Page 127 of All That We Are Together
I’d failed them. But above all, I’d failed myself.
I guess you have to fall completely apart to know what you have inside you. It turned out that I had my own demons too: my pride, my vanity. Things I’d never known were there because nothing had ever awakened them. Things I didn’t want to fall victim to again. Remembering Axel and how he’d been brave and had fearlessly confronted his feelings even when I didn’t believe in him gave me strength. All of us can learn to overcome our mistakes and leave them behind.
I forced myself to reflect no matter how much it hurt. It’s never pleasant to look in the mirror and see not the thing that you wish you were, but the thing you are and that you’re trying to run away from.
I accepted it: for years, I’d needed someone by my side. First it was Axel. When that was over, I held on to Landon to keep from falling. Then Axel came back into my life and reminded me of how magical it was to live surrounded by color.
I had never really been alone.
I envied Axel for that, because he seemed to enjoy his solitude; he didn’t need anyone beside him. If he’d had someone there, it was because he wanted to, not because he felt suffocated by the idea of stretching his arms out and not finding some pillar to take hold of. But still, I wanted to be that for him. Free, not needing him, but choosing him. As I took my walks, as I worked in the studio, that idea started to come together in my head, and I remembered something Axel told me once: “I want you to live, Leah. And once you have, I want you to choose me.” That didn’t mean I agreed with the decisions he’d taken, but I was starting tounderstand them. I was starting to see things from his side when he was farther away than he’d ever been and when, despite everything, I felt him so close.
On one of the last days I spent in Paris, I stumbled—literally—upon a record store and secondhand shop. I had my headphones on and my head in the clouds and didn’t see the chalkboard sign in the middle of the street advertising a special price for customers buying three records or more. I went in. I don’t know why, but then, I didn’t know why I’d spent the whole day walking from place to place. It was just what I was in the mood for.
I spent a long time looking at the covers, the titles, and names of bands that brought back memories. I grabbed a few Mom used to like that I hadn’t listened to in years, and when I was about to go to the counter and pay, I saw another one I knew very well,Yellow Submarine, with its cover full of unmistakable colors.
I bought it on an impulse, then went straight to the nearest post office, hurrying, with an intense, even overwhelming need of a kind I hadn’t felt in a long time. I liked that, feeling the way I used to years before, when I was a girl and I did things without stopping to think for even two seconds, even if it sometimes got me into trouble.
Then I went home and breathed easier. I was happy. I cooked for the first time in ages, played music, enjoyed being alone. Really enjoyed it, without feeling sad or unfortunate. I baked a lasagna and ate it still hot, with the cheese almost bubbling. And when I lay on the sofa and closed my eyes, the puzzle piece I’d been looking for so long appeared suddenly, as if by magic.
For months, I’d been asking myself who I was, opening doors and looking into them, hoping I’d find myself. The problem was I hadn’t stopped to think that what really mattered wasn’t that. What mattered was finding out who I wanted to be.
And just that—just asking the right question or the wrong one—changed everything.
122
Axel
“A package came for you yesterday,” Justin said.
Surprised, I looked at my brother, who shrugged and walked into the backroom of the café. He came out a minute later with a thin bubble-wrapped envelope with the name of a shipping company on it.
“Doesn’t have a return address,” I noticed.
“I’d suppose there must be lots of people who want to kill you. You just awaken that feeling in those around you. But I’m curious enough that I’m willing to accept the risk that I might be handling a mail bomb. Go ahead, open it!”
I grunted like an animal at my brother before opening it. Then I felt a nervous twitch in my stomach and smiled like an idiot. It had been weeks since I’d smiled that way.
“A Beatles record?Yellow Submarine. Who sent you that?”
“Leah,” I whispered, running my hands over the cover.
“What’s the story with that?” He looked confused.
Happy—elated—I told him, “The story is, she still loves me. I’m the luckiest bastard in the world.”
July
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(WINTER, AUSTRALIA)
123
Axel
I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t. I kept getting up thinking of color and going to bed covered in paint. Paint on my clothes, on my skin, all over my hands…
When I grabbed a brush, I vanished, fully absorbed in the next line, concentrating on what I was doing, and thinking of nothing more, not even of her. It was liberating. Finding myself in those sensations I thought I would never relive again. Painting. Being in the present, feet on the ground, eyes focused on the tip of the brush as I filled edges with color, rounded off borders, splashed life into the monotony.