Page 133 of All That We Are Together

“It’s funny,” he said, “but even when I sometimes wanted to, I never managed to really hate Axel. I guess it was because he looked at you the way you look at things you want with all your heart but know you can’t have.”

I felt momentarily numb. It had been so long since I’d talked about him with anyone that even hearing his name made me quiver.

Axel. Four letters that meant everything.

“Promise you won’t go this long again without talking to me,” he said with gentleness in his eyes.

“I promise.” I smiled and leaned my head on his shoulder.

August

_____

(WINTER, AUSTRALIA)

128

Leah

I guess not all stories proceed in a straight line. Some are full of curves, and you don’t know what you’ll find around the corner. There are difficult stretches where it’s hard to keep going, and you fall apart and have to pick up the pieces of yourself before you keep going. But everything passes. You learn to walk and to file off the sharp edges of the mistakes you’ve made. You learn to let go of the things that used to work and no longer do. You learn that every scar has a story behind it, and you don’t have to cover them up; instead you can be brave and show them off proudly, the wounds that still hurt and the ones that have already healed.

That’s what I did that day. Putting one foot in front of the other until I reached that house where we’d lived through so much together, I didn’t hide. I walked calmly, focused on my surroundings, on the tree branches leaving shadows on the gravel and the damp grass growing next to the ditch.

When I caught sight of the house, with the wild ivy growing up one side, I felt a tingle in my stomach. I started walking faster. I had to stop myself from running. When I reached the door, I wasso nervous I could have vomited. Holding my breath, I rang the doorbell. I wanted a few minutes that felt like forever, increasingly disappointed, until I realized Axel wasn’t home.

In the past few days, I’d imagined that moment a million times. And it was always…perfect. The bell rang. He opened up. I threw myself into his arms because the need to touch him was more powerful than anything else. I looked for his lips. I looked for…relief.

But that didn’t happen. So I did the same thing I’d done so many times before. I walked around the house, trying not to get caught in the bushes and trees growing flush against the windows. I cursed myself for being so dumb and wearing a dress instead of something more practical, but then I reached the porch, and the memories that overcame me pushed every other thought out of my head.

The magic. The stars. The music.

And then I saw the blue. The red. The violet. And I went weak in the knees. I gulped, felt the blood coursing through my veins, and without realizing it, I brought my hand to my chest. All over the floor were tubes of empty paint. Used, lived, felt.

I entered the house. Or better said, the house entered me.

Because when I opened the door that led out onto the porch and stepped inside, I felt the floor spinning under my feet and the walls full of paint embraced me. I held on to the doorframe to keep from falling and sobbed so hard I could barely breathe.

I was paralyzed as I tried to understand every brushstroke, every image, every line, all of them so full of life. Everything was color. Everything. Axel had painted the walls with his hands, andalong with them bits of floor, the legs of chairs, the stools in the kitchen, even the surfboard that was leaning on one wall and the trunk where he kept his records.

He hadn’t painted a canvas. He’d painted the objects themselves.

I smiled through my tears as I remembered how he’d told me one time he bought that house because he was in love with the idea of being able to do everything there. And he finally had. Literally. He’d filled it with color, his way, looking for every drab crack and corner, every board, dragging his brush across all of it.

I tried to distinguish the lines and colors crisscrossing the walls and see details of our story within them: that pair of lips in one corner, a soft caress, trembling stars scattered across the night, two bodies interwoven with desire forming the trunk of a tree with pale leaves, the sea, waves swallowing tatters of guilt under a soft light that reminded me of the scent of summer.

I dropped my purse on the floor and walked through the living room feeling the dry paint, the irregular surface of the walls, feeling on my fingertips how he’d painted over those surfaces, feeling…trying to feel him at every step. I ran my fingers over the edge of a wooden frame in what had been my bedroom, where every night I had longed to get up and go to his bed, steal a kiss, show him I was no longer a little girl. There was a gorgeous drawing there, colorful, one that spoke of other worlds.

On the larger wall next to the bed, he had painted a huge yellow submarine. It was beautiful. Special. With round windows in the middle of a blue sea full of starfish, other fish with big eyes, and an octopus with its purple tentacles wrapped around thesubmarine’s tail end. The brushstrokes were soft and delicate, and seemed to glide effortlessly over the walls.

I was still standing there on the threshold when I sensed him behind me. I turned slowly. Very slowly. Trying to stand firm.

Axel was there, in the middle of the room, nude except for wet swim trunks. His chest was rising and falling and his eyes pinned to mine, burning, intense, full…

I wanted to say something. On my way from Brisbane, I had been cooking up a speech, some kind of declaration of intentions, but all those words vanished and I was left empty, trembling and staring.

Axel stepped forward, but then stopped as if he were scared to ruin the moment, break the invisible thread that united us. My mouth was dry. I felt happy, ecstatic really, but also tense. And awkward. Extremely awkward. Maybe that’s why I asked the first stupid question that came into my head, because I needed to break the silence.

“Why’d you do this?”