Page 117 of All That We Are Together

“I don’t know. I thought it might have been the one of Paris melting…”

Leah frowned. Maybe she didn’t like my description of the painting, but she hadn’t given it a title, as far as I knew.

“They’ll probably have that one forever.”

“Why do you say that?”

“It’ll never sell.”

I followed her to the kitchen and put on water to make tea, then cornered her against the counter. I couldn’t help it; I needed to touch her constantly, and anyway, I wanted a clear and honest answer to the question I was about to ask her:

“That’s it then. You got what you wanted. Does this mean we can go back to Byron Bay?” She gave me a look that made my soul wither. “Jesus, Leah!”

I let her go, closed my eyes, tried to calm down. But I couldn’t. I turned off the gas.

“Scarlett says I’d be a fool to leave now after what’s just happened. Not even she saw this coming. I’m not talking about a long time, just a few weeks, maybe, to see what all happens…”

“Why do we need to see what happens?”

“So we can make decisions. I don’t know!” She brought her hands to her head. Her expression was frustrated.

“This is ridiculous. What is it you want?”

“I want to do things. I want to be better!”

“Better for who?”

“For all those idiots!”

“For God’s sake, Leah, are you listening to yourself?”

“Why can’t you just understand me?”

“Because you don’t even understand yourself! If you could hear yourself, you’d realize what you’re saying doesn’t even make sense. If they’re idiots, why do you care what they think? Are you trying to adapt to their expectations of you? Is that it? Look at me.”

“I don’t want to argue,” she whimpered.

Shit. I didn’t want to argue with her either, I didn’t, but shewas making it hard for me not to. She’d lost her perspective or was in one of those crises where you can’t tell what really matters in life from what doesn’t. Sometimes things are too blurry when you see them from the inside. But from my perspective, everything was clear as day, and it was torture to see her caught in that spiral of doubts and desires.

She hugged me. But that day, for the first time, I couldn’t hug her back, because I didn’t recognize her. Ironically, when I finally thought I had her, that she was mine, it was the very opposite: She wasn’t even hers. She wasn’t herself. She didn’t know who she was.

108

Axel

“Let her fall,” Oliver had said to me.

The problem was, I couldn’t forget that conversation we had the night we spent together in Byron Bay walking the streets till dawn, sitting on the swings, talking before she decided to take off on that journey. She asked me whether I’d pick her up in Paris if she fell. And I promised I’d always be there.

109

Leah

I could feel that I was doing something, but I didn’t know whether that something was good or bad. Better than nothing, maybe, filling up that part of myself I hadn’t even known was empty before then. There was an art website that had an article about still-unknown artists who were about to break out, and it opened with a photo of one of my paintings. At some point in all those weeks I spent shut up in my studio, I’d come to the realization that what mattered wasn’t me being recognized, it was my work. People liking it. People seeing it and cocking their head to the side with interest, Scarlett smiling and nodding with satisfaction when she looked at it. I needed to feel people were understanding what I was trying to express. It was like putting a message in a bottle and crossing your fingers, hoping it would cross the sea and someone would still be able to make out the faded letters.

I worked from the time I got up to the time I crawled into bed. And when I curled up next to Axel’s warm body, I tried to ignore the sour look on his face, the tension in his arms as they surrounded me, the increasingly dense silences.

I wanted to talk to him, but I didn’t know how.