Page 115 of All That We Are Together

She giggled and hugged me.

105

Axel

She was beautiful in that dress that left her whole back exposed, even if all I wanted was to tear it off, and that was complicated, since we were surrounded by dozens of people who were talking and snickering. I ate and drank and tried to enjoy the festivities, but it wasn’t easy. First of all, I couldn’t stop thinking how wonderful it would be for Leah and me to be at home, our real home, lying on the porch and looking at the stars, maybe thinking about going to some simple art fair the weekend after or getting something ready for the gallery in town. Second, I was starting to realize that maybe I had been wrong the whole time. That this was what Leah really wanted. To spend her nights like this, among strangers with fake smiles pasted on their faces.

I looked at her. She seemed comfortable in her own skin. Or so I’d have thought if I didn’t know her and couldn’t see how rigid her back was, how tense her shoulders, how nervous she was when she greeted Scarlett, how she felt inferior or maybe dazzled around her.

I hung back while they talked. And eventually I turned aroundand looked at all the people there wrapped up like Christmas gifts in their finest outfits. It was smoke and mirrors. The entire party had this cardboard feeling about it; authenticity was notably absent. It didn’t even seem real to me: each time I looked at the guests, they all seemed to me to be empty shells. And I didn’t want Leah to be there with them. Were there exceptions? Sure, just as there are anywhere, but the air of refinement there, the appearances, the trifling conversations all bored me. I spent half an hour listening to a group talk about whether mauve was back in fashion, and I thought my head was going to explode.

I grabbed a drink and walked out, leaving the murmurs behind and climbing up to the top floor of the hotel. I emerged onto the rooftop.

The wind was cool, but pleasant. I took a deep breath, then lit a cigarette, looking down on the life that was throbbing below while I was stuck there at a party where I couldn’t feel like myself. I was worried that she and I were looking for different things, and now, when it had taken us so long to learn to walk beside each other again…

I heard her behind me and turned my head.

“What are you doing up here?” I asked, then took a pull of my cigarette.

“I saw you leave.”

“So you couldn’t take your eyes off me,” I joked. She leaned her elbows on the railing, and I continued, “Next time, tell me and I’ll stay with you.”

She smiled timidly, but not even my attempt to be jovial could cover up the mist that was settling over our night. Paris was at ourfeet, but I felt it was the other way around, that we were at the city’s feet, scurrying from one dead end to the next.

“I hate seeing you like this. I just wish everything was easier,” she said.

“It is easy. And I’m fine,” I lied. “Come over here.”

I hugged her from behind and rested my chin on her neck while she sighed.

“I feel more lost than ever, and this is the time when I’m supposed to be finding myself. Sometimes I wish I’d never even come to Paris.”

“Don’t say that. Think about all the good things!” My hand climbed her waist and stroked the bare skin revealed by her low-cut dress. “When we catch a plane and go back home, my number-one priority is shutting us up in the bedroom for days on end. We’re allowed to leave only for good waves or if we run out of food, but that’s it. The rest of the time, it’s just going to be you, me, and my bed. Our bed.”Our bed. I liked the sound of that.

She smiled and I nibbled at her cheek as I brought my hand down and slid it between her legs. I thought she would protest, but instead she arched her back against me, and I told her to relax and let me play a bit. I couldn’t think of a better way to ignore the party taking place below us, the one I didn’t want to be a part of. And all I wanted was for her to feel the same.

May

_____

(SPRING, PARIS)

106

Leah

I stepped back a bit to get a better perspective on the finished work. The afternoon light was coming into the studio and illuminating the canvas full of cold, distant strokes of the kind Scarlett had asked for. I was happy I’d done it. I had the proof that I could do something if I set my mind to it, and I felt a strange satisfaction as I started to clean my brushes.

Axel came into the studio and looked at the painting.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“I like it,” he lied. I could tell from his eyes that he was lying.

That hurt, but I tried to ignore it. I’d wanted him to be more enthusiastic. It hadn’t mattered to me before whether or not anyone liked what I did, but I’d also never felt so exposed, so weak and vulnerable; with that picture, I was opening up, it was as if anyone could look at it and see straight through my skin down to the bones.

I couldn’t stop now, and I couldn’t go backward. I was terrified to go running back into Axel’s arms the way I had when I lost my parents and I needed to hold on to him so he would saveme. I was thankful to him, I would be for the rest of my life, but I had to learn to hold on to myself, to save myself, before throwing myself into his arms and begging him to take me away from there on the very next plane. I felt Paris was giving me a kind of independence I’d never known, the possibility of a new beginning.