Coast.

 Caleb messaged me this morning, early. Just a heart and when I asked if he was up, if he wanted to have coffee, if he needed something he didn't reply. I went down the hall, down the three steps and knocked lightly. No answer so I let myself in, went through his den, down the hall and knocked again on yet another closed door. No answer. My heart's awake now, instant concern and I open the door and cross to his bed where he is face down in a swimmer's pose, arms up around the pillow, dark brown hair sticking up, tattoos on glorious display. 

Diabhal. I lie down next to his face and he opens his eyes and grabs me in close. I shriek in response. Jumpscares when I'm already scared to death aren't fair and damn straight someone in this room is going to have a heart attack and I don't think it'll be him this time. 

Fuck, Cale! I am angry. I don't like being tricked and he knows damn well if he asked for me I would have come anyway. I try to shove him away but his iron grip holds me in against his warm skin. I give up because there's no point to fighting him. 

Sorry. I actually did have a hard time staying awake long enough to type a whole message so I figured you would understand. 

What do you need? I pull back to look at his face.

Cuddles. His eyes are big. Medium blues that I've seen darken to black before my own eyes. Please. I just want to hold you for a while. 

We're all worn out emotionally and physically. I'm sick. He's worried, not unlike the others, and everyone is subsisting on reassurance and affection these days and little more.

What can I do, Neamhchiontach?

You know what. Bring Jacob back. 

I'm not doing that to L-

So I can leave him, and then I'll have closure. And the upper hand. 

Was that it? You're looking for control?

Maybe. 

I believe you have it now. If you tell us to jump, we wait for you to follow with how high.

Do you think I do? I twist my head to look up at him. 

Definitely. The tides have turned, Bridget. You're in charge now. Of your happiness. You don't run after Lochlan. He wants to be with you. He's not going to leave. 

I relax all of my muscles. It takes effort and a reminder lately. 

So you're not going to bring Jake back so I can do all this?

I don't think you need to do all that. I think Jake knows exactly what you would do if he were here. And I think you don't have to be afraid anymore.

He wraps his arms tight around me again, pulling me in against his chest while my brain explodes.

Men who sing.

It only took me a minute. I woke up and heard screaming.But the screaming quickly formed a familiar pattern. I run and look outside and I see Lochlan is out there singing in the gazebo and Ben has one of his guitars and he's accompanying Loch. 

Holy cow, he's so loud. Ben taught him a trick once, one I was taught a while ago, and that's if you really let go and amp up your volume you can hit a range that otherwise you won't reach. Lochlan's having a blast now. It's opened up a whole new world for him.

He's out there doing Ricochet. In the rain. Arms gesturing wildly. Practicing. He always was one to have inspiration hit at odd times, but we're definitely both morning people. 

Damn. It's one of my favourite songs but now when I listen to it I only hear his voice. Kind of like when I listen to Relient K or Thirteen Senses now, his voice sounds like that. Friendly. He sings their songs a lot. 

I don't know, it's comforting to me. A man who sings is a man who has let go of his self-consciousness and opened his heart to the world. Not that Lochlan's ever been self-conscious in his life unless it came to figuring out how to be romantic when I was a teenager. He's a showman. He would light something up or do some death-defying acrobatics (that was such a short time frame and he hates it when I bring it up. We spent far more time on the sideshow than we ever did in the Big Top, that's for sure, but most of it was political and shady as fuck and that's why we left.) and never once was he surprised at the applause or gasps of fear and appreciation. 

Never once. 

But he was also (and remains) humble and appreciative of all of it because he considers it a life skill, like swimming or doing your own IT. 

(Did I tell you I moved the television last week and figured out every last input and HDMI cable? It all works and I have Netflix that I can see from anywhere now because watching things on a laptop or iPad if we're not in the big theatre downstairs isn't compelling at all and he is SO PROUD).

But yeah, the singing he decided he likes much better than the ever-complicated guitar, and life is short. You want Bridget's heart, you better sing for it. 

And besides, his voice is high enough to drown out Jacob's. It's always in my head and now I can barely hear it. He's still a blur out there but my focus is surprisingly clear today.

It's the easy Saturday cardigan pattern if you're actually wondering but you're probably not.

Tight quarters today as Caleb attempts to conduct a catch-up workday which basically seems to involve me organizing his bookmarks, filing away his digital receipts and reconciling his bank statements. He has pulled the small parlour chair over right beside his big leather desk chair on wheels and since it's too heavy for me to move I was forced to crawl over the arm and into it while he went downstairs to get us fresh coffee, after discovering that mine was ice-cold and untouched this morning while I watched the rain blur the ocean view. 

Everyone is still soundly asleep. Not all that surprising at seven on the second day after a two-day event like that one. Not hungover, just tired. They sometimes forget, I think, that they can spend time together or talk when it's not a special occasion and that always surprises me, when they act like they've hardly seen each other in years. Other times the bond is so close that one will rush out the door to find another because they had a feeling they were needed and it turns out to be true. In any case, boys should start trickling in shortly, as their bellies growl for breakfast, and by then I should be pretty much finished, as I like to work efficiently and get finished and Caleb likes to fuck around and flirt. 

How are you? He sips his coffee, ignoring the fact that I have eight tabs and four folders open and I've resorted to sticky notes to keep track of this when it's right in front of me.

Thanks for the coffee. I'm swell. I flash him the biggest fake smile I can muster and take a sip. Oh. So good. So hot. A far cry from the one I made myself two hours ago.

Neamhchiontach. Talk to me. He rubs my back and I twist away, sitting up straighter on the edge of the chair, trying to focus on the words on the screen when they're starting to swim. Don't drag me down into those depths now, I can find my way there with no help at all. 

Let's get this done. I have plans. 

What are your plans? 

Watching Demon Slayer with Henry and working on Christmas gifts. 

Maybe I can join you. 

Sure. Bring your knitting needles. We go hard. 

I would love to learn to knit. 

Get PJ to teach you. I taught him years ago. 

I'd rather you teach me. 

I'm a terrible teacher because I'm still learning. He ended up doing online tutorials. 

Did you do the tutorials?

No I just rough it. 

He laughs. Well, maybe I'll drop in for a bit anyway. What time are you finished here?

Noon, I think. Maybe one at the latest. Does that work for you?

Any time you are here works for me. 

Let's make omelettes for lunch first, I tell him abruptly and his face suddenly morphs into a joyful, pleased expression. With Ben and Lochlan too. I don't tell him I can see the man in a pale blue button down and jeans (or the shape of him anyway) out by the fence. Let's have a really good lunch first.

Heavy rainfall warning.

The rain is imminent. I can see it coming across the water, a heavy dark grey mass of misery and tears from the sky. Perfect. It's how I feel but I'm tired today. I'm worn down now. The antibiotics from last week didn't do the job and the doctor is coming back tomorrow. My physiology hates me, my kidneys even moreso. Ben tells me it's because nothing on the inside of me has any room to spread out, that it's all compacted in there and that causes problems. I know all this but today it's not funny, it's just another thing I have to deal with when nothing is supposed to intrude. This week is bookmarked, blocked off, highlit, set aside. I don't have time to be sick still. Then they'll just feel more sorry for me or make excuses, when there is no excuse for this. Not this long after. 

Sam is right. Ben is right. Lochlan is always right. Schuyler was right, when he didn't push for me to stay so long at the party, which again ran for two days and thank heavens they only throw one like that every nine or so years because while it was just as magical as their wedding reception I attended less than half of it overall this time instead of the whole thing last time. 

So fun though. A huge bonding experience for all of us, to be sure, and a wonderful chance to celebrate and mark the good things in life instead of always counting the days out from the bad things. The time removed. The exact numbers required by science that you are permitted to grieve until you are forced to feel better, dictated by someone who has probably never felt like this in their lives. Science won't answer these questions for me. Science might bring him back though and so I have to keep them in my pocket even as I want to point out grief really isn't a science, and no, there's no magic number. Sure you can move on, but honestly when you start out walking you walk forward by default, right? Your heart, your mind can easily get left behind while your body takes off in a flat run. 

That isn't science, that's common sense.

Pumpkinhead butternauts.

I will build my own empire
And banish myself from you there
I don't want to remember
The love light has shown

I won't fight our destiny
Cause you and I will always be alone

Morning. There's a fire in the woodstove again but I believe most of us are still next door. I tapped out at two, coming home to sleep for a few hours. Schuyler and Dan walked me home and settled me in and then went back. They plugged my phone in for me. They made sure I was tucked in tightly. They left the pumpkin lights on the hearth on so that it would be a festive-rest, I guess and this morning the lights were gone.

Lochlan is making coffee. He's still in his suit. Pants and shirt, anyway, tie looped around his neck, curls escaping from his loose low bun as always. He's still going, home to see if I was awake, sticking around for a few. Ruth is spending the night at her boyfriend's family home. Henry was at his best friend's house all night and came home late. I know because Dalton and Andrew walked up the road, sent by me, to meet him, since it's Halloween night. They reported back, amused because Henry is over six feet tall and almost twenty but I still worry about him, and that won't change.

I worry about everything. It's as if they don't even know me.

He has begun to take down the Halloween decorations. I'm certain later on today they will bring in big sheets of feather padding to cover every sharp edge in my life for a hundred miles.

I take the coffee and Lochlan asks me if I'm coming back to the party with him.

No. Two in the morning is lots. 

There is french toast. 

Let me get dressed. 

His face breaks into a smile. And bacon.

I'm not even going to change out of these pajamas then. Grab my coat?

That's my peanut.

Pumpkins.

I am up early. There's a party to get ready for, tonight.

Notes of Immortality drifting up from Duncan's guitar this morning. He was up early to light the stove for me (I can do it, he just wanted it to be warm and cozy downstairs when I woke), sticking around to see how things were. This week in particular is the one made of glass, made of thorns and poison, despair and longing and a cold ache from so far away now I think I might never find my way back home. It's as if my calendar is cleared and my brain decides that it's time to pick a fight with my heart and lose, as ever, a weak competitor in the face of a mighty warrior. 

(This heart is a keeper, it's a keepsake, it's a rare find.)

Lochlan said that to me once. I was ten years old and I never forgot that because everyone said he was such an old soul it was hard in this day and time to understand what he meant when he said certain things but now on this side of life I get it, and he's right. 

This heart is pinned to my sleeve with a rusted safety pin. It's been hanging by a thread for a hundred years now but every so often he comes back and readjusts the pin and it's a little more secure again and everyone lets out a long breath. 

Do you have another song, Poet? It's a request that's kind and necessary as I can't do that so he starts playing Black, of all things.

Jesus, Dunk, please. Find something unrelated.

Transmission. Perfect. I test it and it doesn't hurt, a song with blunted fangs that push against my skin instead of breaking through. It will hold. I won't die from listening, a threat if ever there was one. 

It's Halloween-day. No one comes down here. The driveways are yards and yards apart. They're all steep, mostly gated and it's so dark at night you can't see your hand in front of your face outside. It's not historically a trick-or-treating neighborhood save for the occasional folks who preclear it with everyone and dance their costumed grandchildren down the street at six sharp, only hitting houses with opened gates that welcome them in. So the gate is open, there's a bowl of candy out in case, but odds are PJ will have finished it off by three sharp and I will have to scramble for granola bars, if I am not already out in the gazebo impaled by my own sharp wit and the burning logs from this raging fire in my heart, rendering everything to ashes, unrecognizable, ruined beyond repair.

Also I just noticed...Michael Myers is standing out at the end of the lawn. I wondered where my scarecrow went. Now I see he's in costume.

Nice, guys. He's my FAVOURITE.

Ben specifically requested a goofy post so here.

Today is brought to you by my handknit pale blue sweater and this stoneware bowl full of dried cranberries that I am snacking on while I review, for my Collective, all the shitty horror movies currently on Netflix in hopes that if I someday see them all then only good ones will be ahead of me. 

I don't know if any of these are on Netflix but horror movies I love include Thirteen Ghosts, The Town That Dreaded Sundown and any and all versions, sequels and reimaginings of the franchises Halloween, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Jeepers Creepers.

Safe to say I'm a slasher fan (though Thirteen Ghosts is just about every single genre of horror movie at once and it remains forever my absolute favorite scary movie), through and through, raised on Friday the Thirteenth and Nightmare on Elm Street movies. Scary meant a mysterious man in a mask, killing at random but mostly at night. Small idyllic towns that suddenly weren't so safe anymore and screams that would split your head open if only they weren't abruptly cut off by a violent death.

And while I have no use for terrible horrible movies or unimaginative or unscary ones, I have to vet the available offerings from Netflix for the boys every Halloween. Or rather, they let me. Ruth also participates though she makes better choices. I go straight for the bad ones on purpose. 

Like yesterday's Friend Request.

Oh my LAWD. 

It was so bad. The only good thing I could come up with (a requirement in these reviews, for sporting sake) was that it was like some VFX student raised his hand and told his instructor I can animate bees! and so they wrote a movie around that talent, using the Angelfire online diary of a preteen who watched an old VHS copy of The Craft once. It belonged to her mom.

That bad? Dalton laughs.

That bad. Maybe worse. Jesus. It stared the girl who plays Lexa in The 100 and also was in Fear the Walking Dead (I think). She was great. Everything else was tropey-tropes. I almost need to watch an old favourite as a palate-cleanser but instead I will soldier on. Today's offering is...uh..Searching. Which apparently might be better. Here's hoping it at least sucks less.

Update before dinner: Searching was fantastic and very stressful. Not my genre type but reallly good!

Lion.

We're making turkey sandwiches for lunch. Lochlan likes his on white bread, regular mayo, no lettuce. Turkey slices with salt and pepper. Sandwich cut on an angle. He makes mine the way I like it. The heel of the loaf of bread, and a regular piece. Rye or pumpernickle, never white. British mustard, preferably. A huge stack of lettuce. Okay, maybe a little salt and pepper. He doesn't cut mine, I like to hold the whole thing at once. 

After lunch Caleb takes our plates and then asks me if I want to go for a run later. Maybe before dinner to burn off some nervous energy (is there any other kind?) and I automatically say no. He takes my arms, centering me in front of him, looking down into my eyes to see if I'm doing okay Right Now. 

I am. I don't want to run though. My sauconies have holes in the toes and I'm bitterly unimpressed with how quickly they wore right through and so to punish the company I'm taking the winter off. 

Clocks go back this weekend, Diabhal. It's a warning not to push but he finds it hilarious.

Same time every year, Doll. 

I shake my head. Maybe later in the week. 

Let's go today-

LET'S NOT! I struggle out of his grasp. He looks surprised and freezes for a second before recovering, his expression changing to boss mode, almost parental before my eyes. I wish I could do that. If you stare at me long enough I simply self-destruct. 

I can't go today, Diabhal. I need to move slow. 

I can distract you, he says softly, before landing a soft kiss on my temple and letting me go. He heads outside.

Lochlan is on his phone on the other side of the kitchen. PJ is running through the grocery list that's on the side of the fridge. We have a paper list and then add those things to an app that we share, synced to everyone's phones. You always have your phone when you're out but not always when you realize at two a.m. that we're almost out of rice krispies. Ergo: paper list on fridge. 

PJ shoots a look at me and I catch him. 

What a mood, Bridge. It's forceful and sexy. I like it. 

Lochlan snorts. 

PJ takes the hint, puts the list back in it's place and goes down the hall. For the moment, everything is good and I don't need to be three-deep in boys for safekeeping (not during the day, anyway). The meeting organized a loose all-hands-on-deck scenario where everyone has agreed to float in and out to be handy in case I break free or break down. To make sure there are arms everywhere. Like a human playpen for an adventurous toddler, I can bounce around in this soft but hard bouncy castle made of guys watching me reel from grief while we point out we've finally moved on.

But have we moved on? 

They closed the loophole that let Jake in but they'll never be done with the interloper himself and I think that is the part that Lochlan will never forgive himself for. He saw it coming and he had a small window in between Jacob moving against Cole and when Caleb came back but he left it closed and he tried to be so hands off and it didn't work. He tried to go out and live his life too and it just. didn't. work. He's supposed to be here with me. We're supposed to be sick of each other's beautiful faces and of my immaturity and rigidness and his stubborn perfection. 

But we're not. 

And there he is. Right there within reach when by now in the year usually he's found something to do and can't watch as I regress backward to the point where he needs to take the knife and I can't even spread mustard on my own sandwich. Just in case I turn around and plunge it into my ribs to stop the hurting that blooms with every single breath. Just in case I want to turn and look up at the one who came back to deal with the mess that is me, the one with the red mane and the stoic green eyes. The freckles and the capable hands. The one who told me God was make-believe and preachers were snake oil salesmen, nothing more, but who goes to church anyway just in case he turns out to be wrong, the one who stood at the meeting yesterday and thanked everyone for holding both of us up while we get through the hard parts, saying this is his religion, and this is his flock. That we will be safe, and happy, at last. Sam let him take it, let him run with it. Sam knows he'll be back.

Jacob stood in the doorway and smiled proudly at Lochlan too, but I don't think Lochlan saw him at all.

And I'm not going to commit any mustard-knife crimes. Not in this life, anyway.

Lamb.

 It's a family meeting. I sit, knees together, perched on the chaise in front of Ben, who has ninety percent of it to my ten. The small copper box rests in my hands, as my fingers rub the little enamel bluebird who after thirteen years glows with an attention paid in spades, enamel gone, beautiful warm copper and no blue remaining. My fingers are nervous, trembling, rubbing the bird in a steady circle, a worry stone to replace the oval adventurine one Lochlan found for me on the beach in Cape Tormentine when I was nine. I wore it right through. I still have it.

My brain is screaming the opening lyrics to Goodbye Yellow Brick Road. I should tell them I can't hear them but they're so focused and attentive right now. 

Lochlan has the bridge of his nose held by his thumb and middle finger. His index finger has disappeared into his waves. Curls on the bottom, waves on top. It's grown so much since summer. It's getting darker on top for the lack of sun. 

(I'm going back to my plough back to the howling old owl in the woooooooooooods hunting the horny backed toad oh I've finally decided my future lies beyond the yellow brick roaaaaaaaaaad)

Hold the line, he says.

She needs more-

He lets go and stares at August. We need to hold it. She'll be okay. 

He knows I can't hear him so he's kindly shoved me right outside of the conversation. I don't need to have any input. Not anymore.

She'll be okay. He repeats it to reassure them and I feel soothed by that. I hand Jacob back to Ben, who takes the box in one hand. I resume rubbing my fingertips with my fingers. I have no fingerprints left.

 Face pressed against the frigid window this morning. The world has gone out of focus now from the condensation from breathing and some moments I can't believe I still am even able to breathe when the ground is quicksand, my limbs are concrete, my heart a shattered mess, my brain a disaster in a bone bowl, rattling around trying to outrun the memories as they come, direct hits, killshots, certain ruin every waking moment. 

I turn my cheek away and press my forehead on the pane, hard. Lochlan says my name from the darkness on the other side of the room. I laugh. Save yourself, I tell him, as if it's an option that he didn't already take once but he came back and God bless him for that. I don't know why though. I am not lovable, not manageable or useful or good. I'm kind though. I love magic. I love fire and I love love itself and once I thought everything was going to be okay and goddammit, it was the best feeling in the world. 

Kind of like when you press your skin against ice-cold glass.