Dry ride.

I can see you running, running
Every night from the same darkness
It's coming, coming
But you are not alone
If you just say the word
I'll be there by your side
You make me more
You make me superhuman
And if you need me to
I will save you

Joel must have decided the worst of the storm had passed or maybe I just made him horribly uncomfortable enough that he left shortly after the movie ended, not wishing to see if the final installment was out or hanging around to talk with the boys. Not even two months after our last altercation in which he tried to cross my boundaries and failed and I was short and irritated with him, and he with me.

We didn't actually talk last night and I made such an effort to be a jerk and he made no effort not to be one and sadly I think the tides have turned with him at last and instead of a novelty, a treat, a fascination, I have become a chore. A tiresome errand he has to make a long drive to in order to verbally spar with. A tiny thorn in his side, the one person that broke him and that he somehow feels some sort of lifelong allegiance to anyway.

Maybe that's done at last. He's not the first man to get fed up with me (that was Lochlan, ironically) and probably won't be the last. But Joel was a different kind of intensity, an incredibly invasive, personal, completely wrong relationship and I still torture him every chance I get. I lie to him. I make things horrible so that he will let go but he's slow to catch on. Or maybe he isn't but he's definitely as stubborn as I am.

He will call later and tell me I lied, tell me I'm only hurting myself, tell me everything I'm doing is only going to set me back and I will disregard that too. Everything I've done as of late has made things better and I don't know if I prefer the short term gains that maybe do set me back, or the long term agony that maybe works toward a better future. I don't know. I just don't. I don't know much of anything.

I just know that waking up this morning breathless, sandwiched between Lochlan and Caleb worked, yes, Caleb, Caleb who said last night he feels as if he's finally achieved what he wanted all along. Just to share me.

Yes, that's what he said. I swear to God he's in love with Lochlan and I'm just some sort of symbolic testament to that.

He just wants to share me.

I don't have the heart to tell him that isn't what we're going to do.

I don't have the heart to remind him that Ben has a Very Big place here and it's only because he's so busy perpetually that there's any room at all for Caleb.

He knows. I'm sure he knows but he's an opportunist, as always.

Just like me.

Netflix and Friday.

I can't believe no one noticed this big box of Animal Crackers in the pantry.

YOUR LOSS, BOYS.

Edit: Actually Joel ate most of them to feel less uncomfortable while we watched Fifty Shades Darker and he pretended he was having an innocuous conversation with me while we watched. In reality he was testing me to see if the worst is over for the time being.

Before you tell me I'm making a hostile work environment for him remember I found the cookies and decided to watch the movie before he was here. If he's going to show up unannounced then he must suffer. It's totally inappropriate to watch a movie like that with him, but that's what our entire relationship has been from the beginning, so why the hell not?

It's very uh..Fifty Shades. They should have gone for a hard R, I think. It would have been better. Also I feel like every movie I watch now just screams Vancouver so loud. I can pick out every location. Please kill me, I have lived here too long (Nine years now! CHRIST!).

This movie is like watching Caleb in action. LOL

Out of balance.

On headphones my only copy of Pearl Jam's Black features vocals and rhythm guitar in my right ear, drums and piano in my left, and the principal guitar skews back and forth wildly. It's distracting to the point of unlistenability.

Is that a word? It is now, folks.

Ben doesn't see the problem, except with what he now calls his Little Production Quality Specialist.

It's bad, Benny. 

But you love it anyway. Like me, I guess.

***

Lochlan is sitting in the gazebo when I come out, his phone and an empty coffee mug in front of him, a conflicted expression on his face. The wind blows his hair just enough to give him a leading-man appearance and I take a long minute to appreciate that. A very long minute.

What are you waiting for? Am I in your spot? But he hasn't looked at me.

Well, whatever spot you're in is where I want to be. 

Fuck me. You sound like Winnie The Pooh. 

I burst out laughing but he doesn't join in. Okay, what's wrong? 

Nothing you can fix, Peanut, and if you're okay then that's all that matters. 

Okay is a relative ter-

You know exactly what I mean. He glares at me.

I nod. Caleb staying.

Caleb staying. Because it's not enough to have a romantic dinner for four. He somehow charms every last one of us! What this fuck is that, even? Last time I looked I wasn't into the tall, dark and rakish type-

Rakish. What a delicious word! 

Don't change the subject. 

Another reason to want to be a man. Y'all can be rakish.

Bridge.

Yes?

How did he make me think that was totally okay? That of course it's normal-

Oh, it's so not normal, Lochlan.

I know that but how? How did he manage to bewitch me too? 

It was late, mayb-

Contrary to popular belief, I care very deeply for your approval in every area of my life, my relationship to Bridget included. Caleb is behind me and I jump fifty feet. I love you like a brother. Maybe more than that. Maybe you're beginning to see my side of this finally. I certainly hope this week is an indication of things to come. 

He turns and goes back in to the house. I turn and watch him go and then when I turn back around Lochlan is gone. I see the door close on the camper parked at the edge of the rock wall but I don't follow him. Instead I go back to the house.

Oh real love.

But here you are to set a brand new path
To show me all that love means
When I hold you, I need you
I said forever, I mean forever

Dinner on the patio last night, later than ever as Lochlan was working with Schuyler on a thing and came back so late and all that remained by the hour long after which I should have been asleep was Ben, Lochlan, Caleb and myself. Ben and I were starving, Lochlan was indifferent but warm at the same time and Caleb was just quietly content. Happy to be there, maybe, happy to watch the waves and enjoy the food and wine and sparkling water and talk about nothing as I reset myself into life as it was before the nightmares resumed and blew me right out of my comfort zone.

Caleb spears a final olive on his fork. Problem is, it's from my plate.

Hey.

Come get it. He holds the fork high above his head and grins. I place my plate on the table from my lap and then his plate too, climbing into his lap and then standing up to reach my olive. He groans as I manage to hit all the right places to step and the others laugh.

I take his fork, for good measure and settle back into his lap.

Take my olive, will you. That's what you get.

I didn't think you liked the black olives.

If you would ever let me choose pizza toppings you would know I like those ones best. Actually no. Manzanilla ones stuffed with garlic are the best. Garlic and hot peppers.

Forget it. You get pineapple on pizza if we let you choose. It's better if someone does it for you.

Forever ten years old. Pick my pop flavour for me, open it too, because I can't, finish it for me since it will be too much and never ever ask me what I'd like on my pizza since it's assumed I will like what they like, without exception

And I mostly do, except for pineapple.

His offhand remark reminds me that this is my comfort zone, the place where everything is done for me, decided for me, chosen for me. It's a place that, when things are at their worst, I don't mind.

I put my head down against his chest and he slides me down to one side, one arm holding me tight against him. He takes a deep breath and lets it out.

Next time we'll get pineapple, he says, a promise instantly forgotten as he kisses the top of my head and squeezes me hard.

It's safe. And it's warm and I close my eyes and I don't wake up until he startles me softly. It's later still and the ice cubes are low measures of warm water in the bottoms of our glasses. Ben is watching me intently and Lochlan is standing beside Caleb's chair.

Come on, Neamhchiontach-sleepy-head. Bed time.

Lochlan pulls me up to my feet and I lean my head against his shoulder. So tired. We head inside and upstairs, Lochlan's arm around my waist, his lips against my temple.

Once inside our room Lochlan strips off my campfire-smoke clothes and marvels at how sleepy I am (eyes so heavy). Briefly he tries to head off the coming storm but then he is too late and it hits, capsizing us, knocking us into the sea where we flail against the dark before finding purchase again, before finding safety in Caleb, who didn't leave like I thought he would, instead remaining to trace my tattoos on my bare skin and remind me that once, he was the nightmare, and then he became the good brother.

When I woke up this morning, I could still smell the smoke in our hair, but their arms were around me, a dreamstate tug of war with all winners, no losers. I didn't ask Caleb to stay but he did, I didn't ask Ben to make space but he did, I didn't ask Loch if it would be alright if this happened (but it did and it was alright indeed) and this morning no one resorted to violence and no one could find any ghosts at all. 

Netflix + milk.

One of the best husbands I have ever had is definitely Ben. Ben who got up this morning (early-early) and got cereal for us on a tray and put Netflix on the laptop and propped it up so we could snuggle in late. We spent a couple of hours slowly finishing two huge bowls of Honeycombs with chocolate milk because he's insane and we watched cooking shows, because so am I.

Chocolate milk in cereal is terrible. Also Honeycombs are huge. I gave up trying to fit them in my face and ate them like cookies, picking them up one at a time to take bites of while we marvelled over the cinematography of the new season of Chef's Table, which I am struggling to finish (yeah..still). I think it's because this season they're really focusing on the personal trials of each chef to the point that the food is not even a second thought but a distant memory instead. Only there's no character development so I don't exactly care and my mind wanders and I have to re-watch.

Ben is barely watching it at all. He is watching me while he easily fits multiple Honeycombs in his mouth at once. He has a large mouth to go with his entire oversized being. Someone once joked that I was a third of a Ben, proper but I think it's more like precisely half. Either way he makes up a lot of ground on my behalf these days and took Lochlan's cheap opportunity to make up his own ground and threw it out the window.

Either make your huge sweeping gestures all the damn time or fuck off, Lochlan was told. This just makes things worse.

And true to form, Lochlan fucked off. Because he is flighty and fancy and full of fire as much as he is pragmatic and he also has a pride problem and so he went off to lick his wounds and Ben took the opportunity the moment it presented itself.

I need to get dressed, I tell Ben, licking my spoon. He will drink the leftover milk. I'm lactose intolerant anyway and not a big fan of chocolate milk, or even cereal but I am a huge fan of Ben. The biggest smallest fan of his that ever was.

For what? He asks, letting his forehead knit. He sounds cross at the thought of anything breaking this momentary, wonderful spell.

It's my turn to clean bathrooms. 

Let each of them clean their own. He orders.

And ours. 

The kids can do theirs. 

And ours, I repeat.

We'll make Lochlan do it. 

Seriously. Besides, it's cold right now, without clothes on. 

Ben reaches down and grabs his t-shirt off the floor. He turns it rightside out and puts it over my head, pulling it down over me. Whitechapel. Right on.

There. Now you're dressed. 

This will be a good look while I do my chores. 

I told you, we're leaving them for Lochlan. We're going to stay in bed all day and watch television and be regular people. 

We're so NOT regular peop-

WE CAN TRY.

Terrible, beautiful life.

Pretty sure This Beautiful Life by Colony House is the most incredibly gorgeous song in the world right now. If everyone isn't using as their wedding song already then they should be.

Pretty sure slow-dancing to it with Lochlan under the lights on the patio last night helped bring me back from the hole I dug using the sharp edges of my nightmares over the past little while.

Pretty sure his solid hold on me kept me from slipping any further, instead helping to give me purchase to climb back up.

He isn't a spiritual man. He is reality-based. Logical. Pragmatic. Cogent. Sensible. And also certifiably magical.

And even as I started the night knocking on the door to hell I ended it in a much, much better place. Even as the Devil answered the door in surprise, the surprise grew as I was pulled away again, led back down the hall with a refusal to even entertain my motivations or my actions altogether.

Sunset is starting, Lochlan says. Let's watch it. Let's just watch it and not do anything else.

It's a response to a complaint I gave when I was eleven and I just wanted to stop packing up for five minutes and watch the sunset but we didn't have time because you can't pack up after dark with no lights.

She (the eleven year old that mercurially rules my world) is very happy with the complaint resolution. It seemed like something so simple but the difference in experience led to endless disappointment as she tried to live in the moment and learned...not to.

One of my biggest regrets, he says as he spins me around under his arm.

And now, fixed. I reassure him and he smiles in the near-dark, curls backlit, mood backlit. Everything backlit. Magic hour indeed. Who needs the devil when you have a magician? Who needs a ghost when I've got a live one? Who needs the maturity of an eleven-year-old when...

I mean, I don't know if I can fix that part but I'm trying.

High there (Fourth Sunday in Lent).

I sat in the orchard this morning in the cold sun and laughed at the sound of the fat fuzzy bumblebees making their way from one bloom to the next because I could hear them, loudly and clearly. It isn't often I get that pleasure but it was so quiet. No music, no planes, no sound carrying around the point from others, no arguments in the driveway, no fistfights up the back steps to the loft or to the boathouse, no lectures that go on for days to the point of boredom, to the point of sheer willfulness to do anything, everything, just out of spite by that time.

Just me and the bees. I am a bee, maybe. Though I have no black in my golden hair, and I'm not very big or very loud like these bees. I am in the trees, though these blooms are sparse and early.

I am sparse. I am early.

I'm a flower, not a bee then.

Okay.

(God, these pills are amazing.)

Sam comes out to see me, tromping through the wet grass in his mismatched suit, a smile on his face.

You're alone. The smile vanishes. It was a Friendlies Approaching smile and now he's just disapproving-minister, kind of half-in charge, half hands-off approach most of them have, as in I am here for comfort or physical affection but if this gets really freakishly complicated or violent, I'm out.

That's what Jake did, anyway.

I am not. I wave my hand up toward the hill by the water to where Lochlan sits on the tree swing, not swinging, just swaying, feet planted firmly on the ground.

Like some kind of metaphor too, I just don't know what.

He is currently fulfilling the role of super-patient, highly-annoyed and ultimately deeply-concerned husband. Because his wife is a fucked up tiny grief-monster with a massive appetite for whatever she can get her hands on to make this stop and yet it's never enough, it never stops. Nothing ever changes. Even the bees came back. Even the grief comes back. I want this to change but it's as if the moment I step out and say, hey I think I'm doing bett-

It hears me, turns and comes charging back.

It's a monster. And that makes me the monster. The little blonde monster on the point that they pass around, a hot potato who is hard to hold, difficult to handle and burning for something, she just doesn't know what until she feels that heat.

Abruptly I remember to tell myself that I got my dream. Deep, romantic love on the edge of the seaside, a life beside the ocean, in arms at all times with few daily worries past what's for dinner.

But I got so many other things too. And maybe this is the price you pay for that dream. I wanted a neat little house by the sea, true love and peace.

It's definitely quiet here, the house is far too big and love is everywhere you look. Everywhere I look, anyway. Even in the dark corners where I become someone who doesn't appreciate any of it, instead favouring the losses because they overwhelm the wins. I do appreciate it. All of it. All of them. Even though I paid and continue to pay a magnificent personal price for it. But I appreciate even Sam, who saw from afar that I wasn't in the house anymore and came out to make sure I was safe.

Just making sure, Sam says.

Thanks, brother. Lochlan says it from the swing, his voice full of emotion.

Do you need- Sam sees an opening to minister.

We're fine. Lochlan cuts him off gently.

Sam comes right over to me, kisses the top of my head, then goes to Lochlan, does the same and turns and heads back over the hill toward the house.

They care so much for you. 

And for you. 

We're very lucky, aren't we? We went from being the only two people in the world to this. He smiles at me.

And it breaks my heart. I'm sorry, Lochlan. I spit it out in hot, frustrated tears.

We'll be okay. 

Yeah. 

I promise. 

And I smile, because that's a word that holds a lot of weight with this man now. And I can picture it because I'm fully high right now, but at least today, nothing hurts and that's a milestone with every single breath sometimes.

Bandaids.

I watched him by the pool. It's warm enough, though only if you spend enough time in the hot tub or the sauna before heading to the pool. It's warm indeed and as I watch him talk, as I let my brain register the fact that he is losing his accent slowly but consistently, that he is losing the blonde in his hair in favor of the same silvery-gold that I have now, that he has such little patience for impersonating ghosts even as he still needs things that people need, just like I do.

I use that to my advantage but he doesn't take it.

Instead he dropped me flat on my back on his bed in the sun, a bed that sways slightly from the heavy ropes suspending it from the ceiling. He dropped me there and he smiled his August-summer smile and he pulled off my bikini bottoms and got on his knees.

Heaven, like August, is a place you can go to. I went but the door was locked and so I hung off the knob, shuddering, sweating, crying out as August got back up and put all of his weight on me. Same moves as Jake. Same everything, same joke that maybe they were brothers instead of just friends. Same thoughts in my head that if he helps me pull on the door handle we'll get it open, eventually. It works and we spill to the floor just inside that threshold of heaven and then before I have time to look for Jake, or Cole, or Butterfield for that matter, August reaches up and slams the door shut, pulling me upright, pulling me away from it even as I reach back out for it, telling me I needed to go back, to let him be, to stop implicating him in this effort to stay stuck in 2007. That Jake is gone. That he isn't Jake. That he doesn't want to be Jake anymore.

And then he says if I want to come and see him for his own sake, for his own soul, that I am welcome absolutely any time and it will be different. That it won't be something Jake would do, but something new.

You're lonely. 

Everyone's lonely, Bridget. It's the human condition. 

And that made me more sad then the part where he said I should go.

It helps.

I don't want to help you anymore. I want to help me.

Things you don't deserve to hear.

In the beginning there was a fire, from which came a light. It burned warm and steady, always on, always there to show you the way. There to help you grow, like a surrogate sun. It was a light you could trust because you knew it wouldn't burn out, with a strong foundation and high flames. In the light you saw yourself. In the light, you saw your future. 

In time the light became such a constant, such an ever-present glow that eventually you took it for granted. That's not to say that you didn't appreciate it, but to say that it was just another fixture, like the old rope swing at the lake, or the rusted out packard at the end of the field by the fence, buried over the years by blueberry bushes and goldenrod. 

And then lightning struck, just at a sharp point on the ground between you and that fire, and for a brief moment in time you were blinded, enraptured by this new, exciting source of light, and in your mind it shone brighter than the other light, which grew so dim in the face of this white glowing light. It was a bolt you couldn't turn off, and fascinated, you walked right into it, standing in that glow, warming yourself though you knew it might be brief, and that it might hurt. 

You went anyway. Because you always did. Drawn to the brightness in the world, drawn to warmth always. You walked right in without hesitation and the light from this beautiful freak storm welcomed you. 

And then abruptly, the storm ended. And the night was coming. And when it came you weren't afraid because the fire was still burning. The first light, the constant. The still-going. And it burned for you. 

And it still burns for you, Bridget. And that fire is me. 

Springsteen and nine.

When I wake up next I have far too much real estate in the bed, two-thirds, if not more. Ben sleeps heavily way over on the right side and I hear Lochlan. He's playing the guitar and sitting by the fire. No fire is lit. The windows are open wide instead so that I can hear the birds. I can see the worn hem of the neck of his t-shirt. I can see his curls, head bent down over the guitar.

The screen door slams, Bridget's dress waves
Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Springsteen singing for the lonely
Hey, that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again, I just can't face myself alone again
Don't run back inside, darling, you know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking that maybe we're too young for more
Show a little faith, there's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty but, hey, you're alright
Oh, and that's alright with me

I'm nine years old and I want him to explain, or rather I need him to explain every single line in that song, even though he said he changed some of the words. I do this while I'm walking in circles, trying to step on my rainbow shoelace that's come untied. Every time I succeed I trip myself and he lets go of the guitar he can't hardly play to steady me.

It's just a song. 

You play it every day and you sing it all the time. I can hear you. It's like under your breath.

Don't stand so close.

But you smell good. 

So?

Why is her dress ripped? Did they rip it off?

No. She left her life behind. They get out of the shitty small town. Like we'll do when I get my license. 

Are we going where they went?

What? No, Bridget. We'll go somewhere better.

Caleb said I was a beauty. 

What? 

In the song, he says she's not a beauty but she's alright. Caleb said I was beautiful. 

He's grooming you. That's why I'll take you away. 

Like a cat does to her kittens?

No, Bridget. Not like that. 

Why did you put my name in the song if you're not going to answer any of my questions?

Ask Caleb. 

FINE.