Meanies.

I have to go to London.

He looks at me for what feels like an eternity. I'm busy stirring honey into my coffee. My throat is knives. I took Henry to the doctor yesterday and he has strep. Why wouldn't I, right? Henry's on antibiotics and I'm just plain stubborn. I have six days to get better before an event and no way could I get on a plane.

If I had the time.

If I even wanted to.

I have something I want to check out and then I thought we could have a little vacation. Take a few days-

I'm sorry. Maybe Lochlan is free though. 

It's not on offer for him. It's work and I need my assistant. Not a busker. 

Well, sorry to say your assistant is a busker so when you insult my husband you're lumping me in with him. 

Caleb realizes I'm not going to let him off the hook and tries again.

Bridget, I'm sorry. I don't appreciate offers of replacement, I guess. I was trying to turn a work trip into a pleasure trip. God knows you could use the break. Honestly if Lochlan saw you talking to yourself as I have he'd-

I wasn't-

DON'T say it. The only way I can sleep at night is to consider you talking to yourself to cope. Please. 

Ha. Newsflash-

Do I have to force you to go. 

You can't. 

I don't know if you've noticed, but I do what I please.

If it doesn't break your heart it isn't love.

These days pass me by
I dream with open eyes
Nightmares haunt my days
Visions blur my nights
I'm so confused
What's true or false
What's fact or fiction after all
I feel like I'm an apparition's pet
But you haven't lost me yet

Jacob still doesn't like this. When I come into the kitchen this morning Caleb is already present, making coffee, reading on his phone. He's wearing a soft t-shirt and worn jeans. Bare feet. I wonder if I've ever seen him in my house without shoes before. Maybe only in my room. I don't know but it seems odd and then perfectly natural, like the first thing a man does when he's home is kick off his shoes. He takes his mug and his phone and heads to sit down, right where Jacob is already sitting, leaning forward, elbows on the table, worn sleeves rolled up. Worn jeans to match only Caleb prefers dark denim. Designer. Probably Balmain. Jacob lived in his Levis from Sears. $39 in the big and tall section. I only know this because it's where Ben goes for his. Or used to. Now Sears is gone and I don't know where to look.

Caleb puts his cup down and sits back in the chair. Good morning, Beautiful. Did you sleep?

Jacob disappears as the cup lands on the table, reappearing beside me. I almost die from shock but flinch almost imperceptibly inwardly instead, nodding.

I did. You? I turn to stare at Jacob and he frowns. That wasn't necessary.

I'm not allowed to greet you now? Caleb looks unimpressed.

Not you. Just-nevermind.

Jacob laughs. Told you you can't handle more than one man at a time. This isn't who you are-

I know who I am! I hiss in his direction.

I know you do. Caleb is waiting, alarmed.

Sorry. Just thinking out loud.

He's here, isn't he? Caleb is the Devil. Of course he can see angels. He used to be one.

Who? I shoot him a look of confusion and what I hope passes for irritation and I hurry out of the room and back upstairs. Anywhere Jacob isn't.

Captive audience.

(To set the scene, I'm using Ben as a pillow today while I nurse my bad arm by the fireplace in the great room today. He has his laptop and we are watching Things. I'm not going anywhere. My arm is very sore. I don't think it should hurt like this when weight is put on it but then again, I heard what it looked like that one time. But this isn't about my arm. I'm about to have an opinion, here. Look out.)

I'm at the point where I've absorbed enough direction and have enough confidence to watch a brand-new music video of an acoustic rendition of a song and give it my own running commentary.

(Slow it down, just a little. You can't breathe while you sing this. Black anad white would be better. Add some noise. Some film grain maybe. Some local cameras. Stop with the wide shots already. The composition could be tightened on this by a monke-Hey! This goes right into Memphis May Fire (God they're young).  Stop. With. The. Wide. Shots. End it with the song, we don't need a cheesy afterstory. Do more of THIS. PLEASE.)

Ben is very patient while I rattle off all of the things I would change. Sometimes he takes full advantage, as I am a ruinous, rabid music lover as well as the subject of more than a dozen semi-infamous music videos so my suggestions (or rather, my opinions) come from a place of love.

Well, what do you think?

I think you're jaded. Maybe they calculated this for humility. 

Yeah. I doubt that.

A subtle image change for them. Like 'hey, it turns out we're not perfect'. 

Okay, in that context it works great. Sort of like these bands that are like 'hey, we know a guy with a drone'. 

Worked for your last music video shoot, Bridge. 

It sure did.

So...don't quit your day job? And he laughs, because they would love it if I did.

A little laugh, a little scream.

Today I got home, kicked off my shoes, dropped my purse by the door, my nametag (still says BABY) on the table in the center of the foyer and walked straight through the house, out the back patio doors, across the back lawn on the lovely new flagstone path and climbed straight into the hot tub. The pool is empty now (sadly) but the hot tub will stay since we can cover it and empty and fill it with ease. Caleb laughed, as he was the one who followed me out, watching as I climbed in dress and all.

I sat there refusing to speak, as I reached that point in my week where I feel too beaten down by life to respond without committing murder and I leaned my head back and closed my eyes.

That bad?

No, just tired. Where's Loch?

Helping August, I think. 

With?

A wifi issue, I believe, unless that was a ruse.

I go to get out of the tub, suddenly panicked and Caleb shakes his head. I sent Ben with him. Everything's fine. 

Okay. I settle back warily. I'm still leery of Lochlan going off on August if he even breathes the wrong way. Not that he will, but that he might.

Besides, he knows you're going to be busy. I don't think he'll make any extra work. 

Busy with what?

You're going to have to help Andrew pick out his dress. 

I don't know why it was funny but it was and I laughed and then I let my head go below the surface in defeat of the day and Caleb got scared and pulled me right out of the hot tub by one arm.

The bad arm.

The sound I make. Holy. It scares even me. 

"As he read I fell in love the way you fall asleep: slowly, and then all at once." -John Green

Okay it's official now that they've told extended family far away, so now I can talk about it all I want.

Christian proposed and Andrew said YES. What started as a hey what the hell early-spring fling in the ebbing winter of 2017 grew into a strong and quiet love that doesn't show any signs of doing anything but steadily deepening, between two young men who spent twenty years getting along great to two fully-grown men who've spent the last two years getting along even better. Then late on Thanksgiving night they went for a walk around the water together and as the story goes, Christian turned to Andrew and asked him if he was happy.

Andrew smiled at him hugely and said he was, and suddenly worried that maybe Christian wasn't happy. He didn't have to worry long, as Christian reassured him that he was the happiest he'd ever been, and that happiness was because of Andrew.

Then Christian got down on one knee and brought a small box out of his pocket that contained a silver ring that used to belong to his grandfather. He had the inside engraved with their initials and a teeny tiny hollow heart and Andrew is now wearing that ring and it will become his wedding ring this spring.

And I am so happy for them I could burst.

If you can't handle me at my worst...

..then you probably don't live in my house.

(or as Sam told me later this afternoon, I seem to go from ridiculously silly to devastatingly profound in the blink of an eye and it's one of his Very Favorite Things about me.)

I got all worked up about my speech for Thanksgiving dinner last night and then after I had two glasses of wine and a huge piece of apple pie with ice cream Sam gave our closing grace, which takes awhile because...of Sam. He likes to preach a little extra when given the chance, as most of the boys are total heathens, wayward souls who don't go to church enough and need to be saved. So I leaned my head against Ben's shoulder and rudely fell fast asleep, sitting up like a horse, no less, and missed my turn, which came around and was sweetly ignored by all, and no one protested, as apparently they had a little Bridget-free family meeting and Sam read the pertinent parts out to them from yesterday's post and they had already decided to let me off the hook.

Sam insists I will go to heaven, that God doesn't want me to mourn anymore and that my reward will be the end of this pain I'm in. While he was talking the tears started rolling down my face, a race to the bottom like no other and he shook his head. Apparently most people are rapturous when he talks like this but for me it just confirms my misery as if once it's validated it is real and then I'm really in trouble.

No, no, no, Bridget. Don't cry. These are beautiful times. Your words, God's plan. the love and patience of this entire extended family that holds us in the palm of their hands-

I wish they-

What do you wish, tell me. 

I wish they could understand how much I love them all. 

See? That's what I said, flighty to devastating in the blink of an eye. That's what makes you worthy, Bridget, and that's what makes this whole argument pointless.
 

Revenants and rogues.

Deep breath. Step outside in the rain. Pull my coat a little tighter around my bones as I wait for Lochlan to pull the truck up to the front walkway. One month remains and Jacob would have been forty-eight had he not chosen to fly instead. It's been eleven years, almost, since that time and it's only barely dulled, still agony, still aching in my soul, and I'd happily give it back to the Devil if it meant it wouldn't hurt this much.

But today is our Thanksgiving. We're going to church, we're going to cook turkey and stuffing later for dinner and we're going to go around the table and list what we are thankful for out loud, taking the time to give those items their due, gravely as such, solemnly.

I am thankful for so many things, I think as Lochlan comes around to open my door for me, waiting until I am in safely in and belted, coat gathered up under my legs so it doesn't get caught, before closing the door and coming back around the front of the truck to get in his side.

I'm thankful for my stubbornness in getting and keeping my job (even though I hate the job), the almost five thousand dollars I've earned in the six months time I've been a waitress, and for the boys' reluctance to insist that I quit, even as I come home in pain and in tears, more often than not.

I'm thankful to Jacob. He taught me how to let go, how to hold on. How to deal with the loss of Cole. How to love outside of the Collective and how to pray. How to open my heart to Lochlan again after so long. His absence renewed something bigger than myself, bigger than my heart. His death brought us all back together in a way I thought I'd never see again in my lifetime but the space he occupied will forever remain empty in remembrance of who he was to me.

That's not beautiful or eloquent. I don't know how I will word it at dinner tonight or how I can even make Lochlan see that he isn't up against an adversary he can't fight, he's here because of that adversary and I wouldn't change anything that's happened since Jacob left because it's been all better than good. I just wish I didn't have to trade one for another, I wish I didn't have to choose, didn't have to miss, didn't have to love from down here knowing that I'll probably not end up in heaven, in spite of Sam's insistence, told to me directly in the sermon today as I sat, damp and miserable, my rain-soaked coat wrapped tightly around my broken heart, ineffective safety mechanism as it was underneath Lochlan's arm around my neck, tighter as the words hit their targets, loosened when the words stopped altogether.

It was a hell of a morning and will probably be a hell of a night. Wish me some luck, I'm trying to turn it around a little here. 

Save me from myself.

He burned it all. Down through the layers, through potential. Through the present and into the future and then he made his way across the scorched and blackened earth and he came for the past. He came to burn down the past without him and renew the past with him, searing it into my brain, into my flesh, into my very soul even as he was singed in the process, scalded and smoked, a victim of his own efforts to fix this.

It can't be fixed but he pushes it back, bringing the flames and the light to the dark, his side of a losing war fought with heart, with earnest, with the blazing glow of a love that won't quit.

This was his battle speech, told to me in fragments and with lengthy delays, over his shoulder as he waged that fight against the dark. Against the past. Against Jake. 

Jacob is the black hole that has ruined everything. I would have done okay after Caleb. After Cole. After all of that already until Jacob happened. Lochlan doesn't see it that way. He thinks eventually if you burn enough of Jake away, the remnants of everything and everyone will eventually stop coming back.

It's the complete opposite of what Sam is doing (as the memory thief he's trying to bring closure to my time with Jacob, locking all of the memories away as they are finished and solved, turning hurtful moments into teaching ones, negatives into positives, and using the power of Bridget's Oversized, Expansive Imagination to finish off the ones that remain incomplete).

(Lochlan burned those down too but we're not going to talk about that today).

It's the complete opposite of what August is doing too (as the surrogate-Jacob he's telling me I need to move on before and distract myself from memories of his best friend before shape-shifting INTO his best friend for a little affection without strings (as if there aren't strings!). And it helps. And we're not blaming him, it's my fault even though if the truth is to be believed I'm not in a position to control much of anything. Too fragile. Too splintered. Too Fucked Up with a capital F U.).

(Lochlan hates it. Oh, how he hates it and yet he bites his tongue until he tastes ash and regret. And still he says nothing.)

He pulls me into the flames with him, baptized by fire. I'll win, Lochlan says, the firelight flickering in his green eyes, which look almost black in the dark.

I know you will, I tell him. Because ten-year-old Bridget believes him. Believes what he says and believes in his capabilities without question and without doubt, one hundred percent forever infinity.

Whoops.

My poor PJ is absolutely aghast that the previous post was not about Behemoth's new album I Loved You At Your Darkest, which also came out today. I figured he was doing enough squealing about it to cover all of us and didn't mention it. My bad. It won't happen again, sir.

*flashes horns*

My jumpsuit is on steady.

East is up, I'm fearless when I hear this on the low
East is up, I'm careless when I wear my rebel clothes

So much excitement last evening and this morning as the whirlwind that is Ruth spooled right up with the release of Trench, the new Twenty One Pilots album. Ruth is a hardcore early-adopter of this band. I didn't love them until I heard Trees. Then I was ruined. But I love the new album for certain, just not as much as Ruth. Ruth is losing her shit. It's so amazing. She cried, she danced, she squealed and it's good to know that our enthusiastic love of music is genetic. She is now plotting to get tickets to the show in Vancouver this coming spring, having seen them four years ago at a tiny venue here when she was barely fifteen. She cried then, she's still crying over them. She's exactly like I was with Bon Jovi from the age of fifteen through my early twenties. And I still squeal when Living on a Prayer or Runaway comes on the radio, honestly. She just has the luxury of a deeper, more profound, faith-based subject matter (oh, in spades) for these songs.

Sam is also squealing. He's a huge fan now. It's all Trees fault. That song is incredible lyrically and kind of sets us all on our asses.

But yeah, this is fun to watch.

***

Lochlan continues to categorically deny that he and Caleb were spooning, leaving no room for me in my own bed, which means Detective Bridget is now on the case, and she's going to get to the bottom of this.

She went to Caleb, boldly confronting him last evening as he came in from a brief run. He is somewhat breathless and handsome, finding it amusing that she is demanding answers and readily admits his guilt with a grin.

I figured if you went looking for comfort in the arms of someone you shouldn't be with, I could too, especially seeing as how Lochlan must have felt so alone when you failed to reappear. 

First the kiss, then the spoon! What's next? Stay tuned to find out.

Jesus. I don't think we want to find out. It's a slippery slope and soon they'll just be sleeping with each other and they won't need me at all.