“Is Demi coming to the wake?” Arthur’s mother suddenly asked as the car slid in to the motion.
Both Arthur and Conrad exchanged surprised glances. It was the first time she had spoken to them coherently that day.
“Urm, I think so,” Arthur mumbled, suddenly blushing.
“Good, I’m glad. Jared always thought so highly of her,” Beth Cooper sniffed. “You should go talk to her,” she added as an afterthought.
“I will.”
####
It felt strange to be standing in the Cooper home once more under such different circumstances. Demi could still remember the first time she had visited, and how nervous she had felt.
Those original nerves were equal to the ones she now felt, but her sorrow for Jared helped numb her own anxieties.
Little had changed in the house, some of the décor and a few new pieces of furniture but it was all very much as she remembered.
“Must be weird being here for you,” her Dad whispered to her as they navigated their way through the sea of mourners decked out in black attire.
“A little,” Demi replied, playing down her nerves.
“We don’t have to stay; you’ve already paid your respects.”
“No, I want to stay,” Demi said firmly, and following her gaze her Dad saw why. Across the room stood Arthur Cooper and he faltered beneath her stare, fumbling like a fish caught on a line.
“I’m going to go say hello to some people,” her Dad said, easing away from his daughter and leaving her alone to speak with the father of her son.
Demi approached Arthur, feeling as anxious as she had done that day when she waited for him in the school library. He seemed so foreign to her, yet at the same time so familiar. It was a strange sensation.
“Hi,” she greeted him awkwardly.
“Hi,” Arthur echoed his voice dull.
“Arthur I’m…I’m so sorry,” she almost choked on the words as she said them.
“It’s okay.”
“But it’s not okay, Jared’s gone and I know how much you loved him.”
“I wasn’t there for him,” Arthur sighed, looking desperately sad. “You were.”
“As part of my job,” Demi quickly replied modestly.
“It was more than that and you know it.”
“Well I cared about him. He’s…he was an amazing guy,” she corrected herself as she spoke and felt sick at having to do so.
“He was the best,” Arthur said, on the verge of tears.
“Do you want to talk somewhere more…private?” Demi suggested, knowing how embarrassed Arthur would be to break down and cry in front of a room full of people, even if it was at his little brother’s funeral.
“Okay,” Arthur agreed and led her upstairs to his old room.
As soon as they entered Demi felt overwhelmed by a sea of memories. The waves of shared moments came crashing down upon her and she almost drowned beneath them.
Countless hours had been spent curled together like one being beneath his blue chequered bed quilt.
They’d watched the rain from his bedroom window, and woken early to watch the sunrise. Their love had blossomed in that room. But now all that remained was dust and memories.
“If these walls could talk,” Arthur joked as he sat down on his bed, forcing a smile.
“Luckily for us, they can’t,” Demi said as she sat down next to him.
“I can’t believe he’s gone.” A solitary tear escaped and slid down Arthur’s chiselled cheek as he spoke.
“Me neither,” Demi agreed as she slid a hand across and over his and squeezed it.
“I should have been there for him, I should have done more.”
“You didn’t know how sick he was.”
“I’ve always known! His whole life Jared was on borrowed time! I knew that and yet still I went away and buried my head in the sand!”
“Don’t be so hard on yourself.”
“But I let everyone down! Especially you,” Arthur looked over at Demi, his eyes heavy with regret and longing.
“I ruined everything, I left you when you needed me most,” he continued sadly.
Demi tightened her grip on his hand and held his gaze.
“You were young, it’s okay.”
“But I never should have done that.”
“Arthur, it’s okay.”
“I never should have done it and I never should have left because I never stopped loving you. Everywhere I went, every step I took, you were there with me in my heart. I could never move on from you, from us.”
Demi heard the words but didn’t dare believe them.
Then, driven by emotions he could no longer control, Arthur leant forward and let his lips crash against Demi’s.
They began kissing one another passionately, hungrily, as though they had been waiting years for this moment.
As Arthur thrust his tongue in to her mouth he used his hands to unbutton the black dress she wore as Demi fought to unzip his trousers.
Soon they were naked, with their bare flesh touching. Arthur wanted to take a moment to savour what was happening but he was too fuelled by desire. He lifted the blue chequered bed quilt of his youth and they slid beneath it, as they’d done so many times as teenagers.
And beneath the quilt and above the guests at Jared’s wake they made love twice over, with the fervent intensity of those first heady encounters.
“Oh my God,” Demi breathed when they finally parted.
“Yeah,” Arthur agreed breathlessly.
“That was unexpected.”
“Yeah,” Arthur was so exhausted he felt incapable of speech. For a brief, blissful moment all that existed was the two of them in his bed. Everything else, Jared, his life in New York, existed beyond them and didn’t matter.
“I hope no one heard us!” Demi said suddenly, a mischievous glint in her eye, the same mischievous glint which used to drive Arthur wild.
“Me too,” he agreed. Then he propped himself up on one arm and scrutinized Demi as she lay with her bare flesh exposed, curled up beside him, fitting perfectly as though they were two pieces from the same puzzle.
“How have you not changed?” he asked her suddenly.
“I’d like to think I’ve changed a bit,” Demi protested, scrunching her nose up as she did so.
“I mean, you are still this sweet, amazing girl. How does that happen?”
“I don’t know, good DNA?” Demi joked.
“How could I have ever left you?” Arthur asked dreamily as he tucked a loose strand of hair behind her ear.
“Must have been a momentary lapse in sanity,” Demi smiled but beneath her smile she was fearful. Fearful that this union was born out of grief and nothing more. That soon, Arthur would get on a plane and leave for New York and be gone from her life once more.
Demi was the one suffering from lapses in sanity. She had been mad to get involved with Arthur once again but she just couldn’t help it. Around him she lost all sense of reason. A haze of lust and desire engulfed her and she was powerless to resist him.
“I should get back downstairs,” Arthur sighed, suddenly remembered all the guests in his house.
“People will wonder where I’ve gone.”
Demi watched him dress and leave, deciding to wait until she headed back downstairs to avoid instigating the town’s gossip mill. When Arthur left she lay there in the silence of his room and wondered if she’d just made a grave mistake.
####
The following day, Demi felt sick with regret as she pushed Logan on the tire swing in her back garden.
“Higher, Mommy, higher!” he ordered, as he struggled to remain seated in it.
“Well make sure you hold on good and tight!” Demi said as she gently pushed the swing just a small fraction higher.
“Higher!” Logan yelled, grumpy at the lack of new height.
“No higher than this,” Demi told him sternly.
From the kitchen window Demi’s Dad watched them play, a s
mile across his face. He held the mug of coffee he had just poured and wished for the hundredth time that day that his wife was there to share in sights such as this.
He knew how proud she would have been to see how Demi had coped with motherhood.
He was distracted from his thoughts when he heard a car pull up on the driveway. Moving to look through the front window he felt his heart sink as she saw Arthur Cooper getting out of his car.
Demi’s Dad knew that the last thing his daughter needed now was Arthur coming back in to her life and breaking her heart once again. He hoped that he was here to say goodbye. He knew it would devastate Demi but he also felt she would be all the better to get him out of her life once and for all. Now that Jared was gone there would never be a reason for him to return to Collinswood, at least not for a great many years.
That should give Demi time to get her life together and finally move on.
“Mr. Mitchell,” Arthur said awkwardly as Demi’s Dad opened the front door.
“Mr. Cooper, what can I do for you?” Demi’s Dad’s tone was hostile and Arthur felt very uneasy standing in his doorway, knowing how angry he would be if he were in his position.
“If you don’t mind, Sir, I’d like to see Demi.”
“She’s out back,” Mr. Mitchell gestured. “Playing with your son.”
Arthur turned bright red at the additional information and hurriedly headed out to the garden, keen to get away from Demi’s Dad.
Demi stopped swinging Logan when she saw Arthur approaching.
“Mommy, don’t stop!” the little boy protested angrily.
“Just a moment, Logan.”
“Oh, it’s that man from New York,” Logan sighed when he also spotted Arthur approaching them.
“Logan, why don’t you go play inside with Grandpa,” Demi suggested.
“But I want to go on the swing,” Logan moaned.
“Just for a little bit.” Demi said, this time not as a suggestion.
“Okay,” Logan sighed as she slid down off the tire. He tottered off towards the house on his little, unsteady legs, briefly greeting Arthur as he walked past him.
“He really is a great kid,” Arthur said as he came up to Demi.
“Thanks,” she smiled uneasily, already knowing why Arthur was there. He’d come to say goodbye. She’d heard through Hayley that his flight to New York was due to leave that evening.
She supposed that she should be grateful that he’d taken the time to come and say farewell rather than just slinking off.
“How are you holding up?” Demi asked.
“Alright, I suppose.”
“What about your family?”
“My Mom is a wreck. Everything reminds her of Jared and everything hurts. She needs time.”
“Yeah, time is supposed to heal all wounds.”
“Yeah,” Arthur agreed suddenly feeling incredibly self-conscious. He ran his hands over the tire swing just to give them something to do.
He felt so unbearably nervous that he thought if he looked down at the grass he risked vomiting on his own shoes which was not what he wanted to do.
“Everything okay?” Demi asked, concerned. “You look a bit pale.”
“I’m…I’m...” Arthur floundered before her as she tried to find the right words. “Will you go out with me this afternoon?” he suddenly blurted out.
“What, this afternoon? Where?”
“I was thinking we could go for a drink, to that little café in the opening of the mall,” Arthur tried to sound casual in his suggestion.
He watched Demi’s face drop as she remembered all too well what had happened the last time they had gone for a drink there.
“I don’t know,” she said uneasily.
“Demi, please.”
“Why can’t we just talk now?”
“You need to trust me on this,” Arthur urged.
“Well…” Demi could think of a thousand reasons why she couldn’t go out with him on such short notice but she didn’t use any one of them.
“Okay, fine.”
“Great, I’ll see you there,” Arthur beamed and he took off from her garden at a jog, like a man on a mission.
####
“The same café?” Hayley asked over the phone in disbelief as Demi called her to relay the latest news.
“They very same one.”
“That’s a little sick don’t you think? To say goodbye at the same place he dumped you at?”
“Yeah, I know.” Demi sighed sadly.
“Then why did you agree to go?” Hayley asked bluntly. “You already gave him a chance to be a Dad to Logan when you went up to New York. Surely he’s all out of chances?”
Demi knew that her friend was right but she couldn’t ignore what she felt in her heart.
Sitting on her bed she was surrounded by pictures of her and Arthur caught in the midst of their youth, looking so utterly in love with one another.
She had wanted to burn the pictures at first. To have a giant bonfire out in the garden and watch all her memories go up in flames. But then she looked at them and changed her mind.
The pictures held a magic which could never be taken away. In each image she and Arthur looked so idealistically in love. She didn’t want to lose that magic, even if it now only existed in pictures.
“I don’t know why I agreed to go,” Demi said after a long pause.
“Do you still have feelings for him?” Hayley asked cautiously.
“What, no?” Demi tried to sound like the suggestion was absurd but knew she had failed.
“Dem…”
“Maybe. Oh, I don’t know,” Demi admitted.
“You’re just setting yourself up to be hurt again, you know that, don’t you?” her friend asked.
“Yeah, I know.”
“You’ve already been through so much, why put yourself through it?” Hayley pressed.
“Why go?”
Demi let the question hang in the air, the line silent between them as she contemplated her answer.
“I just need to know,” she replied. “If this is goodbye, then I need to hear him say it. I guess I just need closure.”
“Okay, that kind of makes sense,” Hayley agreed. “Just don’t go giving him your heart again. He doesn’t deserve it.”
Hanging up the phone, Demi returned to looking through old photographs which tugged at sore heart strings.
Logan came thundering in the room, gracelessly swinging the door open and coming over to his mother.
“Mommy, can I have peanut butter and jelly sandwiches?” he asked.
“Yeah sure, I’ll come down in a minute and make them for you.”
“What are you looking at?” Logan asked, curiously wandered over to the bed and looking at the pictures strewn across it.
He picked up the odd one and scrutinized the image.
“That’s the man from New York!” he said, using a chubby finger to point at Arthur in the picture, who stood smiling next to Demi, his arm wrapped around her.
“Yeah it is.”
“Why is he in the picture with you?” Logan enquired, looking up at this mother with big, confused eyes.
“Well, we’ve known each other a long time,” she explained.
“Oh,” Logan seemed satisfied with her answer and began to wander off but Demi suddenly felt compelled to tell him more.
“Actually sweetie,” she went and picked him up and placed him on the bed with her, sitting him in her lap.
“The man in these pictures, who we went to see in New York,” she picked up a photograph of just Arthur. He was smiling warmly, the sun glinting in his eyes. He looked amazingly handsome, like a movie star. Even in a picture he had the ability to make Demi feel weak at the knees.
“This man Logan,” she began, bracing herself for the huge impact she was about to make on her son’s life, “this man is your father.”
“Cool,” Logan cooed, looking at the picture again. Then his mind moved on, failing to grasp the se
verity of the moment.
Just Like Heaven Page 15
