Chapter Fifteen #2
“The fancy dress one? Yeah—yeah, she found out. Called me downstairs and asked me why the cherub was missing a penis.” He shakes his head, trying so hard to contain himself.
“That’s so funny,” I smile, jumping down when he heads into the garden.
We walk against the wind, out to the back of the garden, behind the maze and through a little gate where the moss covered conservatory sits.
A big glass dome that I’ve only ever been inside of twice.
Arthur walks in, his hand strangling the flowers he’s holding.
Theo obviously isn’t buried here or anything, it’s just a memorial of sorts.
A lot of dead flowers scatter the floor, old canvases covered by drapes leaning against the walls.
In the middle is an old chest with a gramophone on the top, stacks of vinyls building up next to it.
Arthur lays his flowers against the chest on the floor, stays crouched down there for a minute or so.
I step back. My chest feels hollow. It’s so strange.
Death is so weird. You can almost smell it sometimes.
This stale stench that just never seems to rid no matter how hard you scrub. He’s all over this room, Theo.
I think death hurts the most when it’s unfair. The way he was snatched was so cruel. It was avoidable and that’s what still haunts Arthur. The what if’s aren’t unrealistic. There’s a reality, somewhere out there, where he is alive. I just know it. Someone like him wasn’t meant to die so early on.
“I’m sorry,” I tell Arthur when he stands back up.
“What for?” He frowns, brushes the tip of his nose.
“For Theo dying.”
He takes a deep breath, his shoulders bunching all the way up and then nods, pulls me under his arm and presses his lips into my head.
“Promise me you won’t go anywhere.”
“I promise—but not that I won’t die. No one can promise that.”
“Yeah,” he laughs once, quietly. “Just promise me you won’t leave like I did—don’t do that.”
“I have no reason to.”
Arthur pulls back, puts both of his arms around my shoulders and stares down at me.
“You do know why I left, don’t you?”
“Yeah, of course, I do.”
“I didn’t do it to hurt you. I had to. Me staying would’ve hurt you so much more, Phoebs.”
“I know.”
“Do you still hate me for it?” He asks with a hopefulness that I don’t have—which is weird because he knows me better than anyone.
“I’ve never hated you.” And then I frown. “Do you hate me? For being with Digby?”
He sighs. “I hate that you don’t know why you’re with him. I know you don’t love him.”
My mouth goes dry. “I do.”
“Does he make you happy?”
Think about it, think about how there’s nobody else here apart from us and how I’ve never lied to him in all my years of knowing him. Think about how I won’t start now.
“No.”
He lifts an eyebrow. “Do you love him?”
“No.”
He tips his head back, teeth sinking into his bottom lip. “I’m just going to say it, Phoebs—why don’t you leave him and be with me?”
I shake my head, reach up to move his arms off my shoulders and hold his hands instead. “It isn’t that easy.”
He searches my face with a frown, looking for the truth.
“You do want to be with me, don’t you?”
“Of course, I do! I miss being with you more than anything, Arthur!”
I tilt my head, press my tongue to the roof of my mouth, take some deep, heavy breaths.
“Then what—”
“I can’t be with you because I don’t want to hurt you!”
I didn’t realise I was crying until the saltiness slipped into my mouth.
Arthur walks the few steps between us, grasps my face between his hands. “Nothing you could do or say could hurt me in the same way that I know I hurt you, Phoebe.”
The Nightmare.
That would fucking ruin him.
I glance down at the floor, his thumbs brush away my tears.
“I wish you’d go out and sleep with a hundred girls or something.”
He laughs. “That’s ridiculous.”
“It’d make things easier.”
“It’d probably give me an STD.”
I look up at him, a small smile that turns into a grin.
He blinks, his smile fades.
“There’s not even five girls I can think of off the top of my head that I’d want to sleep with.”
I cock my head. “My sister, for starters—that’s one.”
“Yeah,” he wobbles his head. “That’s only because she looks like you, though.”
“That’s so twisted.”
“There’s only one girl I’m interested in sleeping with, unfortunately.”
“I won’t cheat on Digby.”
He gives me a look, his lips twitching. “We’ll see about that.”
I raise my eyebrows, cock my head.
“I’m joking!” He holds his hands up but we both know he’s not.
? ? ?
I end up staying the night.
I’m not sure how it happened but it just did. I helped him cook dinner which was honestly a complete shamble because I can’t cook but apparently he can now—had a lot of free time up in that Scottish castle.
He asked me about Freddy, too—first person to not tiptoe around it.
He knows she isn’t here, that she’s America.
The only person who actually felt not only upset for me but for her, as well.
That’s something that not many people will think is special.
When someone asks you about someone else, they’re never really that concerned for the other person.
They’re just asking because they maybe care about you.
Not Arthur, though. He cares about Freddy, he loves her, he’s worried for her.
And now I lay next to him in my underwear with the covers up to my neck because this house can get really cold. Icelandic cold. And neither one of us wanted to put the heating on because then we wouldn’t have an excuse to be in the same bed.
“Are you asleep yet?” I whisper.
He sighs. “I can’t fall asleep with you asking me if I’m asleep every thirty seconds.”
“Well, I just want to make sure we go to sleep at the same time!”
“Why?”
“Because this house is fucking scary!”
“Yeah, I bet my ancestors are well pissed off at us for watching what’s happened in this bed.”
“Ohmigod, don’t say that!” I kick him under the covers.
This isn’t cheating, by the way. Firstly, because I say it isn’t and secondly, we’re not touching so it doesn’t technically count but nevertheless, Digby will not be hearing about this.
The wanker hasn’t even bothered to call or text me all day.
So, actually, yeah—I might go home tomorrow and tell him (I won’t).
But to be honest, what Digby doesn’t know won't kill him.
He doesn’t have to know that I want to crawl inside of Arthur’s skin to keep warm. I want to go swimming in his mind. Is that weird? I mean, I just want to embed myself into his brain, lay there all day and all night. He probably wouldn’t even kick me out, he’d let me stay there forever.
Laying next to him feels a bit like a game of ‘Mums and Dads’, we’re pretending. We’re imagining our life together without the before and without the after—all that matters is the right now.
“Phoebs?”
“Yeah?”
“I’ll wait for you.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you’re ready to be with me, I’ll be here. If it’s tomorrow or a hundred years from now.”
“You’ll be dead in a hundred years.”
“I’ll still be waiting.”
And then he leans over me, sheet slipping down his stomach and kisses me.
Only this time, I kiss him back. Hands on his face, lips on his, eyelashes against his—I kiss him back in all the ways I’ve wanted to since he left.
It’s a beautiful kind of kiss. A kiss that we’ll both hold onto until I’m ready.
When he pulls back, he stares down at me.
“Today’s been the best today since he left.”
“I’m not going anywhere, Arthur. I’ll be here for every today for the next however many years we get to live.”
His face relaxes with some kind of relief. He drops his head gently down onto my chest. My hands bury themselves into his hair and the next time I ask him if he’s awake, he doesn’t respond.