Page 105 of All That We Are Together
So far from his sea, his home, his entire life…
“It almost doesn’t even look like our sky,” I said softly.
“Because it’s empty,” he replied.
Axel got up, and I followed him over to the stone barrier around the lookout. He lit a cigarette, and the smoke snaked around him in the darkness.
“Do you miss Byron Bay? The sea?”
“You are my sea now.”
“Axel!” I laughed and shook my head. “I’m serious!”
“Me too…” He clicked his tongue. “I guess yeah, I do miss it. But I’m not so sure that missing something is bad. Maybe it should be the other way around. Maybe that’s how you learn what you really love.”
“You adore your home,” I remembered.
“Yeah, maybe. Probably. Not like before.”
“Why not?”
“You know. I bought that house because I was in love with the idea of what I could do there, but I never did it. I imagined myself there in those four walls painting and being happy and just having it all. But I’m starting to think there’s a big difference between what we want and what we finally get or what we’re capable of achieving. It’s like if you see yourself in a mirror, and in that light you look out of this world, and you just let yourself get carried away with that image even though it isn’t real.”
“You could change it. We can go back. Soon.”
A month. A month, then the residency would be over, then we would go back to Australia. I hadn’t wanted to think about it too much, because I wasn’t sure what we’d do when it happened. In Paris, it was as if we were living inside a bubble, with me under a spell again, gawking constantly at the boy I swore I’d never fall in love with again, with him bending over backward to show me he’d changed, that he wouldn’t turn into a coward again. And I was afraid that bubble could burst at any second.
Axel looked at me with half-closed eyes.
“Tell me something I don’t know about you.”
It took me a minute, and I giggled and said, “Good Lord.”
“What?” he replied.
“I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a terrible one, but I can’t come up with one thing you don’t know about me. You were probably there the day my first tooth fell out.”
“Of course I was; who do you take me for?” He dropped his cigarette butt and crushed it beneath his foot. “You cried for hours. And your little gap-toothed smile was so cute!”
Looking around, I realized we were now alone. The tourists were gone, the busker had disappeared some time before. Finally I remembered something. With butterflies in my stomach, I looked over at Axel.
“Okay, there is one thing. My first few months in Brisbane, I used to put on my headphones, listen to the Beatles, and walk aimlessly through the city. And on one of those days, I found this flea market with all these stalls with weird junk. And for some reason, I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to buy, and I finally settled on this shell. And when I went to bed, I used to put it to my ear and listen to the sea, because it reminded me of you.”
Axel reached up and stroked my cheek with his knuckles. I closed my eyes. I felt his fingers in my hair, his body coming closer, his hot breath on my lips.
“I must have been the biggest fool in the world for having a girl who smelled like strawberries, could paint her feelings, could hear the ocean in a shell, and for letting her go. I keep thinking over and over about all the kisses I didn’t give you during those years.”
His lips then touched mine, slow, soft. His kiss was intense and profound. I felt my knees start to give, and I grabbed on to his shoulders. Axel held me, as if he wished to protect me not just from the cold, but from everything all around us, isolating us from therest of the world. I could tell he was holding back, restraining the savage impulse that kiss had awakened, and I liked that, us rediscovering each other through a kiss there above the city without looking for anything more. We took so long to finish that when we pulled apart, I felt like a little girl, lips tingling, cheeks warm.
“Let’s go home,” I said.
We held hands and retraced our route almost wordlessly. Axel would stop on random corners, and we would kiss again, as if we wanted to consume each other before we’d even gotten home, and then we’d carry on downhill. When we reached the apartment, I took off my jacket and threw it over the arm of the sofa.
“Did you like your date?”
“A lot,” I said.
“Enough that you’d be up for seconds?” I nodded, and he walked over to me after hanging up the keys by the door. He cupped my cheeks, kissed my nose, then kissed me again on the lips. “Enough that you’d be up for sleeping with me tonight?”