That One Moment

by C.S. Autumn

There is one person for us - one person who holds the key to our heart and soul. Call me an old romantic but that’s what I believe.

They are a contradiction. One light, the other dark. Identical twins. Only not.

Caiden’s laugh is loud and foreign to my ears and I realise it’s the first time since we met that I’ve seen him even remotely happy. He’d be just as beautiful as his brother, I think to myself, if he wasn’t so fucking angry all the time.

“I hope that’s where we go when we die,” Cooper says, his voice full of wonder. “It would mean that we get to look down on everyone we leave behind and they would always look up at us too. Because who doesn’t stop to look at the stars?”

Caiden’s brow furrows then he looks at me. “This is…” he clears his throat and starts again. “This is…thank you.” His blue eyes meet mine and I can’t decipher the look that crosses them before his attention is back on the bracelet. “It’s perfect, right?” Cooper says, depositing himself on my lap. “Jamie gives the best presents.” “Yeah,” Caiden says, his voice barely a whisper. “It’s perfect.”

My chest tightens when I picture Cooper now, aiming that same wide smile at Jamie. Jamie, who is his new best friend. Or his other best friend. Jamie, the boy with messy brown hair and the crooked grin. The one who sings old songs out loud regardless of who's around and who talks animatedly about buildings and shit.

Jamie, who I want to hate because Cooper loves him and he loves Cooper, and no one loves me.

“I didn’t want him to touch me,” I whisper, taking a deep breath and then repeating my words. Tears blur my vision and I blink rapidly to bat them away. “I just wanted Mum to have dinner with me.” More tears build up until the blinking does nothing but push them down my cheeks. “I wish I was more like Cooper.” More tears. “I wish someone loved me like Jamie loves Cooper.”

“You’re my best friend, Coop,” I say, my voice muffled against the now damp fabric of his shirt. “And you’re mine. I’m so lucky I was born with my best friend,” he says, repeating those words from twelve years ago. He really is my other half.

Jamie places his hand over Cooper’s and for a brief second I watch them, wondering what it would be like to be comforted like that. Does it feel like there’s an impenetrable wall around you? Like no matter what happens, you’ll face nothing alone. Is the comfort warm, do you feel it in every corner of your body? Does it have the power to keep you afloat?

Caiden is laughing, a deep, hearty laugh that I have only heard once before. It makes my stomach do something unfamiliar and I rub at it before realising what I’m doing and drop my hand to my side.

I’ve been jealous of Cooper and Jamie. Not because I was losing my twin and not because I so badly want someone to love me the way Jamie loves Cooper. No, I don't want just anyone to love me like that - I want it to be Jamie.

Spinning around, I direct my words at Caiden. “He deserved so much better than both of you.” He flinches, taking a step back until his back hits the wall. “We should never have been at that party in the first place!” My anger knows no bounds and I unleash it, knowing that I shouldn’t say these things. Knowing that the boy in front of me is just as broken, or even more so, than I am. He lost his brother, his twin, his best friend. But all I see is the coffin and all I feel is this deep ache and an emptiness I cannot stand. So I don't stop the words, even when I see them land with brutal force. As his breath hitches and his hands tremble, tightening around his stomach like the pain is just too much, I don't stop.

“He wanted to make a difference, he had plans. We had plans. You stole those from him.” I bang my hand to my chest. “You stole those from me.” Tears rush down my cheeks in waves, in the same way they do Caiden’s. Lowering my voice, I add the final blow. “I wish it had been you. I wish you had died instead of him.”

Three years. That’s a long time to mourn someone. One thousand and ninety five days of putting one foot in front of the other and trying, trying so bloody hard to be better.

Grief is a monster that hangs on your shoulders until you’re too weak to fight it. Until exhaustion settles in and the monster whispers in your ear to just give up. I think if you’re strong enough, you can fight it off. I think you can win and grief can become a part of you but not enough to control you. But my monster has won because I am not strong. I never have been.

“You told me you wished I’d died and I wished the same,”

“Would it really be so bad if you got what you wished for?”

“Don’t say that.”

Fuck this entire day. Fuck Caiden. Fuck truck drivers who fall asleep at the wheel. Fuck me and fuck Cooper for dying. Just fuck it all to hell.

Absentmindedly, I run my hand over my bracelet, feeling the cool metal as it rubs along my skin. Blue like my eyes, black like my hair. Chosen by Jamie. For me. He needs to leave and go back to his life. I so badly want him to stay.

It was Cooper that held us together, and without Cooper here….well, Jamie and Caiden do not exist.

Cradling him to my chest, on the cool bathroom floor, I think about the events that led us here. Going back to the day we met, to the day I fell in love with his twin, to the day our choices cost us more than we could ever afford. To the day I told him I wish he had died, to the day he left and then to yesterday when I watched him sleeping in the hospital bed, regretting every harmful word. And then to now. To this moment where it feels like he’s right where he’s meant to be. Where he smells unfamiliar but he feels like mine.

“Or maybe you’re here because you think I’ll fill that gap he left behind. Is that it Jamie, do you want to fuck me and pretend I’m Cooper?” It’s a low blow, I know it the minute the words pass my lips but it’s too late to take them back - and I don't think I'd want to anyway. I'm so fucking tired of being nobody's reason.

“You’re scared, I get that, so am I. You’ve turned everything upside down and I barely understand myself at the moment, but I do know this. I’m not comparing you and I don't wish you were him. Whatever paths we took led us here, to this moment where I'm with you, sunshine. You.”

Light streaks through the window, casting him in a glow that makes him look unreal, ethereal, like a dream I’ve never dared to have. Cooper may have been his identical twin but everything about Caiden is different - more intense - from the sounds he makes, to the way he smells, to the sweet and salty taste of his skin. My body hums with a mixture of arousal and delight as my eyes feast on his pale, flushed body.

“Jamie was having a tantrum and taking Nova with him as his emotional support baby,”

Caiden rests his forehead against mine.

“Do you think we could be something good?”

I kiss him. Hard. Hoping the kiss is enough to tell him just how go...

I’m certain what I felt for Cooper was love, but at the same time, the feelings I have for Caiden aren’t the same. They feel stronger, deeper, and they consume me in the best possible way. But they also have me questioning everything I’ve ever believed about love.

“He’s so bloody fast! You should have rescued a tortoise.” I eye Caiden, who’s lip twists into a smirk. “Do not even think about it, we are not having any more of your strays, and certainly not a reptile.”

“I love you. I can’t promise you forever, because we both know that’s not a promise anyone can make. But I can promise you every breath and every beat of my heart.”

“It beats for you, Caiden.”

“For ...

When I lift it to the light and read the engraving, my heart stops. Air ceases to exist in my lungs and I swear the rumble of thunder that sounds through our flat is the sound of my soul breaking in two. Jamie and Cooper. Forever and Always.

“How can you love me when you never stopped loving him? I hated myself for wanting you, I felt like I was betraying him but you know what I realised, what you helped me see?”

“I realised that I deserve to have someone love me with every bit of them. I thought that was you.”

“I deserve all of you. I deserve not to be your...

“Every breath and every heartbeat, remember?”

“I need you to know that Cooper was my world.” I suck in a sharp breath, not having expected those words. “He was all I saw, and I fell hard for him. But Caiden, that was nothing compared to how I feel about you.”

“While he may have once been my world, you are my entire universe. You are the sun, and the moon, and every cosmic space between. You are the greatest thing to ever happen to me, and the greatest love I have ever known.”

Tattooed over his heart and covered with a clear film, Jamie has my name, in black swirling font, coming out from the middle of a constellation of stars, like a burst of space dust and energy. The stars are inked in black and white, and a swirl of purple and deep blue wrap around the end of my name, like a whirlpool. “It’s the universe. My universe - you.”

We’re both in a good place in our lives - we started a company together doing garden and home design, we still have Ford, as well as a puppy, three rabbits and a tortoise - all rescues - a new house and have travelled a large amount of Europe together.