We didn't spend our life togetherI call them fire and ice mornings.
and I will miss you forever
The choice was mine
To long for a time that will never come
Though we leave the world apart
I still went peacefully, quietly
with you still firmly in my heart
I will wait forever
I wait.
When I wake up half-broiling and half-frozen, wedged into the middle of the Emperor bed with the big frame that I have come to love draping huge scarves over, yards of gossamer, translucent tulle in shades of flames and water. It's a fort, okay? Something that's impossible to build in a camper. And I always wanted one.
Lochlan's a thrasher. A hot-sleeping, blanket-stealing, dream-driven, night-enduring moonbeam when he sleeps. I have no doubt someday he's just going to up and burst into flames from the inside out. That will be the way he goes. I carry a big water bucket now everywhere I go. Just in case.
And Ben is a corpse who night after night scares the ever-loving fuck out of me. He's a vampire, his skin cooling, heartbeat slowing, not-moving-a-muscle, rigid nightmare-suffering blackout-dark nightcrawler soul dissolving into the early morning hours until you can no longer tell him apart from the skies. If it weren't for the sheer need to protect him from himself as he slumbers I might run screaming the other way.
***
I'm back in the creepy/spendy/famous grocery store, shopping amongst the only Glitterati who don't send their staff to buy groceries each week. I suppose it makes them feel human.
Me too.
Mondays will invariably find me standing fully perplexed in front of the cheese display. Because I don't understand. I don't understand what you do with most of this stuff and I don't understand why it costs so much.
(Here's where I should point out I pull the same face in front of the lightbulbs now, desperate to find the lightbulb that doesn't cost $27 a piece or have that stupid cold faint light that you can't read by).
And the Devil is still stalking me. Not sure why he doesn't shop any other day. And I don't bring him anymore because some times I just want to get something accomplished. If it's grocery shopping then that propagates into all other facets of life.
(Here's where I point out what I mean is PJ is cranky when he isn't fed regularly).
Caleb is standing beside me again while I hold this tiny seventy-dollar wheel of fancy cheese.
Good choice, he says.
What do you do with it?
Melt it in a little pot in the oven and then dip things in it. It's delicious.
I do that with Cheese Whiz.
Yes, I know. I had them stock the stuff in California so that we could have late-night cheese toast.
We didn't though.
We did not. Too bad, too. Should I get some today and we can have it at home?
No. Leave it here. I am impatient suddenly. Tired. Not in the mood to banter about products or dredge things up. And worse still is that I got caught this morning. My truancy from the place I'm supposed to be is glaringly obvious but this morning Lochlan said we needed things and we would go right away. I obeyed him because that's what I do. If Caleb dropped an order right now I'd obey that too. Because that's how they taught me to be. And that's how I am.
***
Lochlan wakes me out of a sound sleep.
You were talking.
I try to pull away from him but he has me pinned on my back. If sleeping is the only time I have with Jacob then Lochlan is interrupting my dreams and must be stopped.
Sorry. Find some earplugs. Let me sleep.
He stared at me in the dark as I lightly ran my fingers over his face feeling his features because I couldn't see them. He waited patiently and when I was finished I could feel his expression of resignation and helplessness and I closed my eyes again and returned to my dreams to finish the night in a place that wasn't hot or cold.
It was just right.