Just Like Heaven (22 page)

“No higher than this,” Demi told him sternly.

From the kitchen window Demi’s Dad watched them play, a smile 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 severity of the moment.

“Can I have my sandwiches now?” he asked, feeling hungry.

“Yes, okay, I’m coming now,” Demi said as he got up off the bed, feeling a weight lifted from her shoulders to finally be open about who Arthur was and what he meant to her life. She just hoped that he was finally willing to be the same way about her.

“I love peanut butter,” Logan twittered to himself as he carefully made his way down the stairs.

“I wonder if Dad does too,” he mused.

Behind him, Demi froze on the stairs, her heart almost bursting to hear her son refer to his father so easily and so warmly.

####

On the way to the mall that afternoon Demi had to fight the urge to stop the car and turn around. What was she doing? Arthur was only going to hurt her again. He was leaving for New York, that night, turning his back on her and Collinswood, maybe forever.

She should just stop the car and go home, yet still she kept driving.

She’d told her Dad she was going to meet with Hayley and had seen how sceptical he was;

“You’re meeting Hayley?” he asked.

“Yeah, just for a chat.”

“Where?”

“At the mall. Are you okay to watch Logan?”

“Yeah no problem,” her Dad said, then after a brief pause, his brow furrowed he asked; “what did Arthur want?”

“He was just coming by to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye?” her Dad sounded surprised, or at least tried to.

“Yeah, he’s leaving for New York tonight. I thought it was nice of him to drop by,” Demi decided it was best to assume that all Arthur had been doing was saying goodbye. Meeting at the café was merely a way of dragging it out, and why he felt the need to do that she had no idea.

“Alright, well have fun with Hayley.”

“Thanks, Dad, I will.”

“And Demi, just be careful. Remember that I love you very much,” her Dad added when she was half out the door which gave away the fact that he knew every well that she wasn’t meeting with Hayley.

“Thanks Dad,” she smiled. “I love you too.”

####

As she pulled in to the mall car park Demi felt her hands begin to shake upon the wheel. At least this time when Arthur left her she wouldn’t be stranded at the mall, she’d thought ahead enough to know to bring her own car. But then he hadn’t even offered to pick her up.

Since that fateful day Demi had been to Collinswood Mall a hundred times yet today it all seemed different. It was as if she’d never been there before.

Demi suddenly felt unsure of herself and more over of her decision to be there.

“So are you leaving tonight?”  Conrad Cooper asked as Arthur frantically edged around the kitchen looking for his previously discarded car keys.