August and September, too.

I'm running out of time
'Cause I can see the sun light up the sky

 I've made the most elaborate changes to the song, flourishes on the piano and the song never ends. I just keep making up new choruses as I go. I never leave the bench anymore until I'm falling asleep on my feet. I feel like this song has made me a better player from what I was before, as I had a tendency to try and memorize the notes instead of reading the music. To me playing and singing is only marginally easier than writing while singing, and so some days I'm not writing at all. 

Besides, I only have two fingers to work with on my right hand so everything is a struggle now and it's a wonderful visual and emotional connection to the book I just finished. Not sure if I can spoil it quite yet. I only even heard of it on a podcast and then I noticed Andrew had a copy sitting on his desk in  a pile with other books and I made a mental note. And then it exploded on tiktok and so I bought it and read it too. 

But I'm not going to talk about it today. Not in the midst of all the other things. Like August on his goddamned knees, apologizing for shouting me down, for flaying me in front of my army, for telling me my coping methods were not coping methods at all, but methods by which I will facilitate my destruction and the destruction of those around me. 

I pointed out isn't that why he's here, because it takes one to know one? And what do you know, I found the button and he. went. off. 

And it was nice to finally watch him blow his stack. As much as the words (all true) hurt so bad I didn't think our relationship would recover (hint: it has) he needed to do that and needed to make his observations known in a meaningful way. And we made up and he and I have talked about the book and what I've seen and what I came away from it with and how maybe I really need to talk to everyone more and I'm generalizing here because I want to give you ample warning before I spoil that book. 

The sad part of all of this is how much he's been keeping to himself all these years and how we're all peeking around the corner at this point into the black that is October and so unwilling to keep moving forward we're taking turns pouring concrete around each other's legs trying to keep us in the summer, keep the fall from barging in, keep the memories from burning everything down around us. Trying to hold on, but for what? To do it all again, year after year, just crawling into the bright warm light only to be dragged backwards into the dark? 

Yes, Sam says, my memory thief, holding one of Lochlan's soot-covered torches, a flame still boldly emanating from the top. Lochlan stands beside him, holding the rest, all lit up like fireworks because he is the apprentice, he's the one who decided fire would be the way. Because that's what we do. To live is to coexist with joy and with pain, equally, or you really aren't living at all. Then he touches the flame to the edge of my day and I am baptized again, in fire, a phoenix with broken wings, stripped of it's feathers, a pathetic creature tripping over one memory after another because he gets a lot of them but he never gets them all. Sometimes I am surprised and end up flat on my face after one appears in front of me suddenly. A spectre. An apparition. A ghost in the form of a helium balloon, handed to a little girl at a fair. 

But it isn't fair. And that's okay too because without the pain how would we know when we're experiencing joy at all?

And that's the part they're trying to teach me now.

Probably empty promises but it's nice to have the reminder that we're better when we're all together.

Facetimed with Ben (and Daniel and Schuyler) and we both might have cried. Schuyler cried on our behalves and Daniel didn't even once wipe his eyes, tears streaming, everyone he loves in one spot, but not. And I did the unthinkable, the thing that's not healthy or good for anyone, the expensive, damaging, selfish, entitled thing and I asked Benjamin to come home, that he can do zooms with his people and we'll find a five-star chef and we'll go on hikes and make crafts in the back yard and hire a masseuse to come visit every day and work on ourselves here.

At home.

Where he belongs. 

I expected a deluge of disappointment, admonishings and lectures. I expected someone would just end the call and spare me the usual humiliation of being spoken to slowly and with purpose, explaining all the reasons why things are the way they are and why I'm a horrible, no-good little asshole for even suggesting he leave early. 

But to my surprise, Ben turned the phone away from the others, winked and said How does Tuesday sound? 

What do you mean? What's on Tuesday?

Our flight home, Bumblebee. 

And I start shaking and flapping and fluttering and drop the phone. Off the cliff, where I cry out in dismay as I watch it slide down the grass and then bounce down the rocks and Lochlan leans out over to watch too and starts laughing and pulls out his phone as he pulls me back away from the edge, where we had been sitting at the top of the steps, showing Ben the storm clouds rolling in for the big rainstorm tomorrow. 

We are walking back up to the house and he calls Schuyler. Fastest way to reconnect since we don't have to page Ben who is probably talking to a rock or maybe to the grasses halfway down the cliff right now. Wondering if I jumped. Or fell. Or threw the fucking phone. 

What happened? Schuyler looks alarmed and we both wave at the screen. He hands his phone to Ben again. 

I dropped my phone off the edge.

We'll go get a new one next week, okay, Bee? 

Are you sure? 

It was a top up. Four weeks. I'm already done. Just had to get my legs under me. Did they talk to you? 

I nod at him. Yeah. 

They said they did. 

I'm game. If Lochlan's game. 

We're going to go to Polytherapy (our word for it). Which is where they will teach us not to also fall in the hole while looking into it for the ones we love most. Ben and I will run ourselves over trying to be miserable together. It's horrible and beautiful. Lochlan hates it but he has his own problems and will be learning how to provide actual, in the moment support in a more meaningful way than he has been taught thus far, still finding it far more comforting to simply cut and run. It worked in the old days, it works when you need it too. It doesn't work at all for us. 

Good. And what about you? 

I'm here. 

Bee-

I just need you back here. 

When I was there you didn't want me there. 

That's never been true ever, Benjamin. 

Just checking. 

I just need to not do a ritual sacrifice if you have a down day. 

Me neither. We're like Romeo and Juliet do Groundhog day. 

Perfect. 

It's so far from perfect, Love. 

Get home safe. 

Be there when I get home. 

Always. 

Then I dropped Lochlan's phone when the fluttering started again (stupid cast. I drop EVERYTHING) but it bounced harmlessly off his leg, landing in the wet grass to the side of the concrete path. He laughed and collected it. Can't believe I have both of you and you're literally the same person, just in two different bodies. 

Sorry. 

Don't be. I'm not.

Based on my hand and my brain I was not cleared. to. fly. 

Which means no one went save for Daniel and Schuyler to visit Ben for the family weekend portion of his stay which is THIS WEEKEND and I'm almost as angry at that as I am at everything else right now.

Blasted.

There are Halloween Goldfish this year! Tiny ghosts and pumpkins to go along with little vampire fish. I have had three little pouches of them so far this week. Did you know in this house we go through almost twenty bags of Goldfish a month? I used to buy the big boxes with two big foil pouches inside but the store I frequent no longer sells them in bulk so we buy three bags a week instead. 

I feel like they're the thread of our lives. Little cheesy fish-shaped crackers, swimming through our days. 

They missed a perfect opportunity to do dead goldfish crackers though. Little fishbones. 

God, you're morbid. They're for kids. 

Yes and I am and no, they're for everybody.

Still no spoilers but typing remains a massive challenge so this took a couple days and probably doesn't make sense anymore.

That post begat a standoff that ended rather spectacularly. 

I won.

I never win a standoff. I either get scared, bored or tired and give up, planning a coup later or maybe a whole other insurrection but this time I took my stand and pointed out the obvious. They dropped the ball. 

So if I pick it up it's not my fault. If I go on to help my team of me, myself and I to a twenty-one point lead it's THEIR PROBLEM and they'll have to regroup and form a new strategy. 

In this house we are not culture snobs, but sportingly...gatekeepy about it nonetheless. You need to know your Iliad and your Odyssey too. You need to know your Bach, your Orange Goblin and your more obscure Pachelbel and vintage Aerosmith. Your Tolkien quotes better not be from The Hobbit and you've read Little House on the Prairie because it's relevant to our times of excess and automation. I don't know. We're weird about it and if we can make each other feel bad about not having heard a particularly blistering guitar lead from Toska or a passage from a Keats poem that once made Sam sob during a wedding you can bet we will because how else are you supposed to have a hierarchy of superiority without knowing that one little thing? Or better yet, showing the rest of the family something cool, which means you're cool for the rest of the day at least, maybe even the week if you're truly blessed. Sometimes a neat musical means the whole house is pitching in and taking roles and singing along. 

But we ain't singing today, guys.

They lied. They fucking lied because they didn't want to be the one that didn't read and figured out of all of us someone had finished it and would catch the foul. Someone would step in and make sure there were no triggers and no spoilers and no ruinous Bridget-brain perched on the ledge of a hole made with a literary shovel, the worst kind of holes because you can't help them, they just happen. 

I'm so brave though. I believed them and I waded right in, up til the water was over my head, weighted down by the history of myself that I wear, that I never take off, that I can't swim with. 

August tried to shout me down, that was the worst part here. And I refused to give up the book because I have a little over two hundred pages left and I AM NOT SPENDING THE REST OF MY LIFE WONDERING WHAT HAPPENS TO JUDE! 

So fuck all of you. Someone should have kept this book from me and I'm so grateful no one actually did because it's already found a way to explains several things about me and the way I am that I've never been able to put into words in order for you to understand and now I can. 

So that's a gift they should be grateful for, because I know I am, as hard a read as it is.

Content warning.

One if by land and two if by sea
Maybe it's both and we'll all get lucky
Go to the end, man. Don't quit on me
Get what you wanted
Anarchy

 

So it turns out not a single one of them ACTUALLY READ THE BOOK.

Moose gifts.

 https://fourheartsranch.com/

What about it? 

We should buy it. 

Why do you want it, Bridget? 

Because it has lakes and horses and cows and birds. Bears. Moose. 

You can have all that here.

Show me a moose. 

Caleb takes out his phone and starts typing. 

No, I mean a present moose. I haven't seen one with my own eyes in years. 

 It's very remote. I don't think I want to be in prime forest fire territory. 

But I keep looking at it. The layout is decent. The main house is a little strange but we could change it all and the swimming is RIGHT THERE, tons of it. Not just a pool and the ocean with the rocks-

Then you would be the Lakewater Princess. 

That's fine. Not like I can get down the deathtrap stairs anymore. 

But you do anyway. 

Of course I do. That's my beach. 

I rest my case. 

We could buy it as a vacation property. 

We could do that but we're never going to go inland. You see how often we went to Tahoe. 

Once every couple of years? It's because it's in another COUNTRY-

Keep looking. Find something near a little healthcare, maybe.

I do. Because I want space. And privacy. And a moose. 

George Stark: Not a very nice girl.

She's back. Working to take five times longer to type some shit on the screen so that people stop assuming that I Thelma and Louised myself off the cliff in a Jeep or was strangled during rough sex upon request. 

Both perfect ways to go, but I'm not ready for either yet (I mean, everything but the death-part would be fine in both examples, let's be real here).

I had surgery on Wednesday morning (PJ just told me that was only yesterday WTF) and now the cast comes off in twelve to eighteen weeks (FUCKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKKK) so this is not helping my cartwheel career, let me tell you. Thank God I can walk a tightrope better than most, for my hand is less than useless. The joke is I can finally practice using my left hand for handjobs and then be able to multitask six months from now but the boys are rather desperate to cheer me up. 

But I'm not here to talk about scaphoid non-unions and the girls who suffer them. No, I've decided that we should talk about the bone now inside my hand that they used as a shim to fill in the space where my own bones, in an expected act of defiance typical of yours truly, declined to actually grow. It's called a non-union and the worst outcome save for infection. 

So they decided to do a bone graft and screws and another cast. 

And then began to explain where the bones come from. 

And Lochlan jumped up and covered my ears but it was too late, while Caleb tried to talk over everyone pointing out they could do a graft from me, or even from him if necessary. Both bad ideas as I obviously heal so poorly who needs another thing to deal with and he might not even be compatible (snort) and they don't take volunteers. They dismissed the whole thing as par for the course, don't worry about it, etc. etc. 

But my mind. 

Oh, we all know my mind.

It went straight to The Dark Half, (It's a book by Stephen King) and you can look it up. I was wondering if anyone had any information about my bone. Who was he? I'm assuming it's a he. Young or old? Sick or a sudden accident? Will he help me or take over? Can I name him? If so, George it is. Do I get a certificate of authenticity? What if he's angry and haunts me too? What if he doesn't get along with Jake?

Who's Jake? The doctor looked so alarmed.

And Cole, I helpfully point out. They are my dead husbands. 

The doctor put a call in for mental health services. Like he could order it. Like Door Dash.

It never came and then instead the boys had to explain and give the number for August and then for Seth, who vouched for my care under duress and without preamble and then I was never directly addressed again and I will be heading to a different orthopaedic dept. in the future, as they don't understand me and I can never show my face again in that hospital.

And I have been relentless since, equally repulsed and fascinated by the fact that I have a bone in my body that came from a dead person. Sometimes I want it out. Sometimes I feel like I have permanent company. Sometimes I wish they could have given me his brain too, and then I could think other thoughts. I think maybe he was an engineer or maybe an architect and he had coffee with a college friend and then died tragically crossing the busy street in front of the coffee shop, hit by a bus he never saw coming. It was raining. It was dark. What a shame.

But what if he's a bad guy and he was shot by a jealous husband? What if he was throttled during sex and now all I will see is his last vision of the realization in the eyes of his lover, too strong for his own good, spent and glistening in the dark candlelight, screaming his heartbreak into the void? 

Right. The drugs are fucking fantastic and I'm not even going to edit. So there. Enjoy the madness while the drugs are this good because next week I'm sure Lochlan will be hiding the chainsaws again. But will he be hiding them from me or from GEORGE? 

Who knows? Who even cares?

Don't tell me I'm fine.

I got my phone back, found my mind, covered with lint, kicked into a dusty, dark corner and I unclenched my fists long enough so that Lochlan could tuck my good hand in his for the evening, not letting go, comically so even as I pleaded to be allowed to go have a pee and I'll come right back. 

Promises are fine and all but I'll come with you. 

Why?

Because it broke my heart when Asher came to tell me where you ended up. 

He's the one who walked away. 

Because I'm sure if he had tried to comfort you somebody else would have had issue with it so he came to get me. He did the right thing. 

He left me alone. He even took my phone. 

Probably thought you were going to chuck it. 

Lochlan-

It worked out. I was outside in minutes. I can do this. Let me do this, Bridge. 

We end in a stare-off. No one says anything else. I finally look away first, because he wouldn't dare.

***

Hospital today. Going to go see a man about a hand. This pain is not what the boys describe after a cast. And I have a huge pain threshold so the fact that this hurts this badly after having the cast off still is making me nervous. Wish me luck.

One week til I can get on a plane and touch him for real.

Not sure who was more ashamed this morning. Lochlan for having the gall to invite Caleb up to function as the huge space usually taken up by Ben, knowing full well I don't need to complicate my autumn any further, or me, who drank a whole bottle of malbec, said fuck it, and took every opportunity they gave me to turn myself inside out while they touched me, headphones in place so I don't have to hear the things they say, body numb by the time the sunrise hit, mercifully so until the broiling steam from the shower hit my skin and woke everything up again. I fled the room for the relative safety of the gazebo as the sun climbed the long ladder into the clouds and I refused to even meet Lochlan's eyes once daylight rounded out my view. 

It's okay, pretty sure his hypocritic gaze was fixed on the floor too. Not like he doesn't know it makes things worse. It's a short-sighted solution to a longterm problem and it would be better for everyone involved if we didn't pull this shit every time we miss Ben. Not like Caleb doesn't lurk around us late into the night just hoping we'll let our guard down. Just pouring more wine, hoping Bridget will turn the corner from mean, spiteful insult-thrower to positively pathetic, helpless drunk and the minute that switch is flipped Lochlan just wants to fix it and he doesn't care who he has to sell his soul to to do it, whether it's August, Sam, Schuyler or the Devil himself.

Caleb and Ben are the same size. Same colouring. Same intensity. And that's where it stops. Caleb has his own vulnerabilities but they're nothing like Ben's. Caleb holds his fork wrong. He shoots his cuffs too much. He wears an exceedingly expensive Breitling watch that hurts when it scrapes against me. His eyes are blue instead of brown. His hands are smooth and manicured, no callouses from the constant guitar playing, no hesitation, just smooth all the time. Calculating instead of earnest, manipulative instead of predictable, serious instead of goofy. 

But that blurs in the dark and we let him in. And we gave him a show for free and then he made us pay the price and the proximity burned us against the moon until we keened and hawed in the night for everything to stop, painfully aware as the night ground to a dull finish that the only things we're eroding here are our credibilities and our strength. Bridget's mental health. Lochlan's steadfast morality. 

But who needs either of those things when the Devil will give you everything you really want. 

I called for Ben and gave my family code and it wasn't even ten minutes when he called me back. Facetime. I am so hungover and so sensitive I can hardly meet his face. 

Caleb came over last night. 

Loch there? 

Yes. 

You both okay? 

Yes, I lie.

It's fine, Bridge. Sorry I missed it. He smiles his absolutely smarmiest grin and I start laughing and crying all at once. 

You think it is? I don't think it is. 

It's better than if you go see him alone. 

I know. 

Then don't worry about it. 

When can you come home?

I see Asher coming across the lawn and I roll onto my back so I don't have to look at him, holding the phone up in front of my face so I can look at Ben for one more minute. My time is up. My ghost-balloons bob around in the cap of the gazebo, Jacob coming into frame every few seconds to frown down upon me, Cole laughing at my pain and Ben begins blur until I can't see him anymore. Asher takes the phone from me as I choke out an I love you and Ben's gone again. 

Asher puts my phone in his pocket and turns and heads inside. I cover my hands with my face and sob because out here no one can hear me and there's nowhere else I can go.