Chapter 15: Share With a Dead Man

"Oh, yeah, it was a…. how do you say it on your side of the pond?... A splendid watch party!" Courteney bit her lip around a bright smile.

She shivered happily as the dulcet tones of her partner for more than a decade came through the phone receiver. "Well, usually, people use the term 'watch party' for sporting events. You know, football, hockey, cricket…"

Courteney smirked. "Johnny McDaid, are you trying to mansplain me?"

"Got it. Terms are interchangeable. You say tomato, I say to-mah-to."

She rolled her eyes. "Babe, you have a British accent: of course you would say to-mah-to." They both laughed.

Courteney held the phone in the crook of her neck as she changed into pajamas, listening intently as Johnny, on the other side of the Atlantic, told her about his day. She missed him, during this half of the year, but it was an arrangement that worked for them. After all, if he stayed 12 months out of the year in California, they had been in a committed relationship for so long that by now the state would have considered them to be in what was known as a common-law marriage.

Not that they weren't partners in all things. They had both been drawn to each other when Ed Sheeran, a mutual friend, had introduced them not long after Courteney had finalized her divorce to Coco's father, David Arquette. The courtship had been whirlwind, escalating in them becoming briefly engaged in 2014. It had been a mutual, amicable decision to call the impending nuptials off, while still staying together. Following a stint of couples therapy and after recognizing that Courteney did not feel the need to be married after her first marriage had ended with such emotional hurt, Johnny had understood.

Courteney now giggled. "The best part was Coco didn't even get the theme of the marathon until she was going through the titles!"

"And if you don't mind my asking, what was the theme of the marathon?"

Courteney stole a glance to the framed portrait on her nightstand. "Oh, we did a mash-up of Matthew Perry's old movies!"

There was a slight pause on the other end of the line. "Really?" Johnny hummed. "I, uh…. don't really know a lot of his work outside of what he did with you. I can think of Fools Rush In and 17 Again, but everything in between that is a big blank."

"Well, he transitioned from TV to film well enough, but he just… couldn't sustain it in the same way that Jen and Lisa could," Courteney explained, delicately. She sat down on the edge of their bed. "I didn't make the transition from TV to film that well myself, to be honest. Most of my film work was either before Friends, or due to the fame I got while doing Friends. A bit after, when Coco was little, like when I was on Zoom."

"Huh? I'm pretty Zoom wasn't a thing back in the mid-2000s," Johnny laughed.

"No, no, no, not Zoom the virtual meeting app, Zoom as in the really awful superhero movie I did with Tim Allen."

"Cool. Remind me to queue it up when I'm home."

"Do yourself a favor and let's not: it's 88 minutes you'll never get back."

"…. And it apparently also has 4% on Rotten Tomatoes. Understood."

Courteney smiled. "At least, when Matthew did film work, he always landed good scripts." A beat. "Except for Serving Sara, which he claimed in his book was terrible. But that wasn't even his fault! He was using at the time and really struggling. I think if he hadn't been battling addiction, he would have made the jump from TV to film work just as easily as the girls did…." She felt tears seep into her voice. "It's such a shame, you know? It was so hard for him – and he really is so brilliant…. Johnny? Sweetie, are you there?"

For a second, she feared the call had dropped and that she had been talking on and on for so long, she hadn't even noticed. But then her partner's soft voice wafted to her, with an odd inflection in his tone.

"… I'm never going to have your full heart. Am I?"

"What?" Courteney frowned. "Johnny, babe, what are you talking about?"

"What do you think I'm talking about? More to the point, who?"

"Who am I talking about? I don't…." Courteney stopped abruptly and then let out a strained chuckle. "God, you know, you…. you're as bad as Coco and Jen…."

"Well, your daughter's a smart girl, as is, I presume, her godmother. Maybe they're right to wonder. Because where I'm standing, baby, you've gone on national television and claimed to receive visits from your late co-star, you just spent half the night binge-watching all of his greatest hits – bloody hell, you put a framed photo of him on our nightstand and you didn't even ask me about it!"

"You never said anything!" Courteney pointed out, her voice rising a little. Where on Earth was this coming from? "And for the record, that's my nightstand! You have a perfectly good one of your own on your side of our bed!" There was a creaking sound on the floorboards from somewhere out in the hall, but she ignored it.

"Yeah, your nightstand. On which a bloke who drowned in his hot tub – really rubbish way to go, if you ask me – is sharing space with a picture of us!"

"There's a picture of Coco also sharing space on the nightstand, and you've never had an issue with that!"

"I'm not exactly worried about Coco coming between us," Johnny clapped back, testily.

Courteney's jaw dropped. "What exactly are you saying?" Her voice was iced with warning.

"I'm saying that you have unresolved feelings for a guy whom you worked with on your TV show 20, 25, 30 years ago!" Johnny accused. "Would you ever wax on and on about the work on my albums, or do I need to take one too many hits from a bong and go founder in the backyard pool to get you to notice?"

Courteney froze. "That's not funny," she growled.

"No, perhaps it jolly well isn't, but I'd say it's more than fair," Johnny returned. "And you know what the worst part of it is, love? I can't even be that jealous about it! Because it isn't as though you're pining for some guy whom you divorced. You're pining for some druggie who's DEAD! And I can't help but wonder that when he died, a part of your heart went with him!" He let out a deep exhale. "Call me when you're over him." The dial tone beeped.

Courteney drew the phone away from her ear, stunned, her mouth agape and her bottom lip trembling. After a beat, she hurled her phone into the corner of her room, curled up on her – their – bed in the fetal position, and cried herself to sleep.

DREAM

Bless him for coming so quickly to her! Matthew held Courteney quietly as she wept against him. He didn't ask questions, just waited for her to speak when she was ready.

"I didn't think you would still be this boo-hooey over me after…" He frowned. "How much time has passed there again?"

Courteney sniffled into his strong chest. "Nine months."

"Just nine months?" At her tear-stricken face peering up at him, he popped his lips. "Huh. Time really does pass differently here."

Courteney wrapped her arms around his neck. "Trust me, I wish my crying had been about you." A pause. "Well, it was about you, sort of, but it was also…." She exhaled. "It had to do with Johnny. We had a fight. About you."

Matthew's lips squirmed in a bemused frown. "Never did get to experience two girls fighting over me. I don't know how to feel about a girl and a guy fighting over me. Your rock star boyfriend has never struck me as being a player for the other team…." He giggled. "God, wouldn't that be hilarious? If he played for both teams?"

Getting the reference, Courteney couldn't help but laugh wetly. "He said that I was…." She stopped herself.

Matthew's hands tenderly framed her face, tilting it toward him so she could look him in the face. "That you were what, Courteney?"

Her eyes filled with tears and she whimpered. She doubted she could express what he had meant to her in life, not even to herself. Not even to him, and after he was dead. She hadn't the words. Matthew meant so much more to her than anything she could hope to verbally express.

"I guess I shouldn't be acting like I'm so attacked. All of our Friends have wondered. My own daughter…." She bowed her head as much as she could while Matthew was still gently cradling it, and wiped bitterly at her eyes.

"What? What have they wondered….?"

Courteney gazed at him. "…. if I was actually in love with you." She corrected herself, the use of the past tense still tasting wrong on her lips. "Am actually in love with you."

Matthew studied her for a long moment, his expression unreadable. Courteney anxiously searched his eyes, pleading.

"Matty?…. Matty, say something!"

Tears slipped down Matthew's cheeks, and her heart howled, because oh God, if he didn't….

"You don't know how long I've wanted to hear you say that. Did you really have to wait until after I was dead?" He glanced away slightly, gnawing on his bottom lip. He let out a small chuckle. "At least you were a better enough actress that you were able to keep people guessing. For me, it was fairly obvious:" He glanced back to her now, his stare intense and full of deep, deep adoration.

"I love you. I fell in love with you almost as soon as I met you back in '94, and even with all the women I burned through, I never stopped. Because none of those women meant even a fraction of what you mean to me!"

Courteney was sobbing, nodding, curling her hands around his wrists as tear tracks blazed a pair of rivulets down her cheeks. The words registered in her heart and she accepted them, accepted his love, for what it was: consuming. All-encompassing.

And tragically, in life, unrealized, if not entirely unrequited.

Courteney began to blubber. "I'm sorry…. I'm sorry it was never the right time for us. But Matthew…. you were breaking my heart! I loved you – love you, but you were going down a path I couldn't follow!" She thought back to how she had explained something very similar to Coco when they had met for coffee back in January.

Matthew didn't even seem all that offended by what she said. "I know. It came down to my choices: not 100%, mind you – free will is diminished to some degree during addiction."

Courteney nodded vigorously. "I know, I'm sorry; It wasn't your fault, darling."

Matthew chuffed bitterly. "Some of it was." He sighed. "I just wish I could have been the man you deserved…."

Courteney cupped his cheek. Caught his eyes and held them. "You are," she hissed fervently. Closing her eyes, feeling the tears leak out of them, she finally begged, in a voice so raw, it came out as a whisper:

"Kiss me…."

His lips crushed hers and with a moan of pathos, Courteney wound herself tightly about him and desperately kissed him back. They supped from each other's lips greedily, Matthew murmuring words against her skin like they were oaths:

"I love you…. I've always loved you; I'm so in love with you…."

"Me too….." Courteney moaned. "God, Matthew, I…." Words failed her; she couldn't finish. She felt herself being leaned back and she let Matthew guide her in a slow sink to the ground.

"Sometimes…." Matthew grunted huskily. "I would fantasize about making love to you over and over again, in some meadow… peeling off of you that yellow sundress you were wearing, the day we first met, remember?"

Courteney swallowed hard. "I remember…" Opening her eyes to gaze into his deep blue orbs, her lashes fluttering like a butterfly's wings, she looked around:

They were all at once in a meadow much like the one Matthew had described. Courteney glanced down at herself: Suddenly, she was wearing the exact same yellow sundress she had been wearing their very first day on the Friends set.

Lifting her gaze to his, Courteney swallowed and pulled Matthew the rest of the way on top of her. She spread her legs for him, and her throat bobbled through another exhilarated gulp.

"Put your hands on me, Matthew….." Her timbre was a breathless whisper.

Matthew's lips claimed hers. Moments later, so did his body.

Tongues pushed through as they went to war. Hands clasped sweat-soaked skin. As her ghostly lover began to thrust, Courteney wrapped her powerful thighs around his middle, her cries lilting and crescendoing as…. as he…..

Her nails dug into the earthly soil on which they rested, as she and Matthew made love. As he brought her to blissful orgasm.

Courteney awoke some minutes later with her face and her loins flooded with dampness.

END OF DREAM

Coco Arquette was a pretty mature, resilient young woman for only 20.

She had weathered watching her parents get divorced when she was all of eight, nine years old. She had been roughly the same age when she had watched her mother move on with another man fairly soon after that – Johnny was a great guy, a 'top man,' as they might say across the pond. He and her mom were good together.

But the one thing that Coco could not take lying down was when someone either doubted her mother or was critical of her feelings.

In regards to her mother's feelings (whatever those might be or might have been) for a certain, bronze-haired, blue-eyed ex-costar, Coco might have been curious, even suspicious, but she wasn't critical. That Johnny had been to the point where he'd instigated a transatlantic argument about it made her see red.

Even so, Coco was able to keep a level head just enough to fire off a text message the next morning to her mom's partner, making it clear in no uncertain terms that she had overheard his conversation with her mother. Fiercely protective as she was, she didn't let the anger overtake her, instead leaning on some of the words and phrases her Aunt Jenny had used to explain what her mom was going through – about 'grief is love that has no place to go' and ' pillars of men' and all that.

Though Coco couldn't resist getting in one, chiding little dig: YOU'VE OBVIOUSLY NEVER LOST SOMEONE WHOM YOU LOVED DEEPLY, WHICH MEANS YOU'VE OBVIOUSLY NEVER GRIEVED SOMEONE THE WAY MY MOM HAS, AND IS. GIVEN THAT, AND HOW YOU'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO TRULY UNDERSTAND WHAT SHE'S GOING THROUGH, I'D ADVISE YOU TO APPROACH HER WITH A LITTLE LESS ACCUSATION, AND A LITTLE MORE GRACE.

The instant after she sent the long-winded text, Coco briefly second-guessed herself, wondering if she had done the right thing, to the point that a pang of regret coursed through her. She never made a point to interfere too much in her mom and Johnny's relationship – Mommy was a grown woman who could handle herself.

It was an agonizing several hours of waiting and checking her phone's home-screen, the blankness of it mocking her. Coco started to wonder if she had accidentally fired off that text when it was the middle of the night London time. The phrase made her flash back to the iconic moment in Friends when Chandler and Monica share their first kiss, and she fought to tamp down a smile.

It wasn't until she was getting ready for bed the next night that a reply appeared. Though emotion normally didn't come through so well in a text message, by his words, Coco could tell: Johnny was chastened.

YOU'RE RIGHT, KID. AND I'M SORRY. I PROMISE, I WILL CALL YOUR MUM AND WE WILL WORK THIS OUT. The little bubble icon of three asterisks appeared beneath, followed by a whoosh as a follow-up text came in: THANK YOU FOR HELPING ME CHECK SOME OF MY OWN PRE-CONCEIVED NOTIONS.

Coco smirked, feeling vindicated. She only took a moment to wonder if Johnny would tell her mom about her calling him out, or how her mom would react if he did, in favor of typing back a brusque, if also cordial, response:

YOU'RE WELCOME. NOW FIX IT.