The Love of My Afterlife(61)
“I’m fine,” I say, although I can feel the tears that seem to come so easily now popping up to say hello. God knows what will happen to Mr. Yoon.
“I’m starting to think that finding this Jonah was about more than informing him of an STD?”
“There never was an STD!” I snap as a soft twig breaks beneath my bare foot. “I’ve never even…I just…I said that in the moment because I didn’t know you. I did think there was something real between Jonah and me…and I needed there to be…I needed him to be…” I trail off. It’s too difficult to explain and especially to someone like Cooper. I sigh heavily. “I’ve just fucked it up, like everything else.”
“I’m sure it’s not so bad.”
“Cooper, I just chased after a man and humiliated the pair of us in front of a room full of people.”
“I’m sure he was flattered by your determination.”
“Oh please.”
Cooper’s voice softens. “Sometimes when people want to go, it’s easier to just let them.”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I say, wiping away another uninvited tear. “And especially not with you. I just want to go home.”
“I understand.”
We continue trundling along the country lane in miserable silence, when suddenly there’s a weird rustling sound from above. Both of us stop walking and look skywards. We are rewarded for our curiosity with a massive splatter of rain bucketing all over us. An abrupt crackle of lightning illuminates the shock on our faces, immediately backed up by a rollicking clap of thunder. Now? It’s going to rain and thunder and lightning fucking now? It’s been the hottest summer since records began, it hasn’t rained in a whole month. But it suddenly decides to when I’m stuck on a country lane, barefooted, crestfallen, embarrassed, and marked by death?
I laugh. I laugh and I cry and I shake my head. “Perfect!” I yell at the sky over the roar of the thunder. “Genuinely. Your timing is fucking sublime!”
“Delphie, come on!” Cooper shouts over to me, his hair already drenched. “Don’t just bloody stand there!”
I look down at my feet, the rain already softening the previously dry ground beneath me. I lift up my foot. There’s a squelch.
“Come on, we’ll get soaked.”
I can’t seem to take my eyes off my feet. I’m going to die in three days anyway. What does it matter if I get soaked? If I drown in this rainfall? Literally nothing matters anymore.
Cooper approaches me. “I’m gonna carry you back to the car, okay?”
I shrug half-heartedly, sort of expecting him to swoop me up into a cradle and carry me like I weigh nothing at all. But no. He does not do that. He scoops me up—yes, without any effort—but he throws me over his shoulder like I’m a sack of potatoes which, frankly after this shit show, I might as well be. My head dangles down his back, and when Cooper runs along the country lane, my head starts to bounce against his butt.
“Cooper! Put me back down!” I yell, because this is just too much humiliation even for me. But the rain and the thunder are so resounding that he doesn’t hear me. I wonder briefly if I will get a bruise, because while Cooper’s bottom is a little rounder than average, it is pure solid muscle. It’s like my head is bopping against a basketball.
I give in, deciding to just dangle, and soon enough we’re back in the car park, where Cooper places me on my feet outside the car. He reaches into his inside pocket for the keys, and then into his other inside pocket. He pulls out the army knife and the architectural plans and a wallet. Then he takes off his tuxedo jacket and dives into his trouser pockets.
“Fuck,” he barks. “My car keys. They must have fallen out when you were looking for my handkerchief. Did you not hear them fall?”
“Of course you’re blaming me,” I shout, rain sweeping my mascara right into my eyeballs. I lift my hands and try to shield my face. “You could have lost them at any time. Just use the army knife thing to unlock the car door. It worked on the gates!”
Cooper glares at me, a wet lock of hair falling into his eye. He swipes it away. “It won’t work on that. This is a special lock. It’s made so that it can’t possibly be picked.”
His jacket is slung over his shoulder and his tuxedo shirt is so wet it has become see-through and plastered onto a torso that looks to be as solid as his bum. I can’t seem to take my eyes away. My mouth feels dry. I feel the rain on my lips and catch some with my tongue. Cooper stares at me for a moment, panting, the rain dripping from his eyelashes.
“The pub,” he says suddenly, pointing at the warm yellow lights of The Bee and Bonnet. Without asking, he scoops me up again, flinging me over his shoulder and running towards the pub, my head once again bouncing against his thoroughly soaked bum. For fuck’s sake.
Cooper flings open the pub door and plops me onto my feet inside.
“Fucking hell,” I cry out dramatically. Only we’re now out of the rain and this pub is very, very quiet. There’s the gentle sound of a radio playing Adele, and only three other customers—a slightly damp grey-haired couple and their grey-haired pug—in the whole place.
The bartender looks down at the puddle we’re making on the stone floor and sighs. He disappears into the back, returning with a slightly damp towel that looks like it might have already been used on the grey-haired couple and their dog. Cooper grabs it and rubs his hair and face before handing it to me. I do the same and then place the towel on the floor to simultaneously wipe my bare feet and soak up our rain puddle. I hand it back to the bartender, who hangs it back on the hook, ready for the next wet customers I assume.