A/N Sorry this took so long to get to you. Blame it on Gmail eating attachments between myself and my beta. And a slashy garret taking over...

12/24

It's funny, as much as I hate every minute of it, I can't help but think I'm falling for Rene. I mean, there's something about her that makes me want to think that I can love her, but part of me keeps telling me that the only reason why I feel anything at all for her is because she's so much like Jordan.

Part of me keeps reminding me that I only want Jordan. So yeah, if there really is a Santa Claus, he knows what I want to wake up to find beneath my nonexistent Christmas tree.

When you live alone you have no point for that. I remember when picking out a tree used to be the big thing. Maggie, Abby and I would go off and pick out the best tree in the farm, get it and take it home, and the three of us would spend the rest of the night decorating it. Right there on the twenty fourth. And we'd go to midnight mass and come back with Abby sound asleep, and Maggie and I would lay out the gifts, ready for Christmas day for her to come down the stairs with that gleam in her eye.

I never went to church either, except for midnight mass every year. I've given up entirely on religion, on faith in general. There's only so much faith one can have. They say that faith can move mountains, that if you wish for something long enough and hard enough that if you believe in it, it'll come true.

I've wished for one thing in my life to go right, I've believed in the chance of actually having a real relationship with her, and I haven't gotten it, she just keeps drawing closer and closer to Woody, leaving me all alone. The more I want it the further and further away it goes.

But I don't blame scrooge. I can see where the man's coming from. Bah, humbug.

1/19

I hate myself. I hate myself for allowing myself to fall for Rene. I'm in something with her, I don't think its love, I honestly don't. It doesn't even come close to what I felt for Maggie, but it's something. And I want to make this right, make it work.

I want to prove that I can have at least one real relationship, that I can do something right with my life.

Prove myself to the world. Peter was griping today about no one seeming to understand him, if only he knew how well I did. He wonders why he seems to constantly be on the outskirts and I know why, I keep forcing him there, I keep him there, far away from me.

If he gets too close to me, he reminds me of what I was. He even looks vaguely like I had all those years ago. He was me; he was everything I had been. He was my nightmares stepping out of my head and becoming reality, the life that I've hid from everyone for thirty years coming back out to bite me.

And I have my chance now to prove myself, prove that I'm no longer that same weak man. Actually take control of something in my life and have a real relationship. I'm going to make things work between myself and Rene, I have to.

I don't care if she's a replacement for Jordan, she's what I have and I'm going to make it work, I'm going to make things work out between us, no matter what. They have to work out between us.

1/30

I think Rene knows, at least somewhat, that she's not the first one in my heart. I don't think she knows that Jordan's the one who has my heart, that she's just the next best thing. I think she still thinks Maggie has it. But I don't know, she and Jordan don't get along, all they ever do is fight.

She may think its Jordan; it may just be intuition that has her hackles raised and ready to fight, wanting to fight her off for me.

Nice thing to think about, but I don't that's it, why would anyone want to fight about me, fight over me?

2/12

Wow, it does surprise me somewhat to read through this for the first time completely sober. Every other time, I've only broken this out and wrote while at various states of drunkenness, and it's amazing to see this side of me, I hide it even from myself.

There's a reason I drink alone, it's not because I'm not a social person, although I do prefer solitude, it's because I'm afraid of what I'm going to unleash. I'm afraid of what kind of man I'm going to be once I'm let out of my cage, freed from the bars by the alcohol.

I'm afraid of being the angry man that I am in public, I'm afraid of things getting out of control.

But most of all, I'm afraid of her seeing what I'm really like. It's hard enough getting her to like me, trying to come up with something good for her to see in me, but if she knew what I was really like, what I hid behind a carefully constructed facade she would hate me.

Everyone would hate me once the realized what I really was. What I really am. I'm a monster on the inside, there's no other way to describe it. But I hide it all, I keep my wall of calm stoicness up, I only let it down while here, all alone, sitting with some good jazz playing and a nice bottle of scotch to curl up to.

2/14

Another valentine's day gone. Rene and I went out to dinner, I bought her a card, we screwed. There's nothing really passionate about our relationship except for the hate, we both hate each other for what we are, I think its equal parts self-loathing too, we're so alike, we're too alike. And she's too much like Jordan. I can't love her, she's just like Jordan.

It takes every ounce of will not to scream out Jordan's name when we're in bed together. She's all I can think about. And Rene already knows that there is definitely something else up with me, that I do care for Jordan in a different way. I don't need to confirm it by screaming her name.

But what I wouldn't give to just have her once. To feel her beneath me, to gently and slowly thrust in and out of her. To taste her lips on mine. To kiss my way down that perfect neck to those perfect breasts. There's no other way to describe her but perfect. Tangle my hands in her chestnut curls as she gently makes love to me with her mouth.

Makes love, there's a term that I don't use often. There's no love in it most of the time. Sex is sex. Fucking is hard sex. But it's all sex.

Until you love someone. And I've given up trying to fight it, I know I love her; I'm not going to even try and fight it anymore. Just accept it and hide it.

But that's what it'd be. Making love, because I love her. It's just she'll never love me; she'll never ever reciprocate what I feel. Who would ever want to love the dirty old man that I am?

3/18

I don't know why I do it to myself. I love Rene, I think I do at least. I don't know what to feel anymore. I just don't want to feel feelings lead to hurt.

What's that damn quote from the Star Wars movie? Love leads to fear of loss. Fear leads to anger. Anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering. Or something like that. All I know is it boils down to love leading to the dark side. And I can see why.

I don't want to love Rene, I know that she's nothing more than a cheap replacement, that I should be valuing her as something more, that I shouldn't be loving her because she's close enough to trick my mind into thinking I have the one I want. But I do.

I don't want her to leave my life, because it would mean loosing the "Jordan" that I have. I'm scared of her leaving; I want things to work, because if things work with Rene, they're working with Jordan in some sick twisted way.

I'm afraid of loosing her and I'm angry about it. I guess Yoda was right, gotta hand it to the ancient green guy. He knew what he was talking about. I hate myself for loving her, I hate myself for loving either of them, I hate myself for letting myself care, and I suffer for it.

But I don't know if I love Rene. I like to think I do, it makes me think I'm still capable of loving, but I still have this voice in my head telling me that I really don't care about her, that I don't love her, that I'll never love her, that she's only someone to fill in, a stand in for the one that I really love.

I want to love Rene. It proves that I can still love, it proves that I'm not entirely cold and heartless, that somewhere deep inside of me I still feel. I doubt myself sometimes, doubt the ability to feel. I doubt the fact that there is actually a heart inside of me.

I know this much, if there is one inside of me, it's smaller than the Grinch's. Mine's at least four sizes too small. The only one who I seem capable of caring about is Jordan; I don't want to care about anyone else.

And Abby, but I don't know how much of that is biological. Sheer paternal biology telling me to love her. I do, I really do, but there are times when I doubt even my love for her, she's my daughter and I can't tell if I love her or not sometimes.

3/30

So I wound up surfing the web in a fit of boredom today. Remind me to never do that again. The amount of teenage attention whores out there is insane. Al these kids who talk about how life is hell without knowing it.

How are they to know how much life is hell? They haven't lived enough to feel it, really bad. None of them has the right to claim that their life is horrible, not until you've lived through horrible, not until you've lived through everything that could go wrong going wrong in your life.

A good for nothing chickenshit father running out when the going got tough. Having to put up with an icy bitch for a mother, who never seemed to really be able to care, never seemed able to love, who only wanted to see me become something. Bouncing from place to place one-half step faster than an eviction notice.

Spending two years of a life strung out on any and all substances that came your way, claiming you were a musician when really all you were was one stoned person who was trying to play drums onstage but not doing a good job of it.

Going to college and switching to what your mother wanted you to do simply because you were too damn afraid of your horrible life ending. Loosing your best friend in a war that you were too chicken to fight in.

That's hell. That's a horrible life. You can't say your life sucks until you do all that. You can't claim you're suicidal because your boyfriend broke up with you and you failed a math test. That's nothing. That's crappy teenage angst, been there, done that.

It's funny, that always seems to be one topic Howard and I avoid whenever he gets the urge to talk to me. He's never once asked me about depression, about suicide, about what I thought about it. You'd think he'd ask, after all I only see at least one a week. But he never has, he's always kept away from it.

Not to say that I haven't. Everyone has days like that though, right? Where all you want to do is drink yourself into death, give up caring about everything, give up thinking, feeling, everything. Just leave this world behind.

But I'm too chicken too. I'm so afraid that I'm afraid of killing myself. Talk about irony. I couldn't do it; I couldn't do it and know that people would hurt over me. I couldn't do it knowing that I'd be hurting her; I couldn't do it knowing that the morgue would go to shit without me.

I could never hurt her; I want to be the one that she turns to. I want her to forget about Woody, I would like nothing else but to see the detective gone from her life. I want nothing more than to see him gone.

I'd kill him myself if it didn't mean that she'd hurt. She'd hurt for him, and I couldn't do it because of that. I want to see her happy, not sad. I want to kill him to allow me to make her happy, but she couldn't be happy if he was murdered. I can cover my tracks well, but she'd be the one who wanted to be involved only to get to the bottom of it.

And she'd be able to trace it back to me. She'd be able to get it back to me, and that would leave me nowhere, that would leave me worse than where I am now because it would shatter all her trust in me, shatter what she thinks of me.

And I don't want that. More than anything, I don't want that. I want to still be there to be the one for her to lean on. When he leaves, she's going to lean on me. And I'm going to be more than willing to be her crying shoulder. I wish I could come up with a way to convince the boy to leave, leave her, leave this, leave everything and make her hurt so that I'm her knight in shining armor.

4/15

She called me St. Jude today. The patron saint of lost causes. I'm the patron saint of myself then, I'm a lost cause and I know it, I've given up trying to fight it, I just accept it for what it is, I know I'm gone, lost hopeless, in love with the one woman I can never have.

I hired Peter because he was a lost cause, because part of my brain was telling me I had to, that I should because of what I had been, that I couldn't fault the boy, it would be the pot calling the kettle black, and I was above that, I had put my own past behind me, that he could too.

Only thing is that he couldn't. He couldn't put his past behind him and it's come up to bite him in the ass. His wife, ex wife, whatever she is, rolled through the morgue and it sent him right back onto his old path. Once I was through I was through, I never relapsed once, never.

But now that he has, it's gotten me thinking. I want to. I want to remember how it feels, to forget everything around you. Forget the pain, forget the hurt, forget the stress and the worry. The scotch is good but there are times where it's not enough, that no matter how much you want to drink, it's never enough.

Thinking about it is all but making my mouth water. I haven't thought about it in such a long time, every time I thought about what I had been it was simply to realize how horrible of a person I've been. And this is just another thing, another notch on the list, one more thing that proves that I'm horrible.

I've been clean for almost thirty years. Gave up being on the road and everything else along with it. Everything except drinking. I couldn't handle life if I didn't even have my scotch to help me cope. I need something left. I broke all ties with the life I had lead, gone to college, made something of myself.

But now, all I can think of is how great that feeling was. That thirty years is a long time to go without feeling that good, that it wouldn't hurt to give it one more go around, that I was stronger now than I was then and wasn't going to allow myself to get hooked.

Part of me wants to. Part of me wants to just throw in the towel and live the rest of my life in that wonderful drug induced bliss, forgetting that a world exists outside of booze and drugs. I have plenty of money to support me like that for the rest of my life.

A six-figure salary, even if I lost it, I still have enough in the bank to live comfortably for the next twenty years. Twenty years that could be spent in a wonderfully hazy mist, forgetting that there is a world beyond my own mind. I want something, I need something. I need something to make me hate Peter less. I need her.

4/23

I came so close to finally getting my wish. The boy nearly left. Nearly. Unfortunately, he didn't. She dragged him back. And I want to hate her for it. But I can't hate her; I love her too much to hate her. I can't hate her, but I can hate him.

I can hate him for being so damn likeable. He's so cute and cuddly, like a little puppy. Everyone just wants to mother him, and Jordan's no exception, she's fallen for his detestable charm. She's fallen for the deep blue eyes and cute spiky hair. He's everything that I'm not.

It just further proves that I'm not what she wants. She went all the way across the country to drag him back. She went all the way across the country just to get him to come back, to get him not to take a job in California, because she wanted him here. She can try and downplay everything all she wants, but she loves him, even if she won't admit it to herself.

She has the same look when she looks at him that I know I have when I look at her. Wistful longing. Only I know that mine is tinged with more pain than hers. I know I have no chance with her. Tell that to my heart. I know I'll never have her, yet I still love her.

I have Rene though. We went for dinner and drank too much and wound up fighting. In that harsh whisper that you use in public, when you're in the middle of a fight but don't want to draw attention to yourselves. I didn't care. I didn't. I would have started screaming with her right there, in the middle of some restaurant that she dragged me to.

She's the perfect combination between Maggie and Jordan. The worst of both. She's got Maggie's detestable personality, but almost the same look as Jordan. Looks enough like Jordan to make me want her, but she's got Maggie's same catty personality to push me away. Yet there's glimmers of Jordan in there too, the stubbornness, the way that once she latches onto an idea she refuses to let it go. That's something that's so Jordan.

It's all I can do to remember who it is that I'm with, not to let my mind wander when we're in bed, I don't want to call her Jordan. They hate each other enough already, I don't need to give Rene another reason to hate her, technically she's my boss and technically she can get Jordan removed, and I wouldn't put it past her to do it as revenge. Honestly, I wouldn't.

But we fought, fought about how "emotionally distant" I am and if I want to make things work between us I have to do something for the relationship too. She hasn't done anything. I want to make things work, I do, I want to prove that I'm actually capable of having a relationship, and I called her on the way that she's every bit as distant as I am.

She didn't like that either. Hence the screaming. Or near screaming. It didn't help that she was one her third glass of wine and I was on my third scotch. The good news is we could both write this off as a drunken thing, the bad news is that we can both write this up as a drunken thing.

As much as I want to make things work, I don't care if they go sour between us. I want to make things work, but I could care less if they really do. I want to love her, but I don't know if I do, I think I do, but then there are times when I don't, when I think that things are just horrible between us.

I just wish that the boy would leave, I could call it quits with Rene, and finally move in on what I really want, love her the way I want to, try and work my way in, get her to love me. Hopefully. But I've given up on hope; it's something that just tricks you. I don't hope for anything anymore.

5/1

Rene made me chose between her and Jordan. Or try to at least. I didn't fall for it, I wouldn't fall for it. I think Rene knows who I'd pick, I think she knows where my feelings lie. She may pretend like she doesn't, but I can see it when the three of us are forced into a room together, the venom that she shoots at Jordan.

She hates her, with good reason, I suppose. I suppose she can sense the fact that she's just a cheap replacement for Jordan, that she's just the next best thing that I don't really love her, not the same way I love Jordan. That she's nothing but a cheap thing that I can trick myself into believing is what I want.

And Jordan's off chasing some lead on her mother, and it's driving me nuts. She hasn't come back in, hasn't called, hasn't done anything. And I'm stuck here all alone trying to think about what to do. I mean, I don't want to start freaking out and have her laugh at me for being worried.

But she's my last anchor left in the world, she's the last thing I have left. She's the one person I have left that I can really turn to. I can't turn to Abby, I don't need to burden her with my problems, she has enough of her own, Rene's figured out that I don't really love her, that as much as I want to make things work, she's number two to me. I have no one left to turn to if I loose Jordan.

I don't want to have to choose between them. Rene should know that I have no chance with Jordan, that she's just what I pine away for even though I know I'll never have her, she has Woody, she doesn't need me, she wouldn't want me.

5/2

I don't know what to feel about her. I'm just sitting here getting drunk, as per usual. I've never been quite as panicked as when she collapsed in my arms, she staggered out from some alleyway, saying she had no clue what happened and then just collapsed.

I tried to downplay my fear as much as possible, but I'm sure some of it showed through. The only thing I've ever felt like it was when I thought something had happened to Abby. But this was every bit as intense as that, I felt every bit as panicked.

If I lost her, I'd be lost, I'd be hopelessly and pathetically lost without her, she's the one that I lean on. But she'll never know that I love her. As much as I want to tell her, as much as I want to make a move on her, I'm not that evil.

I wouldn't dare make her choose between Woody and myself. I couldn't. It'd hurt her too much to make that choice. Instead, I stay in her life as her best friend, her mentor, her boss, the one that she turns to whenever something goes wrong and act as if it doesn't matter to me that she looks at every other man in Boston except for me.

But when she told me that Woody was the only one left that she could trust, I couldn't help the pain that I felt. I played it off with a joke and I think she realized her faux pas and apologized, but it didn't mean it didn't hurt. It still hurt. A lot. More than I wanted it to.

But I wanted to be that person, the last one left for her to trust. Woody did it though, this time, he betrayed her trust. This may be what I want more than anything; this may be my chance to step in and be the hero, saving her from everything. This may be my chance to be her knight in shining armor.

I can jump in and help her, be the one who won't betray her trust, won't betray her confidence, who'll help her. As much as I hate the random leads she follows, as much as I hate how involved she gets, I've learned long ago not to stop her, that trying to stop her will only lead to her sneaking around behind my back on the whole matter.

And I'd rather know where she is and send someone along with her than not have any clue where she is, only that she's out there risking death, only that she's out there and could be dying over some harebrained idea that she has and driving me half to death with worry because I want nothing more than to make sure that she's OK.

I can't show my panic though, I can't. Showing it would show that I feel for her, that I care for her, that I care more deeply than I show. And she'll catch on, she's too bright not to, and I don't want her to figure it out. I know her, she'll feel as if she has to choose between Woody and I, and I know I'm going to be the one who gets the "I value your friendship, but I love someone else" speech.

And I don't want to be the recipient of that speech. So I pretend to only care as a friend, pretend that I don't care about who she's dating, so long as she's happy. Act as if she and Woody work great together, act as if all is well in the world.

But really, I'm here drinking alone every night because I love her but she'll never love me. And I think Rene knows that we're through, I think Rene knows by now that we're not meant to be, that we're never going to work, she keeps being on the verge of just saying that we're through, and I honestly don't care if she does or doesn't.

5/9

I came so close to actually kissing her. I don't know what possessed me to do it, but I almost did. Almost. But she turned ever so slightly, I knew that she didn't want it and diverted it to a quick peck on the cheek that left me wanting more.

I wanted to kiss her, press my lips against hers. Do what's played out in my dreams for once, for real. I hate the dreams, I hate feeling like a teenager again, waking up hard, having to actually break out the porn.

Don't act surprised, really. I can't allow myself to loose myself in that fantasy when I'm with Rene, because I know I'll scream her name, that it would be the last straw in my relationship with Rene. And I don't want to screw things up that badly between us. I want to try and make things work.

It's bad enough that when I dream at her I think I murmur her name. I think that's how Rene knows that I really love Jordan over her; I think I've probably reached out for Jordan in my sleep but only got her instead.

I really do care for Rene, I want things to work between us, but I love Jordan more, I just do. I can't help it, I've given up trying to fight it, it's just something that I accept. It's just part of my life. The same way that scotch is, the same way that I get up every single morning and do the same things is, it's just part of my life, and I'd be lost without it, it's become so much part of my routine to love her, I could never adjust to loosing her.

The damn case got under my skin though. The boy kept trying to play me, kept trying to trip me up. It was a little unsettling the way the boy seemed to be drawn to me. The worst thing was I can see part of myself in him, there's something about him that makes me relate.

He's let everything that I keep boiling under the surface out. He's just the same as me, only he's crossed the fine line into insanity. A line that I threaten far too often, a line that I wonder if I've crossed at times.

There's this scary side of me that I saw in him. The anger that lurks just behind the surface. I keep it well hidden when I'm sober, I forget it's there except for the occasional rare moment when it shows through, but when I'm drunk, it all comes pouring out of me, all the rage, all the hate.

He murdered someone in cold blood just because he could, just to see if he could get away with it, and he nearly did. And I can't say I haven't considered it, just to see if I could get away with it. Just to see what it feels like to take another human life. The power to play god.

I had that power once; there was a reason why I didn't take up regular medicine. I was going to be an ER doc, but halfway through my internship I realized that every single patient that came through I wanted to see what would happen if I tried this, or tried that, played god with them, used them as my own guinea pig. I wanted to try things with them.

And it scared me enough to force me away from the living. It scared me enough to make me change my internship, start from scratch as an ME, I couldn't handle it as a regular doc, I wasn't going to kill someone just because I wanted to know what it was like.

I suppose that's the border between sanity and insanity. I never acted on what I wanted, he did. He was crazy, I'm still sane. Or I suppose sane as I can be. I mean, I've wanted to kill people before, but never did. I can't count the times homicidal thoughts crossed through my brain for Maggie. But she's still alive.

I couldn't even punch her much less murder her. Although I don't know, it seems as if killing her would be easier than hurting her. I could never bring myself to hit a woman, but there are times where it's taken all my self control not to do something extreme. Shoot her, drown her, poison her, do something extreme. Get rid of her.

Never could, never will though. I could never get away with it, Jordan wouldn't let me. Not Maggie. Not Woody, not Rene. She'd cover for me if it were something that happened, a random accident that wasn't me snapping and going off the deep end, she would cover for me, pronounce it an accident, and send the cops on a wild goose chase.

I could get rid of Woody though and have it look like an accident. Accidentally run him over while speeding and he's trying to get in the car to tail a suspect. Accidentally encourage some criminal to shoot me but duck behind Woody at the last second. Oops, too bad.

But no, instead, I'm cursed with sanity. I can't do it; it preys on my mind though. Thinking about what it would be like, ever since the stupid boy put it into my head that there might just be such a thing as the perfect murder. There is no such thing as the perfect murder though. The perfect cover up, yes, but not the perfect murder.

5/19

I think things are over between us. I told her to just jump in with both feet, and I don't think she wants to. I don't know what she wants, I don't know if she wants this or if she doesn't.

I just want to prove that I can have a relationship. My head's telling me I'm a fool if I don't love her, that I'm an asshole if I don't spring on the opportunity that's been presented to me. But then again, I thought the same thing about Lily.

My heart doesn't want her. My heart doesn't want to love her as much as my brain is telling me that I should love her. I just don't want to go through with it. I don't want to go through her constantly being on edge about how I feel for Jordan. I think she knows, she has to know.

She can't not know how I feel, I've all but told her. She can't miss the glances, she can't miss the way that she's so similar to Jordan, she has to know she's just the next best thing. She has to know that I don't love her, that I'll never love her. Not the way that I love Jordan. She has to know it.

She accused me of it too; she accused me of my relationship with Jordan. I wish there was something there for it to be founded on, but there's sadly not. I wish that she actually had something to accuse me of.

She accused me of getting involved in Jordan's jury duty, I wouldn't. I'd do anything for Jordan, but that's not my ground to interfere, as much as she wanted me to. I nearly caved to her wants, but I didn't. I'm strong enough to resist on that.

If she had offered me something, in return I would have offered her anything that she wanted. Not even necessarily sexual, just an agreement to at least give us a try, give a real relationship a try. I don't want to sound like a sleazy old man, I'm not. Not really. I don't think so.

But Rene has to know about what I think of Jordan now, she has to know that I love her, that she's second string. I want to love her, but I can't, there's just not enough room to love her for anything else than what she is to me, the next best thing.

I tried to stop myself from getting involved with her for that reason; it would have been easier for both of us. I wouldn't spend nights wondering how I felt about her, if it was love or not.