanut. 

You can have all the free time you like. I'll take Sam with me. 

Naw, I'm good. Same time tomorrow? 

We smile at each other. The bickering never ends. He'll never be slow enough for me and I'll never be fast enough for him, but somehow we keep pace.

The pop-ups and towables turned out to be such a pain we switched to motorhomes and never looked back.

Due to the sunburn I slept with a huge floor fan pointing straight up the centre of the bed. I slept on top of the covers without pajamas and when I woke up my ears hurt from the wind and I could have sworn I was in the back of Lochlan's pickup truck the morning he tried to surprise me when our ticket came up for a campsite. He tried to move the truck and trailer before I woke up but if you've ever slept in the bed of a pickup with a pop-up camper trailer towed behind it you know there's no way to sleep through all that clanking around. I remember thinking he was still beside me because I was tightly packed into the centre, surrounded by soft things and I couldn't get my bearings. I thought the truck had been stolen so I screamed and he lurched to a halt and jumped out of the cab and saw me and swore and then yelled that he thought I fell out and not to do that.

Where were you going? I asked. I was afraid now he was going to hit the highway with me in the back (legal back then, no actual worries but I was ten. I worried about..well, I still worry about everything. Sigh.)

We got our spot. He grinned. The waitlist was days and days and that was our first night in the truck since we couldn't set up. We got lucky.

Which spot?

Oceanfrontage. 

Can we stay there forever?

What? No! Six nights and then we're gone anyway. 

But it's OCEANFRONTAGE.

I know, Baby. Someday we'll live on the ocean. 

Promise?

I promise. In the meantime we are the carny kings. 

The surface of THE SUN. JESUS CHRIST.

I'm certain that Duncan is at this point plotting to fill the hot tub with sunscreen so I can be dip-screened and he won't have to yell at me while I shriek and complain that he's spraying it unevenly/on my face/not on my skin at all.

And I'm allergic to it so I'm going to get a rash and a weird sunburn, but only in places. He gives up and gives the can to Sam and says You deal with her. I like her better when she doesn't talk. Sam laughs and suggests regular/nonspray sunscreen.

See how fast they all come out here when you try to rub that all over me.

I'll do your back. You can do the rest.

Well, that's no fun.

Hush, Bridge. You're killing me here.

I plant a big huge sloppy kiss on his cheek and let him off the hook. Ben can do this. Besides, his hands are like tennis rackets. He can probably have me covered in one minute flat with one pass.

Then I pass the torch to him. Though it's a sad day, because I was enjoying you being too much for Duncan but just enough for me.

Told you, you're my favorite.

And you are mine.

Love you, Sam. 

But the SPF 60 Waterproof sunblock was no actual match for the Irish and I burned to a crisp inside of eight minutes. It was no match today for anyone else either and we have rechristened this to be Pink Point because now we all look like Lochlan after a day in the sun. Sweaty, ruddy and pink. He swears and says it means a day of hard work and I said that it means I am never going outdoors again, so someone needs to make it an indoor pool, and maybe an indoor beach since we probably have the money, and I'd like the stars and the moon inside too if you please and maybe-

Maybe just keep to the covered chaise, Peanut, because really you can't tan. But you shouldn't anyway so it's just as well. 

I think part of me is still outside. Does this look melted to you? I hold up one elbow. I feel broiled and skinned and miserably fried.

Yup, maybe a bit. I'll send someone out to scrape up the leftover bits. Maybe we should make room in the fridge for you. 

Oh, that's a great idea, yes, let's do that. 

Mother of invention.

What he couldn't do via brute strength, he accomplished with magic and so it was in the early evening hours when he appeared with his top hat in place, torches lit, eyes flashing in the firelight.

Let's go, he said, and everyone followed suit, taking a torch up behind me. Off we went, down into the depths of my mind, dodging doors with huge creatures locked behind them, skirting dark corners we didn't want to investigate further, until the air grew cold and the light came up and the telltale crunch of leaves could be heard underfoot.

Almost there? He asks me. His free hand has mine tucked inside it tightly. Close behind us still is my beloved army.

Almost, I whisper. I don't want to bring everyone here. I don't want to be here.

We get to the door and he opens it but Ben steps through first. The light is on but no one's home. They're not here. See, Bridge?

I nod. It's so empty. Our voices echo.

He's not calling you, it's just your mind playing tricks on you.

This isn't the kind of magic I like.

Then let's go back home, Lochlan reaches down behind my ear and brings his hand back, holding up a house key in front of my face. I take it.

I tell Ben to leave the door open. Like I left it before, I tell him by way of explanation.

Sure thing, Bumblebee, he says, and swings it wide, letting it rest against the outside wall.

We make our way back quickly into the dark and then back through into the light. They're gone for real. It was my mind. Everything is okay. It was just a dream.

Lochlan looks pale when he finishes safely stowing away the torches and hanging his hat back on the hook. You always had such a vivid imagination, Peanut and I tried to foster it as much as possible over the years but I wasn't expecting that. Fully constructed rooms. Traps. Dark passages that couldn't hold an echo. Amazing. 

It isn't. It's terrifying. 

That's why we're fixing it. All of us. Together. For you. 

Ben said I had to fix it myself. 

I didn't know what we were up against, Bee, Ben says abruptly. I made a mistake.