Page 111 of All That We Are Together

“Tell me now, then. Tell me what she said to you.”

“She said I didn’t have to leave when the grant was up. She said I could stick around a while longer working with them and they’d find an opening for me at the gallery.”

“Is that what you want?”

That was the last question I wanted him to ask me, but it was also the most necessary one, the one that meant everything and that I still didn’t know how to answer.

“I don’t know,” I whispered.

He rubbed his hands over his face.

“Well, tell me when you figure it out, because Jesus, I thought we were together in all this. I’m here, Leah; I’ve followed you to the other end of the earth. I deserve to know.”

He walked off, but when I shouted, he stopped again.

“I didn’t want to ask you to sacrifice yourself for me!”

“Are you kidding? I’m not leaving here without you.”

My lower lip trembled, and I hugged him; I hugged those words and everything that they contained, praying that Axel wouldn’t pull away. And he didn’t. His arms surrounded me, protecting me from the cold, and then I calmed down as I felt his soft, familiar lips on my temple.

101

Axel

For days I’d been smoking and overthinking things. It didn’t do much for my headaches. Or my nerves. No matter how much I tried to pretend otherwise, I knew things weren’t right. It wasn’t normal for Leah to shut herself up in her studio for so many hours painting things that didn’t even look like her work. She didn’t have long to make a decision. And I was frustrated that I didn’t know what that would be.

I was incapable of telling her what I really thought, because I didn’t want to fight and I was scared something would cause a breach between us. And in a strange way, I was being a coward again, but this time it was different: I wasn’t trying to push her away, I was trying to avoid losing her.

I lit another smoke just as she emerged from the studio, watching her come down the stairs looking absent. I needed to do something to change that, I thought.

“Get dressed, we’re going for a walk.”

“Now? I’m beat,” she said.

“You’re missing out on the whole city.”

Leah hesitated, but she knew I was right, and ten minutes later she was ready and we walked out of the apartment together. It was already nighttime. We took the Metro. As it chugged along, she seemed to forget the demons she’d left behind in the studio. She started smiling at all the silly stuff we said, listening to people speaking French and making up stories about what we thought they were saying.

“I hid the body in the freezer in the basement,” I said, recreating the conversation of a man in front of us who was speaking to his wife seated at his side.

“Next to the turkey and the peas? Brilliant, you’ve just ruined Christmas dinner,” Leah rejoindered, laughing when the woman she was imitating pinched her brows as if she really were angry at finding a corpse next to her food.

We walked out through the tunnel, relaxed. The Eiffel Tower was shining bright under the dark sky. We stopped close to the little carousel next to it, and I bent over to give her a slow kiss before rearranging the scarf she liked to wear on cool nights.

I felt frightened when I saw her eyes and asked her, “What’s going on? What are you thinking?”

“How everything’s good when I’m with you.”

“What about when we’re not together?” I asked.

“Then I’m not so sure.”

I didn’t know what to tell her, but I didn’t like what she was saying; it meant something was wrong. I took her hand and pulled her up onto the carousel. It wasn’t working. There weren’t many people around. Leah climbed onto a wooden horse and smiled atme, and I felt shaken. She rested her cheek against the animal’s head and stroked its mane.

“I need you to talk to me. To tell me what’s going on so I can help you. That’s what this is all about, Leah, getting through these things together…”

“That’s one of the problems. I can’t really tell you. I don’t know what I’m feeling or why this is happening to me. I thought I didn’t care what other people felt about my work, and now it turns out I do. I thought I was above all that; now it turns out I’m not. That’s freaking me out, but at the same time I can’t step back now. It’s like I need to show that I can do it, that I’m good at what I do…”