Page 116 of All That We Are Together

Axel put on “All You Need is Love” and walked over singing and acting silly. I snickered and took his hand when he put it out to dance with me, and as we kissed, laughed, and tickled each other, we fell down to the wooden floor, laughing and gazing into each other’s eyes.

“You’re a lunatic,” I said.

“Takes one to know one.”

He got on top of me and held my hands down over my head. I tried to push into him, but he pulled away, just barely letting his lips graze against mine. Then he sat up and licked his lips, and the gesture was so alluring that I could hardly keep from begging him to get to it and tear my clothes off.

“I want to know something,” he said. “That first night we kissed and you said something about how you no longer thought of love as something idyllic…is that still true?”

“No, but I still think it’s something different from that.”

“Better or worse?” he asked.

“Better. More human.”

“So with more mistakes, you mean.”

“Sort of.” I smiled. I liked us understanding each other. If only everything was like that. But that was impossible, because I couldn’t even understand myself. “Now I feel like love is somethingmore real, more intense, but it also has its bitter side. Nothing’s perfect. Perfection could never be so addictive.”

“So you’re addicted to me…”

I started to pull off his shirt in reply, and remembered all those hours when I saw him barefoot, just wearing swim trunks, and I missed how unworried he’d looked back then. He hadn’t looked that way for a long time now. If I had to draw him that way, I’d no longer remember exactly what he looked like. Instead of trying to rescue those details, I pushed the image aside, buried it the way I buried my fingers into his back and felt him slide inside me, bumping into my hips and then pulling away, getting harder, pushing in deeper until we peaked and I moaned and he covered my lips with his mouth.

We held each other. The moment invaded us fully. His hands touched my cheeks, framing my face, as if trying to make of it a living painting. My throat was dry as I asked him:

“What would you do if you had to paint me?”

He looked at me for an eternal second before getting up and putting on his underwear and jeans, which he didn’t bother buttoning. I propped myself up on my elbows to watch him, confused to see him looking for some tubes of acrylics among my things.

He knelt down between my legs.

“Don’t move,” he asked, his voice hoarse.

“Are you serious? You’re going to paint?”

“Yeah. Just something…small.” He looked away.

I held my breath as Axel dipped a fine brush in blue paint and held my arm down on the floor next to my ribs, turning it around so that the palm of my hand was visible. He ran his fingertips upmy wrist where he could feel my pulse. Then he touched me with the brush. It wasn’t until he’d dragged it several inches across me that I understood he was tracing out my veins, looking for them under the pale skin and covering my forearm with intricate traces.

I stayed still, but I couldn’t help shivering when he traced the same pattern in red. Just then, the first chords of “Yellow Submarine” played, the undersea sounds, those childish words about cities where we’re born, about the ocean, about underwater voyages…

“Did you know your heart’s actually in the middle of your chest? It’s just that it tilts left and that’s why you can hear it better there. Yours is right here.” His paint-streaked fingers drew the conical shape of the heart so delicately that I wanted to cry, even if I couldn’t really say why. “I love feeling it beat against your skin and thinking about how a little piece of it is mine.”

That day, as we drew on each other, I realized there are words that are kisses and gazes that are words. With Axel, it was always like that. Sometimes he spoke, and I felt it on my skin, sometimes he looked at me and I could almost hear what he was thinking, and sometimes he kissed me without kissing me. Like that day when he painted one heart on top of another, sensing my racing pulse.

107

Axel

We were asleep on the sofa when her phone rang, and Leah got up to answer, suppressing a yawn. I sank my head in the pillows. When she came back, she was leaping and shouting, and she jumped on top of me.

Still groggy, I sat up.

“They sold the painting, Axel! They sold it! I just gave it to them the other day, and they already found a buyer; can you believe it? They aren’t even going to hang it at the next exhibition. Scarlett says this is the best news possible, and…”

“The painting they told you to paint,” I said.

“Of course. What else?”