It goes: A Change of Seasons, Apparitions and then Strange Days. That last one's the hardest, by far.

I feel like I'm losing for money
I feel like I'm losing for free
I feel older than the dead angel on my shoulder claims to be

I feel like we're drinking and driving
I feel like we're running into walls
I feel like swimming in your apathy as a kind of parody
For miles and miles, miles 

I feel like somebody's missing
I think that somebody's missing
I think somebody's missing 

Tried the song on this morning, though I'm forced to sing along because I don't know the tab on piano and it's too much of a rollercoaster ride to sing to be able to focus on anything else anyway. My spirit animal looms large today, singing comfortingly into the cavern of my skull, enjoying the acoustics of my pickled brain. The chorus, oh, my heavens this is why God invented music for me, I swear to Him. 

And to Matthew Good, God of my emotional lows because dammit, he's a litmus test for whether or not things are working and clearly I can feel this so bad I guess they're not. Or maybe Lochlan has asked them to back off a little in case my brain doesn't bounce back and he doesn't recognize me here, like this. He can appreciate the late-stage Radiohead-worthy guitar solo but then the final lines ruin him. 

(I feel like somebody's missiiiiiiiiiing.)

Right. That would be Jacob but the spectre of Jacob is still right here and excuse me, I thought someone was going to fix this and did I go through all of that punishment to my liver and my memories for nothing? Please don't tell me I did.

I'm taking this song for a bit, honey.

No you're NOT.

Then skip ahead to the next. I'm not going to let you fall today.

I press the button. 

Apparitions begins and my whole face splits open in a grateful grin as his own face falls apart in response.

Jake leans down and speaks softly into my ear. I think I'm going to give him a break and just take off for a bit. 

I reply without looking at him, my eyes not leaving Lochlan. Don't go. 

Lochlan says evenly, fighting for composure. I'm not going anywhere, Peanut. Why won't you believe me?

A break in the clouds.

Early this morning and I am lying in the Devil's arms, who is up on one elbow with me tucked in against him and he won't stop staring at me and I keep closing my eyes and just drifting away, completely oblivious to everything, the drugs running liquid quicksand through my veins. He loves this. They love fucked-up Bridget. I just love carefree no-worry Bridget. She is so laid back. I'd like to be like her someday. I just have to navigate the side effects which are the ever-present brain fog, no emotions at all (even happiness or contentedness), an exceedingly dry mouth and super harsh dizziness/motion sickness. The moment I feel like I have to throw up I am done with everything and so later, if he lets me go, I will make a plea for the half-dose or whatever's next. This isn't sustainable and that's part of the problem. 

But for right now, if I close my eyes and stay very still I don't feel like I'm moving. I just feel warm and safe and adored. 

He bends his head down and kisses my forehead. Want to go back to sleep? 

No. I need to get going. 

There's nothing you have to do today. 

I laugh. You don't know my schedule. 

Sure I do. At six this morning, you're going to make love to me. At seven, I will make love to you. At eight we can make love to each other, and at nine we will call for some coffee and croissants to be delivered up. Room service. 

Who will bring that? 

PJ, if I give him bribes. 

Good luck with that. 

I'll go make coffee and bring it up, then. 

No, I have to go. It's Monday. 

It's a braincation. Stay. 

I'm calling Joel again. I want my files before he skips town without a word.

We have them. 

Okay, rewind that. You what?

We already have all of his notes. 

What are you talking about? 

August went and got them and spoke with Joel. August will be spending the next several years upgrading his credentials and going back to school. We have an agreement. 

You're creating a live-in psychologist.

Psychoanalyst. He already has his masters. This will just be a top-up of his education and then he has free reign to be your official replacement for Joel. 

Out of the frying pan, don't you think?

No, I think August has proven himself over the years. He is not in love with you. 

Who told you that?

He did. 

He always was a good liar. 

I believe him.

You shouldn't. 

Why not?

Maybe I'm in love with him.

Well of course, or he wouldn't be here. And yes he's in love with you, but it's not in a dangerous way.

My head explodes at Caleb's admission, and this plan. If I could feel happy on these medications, boy would I right now. Does Lochlan know about this plan?

It was his idea. He came to me with it to see if I thought it had legs. 

Does August want to do this? 

Get dressed and go see him, he can answer the rest of your questions. Caleb smiles and leans forward, kisses my bottom lip instead of my forehead, and gets up, heading into the bathroom for a shower, closing the door. Caleb has never once in his life suggest I go to August, let alone considered him an ally. 

But here's the army. Working together. Mounting a strong offensive against the ghosts. I dress quickly and head back up to my room to see Lochlan first. Then I'll go see August. 

What the fuck. Christmas day came so late this year. But it still got here in time.

The value of closure.

Another decent nights sleep. Six hours unbroken and I feel a lot better. I have eaten breakfast. I have had a full-nights hug. Didn't have to look over my shoulder in the dark. Have secured four extra games of checkers with the boys who remained near but stayed out of the firing range just in case they needed to run shifts (spoiler: they didn't). 

I've discovered I really enjoy sitting down on the big wrap-around steps curving down to the back of the house, the ones that are wide and go from the upper hallway down to the patio doors. The overhead light is a yellow-warm  and bright and it's not uncomfortable at all and the board goes on a step by itself and a tall person can sit on the step above it, back against the wall, feet out sideways and still reach down. And I can lean forward and reach up from my step. I might bring the meditation pillows in from the gazebo just for extra comfort but they are big and hold a whole person and it might be worse instead of better. I can open some of the doors to hear the rain if it's not too cold and I can figure out how to beat the boys at a game we've been playing since the treehouse days. That's what it reminds me of, sitting in the hallway taking off snow gear in time for dinner. It's a safe memory and so for now it can linger.

I have won a few games, too. As many games as the number of decades we've been playing. 

I called Joel. I think he's trying to extricate without incident. I think what he's trying to do is ghost me but just so there's no mistake in who's dropping who I left a grownup voicemail detailing our history briefly and thanking him for continuing to help and to try to be a friend long after it was clear we probably never should have met. That shit happens and life isn't pretty and I hope he is happy and has what he needs. I didn't make any offers to be here if he ever needed us or any apologies for being the patient that destroyed his career or even for fighting him tooth and nail for the entirety of our relationship on every single thing. Not all friendships are perfect, especially one built the way we built it. It wasn't supposed to be a friendship and we tried way too hard but now it's done. 

I'm not mourning him. I'm relieved. I almost wish I could call my ghosts and wrap up our relationships and then they would move on as well but at the same time they are woven right through me and so the fight goes on. Maybe I'll fight harder in 2021. Maybe I won't fight at all and move toward acceptance and they will too. 

Maybe those pigs will just fucking fly. 

We'll see. 

For now the drugs are good and plentiful, there's no ghosts around that I can see and Lochlan has taken to becoming my human blanket, including while we made omelettes and plot to conquer this rainy season upon us.

The girl who cried Wolves.

 I don't know how coherent or sense-making this will be today. I'm swimming in an ocean of klonopin-molasses that is my brain today and it feels so nice not to be anxious. I will reply to emails eventually. I watched them roll in while I lay on the kitchen floor behind the woodstove, where you walk into the hall past the kitchen, high traffic so they wouldn't miss me, phone stacked neatly on ipad as I do when I'm about to go somewhere. I figured Lochlan could put them upstairs if I was taken away or put down or whatever you do with your broken pets in this day and age but here I am. 

I already said sorry for wasting their time and for freaking everyone out but I panicked and they all said more than once that it's better to do what I did then yo do what I usually do which is to stop talking altogether and just implode but I don't know if this is better if the result is the same.

Also fun fact for his 2021 New Year resolution Joel gave me up, I guess. He refused to come out. Refused to help Lochlan on the phone. Refused Sam's plea for a little help now and we'll sort out the hurt feelings later and in the background the whole time I am yelling AWESOME. DON'T COME BACK and then August took over and he and Ben and Lochlan sat down on the floor and we played checkers until I couldn't keep my eyes open any more and I slept for twenty hours. I didn't sleep at all New Years Ever. I was passed around and then fought over and by the time dawn broke I hadn't eaten, hadn't closed my eyes except in ecstasy and was playing with a fire I didn't know how to control and it caught up with me. 

Had a facetime with the Russian doctor who was very kind but due to covid he did not come out but he called the pharmacy. And he's called back twice since. He knows damn well I can turn him way up on my phone but I can't understand him or turn him up in person, with a mask. With that accent. It's impossible.

I wasn't going to hurt myself but I was hurting so badly I sounded my own alarm. I keep dodging pills. I hate taking things. And then I see what happens when I don't, like yesterday, but as I said I missed my pills, two whole nights sleep and a solid meal at any point in there and it caught up so fast I swear to God if I look behind me now it's right there, matching my pace, reaching out with both hands to grab me and I hate it and I wish it would go away. 

(And Lochlan is not a jerk. Gosh. He tries so hard and I give him nothing but shit for it. I'm sorry to him too. We make jokes about me having to request things like scissors, the can opener, tylenol, trips down to the beach, I don't know, anything that should be childproofed and yet it's not a joke and it's not funny at all and I understand how lucky I am to have someone like him to be here because he told me Thursday afternoon to fucking cool it and, as always, I didn't listen.)

(For those saying it's impossible to write on heavy drugs. HAHAHAHA You haven't met me. I have the world's greatest drug-metabolism ever and this has been part of the problem forever. I can run a marathon on this shit and I wouldn't wish that on anyone.)

(For those saying I need therapy. Yes, I have it. It doesn't do much and it isn't them, it's me.)

(For those hating, you can take a fucking day off please.)

You're all the things I've got to remember.

When I was fourteen, sometime long before Lochlan decided he couldn't carry history for us and sometime before Caleb decided he now had an open door to continue the abuse he started when I was ten years old Aha released their number one smash hit that still sees people stop and smile when they hear it even now. 

But today was the first time I heard it (I don't have the original, I have an unplugged version from a couple of years ago) and it made me cry, here as I wake up early and start laundry and un-decorating, drinking coffee and playing music before the whole house wakes up as is my favorite time of day because it's the only time I can let go in the music and my brain takes a break and lets my heart drive for a while and no one expects or needs anything at all. 

And then I realized what I need and the music hurts all the more. 

Happy New Year. 

Wait:

! 

There. Almost forgot the false enthusiasm.

It feels sad this year. It feels like it's full of too much wishful thinking and frightening unknowns. It feels like it might be more of the same and yet less of everything. It feels weird and alien and I took down the 2020 calendar and I dearly loved that year, because my children were home and safe, my boys were home and safe and everyone in the greater universe backed the fuck off so I could catch my breath but then I still couldn't keep up and I feel completely helpless when I watch people flout the rules and then completely despondent when they don't and I worry it will be like this forever. 

Only once or twice did I worry that we might get sick. Only once or twice did I need to drop what I was doing and leave an area. Once in Canadian Tire and once in IKEA. I never returned to either place. I have a tendency to go out and run my errands the moment the stores open. I do the grocery shopping at seven in the morning. I go without and I wait and I figure out other ways and I've cooked so much and we've dropped even takeout for the most part just because of the traffic. I drink too much and pass it off as nerves and I think too much and pass it off as grief and no one can fix it. 

No one. 

Jake could have and I don't know why. I don't understand why no one else can help me, why no one else can make me feel safe and secure now and even if he walked through the door he wouldn't be able to pull that off these days because I don't trust anybody anymore and that's weirdly his fault and not Caleb's, not Lochlan's, not Trey's by any means (Cole, that's Cole. His nickname returned in a fond wistfulness and won't go away now with the boys and it sort of freaks me out) and not Ben's. I never trusted Ben, he made sure to be the crazy friend my whole life and even that was a lie as he turned out to be the most sturdy, trusted foundation I think I ever had at any point in my life and it's hard to separate us now for completely different reasons than it used to be.

This is why they say stay, wait for me to get up, wait and we'll go down and have coffee. Don't go in there, Bridget. Remember the blast? There's nothing left that's safe in your head and so just stick with us. And I do but then in the dark they go digging through the papers that coat the landscape and dig up the smallest things and rip them out of my arms, changing them into something else and I have to write it down on a new piece but there's nowhere to put it, no way to organize it into a system because all of that is gone. 

In the dark they turn me into a little monster and if I fight they gaslight me all to hell and back.

It's okay, Bridge, they'll tell me, a reassurance pouring all over the floor but for the holes. I watch them and it looks ridiculous.

No it's not okay. None of this is okay. 

I can't do this without them, Bridge. This is your army for a reason.

Then you can't be mad that they're here, Lochlan. 

I don't know what to feel anymore. What can I give you? What can we do? 

Bring him back because I need to talk to him. 

He's not coming back, Sweetheart. He's gone. 

I don't think he's gone. 

If he wasn't gone do you think he would be able to stay away from you? 

Sure. I would. I would run so fast. 

It doesn't work. I think we've all tried that. 

Worked for him, then, didn't it? 

I don't know what you want me to say here. 

Nothing, I don't want you to say anything. 

Why don't you listen to some music, and then we'll have a nap later.

And so here I am. What a GREAT idea.

***

I didn't think it was such a huge disintegration, at first.

 I know it's a feature of very big holidays when you have lost someone in a violent way, that they are harder and there's more baggage to lug around as you make your way through the world and maybe tomorrow I won't be so sad but it's striking to me to mark these days passing like everything is going to be great and wonderful because you don't know. We never know what time we have and that's what I don't trust. That's what sends me running, screaming, and I feel like that fear isn't something that can be contained in my brain or my heart, as it tries to help out but is mostly useless, chasing after love and affection like a blind stupid fool. I am afraid of everything and they promised I'd be so much better by now but Jesus the hard parts were in the single digits and now it's 2021 and I feel like it isn't. Not yet. I'm still here and they don't want to wait and I don't want to be alone and

I don't want to write anymore of this. Not now. Just know that I called Sam first and he's coming and I called Joel and then I called everyone else and they're calling others and everyone's coming in to celebrate 2021 without quarantining Jesus fuck because emergencies are somehow like that. Take on me, indeed. God my brain is fucking fucked. I'm sorry.

 

(She's a she's a lady and I am just a line without a hook.)

I am drinking the good coffee that Schuyler dropped off yesterday and watching Hardy Boys reruns on my ipad on the big circle couch by the woodstove. If I sit in 'my' spot you can't see me from any door. The stove is too big and it sits in the centre of the room but the only thing in this room is the couch and the stove and the rest is windows and the big patio doors that open all the way across and it's pouring right now so it's perfect.

I had a mad ridiculous crush on Shaun Cassidy which ended simultaneously as the show went off the air and I met Lochlan and the others all in the same period and suddenly I had the real life Hardy Boys to follow around. 

(Nothing has changed since, except I drink coffee now, I didn't until I went to University and then I had one every morning with classmates when I arrived. Cream and sugar and then I dropped the sugar later, only bringing it back briefly when we moved here and I discovered English toffee syrup but I weaned myself off that again because my sugar consumption is rather legendary as it is without physically adding it to regular things.)

My feet are comfortable propped up in the lap of the Devil, who is drinking coffee (also the good stuff) and reading on his own ipad or whatever he does online, I don't know. Maybe stare at the markets until they bloom or shrivel under his medium-blue gaze. 

Hard to believe he's one of the original Hardy Boys, the Frank to Lochlan's inevitably younger, more impulsive, passionate and far shorter Joe. Frank is so irritated with me right now. I wouldn't accept his Christmas gift, wouldn't make any plans with him, have (in his words) left him hanging out to dry, throwing water on his sails, he is now floating in the doldrums, directionless, rudderless, no line on the horizon-

Jesus Christ. I love a New Year's Eve arguments that's just all angst and sailing metaphors. I try not to laugh because it seems cruel but then again he put me in this position and godfuckingdammit if I'm not going to fight my way out with my words, for they're the only weapons I can truly wield that will fatally impact him. I don't have anything else against him. Heck, if I even look at him straight on I'm probably doomed.

So this is better, trust me. 

Why don't you join the guys next door at their fondue?

And fifth-wheel it? No thank you. 

I believe the kids are going, and Batman and Jake. No wheels. Just nerds.

My teeth hurt on the name but to cover my expression I move my feet and sit up, putting my ipad on the table. I can't concentrate on my show when the albatross is spooling up here, blocking the flames. 

He thinks and then says casually that he might stop over for a few. 

I nod and get up. More coffee would be good. 

Want to do resolutions later?

I don't know if I have any this year. I just want to find ways to make Ben's life easier and keep him moving towards one hundred percent. I turn and stare directly into the dark at the Devil who returns it too easily. That stare that sets people on fire and it doesn't touch me right now. I can deflect if I'm focused elsewhere and right now it's Ben. 

I'll do everything I can to help. 

I know. 

Bridget, this is going to be a better year. 

I hope so. 

I promise you. 

I don't think you have that kind of power. You can only control your own actions and I really hope you don't plan on hurting anyone in 2021. 

It was an accident. 

A surprise punch on a concrete ledge is not an accident, it's an evil I didn't think even you had in you and you're the very definition of it, especially to her.

Bridget-

I think I'm going to go see if Ben is awake yet. It's getting late. 

When I got upstairs I bit my tongue, realizing that those are the kinds of words which bring nothing but despair and while I like to stick it to Caleb every chance I get, matching his cruelty is not who I am and I turn and go back down but he is gone. So I call him and it answers to the sound of wind. He is driving. Speakerphone.

Change your mind? 

Where are you off to? 

Just picking up some things off the list since the weekend will be busy and I figured you could use the help. 

I'm sorry, Caleb. I didn't mean to make you feel worse for Ben's-

Bridget, I'm thrilled that you stand up to me now. Call me on my bullshit. You're getting so much stronger and I love every second of it. Keeps me accountable. I'll see you in a bit. Be home by twelve and we'll talk.

He ends the call but I don't feel better.

There's a heaven above me, baby.

Twenty years old and I screwed up. I borrowed some quarters for the cost of a smile and I called Caleb. I pushed too far and now we're fighting and I don't know where Lochlan went or if he's coming back and I can't pay for a room because he has all our money and I can't do our act by myself and he always said not to go it alone if anything ever went wrong, just to call home and get somewhere safe and we'd figure the rest out later. I've got my clothes and my makeup in my backpack and I figured the bar was safer but maybe it's not and no one's going to ID me, too pretty to turn away so I go all the way down to the corner and sit by the phone. I put the backpack on (not leaving it on a chair right next to me, wolves are circling and I don't know these ones) and dial the number. He picks up on the first ring. 

Hello? 

I take a breath. Hi, Caleb.

Bridget? Is everything okay? 

I bite my lip. Guns and Roses is ordering me not to ever cry over the sound system and I'm trying to obey them. I'm trying to be tough but I won't win any battles. If I could Lochlan would still be here.

Bridget. Say something. Where are you?

I shake out a smoke and a match. Bartender won't stop staring. 

Uh. I have to think. In a bar. They have a payphone. We had a fight-

What city, Bridget? I can come to you. I can get a plane right now. (I made the right call. Caleb is twenty-nine now and already has a lawyer job at a really nice firm with so many perks my head spins.)

I don't know-

The receiver is taken from me and hung up. Lochlan's back. Looking fierce, angry and scared all at the same time. Christ, Peanut. I turned around and you were gone. This was the last place I went in. Don't they know you're underage? He says the last part loudly, like anyone's going to give a shit in here if I'm of age. Probably like it more that I'm not. Wouldn't surprise me. I take a drag off the cigarette. I'm shaky and I have a laugh at how relieved I am to see him, even though he hates me. I don't know why I came out with him. We're never going to get along. We have moments where I think I'm going to tell Cole that's enough, I'm going back to Lochlan, but then Lochlan is Lochlan and I remember his incredible contempt for me and his inability to deal with the guilt or the carnage from our past and so yeah, it won't work. I am too strong for him. 

The phone begins to ring and ring and Lochlan just gets louder to compensate. He's giving me a lecture here in a shitty eastern seaboard bar while I suck on a stale cigarette, tears rolling down my face. I don't look twenty but no one steps in to see if everything is okay. Everyone loves a tragedy. Everyone wants to fix a broken girl. None of this shit matters.  

The bartender reaches between us and picks up the receiver, hanging it up again and then taking it off the hook. Not his first rodeo but a strange lovers quarrel nonetheless. Finally he shows a shred of decency. 

Need a cab or something, miss?

I'm good now, thank you. I take another shaky drag while he stares at me. I nod at him and then he gives a long slow gaze to Lochlan, who nods and meets his eyes and finally he turns away to go back to keeping his napping bar. No one in here has enough energy to do anything else, it seems. 

I'm not the bad guy here, Bridge. But you didn't have to agree to come out. 

He's angry about my earrings. They are tiny diamond studs, round ones. Lochlan frowned and asked me why I was wearing them when we got here, when I put my hair up. When we stopped moving and started looking for a crashpad. 

I don't take them off. 

When did you buy those?

Caleb gave them to me for my birthday. He said twenty was such a huge milestone, I should have something almost as beautiful as me to celebrate. He made me promise to never take them off. 

Are they real?

Yeah, we can sell them if we need to. Back up plan, right, Lochlan? 

Sure. Yeah. He's fighting to not look angry as he nods at me.

He said they were half a carat each so that's something, right?

Mmm hmmm. 

What's wrong?

What did Cole say when Caleb gave you those?

Nothing.

Why not?

It's like a pattern.

What's a pattern?

Caleb comes over and then after he leaves he comes back with a present. 

What do you mean? Why doesn't he just bring the present when he arrives the first time?

Guilt. 

For what?

Not....visiting more often, I lie. 

Then he would bring it the first time. What are they really for, Bridget?

I told you. 

No, you haven't. And now you've sounded the alarm and you have to call back and tell him you're fine, we're fine, you made a mistake and I'll talk to him too. I don't want him to come and get you, Bridget but if you want to go we'll leave. 

I want to go. Anywhere else. Also I want half the money. I had to borrow money for the call. 

You're right. I'll make sure you have more. 

Lochlan.

What?

Do you know I'm four years older now than you were the first time we went out on the fair? I'm a lifer. This is my ten-year anniversary and we're on a better gig now. You can let me help make decisions. 

If everyone's in charge no one's in charge, Bridge. 

I didn't say anymore. He's right. I never heard that one before, I tell him. 

I just said it. It's from me.

Oh. 

He wipes the tears from my eyes and replaces my crushed week-old cigarette pack with a fresh sealed one and then for good measure he takes a wad of bills out of his pocket and divides it, giving me half without counting. Granted, I'm not dumb, he gave me the small bills. He kept the big ones. The fifties. The hundreds. I get ones, fives and tens. 

Thanks. I roll it up and put it in my bra. The cigarettes go in the pocket of my green hoodie. It goes all the way across the front of the shirt. He takes the backpack from me and carries it in one hand, taking my hand in his own free hand. 

You don't need him to rescue you, Peanut. 

You left me on the sidewalk. 

I walked ten feet away and when I turned back you were gone. Jesus. I was so scared. I wouldn't just abandon you on the sidewalk. If you don't trust me by now, after everything, then tell me what else I can do? 

****

What city was that, Lochlan? The one where we took the ten-week contract and had the fight about the earrings?

Jesus, Bridge. Why?

I'm curious. 

New Haven. I think. Not one hundred percent on that, though.

Thank you.

Don't write about it. Please. 

Might be too late.

These are not in order. Sorry.

We're going to light it up, Peanut. 

I nod, too terrified to speak. 

Just trust me, like you know you do. Have faith that it'll be fine. I'll keep you safe. 

I nod again. 

Say something, Bridget. Please.

I think this would be a beautiful show at Christmas. With the snow falling outside. 

It sure would. Maybe we should come back and do our own. 

But that's fantasy-talk as pies float through the sky because we can't do this on our own. The backers are shadowy men from other countries with point men here. This operation is huge with almost one hundred performers and another two hundred behind the scenes. We have contracts that don't benefit or protect us, codes of conduct and people who sew our costumes, and I don't have to anymore which got difficult as Lochlan kept growing, and kept getting bigger and stronger and I didn't grow at all. 

Les nuits ne changeras pas

Les soirs quand tes plus la
Même si ca fait mal
Sois mon animals
Sentiments brutal
Les nuits ne changeras pas

And it would have been better at Christmas. In summer people are hot, bored and impatient. At Christmas they are warm, emotional, generous and ready to suspend belief for things that defy reality so tenuously. They're looking for magic, and they'll pay whatever the cost.

***

You remember that? 

Of course. It's the last time you said we'd light it up. Exactly that same way. 

And we are. 

We are. I nod. Hell yes, we are. This summer we'll mark five whole years married to each other and it seems sort of a small, ridiculous number when you factor in our history, that I haven't gone a moment without thinking about him since I met him at eight years old. 

We should be on year thirty at least but no one said trips don't have rocky sections, where you're not having a good time or maybe you even find a better destination and sometimes you get lost and you end up doubling back and you get back on the right road and continue on your way. 

We don't celebrate the number, in any case. We kind of tried but it seems disheartening and disingenuous to be all Happy Third! Or whatever. Like an excuse when this is nothing like that. Nothing about our love has been normal or average or predictable. Not a goddamn thing and I love him even more for that. He never tried to make up for Cole, or one-up Jacob, or assert dominance over Ben, or even shut out Caleb, who watches us now from the fringe, just inside the darkness of the night. 

Hell, yes, you are, Caleb agrees with us without even catching that huge mental paragraph of history that spans over forty years at this point, a history he can't buy, no matter how much money he has and so we did things differently and it works, goddamn it and we're not apologizing anymore. Lochlan has no jealousy left. He burnt it all up, spent it wildly, let it die down and smoke out. 

He trusts me here and so we have a guest for Christmas because my heart has these defects now from being put back together in a hurry, huge holes that are empty spaces and there's one that can't stand it when anyone is alone.Which isn't exactly true but some people being alone upset me more than others, the Devil more than anyone.

Light it up, Neamhchiontach. 

I nod, speechless again. That's the plan.

If I go crazy then will you still call me Superman?
If I'm alive and well, will you be there holding my hand? 

I finally found a comfortable spot and he ruined it within minutes, waking up, shoving me underneath his weight, crushing my mouth against his with a kiss in the dark followed by his hand wrapping around the back of my head to keep me there, his other hand sliding down around my body to bring me up close. That kiss was it and then he was inside me, every thrust so fierce I would let out an uncomfortable cry. Jesus Christ. This is too hard, too deep, too fast. I try to give him a safe word but I don't want to wake up the others, sleeping soundly all around me. The cries wake them up anyway and they move in to block, to comfort and to join. The wolf pack. Different in the dark as they devour their prey. Content to leave whatever's left and hunt again, night after night while the sheep has a thousand lives, her flesh matted with sweat, with the cloying residue of one love gone right and one missed altogether. This one, the one with the medium blue eyes never does let up, save to move his hand from the back of my head to around my throat, and I miss the chance to breathe but I never had it. He squeezes his fingers tighter, he pounds me harder still and my cries vanish into the night as he peaks into an explosion, mercifully letting go as soon as it's over. I don't want to be a bystander, I want to be a participant but he leaves and the spot is cold suddenly. 

It's shame that drives him away. It's me that will bring him back. I'm not concerned. I couldn't leave him to sleep alone, apart from us and this is what it cost.

Besides, his place is immediately taken by the favourite. The one with the striking colouring, telltale freckles and the most tender heart, after mine. The one who makes a huge effort to make it fun, make it good, make me come before he gets going and then again right as he does too. His arms are a safe haven, a gift and I unclench my whole body, suddenly racked by a bliss I can't describe as he moves surely over me. His cheek rests against my temple, his kisses taste sweet, we have a practised, subliminal response to each other, our bodies fitting perfectly. Nothing hurts but nothing is too light, everything so hot and intense we simulate daylight there, for a moment, blink and you've missed it. When he finds his own bliss within me he makes that sound I love more than anything, that sound of pure euphoria and contentment, the signal that everything is okay and he remains, he won't leave, settling in against me, pulling me in tight against his chest, putting his hands up around my head again, this time in protection instead of lust. Within the hierarchy of the wolves it isn't the largest that it is the leader, it is the one I love most.

He said I could be a little soaked sheep in wolf's clothing and he's not all that wrong.

 I've been enjoying the heat, truth be told. Usually I am too hot, blankets thrown off, one single layer under a coat because if there's two I will die, far away from the fire, honestly moving after ten minutes of snuggling because I can no longer breathe, bare feet in January sort of deal and now since I actually got cold I've been changing my tune and wearing wool and I did indeed advocate for that bathtub by the woodstove but due to privacy concerns it was quickly vetoed. 

But we could put up a curtain? I mean ma and pa never minded-

Ma and Pa Ingalls did not live in a commune. 

That's it. I'm writing the early years. Little Commune on The Prairie. Ma and Pa in their wild years before they had Mary. 

Perfect. 

Oh, just you wait. 

Ben offered to draw me a bath upstairs in my big bathtub. That's where I swim. He can have the lukewarm pools. I need the scalding water or ice cold, no in between. Ocean Bath Ocean Bath Bath Ocean. I only have two modes and the switch can't get stuck in the middle. It's just not possible. 

We're about to go dark, I think, for a few days. Not lights (GOD I HOPE NOT) but connectivity. We take life offline for big holidays and reconnect with each other instead. Wrap up the year and oh what a year it was. The rounds of presents and sitting by the tree and the big fireplace talking long into the night, taking long walks around the neighborhood and sleeping criminally late (GOD I HOPE SO) is about to begin. 

Also my bath. It's about to begin. So bye. Merry Christmas!