I could just snap my fingers and lick my lips and he wouldn't even need his imagination anymore.

He leaned me back just enough for my hair to brush the bed. I am still suspended in his arms a foot away from the safety of my quilts, from earth. From the cool night air that surrounds us even as he radiates heat like the sun.

Say when. 

Never!

And he laughs with the most joyful sound. We've been devouring each other since sundown. My bangs are plastered to my forehead. His hair is half out of the bun he hastily put it into, and he looks like a wild man. Feral. Dangerous.

Also stupidly handsome and content and amazing and mine. All mine though he said again this morning I was free to do whatever I needed to do.

He plays an awful game and I like it.

If you could go to anyone right now, who and where. 

I think about it for a minute. I think about lying. I think about telling the truth. I think about angrily reminding him that this is why we fight. This is why I make and break more boundaries than I can keep. That this is the thing that keeps me recidivist, fucked up and ruined.

Answer without thinking. 

New Jake. 

Where?

Jesus, Lochlan. 

Tell me. He is hot and bothered. Gee. Me, too.

His garage. Up against the workbench. 

He's holding you up. 

Yes. Lochlan, I don-

He never even puts you down. He's got you in his hands-

Lochlan-

But he doesn't hear me. He's gone so far ahead, and I'm never going to catch up. I'm not even sure I want to right now. He's gone to a place I don't think I want to be.

Half Lizard King, half fairy godmother.

There's a rule in this house that if you break something you get to fix it and the fix better be as good if not better than the original so be careful or you may find yourself foundering for experts if you destroy something beyond your skill set.

I sat on the floor handing tools to Lochlan this morning, who at the crack of nine came home with a new door for Caleb's bedroom. The door to his wing was fine, it was the inner door that got taken off the hinges. He politely knocked on the first door, which was opened without hesitation. He told Caleb he had a new door and would put it on, Caleb said thank you very politely and left and we set to work.

I handed a level, two different screwdrivers and one single tiny shim and then he was finished. Luckily a door is an easy fix for Lochlan, who can fix anything anyway, save for my attitude and my interpretation of his allowance for my issues.

See how different perspectives make for different opinions of the same situations?

Yeah, me neither.

I got it. You're free. He starts packing up his tools and Duncan materializes out of nowhere (babysitting duty, don't think we couldn't sense him lurking in the front hall below, just in case) to carry down the old door. I rush off down the hall to get ready. We have a brunch to get to. Another dressed-up Saturday, another long table. Another sunny day spent with people we don't see nearly enough, and we're off and running. I wore the wrong shoes, something I paid for dearly over the course of the day, which involved too much walking, and also eyeliner that didn't like me at all, smudging in the heat. Lochlan eventually held out his elbow for me and said I looked hot. I said I was, and he said that wasn't what he meant.

I burst out laughing and we were good again suddenly. He pressed a kiss hard against my cheek and stroked it too. He squeezed my hand in his arm and said he loves me. He gave in first, while I held my ground as I still don't understand how his allegiance to the Devil trumps my need for the Devil but somehow it does and our histories are combined, complicated and chaotic. But our presents seems less so, even with the occasional missteps, hurt feelings or ignored boundaries.

When pressed Caleb breathed his usual crushing beauty of an explanation. He always has one, and they are always solid gold. You don't think he's the Devil? You weren't there when he said, voice breaking, My God, Brother, I couldn't let her go. Not yet. And Lochlan nodded and I am That Object again but also so weirdly thrilled I should be shot for how that feels all the time, just when I'm sure I've had enough of Caleb. That's how he works. Charm and cash. Affection and longing and power and the past.

It's disgusting.

It's the best.

***

My words about PJ hit home like a freight train without brakes and PJ went straight to Ben. Ben who sponsors a couple of people now, has a good solid handle on what has always been a tenuous balance for him and won't bullshit you one way or another if you want to talk addictions.

Ben threw it right back at PJ and asked PJ if he thought he had a problem. PJ didn't even hesitate and has already gone to a meeting. He and Ben spent most of the morning together and it turns out it isn't my fault. I knew that, I've been through the family program, and understand self-preservation on all fronts, but I still worry about PJ and I worry about his mindset, blaming me for this monk's life he leads. It's wonderful to constantly be with friends, and have financial security and privacy and a purpose. It's another thing for a true romantic to be without a love of his own. It's also been a huge blow to see the children he has raised from birth as a caretaker (and the most favorite hunkle of all) suddenly turn eighteen and twenty and not really need him anymore. They have assured him they do need him but gone are the days of homework and packing lunches and gym clothes and early bedtimes and pep talks and projects.

It hit me hard but it seems to have hit him harder. That touches me ridiculously deeply and I bled out and flew into his arms when he got home from that meeting, having been brought up to date by Duncan (everywhere suddenly to pick up PJ's slack), who was there for his initial meeting with Ben about whether he should go into the program or not. I don't think PJ will wind up needing to be sent away like Ben did, he just needs to get back in control and he wasn't too far gone so I'm optimistic.

Sorry, Babe. This isn't you. I don't know why I said that. 

You're just a mean drunk, that's all.

That cuts deep, Bridge. I'm bleeding here. 

Join the club.

Pretty little commune.

In the gloaming oh my darling
When the lights are dim and low
The quiet shadows fall around us
And softly come and swiftly go

When the winds are sobbing silent
With a gentleness we'll know
Will you think of me and wonder
As you did once long ago

I tried to leave him. I tried to get up, he'd pull me back down. I put my things on and headed for the door and he blocked it. I tried to play along and thought he would smarten up eventually. I remained there for a while. Finally I levelled the usual explanation that if he didn't make this easy I wouldn't make it often, and that freezing him out for his behaviour would be squarely on him. He ignored it. So I went for the door again and he grabbed me and took it way too far and I yelled at him and Lochlan kicked the whole door in.

Not sure how long he was out there but I never forget how fast he can move. We meet eyes and we both wished he could have kicked in the metal door of the camper many years ago for just a single second and then Caleb's on the floor and everyone is yelling and I just walk out through the carnage and meet Sam in the hall. Sam's face is questioning and he's there to make sure nobody dies. Or maybe he's there so if they do he can see them to their reward. Or their punishment, as it were.

He had decided I would stay when I was ready to go. And Sam nodded and moved to one side to let me pass.

Lochlan came back a couple minutes later without a scratch. Caleb has none either. He got thrumped on his ass to prove a point, they don't need to take it further. They still put each other in each others shoes more often than not, but it will be at their own expense, not mine. I can't afford it anymore.

PJ found it hilarious. But then again, these days PJ drinks far too much and is becoming less help than hindrance. Not to say he's in the way but he's usually half into himself by lunchtime lately and I'm soon to go fetch that bottle out of the recycling bin and break it over his head. If I could find it for the pile of new ones that has buried it.

Fuck off, Peej.

Notice when you overstayed your time with me, no one broke down the door.

You didn't try to keep me from leaving.

Oh, he pulled that shit again? Fuck him.

Fuck everyone.

See, that's the problem, Bridge. And the only thing Lochlan can do is bust in a few doors and pretend he's fine otherwise.

He sent me there.

What the fuck, Bridget.

He told me to go.

Then he's more fucked than I thought.

I told you this. We all are. Also you're going to a meeting today.

Like hell I am.

Well it's your lucky day, because this is just like hell.

Sometimes it is, you know. And that's your fault.

My eyes sting with tears and I look away. Of course it's my fault. Even though Lochlan is tired and he sends me down the hall to keep the peace, to be a pal, to seem generous and above everything and then he hates me and hates himself and hates everyone and he tries to pretend it's fine. He spins it like I have all the power but I actually have so little. That, like everything else, it will just be unconventional. He did the same thing when we were on the road. He normalized the weird. It's fine that we're on the run. It's the life, climbing out windows in the middle of the night and picking pockets so we don't starve. It's par for the course, selling our souls to get jobs so we can survive even though the jobs were no different than prostituting ourselves on the corner. He packaged it up pretty though. We were together. It was an act. There would be rules.

Just like now.

The redhead would have played America's Rainy Day and it would have worked but of course and that isn't what this is, now, is it?

Well I know that you're gonna cry
Tears are running from your eyes
The piece of my life you take
Is one that so often breaks

It's the kind of cold miserable morning that sees Caleb put on California Dreamin', stereo filling my ears when I'd rather be sleeping.

Stopped into a church
I passed along the way
Well, I got down on my knees (got down on my knees)
And I pretend to pray (I pretend to pray)
You know the preacher like the cold (preacher like the cold)
He knows I'm gonna stay (knows I'm gonna stay)

You don't like it? He's missed the mark. I prefer the Mamas & the Papas version with the flute over the Beach Boys (or even America's cover and I don't often put anything above that band) with it's cheesy eighties saxophone solos any day.

I frown and he turns it off, returning to the blended-family music of The Blue Stones and Missio. I already made the choice for today. I rarely can be persuaded to switch. This is one of my flaws, to be sure. God help you if you're near me and you want to listen to something different and I'm not in the mood. I can't help it. I'm sorry.

The good part is nobody actually minds, as I have good taste in music and play an exceedingly wide variety while keeping a balance of perfect old familiars.

Old family liars. That's how my brain sees that. My eyes just see Caleb, in his Tom Ford boxer-briefs, cut perfectly from the same cloth as Cole, just more refined. He's sipping coffee. He looks energized. I finished my coffee and refused a second cup. I want to go back to sleep, want to go back down the hall but he won't let me and so instead he paired my phone with his speakers and told me to play something good, but softly so I can still hear him over the music.

He likes to try and prolong the mornings, calling for a slow-waking when the usual one will do. He's very easy to fall asleep with, and stay asleep with. I don't know why that is. Maybe the familiarity (liar). Maybe the fact that he's nicest and most generous right after he's ripped me to pieces with his teeth. Maybe he's no longer hungry and can be civilized. Maybe he's just content for the moment instead of perpetually wound and unsettled.

He and August are, strangely enough, a lot alike in that respect in a way that sees a visible relaxing of their shoulders, their minds and hearts and hands directly after touching me that works in a way that fascinates me. I would never tell Caleb that, however. He likes to pretend he's the only man in the world in perpetuity. Just enough to keep my heart together a little longer, he tells me and it makes my tears threaten, burning my eyes and I have to look away for a moment, thinking about something else while he assumes I'm angry about his words and don't want to hear it anymore.

The truth is that's the fuel that keeps me coming back, thriving on his need for me, living for it as a challenge to shut everything else the fuck up. The only control I have over him (something I always, always wanted) is that I get to decide when I see him. And when he can touch me. And I live for the gratitude and tenderness he shows as a result of that permission.

It's a fucking drug.

( You want new music? Go listen to America. Sister Golden Hair, Rainy Day, Moon Song, Lonely People, etc. It's all fucking spectacular.)

I can hear the windchimes on the other side of the doors.

It's going to be a beautiful storm. We battened down the hatches ever so slightly, closing awnings and the larger patio umbrellas and stowing the inflatables. Daniel was supposed to be sure any glassware and breakables were removed from the patio and around the pool but he didn't. I've banned breakables anyway but that doesn't stop anyone who drinks from taking out beer bottles and leaving them everywhere. By 'everywhere' and 'bottles' I mean that one stupid Kokanee bottle I can see out the patio door that is sitting on the table beside PJ's favorite covered chaise lounger. It's been there since Saturday.

Shame, PJ. Shame.

I've got my storm playlist cued up. Sorry, I can't exactly share it since we don't believe in Spotify (again, not renting my music), but it's mostly a solid blend of Pachebel and Oceans of Slumber. Heavy on the heavy, I always say.

Sorry, Dalt.

He hates it when I say that.

But I'm not sorry because it's PERFECT.

Going to work on myself today and heal a bit and snuggle with Lochlan and make a delicious rare favorite for dinner (can't tell you and ruin their surprise) and maybe run out between rain and get that bottle. It's going to drive me crazy.

Fair of face.

When Caleb tracks me down with a hat-trick breakfast offer I clearly fail to impress. I am in the garden barefoot, covered with dirt up to my knees and elbows, the soil freezing and damp. I have a fistful of rosemary and one of lemon mint too and I have bright nailpolish on and hair parted nonsensically, as it seemed fine when I washed it and now that it's dry I've got a bizarre zigzag across the top of my head that somehow delineates the silver from the gold.

With a frown he asks if I'm 'busy'.

Uh. Not really?

He extends his offer, the expression on his face deepening, perhaps unconsciously into one of sheer regret.

Tomorrow would be a better day for it. I'm sorry. I'd like to be home when Henry wakes up. 

It's Henry's eighteenth birthday. He is Monday's child, and an Indigo soul. He has an emotional map copied from my very own and yet he's also a wunderkind that I never could have hoped to be. He has my perfect ashes, pine and ivory-pink coloring and that alone is astonishing. He hates it so.

But seriously. I want to be here so I can give him a huge hug and yell Happy Birthday at his retreating back when he goes to the table with his breakfast muttering something about me knowing he isn't a morning person.

YEESH, Henny. You used to be. You will be again some day if you're anything like me. I get up at five-thirty every morning of my life with a smile that slowly fades over the course of the day and by seven at night I am all but finished, mimicking Caleb's handsome frown in my own completely non-handsome way.

Caleb is a good de facto Dad to Henry though. I will give him that.

I figured we'd be back long before Henry wakes.

True.

Mute (no color, no sound).

Weightless and dark when I hit the water, ears pounding out a rhythm of pain where my heartbeat forces air through them, out into the open sea. I can't hold my breath, violently breaking the surface to suck in lungfuls of sparse clouds and pale sky. The birds ignore me, just another fish in their peripheral view, splashing quietly within the vast Pacific, pink against the heavy black teal of the waves this morning, something I didn't think I would touch until they took me from the land.

My brain drowns to silence but my ears refuse to comply, working just fine, thank you. Lochlan's voice cuts through the hard water just enough for me to catch the sound, but not the words.

What? I look up from my habitual panic-tread as I'm not strong enough to float the way the boys do, spreading their arms languidly in front of them, an easy challenge. I pant like a dog, fluster around and dip below ear-level. It's a fight I'm not sure I could win.

I said come out. He is standing on the dock in jeans and his boots. I notice he has placed his wallet and phone on the wood and his boots are unlaced. Just in case he's coming in to swim too.

Fine. I swim over to the ladder at the edge of the dock. There are four ladders in all. One wasn't enough. Now one at each side. They have to be close. The ease of swimming in the deep end of the pool all but disappears when the fear of not seeing bottom rushes in around the edges, setting my nerves on end, making it hard to breathe. From Lochlan's vantage point he can see no enemies but I don't have (and will never have) his confidence, though keeping me out of the water is hard.

He reaches a hand down and grasps my wet hand, pulling me right out and up to the dock before I can step on the ladder proper. He grabs the back of my head and plants a kiss on my forehead, before heading to the cupboard for a towel. I am wrapped up like a burrito and pronounced fine, untouched by sea monsters or sea lions (more likely than the monsters) and then ushered back up to the house for a quick shower and a long lecture, behind closed doors where PJ won't be able to referee the stern limits of a man running out of patience set on a girl running out of places to hide from herself.

I agree with everything he says because he is right. I know he's right. I play it as cooling off from the weekend's oppressive humidity and thanking the sea for yesterday's bead face-to-face but his fear speaks right over me and I agree to stick to the little swimming beach he has made far on the other side of our beach where the rocks are all but stripped away and the floor has been raked to a fine sand. When I run out of sand, I run out of freedom, he reminds me.

I know this. I just wanted to run and jump off the end of the dock. Sometimes you have to break the rules. Sometimes you gotta just be a kid. Sometimes you need to just do the thing your heart tells you to do even when your brain knows so much better. And besides, he was RIGHT THERE.

Was it fun? He whispers, pulling me in close once again, now clean and dry. Now safe.

Yeah. REALLY fun, I tell him and he grins.
 

Agains.

This is living. Holy shit. Woke up to another dim rainy almost-fall weekend. I was whisked up the road for brunch at Troll's and a walk at Whytecliff for beach glass (I FOUND A GLASS BEAD) and a view of the fat white sea lions before returning home to a a replacement gazebo roof (long story) free of charge from the company that sent us a defective one originally and we have been politely fighting with them ever since and a quickly-pulled together round of chores as tonight is Henry's main birthday party. I finished icing the cake I made. I finished decorating while I did laundry. I made a few lunches for tomorrow. I organized my lists and phone for the week. We fixed a bunch of random small things that were not working and now I feel somewhat heartened and ready to face a new week.

We're also trying something that seems ridiculous but is working great-going to bed at around ten every single night of the week and waking up early, even on weekends and it's working. I'm tired when I should be and awake perfectly without physical pain in the morning. I may be one of those insanely enthusiastic morning people at heart but I also despair when the alarm goes off in the morning because it hurts to have to wake up when I just want to sleep.

We're trying to fix that. I'll let you know if it works.

Hey honey.

Just home now from hosting a massive restaurant brunch. Now no one is hungry for dinner but it was such a huge success and marks a rare departure from the norm of flipped tables and bruised feelings. This time I looked after the bill and everyone sat and talked long after the poor waitstaff wished for our departure, I'm sure. Graciously they hung back and we soon moved out to the street before saying our goodbyes and taking off for home. I'm tired but content. The kids were all amazing. The budget came in far below my own estimate. The food was terrific. The boys were on their best.

What a great day. Even Caleb kissed the top of my head and told me I was a warm hostess and did a really good job.

I did, didn't I? I came down this morning in a dress, returning upstairs to match the casual of the boys in smart pants, a wraparound halter blouse and flats. I left my hair down, now past my chin and no longer a cute french bob, instead a longish pageboy. God, I hate it. Not quite sure if I should chop it all off back into a pixie or let it grow back to the point where it becomes everyone's security blanket, full of bees and peanut butter, always caught in doors, watches and plates.

Yeah, come to think of it, I never minded the bees.

Better but only kind of.

I have had three hours sleep (long story, but sadly not a fun one so let's all pass, shall we?), some leftover salad and a cursory first listen to Dope Lemon's new album and now I have to drive across town to see a man about some balloons. It's Henry's birthday weekend and I'm once again ridiculously emotional about all of it but also way better organized than I first thought. So time is short but emotions are tall, as always. Happy Friday! Also it's thirty degrees in the sun. When I get home I'm heading straight for the pool.