Saturday, 23 November 2019

Their, there. They're.

He's right. Just wear it. 

Not on that fing-

Does it matter? The rings aren't the point. The bond is.

I don't know if Lochlan means himself or Caleb but I'm not going to ask for clarification. I slid the diamond on my right hand ring finger and he nods, after a heartbeat or two before answering my unspoken question.

The bond may extend to the collective but you are mine and I am yours. And he can't come between that. Never will. Besides, he's right. We need to weigh you down.

Friday, 22 November 2019

Justification.

You have at least five rings on now. 

Seven. If you count (I turn my hand around so he can see my thumb) this one. Three are wedding, then these ones-

Right so can't you just add it? I'd rather not see it fly out of a pocket or be sent through the washing machine because you have a tendency to-

Be careless?

No, I believe distracted is the word I would choose. Busy. Not really too concerned with the loose contents of your pockets. 

Well I am, don't worry. 

Are you really still carrying that key?

I reach into my dress and hold it up. Are you surprised?

Not at all. But I still think if you're not going to wear the ring I gave you at least let me keep it in the safe. 

Fine. I hand it to him. He takes it as his face falls.

I was hoping you'd put up a fight, at least.

What's the point? 

Passion. I guess, importance to you. If it's a treasured object that you carry I would think you maybe find it a talisman and would fight to keep hold-

It weighs me down. 

How so?

I want to sail on the wind over the sea and this ring is too heavy for that. 

Bridget-

The alarm on his face sends me backtracking. Like the girl in the book-

Oh. He visibly relaxes.

I'm not...being...(I struggle with my defence) literal, Cale. 

Hope not. I can hardly hear him. What if you wore it on a different finger? What if it just meant something but not as much as the other ones? What if you wore it on a chain or a bracelet?

Why is it so important that I wear it?

I need to..I need to weigh you down. Just in case.

Just in case?

Just in case.

Thursday, 21 November 2019

(Hold your head up, Bridge.)

Just the other day I stared at the ocean
With every new wave another must go
One day you'll remember us laughing
One day you'll remember my passion
One day you'll have one of your own
Sometimes I carry a button from Jacob's shirt, too. I found it on the dresser top after he left and I kept it nearby in case he came back so I could sew it on his shirt. It's tortoiseshell, small and flat. He used to find it incredible how I paid such close attention to the orientation of the holes on the buttons when I sewed them back on his shirts.

It's important it look just right.

It's not important, Princess, he would implore, not understanding how I work, that if everything is orderly and perfect then everything will be fine. It still holds and I am militant, OCD, determined, though with so many souls here now it's hard to keep things tidy, let alone orderly. Maybe it's not that important anymore, Jake. Maybe you were right.

The key that I always carry is from the castle. It was from the door at the top of the steps, that led up to the roof to my glass writing room. They just roofed it over after we left. No more copper Victorian filials. No more beautiful prairie sunrises. Whoever lives there now has made it a happy home and that's good. I hope I never see that house again. I call it the key to my brain. I used to wear it on a silver chain but it's too heavy and so it stays in a pocket, chain still attached so I don't lose it. They've tried to talk me out of it but I say it's like a pocket watch.

It keeps perfect time.

They don't like that I say that. Maybe they're right.

The ring is Caleb's. The diamond ring he gave me. Maybe I'm crazy. Sometimes I put it on. It's a bookmark in my story to keep his place, in case I lose it (the place, not the ring). It's a beautiful diamond but I have Lochlan's heart diamond and two bands already and if I want to be able to bend my finger there's no room left but Caleb won't let me wear it on any other fingers and Lochlan won't let me wear it at all.

The phone is my GPS tracker. They always know where I am.

The heavy things at the bottom, pulling out the stitches with every step I take, are their hearts, complete. They soak through the cotton, blood pooling around my shoes whenever I stop to take in life, slipping as I resume my steps, leaving a trail of gore and rebirth in my wake as we try to reinvent ourselves every single day.

Wednesday, 20 November 2019

(Rachmaninov, if you're curious. Not my favorite by a long shot, but it will do.)

Crusted in salt, mired in concrete, I wait. Peace of mind is coming back. Contentment will return. They promised it would. I pace in the wind, a pretty mess, hair tangled around my throat, fingers icy and blue. The frost makes this perilous, my world set under glass. I can look inside. I could break it and cut through my veins, spilling crimson on a diamond glaze. I could turn and walk away but still I hold. I hold on to the frosty daydream, weighted down with the cold. I hold on to the plans I had, to my happily ever after.

I hold, and so music plays in my brain. My very own on-hold music that drowns out every other sound for miles. I peer into the cloying fog but I see nothing. I cue the light, sweeping it back and forth along the shore only to be met with a blank wall of soft white that drowns in a Holbein caerulean, pulling up the waves only to drop them against the shore.

My pocket rattles. There's a key, and a ring and my phone jammed deep down underneath my frozen fists. I pull out my phone, being so careful as to not bring the other items out with it and read the screen. It's Lochlan.

Come inside.

He doesn't know how far out I am, and that's okay. This is fine. I just needed to breathe. I'll go back in a minute. It's always just minutes, always enough seconds to count but never enough time, if that makes any sense.

I said I was letting the dog out when I came back from the loft and I did but then I kept walking. I was careful. I always am. I'm not in the water today but I'm as close as I can get because I can always feel everything from here but none of it hurts. I wish they understood that. I wish they could acknowledge that. I wish I could stay here longer but I made myself go back.

Tuesday, 19 November 2019

Couch-potato twins.

It's Tuesday! But more importantly since I wasn't keeping track it's also end of a tour leg! That means just before lunch JOHN walked back through the door and I forgot it was today and dropping my plate and screamed when I saw him, for .02 seconds before launching myself across the kitchen like he was Elvis and I was his biggest fan.

He told me I'm his biggest fam and I argued that Ben should get that honor since Ben is enormous but John said it's about level of obsession rather than actual size. Glad he clarified. Glad he's home, having signed up for the North American leg and now the overseas portions belong to his replacement. It actually felt a little like when Ben used to disappear for months. I kind of hated that he was gone but we have facetime and text constantly anyway and he wanted to earn some cash for the holidays plus he was returning a favor to a friend so twelve weeks out as a tech is a nice run for an old guy.

He clutches his heart when I say this. Ow, Bridge. You're so hard on me. 

I have so much work to deprogram you, may as well start right away.

This is true.

What do you want to do today?

Sit and not move for about a week. Then we'll do stuff.

Sounds like fun to me.

Monday, 18 November 2019

Maybe I'll just get fat.

Never settle
Make your mark
Hold your head up
Follow your heart
Want to go for some ice cr-

YES.

I had my bag and was in the car before he could finish the word. Getting ice cream has become synonymous with long car rides where I get to choose both music and flavours and Caleb just drives the car and pays the bill. I won't apologize for that as it's a form of escape that isn't bad for me, unless you note the facts that not only is highway ninety-nine a crazy risk on a good day, but the ice cream, when it's done hardening my arteries into solid blocks of ice and fat, begins to attack the rest of me as I don't process lactose nearly as well as I'd like. But I persist and we share a cone now, as he watches every single thing that goes into his face anyway, and with the amount of escapism I tend to like these days, well..

That's a lot of ice cream.

I wish it were cake but I'm not allowed to bake cakes unless it's a birthday (the sugar) and since I bake a good fifteen to twenty of those a year there's technically almost always cake anyway.

Thank God for that too.

I'm trying to find a little zen here. I'm grateful for all of this and yet so unsettled all the time too. Sam and Loch share the same mind in that they say it's a natural progression that after grief comes a massive need for change and rebirth but I don't know if that's what I need, or what I want. I just wish things were better.

Like ice cream. Ice cream makes everything better but when it's gone so is the good feeling.

***

Ruth has a lead on a future career, which may be beginning before she finishes her degree. Holy shit.
Cross your fingers like mine are, this will be a doozy. If I can't live vicariously through myself then I will stand on the sidelines and cheer her to the fucking moon.

Sunday, 17 November 2019

Post consumerist nightmares.

Yesterday I braved the lunch crowd at IKEA and hated every second of it, escaping with four hundred and some dollars worth of cabinets because for a house this big and this nice, there is precious little in the way of built-in storage and the clutter sometimes gets to me, especially on the edge of beginning to decorate for Christmas. Lochlan had this one under control and I fought and hissed and snarled the whole. way. through.

We snapped at each other until late last evening, but got everything put together and organized and now it's done.

We made up. Sam played referee. It was great.

Then today I braved the after-church, after-lunch mall crowd to pick up a few presents that need to be in the mail shortly for the faraways, and I did it even as it was busy and stupid to have people walking at a snails pace in front of me (Grrrrrr. Snarl.) when I need to be somewhere. I can't slow down and enjoy the lunacy of it all, in spite of Sam's advice to do just that but I was treated to the worlds most perfect Banh Mi afterwards.  Lochlan had one too. That made it worth it. I feel in control again. I also found the INC.redible crystal ball gemstone rollerglosses at Sephora. I bought the jade and the rose quartz and I love them. Chakras beat makeup any day of the week and I'm hoping to turn my mood back from exceeding cranky to fakin' it eventually here.

Saturday, 16 November 2019

A Caleb, a coffee, a crow.

What's happening this morning?

Reading about parallel lives.

And?

I am the female Steve McQueen. Partially deaf, abused as a kid, ran away to join the circus, dropping out of life to tour the country in camper vans, playing pranks on my friends, turning down roles etc. 

Anything else?

Yes, I'm best friends with Bruce Lee, supposedly. 

Name one of his movies. 

Lee or McQueen?

Well, Lee, obviously. No one's going to quiz you on McQueen movies. 

Better they don't. Um..Ah. Dragon. 

Enter the Dragon. 

Okay. 

You're funny, Bridget. 

No, I just love old movie actors. Remember my Ingrid Bergman phase? 

Yup. 

Saw everything she ever made. 

And what was your favorite?

Gaslight. And I'm not being facetious. 

He doesn't believe me, but that's okay. I have to go to IKEA and I don't have time for this.

Friday, 15 November 2019

Here's exactly why this happens.

(Here's a little holiday story about living in what I've come to call The Province That Hated Books. Our libraries have NOTHING. Our bookstores have LESS. Holy shit take me back to, well, any of the other provinces.)

I have a huge list of regular mass market paperbacks on various Christmas lists and since our Chapters store is a little weird in that they never have the books I want but instead seven hundred thousand copies of the latest political biography I figured I would order online.

I picked the smallest of my local bookstores to try first, Book Warehouse. I'd rather support local if I can, even if going into the actual brick and mortar shop, they have nothing. I find everything on my list and quick realize all of it is marked 'special order' or 'may be hard to find' and they couldn't guarantee access to any of it in the next month and a half.

Fine. I head to Indigo.ca. They let me choose everything. I use a coupon and it's all in stock, even items that haven't been released yet (interesting), and everything is going smashingly until I try to pay. Paypal? Failed. Credit card? Failed. Black card? Failed.

LOL

I try Chrome (which oddly enough plucks my paypal password out of thin fucking air, since I don't save passwords, so a note to figure that out later) and still nothing. I wait a day and contact their live chat, who ask if I've tried Internet Explorer (WHAT), tells me to refresh the page (seriously) and then it should totally work. If not to wait an hour and try then, the website will be fixed.

No, did and it definitely wasn't.

For fucks sakes. This is why people shop on Amazon. Even though I *just* got an order from Amazon this morning (Ben ordered something), delivered by a random man who popped out of a mustang parked sideways in my driveway with his hood up. Had he not been holding my amazon box I would have been a little concerned. So the thought of ordering again leaves me a little cold, just based on the professionality (okay so apparently that's not a word unless you're Scottish which explains why I know it) of the delivery...uh service they chose.

But I guess I have to go with hoodie guy, or no one's getting anything to read this Christmas.

In other news, I'm not panicking at ALL so far this season on how behind I already feel with my shopping.

(Update: Amazon let me ship it all to the post office. Sorry hoodie guy.)

Thursday, 14 November 2019

The most wonderful gay of the year.

(Fun fact: When I look at Lochlan, seventeen-year-old me plays Def Leppard ballads at top volume inside my brain. Secretly he LOVES that.)
I don't wanna touch you too much baby
'Cause making love to you might drive me crazy
I got some sleep. Schuyler and Daniel took over operations here at Bridget Corp., inviting us over for Christmas movies and champagne in bed, taking matters into their own hands, as they sometimes do when they find out we're struggling.

(I love it when they host sleepovers. Get an invite to one of those and your social circle is solid gold.)

We happily accepted. Those two are cheese personified, and generous to a fault, sharing their massive bed and their big new TV, wallmounted so it's visible from everywhere. And it's always on, always playing something exciting like a romantic comedy or a documentary on saving the planet.

I think Lochlan had exactly one glass of champagne, poured half full and he was out like a light. I don't know how much longer I followed after him. I just know he was warm and Schuyler was warm and I woke up at five and Lochlan was gone and I was on the edge, Schuyler having gone around the other side to crawl in beside Daniel. They were still asleep so I left as quietly as I could, locking the house on my way out and checking for bears before I make my way down the path.

I could see Lochlan sitting in a patio chair waiting for me. His silhouette is easily recognizable (it's the long flowing curls, Jesus, they're beautiful) plus I knew he'd be around here somewhere as he's not one to allow me to venture anywhere alone, whether on the property or not.

I figured you wouldn't be far behind.

Did you get any rest though?

I think I got up ten whole minutes before you. Maybe I woke you when I left.

Or just admit our brains are fused now. The drift compatibility is complete. 

Yeah. He laughs and I start shivering. It's hovering around zero and if he wasn't walking fire he would be cold too. Let's go up and sleep for another hour. No movies though. Those were bad. 

Those were amazing. 

So fake and predictable. Girl has difficulty in the big city, girl moves back, meets hometown guy and falls in love and lives happily ever after. That doesn't happen. It's wishful thinking.

It is wishful thinking. That's what everyone wants. 

To have difficulty and have to move home?

No, to fall in love with a nice guy who's totally adorable and live happily ever after. 

Ah. Sorry to fuck up your plans then on the adorable part.

But you didn't! I grin at him and he figures it out, grinning wide right back at me in the dark.