Dark; crowned with blackberry thorns.

It's official. Sam's breakfasts might be even better than the ones at Troll's, though with Troll's there are no dishes, no cleanup, no pans to wash. And you usually get a bill that makes it cost more than buying separate ingredients at the grocery store and making it yourself. I'm not sure if the lack of cleanup makes the difference worth it or not. 

I could do that math, but between you and me I am exceedingly nervous about being in public these days and to be certain there is no price on peace of mind, at least to me, and so I think Sam would be a good short-order cook as long as Matt is away but it won't be long and I will be back to fending for breakfast for myself while everyone else does the same. 

Jacob waved from the edge of the woods to me when I went to take some things out to the stables. 

I waved back, reflexively and then caught myself. There you are, I think. Hiding in the fucking woods. That would be Cole's doing, sure as I live and breathe. Cole loves the woods. Jacob loves the beach. They were complete and total opposites and my brain has awkwardly put them together as companions, almost and so they are always together and must compromise. I find they take long periods in turn, like a season almost and then-

Where are you, Peanut? 

In a fog maybe. Camping my projects and my pet projects too, I think. Sorry.

It's fine. Ready? 

I nod and follow him back toward the garage. We are warm and fed and ready to go and do the repairs that Sam and I dutifully logged on the weekend. It won't take long. Lochlan loves this chore. Sam doesn't have to go because he made breakfast for everyone. Win-win.

Foggy Jesus/Withdrawals.

I can't see anything this morning. Our whole world is encased in a thick fog. The ocean is gone, hell, the gazebo is gone. Matt is gone on a quick trip home to see family and Sam didn't really want to travel right now so they amicably agreed to miss each other and then everyone else got pissed off when I said we would keep Sam company until Matt comes back on Wednesday. He was sent in the jet which, I KNOW I KNOW carbon footprint but also CORONAVIRUS so there.

(Also I have zero input on that. Caleb offered. Matt accepted. I don't think he even wanted to go before that. It's a duty visit and those suck balls.)

I am playing a quiet/sappy playlist through my air pods and enjoying this very much Maritimer-specific weather for once. It's freaking cold out but doable in a hoodie, and we are walking the property as we try to do at least once a week to check for problems, changes, updating our list on what's been done and what hasn't, checking to see if anything big and weird washed up on the beach (I wait for the ubiquitous west coast shoe with a foot inside but it hasn't happened. I'm telling the truth. Yes, I love bones but never from people. Unless they're teeth. I love teeth.), if any parts of the fence have been broken, if any trees have fallen or if any outbuildings are insecure (like yours truly). 

Sam isn't saying much of anything. I think he's tired. I know I wore him to smithereens and he swore in the dark and fell asleep next to Lochlan, forehead pressed against Lochlan's shoulder and I laughed so quietly and Lochlan smiled and said it was probably for the best. We're a huge comfort mechanism for Sam and he for us. No explanations no apologies and no boundaries whatsoever, there. 

I am singing along with The Weeknd and abruptly Sam turns back and laughs silently at me, or so I think. I pull out an air pod and he suggests I turn it down slightly so I can hear myself. If I can hear I can sing in key. If I can't hear myself I will...not. And it is funny but it's also mildly stinging and so I fall back further, letting my notebook swing in my hand as I follow him. No more singing then, he can have silence. Besides, Ben and Lochlan are still asleep and since Sam is off for his sabbatical I don't understand why we're the ones up working early on a Sunday but we are also the ones who are the early birds, chirping at the clouds, marvelling at the rain, watching for the sun. Sam says a quick prayer before we walk out the door and now here we are, sniping at each other lovingly as we go. 

He's promised to make me coffee and eggs Benedict with crab cakes AND English muffins when we go in and he even said a double-order of hash browns is possible if I want. 

That's why I didn't throw the notebook at him back and stomp off into the fog already. 

I'm not dumb.

Nameless, graceless, oh and untouchable too.

Ben was on a facetime call on his laptop and I thought he was on speakerphone so I came right up beside him only to be caught onscreen. He's on with someone he sometimes writes with/for and is giving advice or maybe they're just shooting the shit and I try to sneak away before I can be acknowledged, stepping back around so the laptop faces away.

Hey...is that...she looks so familiar. Hey did that girl used to be on your Canadian tours sometimes? She wasn't with you though. A friend, I think you said. 

We're together now. 

Funny, Since you said friend before, I went for that sweet little piece of ass so hard. She looked like a deer in the headlights when I tried to talk to her. I was right beside her during your set. Looked right at me, almost through me and then just turned and left. She said nothing. She was cold-

She's deaf. 

What's that? She was playing at it to avoid me? 

No, she's actually deaf. But since my speakers are up loud she can hear you now so keep it respectful as I'd hate to have to end the call. 

No harm, no foul, man. 

Maybe apologize to my lady, who is still in the room. 

I am sorry, Miss...? I didn't catch your name. I didn't mean to be crass. I am appreciative of your beauty to the point where I forgot to be polite. Please accept my apologies. 

Ben is smiling at me. He's amused. Tour times are far in the past now. This right here is one of the reasons I rarely visited him backstage. I would go and give my regards to people I knew and on my way back I would be ambushed by people I didn't. Tours were a little hedonistic and weird, to say the least. 

I stick my middle finger up at Ben and he cackles in his drawl behind the screen. This guy can't see me and Ben moves along. All good, man. No worries. Thanks for that. Now did you need my manager to send you details-

With that I leave the room. I have actual cold icky chills from that feeling and I want to be up by the fire where it's warm. Maybe Caleb can pour me a brandy. Maybe I could pretend I was someone else but for some reason they always remember me so easily.

MIA.

The very good news is the heavy-machinery part of the driveway is done (after four long days of noise) and the very Bougie part of having a whole team laying bricks by hand has begun. It's a thankless, tedious, back-breaking job and I intend to reward each team member aside from whatever Ransom is paying. I've already ordered them hot breakfasts and hot lunches each day and bring them tea and lemonade in between meals and Ransom is mad that they take far too many breaks here. 

Have you laid brick? I dare you to try it and tell me a lot of breaks aren't required. 

He didn't dare say anything else and the hot meals will continue, though apparently they will be finished by Saturday night. 

I mean, that's pretty good. And next week will be quiet. I hope. I did a huge grocery shop with Ben. Surprisingly there are still no good cereals (Kelloggs is having a moment. A stop work order, I believe so no product due to labour disputes) and God knows where all the spices went, but I can make my own Italian seasoning and I did find pepper and I will use fresh stuff dried and stored from last year's gardens for everything else. 

Next week is a car week, as my vintage Jeep needs some TLC...A starter motor and some liquid or linkage for the four-wheel-drive. I don't know. It bit the biscuit over the last snow event and while I could buy a starter and bolt it on, I just want it done and no one wants to work on it with me so I will pay stupid labour costs to the garage too. Why not, I'm on a roll here. 

Then the cats. Oh yes. The cats. One is terminal as I said yesterday and lives on pain meds and cuddles these days with a super-short prognosis, and the other has an auto-immune disease and needs meds now too and suddenly the pets are all ancient, the kids are all grown up, Lochlan has an errant white streak appearing at his temple and all of the boys are staring down advanced middle age and I am here still stuck at seventeen and screaming for them to slow down so I can keep up. 

There's your barometer, I tell Sam, who sits patiently at the big table in the kitchen, iPad, notebook, phone, bible and coffee cup in front of him. 

Sounds like a good one. Not too busy, not too bored, not too panicked, didn't mention ghosts even once, worried more about your Apple Jacks than your devil and not the least bit worried about your own mental health. To what do you attribute the change today?

The noise finished so I'm grateful. And also the full moon is over. Oh, and the days are getting longer and have you seen Jake cause I can't find him at all lately.

George likes to add spaces and Bridget isn't impressed.

If the editing is wonky again let me just tell you George drags himself through life like a depressed sloth and no matter how fast I get going on a keyboard he is rife with insolence, determined to do his own thing here, and I am left also annoyed but in the dust. He has control over my dominate hand and control he will, even as I rail and go back time and time again to add the words he refused to type, change the words he added in spite of what I wanted to write and fix up the cadence, grammar and punctuation. I still see things I missed and I'm too headachey-tired to bother fixing it all a fourth time here today so never fucking mind, George. You win. Happy now?

In other news, the weather looks like it is going to hold for the weekend and I can fire my kiln. I'm very excited about this but also I did not make enough things and now I'm sad because as always life is about having all the time in the world and then suddenly having none (George tried to write now right there, gosh I hate him sometimes). On the upside the good weather for our region is coming, and the bad is retreating. The days will be longer and so I'm excited to have more time, not less with which to experiment and try things and make things. Even if it's all little trinkets and gifts for people. I've always wanted to do this. 

Schuyler asked me about marketing last night, as in if I have a plan to sell things. Maybe locally? I also had an invitation to sell my wares on a relative's website but I am only thinking about that for now, and not really sure what to do. Let me focus on being happy with what I make first and then I will worry about the rest of it. 

In any case, at least George likes to make things with me. Maybe he was a repressed fifties business man and he wanted to be a creative gay? Who knows. I just know we're both happier lately when we're not writing, which is an absolute first for me and a horrible, strange feeling overall. It will come back. I hope. 

I feel like I've somehow tested positive for pandemic-fatigue. Or maybe it's life-fatigue. I just know one of my cats is terminal, the other two pets ancient and hardly mobile, the whole house seems so empty without Ruth and I'm all but torturing Henry with frettish attention and the fact that life is still shut down and everything is awful is beginning to catch up with me in a way I didn't expect. For once it's not the dead, it's the living that's the problem and this is new. I hate it, for the record. At least the ghost emotions were predictable.

Recipe for a good night's sleep.

We were alone. He had my face in his hands and his weight on my whole heart, lowering himself slowly into me, never breaking his gaze. It's a nightly reinvention for us. A show, just for us. An intense, quick-burning but slow-smouldering act of contrition against everything (and everyone) else. By the time our hipbones touch I am desperate for the inevitable quickening of our pace which always follow a languid, almost-hesitant to the point of torturous beginning. He always looks for my doubt and he can extinguish it quickly, an errant spark left to burn before being put out for safety. Lochlan was my very first true lover and he will be my last. That alone gives us a depth that no one else can touch. 

A kiss followed by one hand moving away while the other slides down around my neck. The one that moves away is now against my hip, flattening my pelvis out for him as the gentleness leaves us in favour of that desperation I referenced before. I pull the sheets up around us with both arms and then give up if only to hold on to something that isn't moving at all. Then I give up on that too and hold his arms, muscles flexing them almost too big for me to hold onto so I am clutching his shoulders.

Are you looking for a handle? He whispers with a laugh as he pulls back and flips me onto my face. Pulling my hips up while I laugh into the blankets I am flattened out once more, this time under the weight of his own heart, and I close my eyes. He takes my  hands and pulls them up above my head where he gathers them in one of his hands, and his other hand presses my stomach up so that my back is pressed against his chest and abdomen. The whole world ignites in this space now and the darkness is left behind. His lips press against my temple, his breath ragged in my hair. I am a captive audience. I am a meal. I am flammable, combustible-girl for Lochlan's very own brand of fire. I am sent to the moon while he circles around the stars, joining me on the surface to see the earth, just for a moment.

And we are warm at last. His breathing slows, his hands unclench, his whole body relaxes as he lies down beside me, pulling me up and into his arms, letting my hands fall. A kiss against my lips and his fingers to smooth away the hair from my face and his own and he presses his forehead in hard against mine. 

Good? 

So good, I whisper back.

He nods and pulls my shoulders in close so my head tucks underneath his chin. We are both asleep in seconds. 

Useful idiot.

One good thing about Ransom is he'll always ask for my list. He knocked on the door yesterday late afternoon and Dalton got it and then all of the sudden Ransom is in my kitchen, masked up, as per house rules if you don't live on the point, asking me if I have anything else for him to do. There's always a honey-do list on the side of the fridge with things that Have To Be Done and yesterday was no exception. 

There's the caulking at the bottom of the stairs, the screen door needs to be replaced on Duncan's door and on August's and caulking the kids' bathroom so check the others, the step at the bottom of the sauna is rotted through and if you can find out what's taking my electrician so long. Just kidding, that one is on me. 

I cough and he asks when I booked.Then he says to just have PJ call and cancel and Ransom's guy will do it. 

It was done by four-thirty and now I have an operating kiln and no time to try it out. 

Actually there's a little problem with the fact that it needs to be outside. I would wheel it out on a dolly. I'm not concerned. But I need a roof over it so the stables need a porch. Then they won't be stables anymore and it will just be a fully-fledged house and I can just go live in it and get away from these-

Anything else? 

No, that's it thank you. 

He winks and turns and leaves. Just like that. Perfect. 

Dalton asks which crystal he should bring down to fix the vibes in the room now. 

All of them. 

PJ laughs from the couch where he waits for me. Right beside Lochlan. Lochlan is where those vibes came from. He likes Ransom less than I do.

I'm not going near the front of the house today. That's where all the noise is.

Today's t-shirt reads ONLY THE BLONDE SURVIVE. I love it. Matt got it for me in an airport overseas somewhere and it's starting to pill slightly. It also pulls just a little in the front and the cut is perfect for a girl. Nipped in at the waist and skims over my hips perfectly. Sleeves actually fit. When I wear Ben's XL men's shirts it's like putting on a black garbage bag. Shapeless but soft. I threw on green leggings with it, since the shirt is ivory with pink bands at the arms and neck and I look like a little kid fresh out of her snowsuit, complete with messed up hair. I dried my hair with a blow dryer but I couldn't find my brush. Then I started coughing anyway and added a sweater to my outfit because within an hour Lochlan will demand I put one on.

Cue a hot chocolate, because damn near everyone's trained now. 

And we've hit that part of January where not only did most of the boys go for a dry January if they aren't already in recovery, but they really went for a dry January, in that the remainder of the solitary men almost one by one gave up the faint hope in their dating apps and unsubscribed and deleted them off their phones. 

They do this every year. 

It always makes me vaguely sad but also mindful of years past when the desperate, poor-decision panic would set in so that people would not be alone for the holidays and the boys would make a go of burgeoning relationships in one of the most stressful periods of the year. It never ended well. I doubt it ever would, except in rare occasions and I see this as an armchair anthropologist, always. I've watched these boys my whole life and life is a roller coaster with free admission, for sure.

PJ has his head in my lap as I sit by the fire gingerly holding my piping hot drink over his head and trying to take sips as he laments the state of the world, that this wasn't what he intended but that he also wouldn't change a thing and he can't quantify why he feels fulfilled but he does. It's a stream of consciousness existential crisis and he has a few each year. 

I'll indulge him until he's good and finished because he's had nothing but time for me. I braid his beard while he talks and look at the colour of his eyes and the flecks of light in his irises and I will lament the almost-waste of a perfect man save for the fact that he did say he was fulfilled and maybe not becoming a husband and father but still having the role for the best years of his life is enough. 

This is a man who cried a little the other day when Ruth came in and told him how many paintings she sold over the holidays and how much she made by doing so. He's always got patience and concern and pure love for all of us and it shows. PJ's love language is service and I'm glad he's never let that part of him shut down. 

He's also the world's most comfortable human weighted blanket. 

He's also rude and completely incorrigible and I love him for that too.

I love that my face is mere inches from your-

Padraig! Don't be gross. We were having a moment. 

We could have a moment-

Hush, you.

Unspoiled.

What is happening with the fountain?

They're going to change it up. A Cherub, maybe. You choose.

Medusa. 

Bridg-

You told me to choose! That makes the most sense, honestly. 

The fountain is getting a big upgrade. And they'll be removing the little pond altogether and just making it look like the rest. Perennials. Etc. etc. Work starts tomorrow because of course, ofc. ofc. Just delay someone else's project so you can pull a whole team and come harass Bridget and overcharge and just..GOD. I wish we could get a new contractor. Emmett is 'unavailable' (I love that word so much) and Ransom is weirdly free. 

RIIIIIIIGHT. 

Yes, so Medusa. 

We'll discuss it. What if we got some koi-

No. Take the pond out, please. It should never have been there in the first place. No one was going to look after it. 

Caleb looks so defeated. We're trying to make this a paradise for you, Neamhchiontach. When you are happy, we'll be happy. 

I thaw a tiny bit. I liked it before. 

It was muddy and deteriorating pavement. 

I know. Now it's just so...sterile. 

Your input is what makes it less so. He's so gentle with his words. 

The fountain is ridiculous. What if we take it out? 

And put in? 

An apple tree with a swing and a garden of flowers around it. Some more lampposts.

Done. 

Oh, thank God. 

You hate the fountain that much?

It looks like when you drive up to a hotel. It's dumb looking. I want a home, not a house. 

I start coughing again and he says that's enough for now and heads off to make hot chocolate for me. It's like a bottomless cup. 

He returns in five minutes with a cup on a plate and some cut up apples. Good, I wasn't about to indulge you with the Medusa anyway.

No Easy.

In a commune full of big, strapping, ridiculously-healthy men it's almost hilarious how the germs go in circles, bypassing everyone with any seriousness until they get to me. The weakest link. The runt, as it were, feral girl prone to every last crumb of sickness and once I get and develop it into a full-blown illness then I give it back to everyone, they work through it and then it lingers only to infect me once more. 

It's not Covid. I've been tested twice now. It's just the flu. Probably because I sleep three or four hours a night and just run on white-knuckle breath-held vibrations and that never changes. Lochlan was running a mild fever too this morning almost as if on instruction, as the doctor said this will run it's course in a few days and to call him if anyone spikes a fever over 104 or if we can't keep control of the symptoms. I worry slightly about Caleb and about New Jake who are both men with health concerns but they both seem fine. 

(Do not even ask me why New Jake wouldn't be fine because I ain't talking.) 

Daniel has the sniffles but no fever. PJ coughed once and Caleb glared at him until he lied and said he breathed his coffee by mistake instead of swallowing it, and otherwise everything seems good so at least it's not pneumonia (I still have at least eight weeks to get that and I'm sure there's one with my name on it waiting in the wings, as ever) and it's not bronchitis. The other favourite.

I lamented being sick all the time and Lochlan pointed out germs are heavier than air so it makes sense if I'm shorter I catch more. Like krill for a baleen whale. I'm just walking through life filtering them with my teeth. 

A vision.

Indeed.