Page 119 of All That We Are Together
“Fuck you.” She blinked. “Sorry, I just…”
“Don’t say sorry,” I said and grabbed a glass for myself.
She followed me into the living room. When I told her not to excuse herself, I didn’t say it out of angerI actually deserved herhostility. I had been looking for it, pushing her buttons; even when we were walking home, I’d wanted to grab her by the shoulders and shake her so she’d finally wake up from her trance.
“I told you not to come to the dinner.”
“As if that would have fixed anything,” I hissed.
I don’t know if the alcohol had removed my filter or if I was just tired of being beside her and being unhappy, if I was angry about that pothole in the road we’d gotten stuck in. I sat down on the floor and drank and thought… I thought of all the things we were losing and all the time we had just let turn to dust. That stressed me out, and I drank even more. Leah left, and it was better that way, because even if it might have been the alcohol talking, it was the first time in my life I didn’t want to see her. But it just lasted a few minutes, and then the bad things vanished and I remembered all the good things we had together.
Let her fall.
I savored those words of Oliver’s for a moment, but then I shook my head and pushed them away. It didn’t matter that I’d been repeating them to myself for weeks.
I downed the last sip of my last drink, and as I did so, I felt Leah’s presence behind me. I got up and turned to face her, and I froze. She was there naked, looking at me glassy-eyed. Not a single thing stood between us. I remembered the first time I saw her like that, the night when it all started, when we came back from Bluesfest and I found her naked in the middle of my living room. Back then, she was more innocent, more vulnerable. More mine, even if I didn’t know it then.
If I could go back to that moment, I thought, I’d do everythingdifferent. In my imagination, we’d never have reached this point; I would have taught Leah how close success and failure are, how those two streets often cross and often go in the same direction. I still saw her painting what she felt, and me there soaking it in and living through her brushstrokes. I imagined us, except together throughout those three years, her naked on the beach and not in an apartment in Paris with the murmur of cars and passersby in the background.
“Aren’t you going to say something?” she whispered.
“This isn’t the right moment…”
She blinked, wounded and surprised.
I forced myself not to look away. This hurt me as much as it did her. Maybe more.
“I’m not rejecting you. I’m rejecting the idea of just fucking you the way I would anyone else. And that’s what I’d be doing right now.”
Leah’s eyes teared up with rage. I reacted quickly and grabbed her hand before she could slap my face. I gripped her wrists and clenched my teeth and forced myself to breathe deep and calm down. Then I let her go.
“If you can’t control yourself, you shouldn’t drink,” I said.
“You’re hurting me on purpose…”
“I don’t want to hurt you. You’re the one who’s doing this to yourself, and I don’t understand why. I’m trying to see things from your side, but it’s hard, and it just keeps getting harder.”
She grabbed a towel from the bathroom and wrapped it around herself as she bit her lower lip. There was something indecisive in her eyes, something new, something I didn’t recognize. Rage, inner struggle, fear, ego.
“Maybe it’s hard for you because you’ve never tried. You may not realize this, but sometimes dreams require sacrifices. Not everything’s easy, Axel. Not everything’s just given to you. But I guess there’s no need to bring that up to you since you just turn your back on everything that requires the least bit of effort.”
My pulse started racing.
“What about being true to yourself, Leah?”
“What does that even mean?”
“You know exactly what it means. None of this is you. None of it is what you really want.”
“How should you know?” She frowned in disgust. “I’m tired of you telling me what I want! I’m tired of you making decisions for me! And this isn’t the first time you’ve done it.” I knew what she meant. She meant the night that I had decided what should happen with our future. But that was different. That was… There was no comparing then and now. “I feel like a puppet in your hands! And I knew you’d do this if you stuck around, manipulating me according to your will.”
Without realizing it, I brought a hand to my chest. That hurt. I breathed deep, trying to find the words.
“Do you not understand it breaks my heart to see you becoming someone you’re not?”
“Do you not understand that I don’t know who I am anymore? I’ve gone through so many phases in the last few years that I don’t even recognize myself when I look in the mirror! Is that enough for you, Axel?”
“Hell no, it’s not enough for me!”