Page 120 of All That We Are Together
We kept going back over the same things, trapped in a viciouscycle, unable to break free. Frustrated, I went back to the kitchen and poured myself what was left in the bottle. When I came back, she was sitting on the ground with her back against the wall, still wrapped in the white towel. Tears streaked her cheeks, and she was staring down at her bare legs. I tried not to fall into the trap, not to hurry over and hug her, not to pretend that everything was okay. Instead, I sat down near her, in the corner, and we stared at each other in silence.
I don’t know how long it lasted. That look. That attempt to understand what the hell was going on. That transformation of silence into pain, and pain into reproaches.
I was exhausted. It seemed no matter how hard I tried, I would never fix what I’d broken years before, and we would never be the people we were on those starry nights with music in the background that I missed so bad. I couldn’t erase the three intervening years. I couldn’t fill with memories of things that had never happened the void Leah was now trying to cover with things I knew would never be enough.
“We can’t go on like this,” she said.
“I know,” I responded.
“I mean, I can’t go on like this. Not with you here.”
“What are you trying to tell me?”
She sniffled and looked at me.
“I’m telling you that if you love me, you’ll leave.”
I thought I’d misunderstood her at first; surely she wasn’t actually saying this to me after all we’d been through together, the bumps in the road we’d gotten past, all the pain…
“You can’t be serious, Leah. Don’t play with me like this.”
“I need you to go home, Axel.” I could tell she was hurting,her cheeks were covered in tears, but me…I was dying inside, incapable of comprehending what was happening. “I need…to find myself. To know what I want. I can’t be with you like this, dragging you to places you hate, hurting you. And I can’t tell you to sit to the side and keep your mouth shut, it’s not fair, and you know you could never do it.”
I felt like I had a hole in my heart.
“You honestly want to tear everything up?”
“I’m just asking for a little time.”
“Well, don’t, dammit!” I stood up, angry, frantic, unable to see anything but the walls crumbling down for no reason. “Just think about things and make a decision. It’s not that hard. It can’t be.”
“Axel…” She pleaded with her gaze.
“No. Fuck no. I’m not going to leave you here by yourself.”
“I need you to. I’m not a little girl anymore. I want to make my own decisions without Oliver, you, or anyone else. I feel like I’ve spent my whole life hanging on other people’s words. I can’t get away from that feeling, and I have to show myself I can do more…”
“Show yourself or show them?” I replied.
She looked back at me as though broken, and I felt like a dog. I knelt down in front of her and hugged her even as she tried to get me to let her go. I hugged her tight until she replied in kind, crying against my chest for what seemed like an eternity.
“Don’t you understand what you’re asking me for, babe? You want me to run away like a coward and leave you here when I promised you I’d catch you if you fell. That’s too much to ask, Leah.”
“You told me you’d do anything for me.”
“Leah, goddammit, anything that wasn’t failing you again and feeling the way I did before. I know I fucked up and I know it was my fault everything went to shit. Probably that’s why I never told you what it was like for me, because I felt like I didn’t have a right to. But I regretted it every single day, I imagined a million times over what it would have been like if I’d made a different decision, I didn’t want some damn guy to put his hands on you, and it killed me to have to remember I was the idiot who told you I wanted you to get to know other people. You don’t understand how much it hurts to give up something you love so much because that’s all you’re capable of.”
She pulled away from me and said in a broken voice:
“You’re right, Axel, I don’t understand. And neither do you. We don’t understand each other.”
“I guess for once we agree.”
She looked away and stood up, holding the towel against her chest. Her eyes were red, and her unkempt hair flicked against her bare shoulders. She looked down and said she was going to get dressed. Then she left. I heard her shut the door to her bedroom. My God. I hated her doing that more than anything in the world. It brought back memories. I had hated it before and I hated it now. Maybe it was that, or the liquor still burning my throat, or the fact that I had opened up to her completely and no longer had anything to offer her and could feel her slipping out of my hands, but I walked down the hall and straight to her bedroom.
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Leah