Page 134 of All That We Are Together

“Because this room is for the children I’m going to have with you.”

He said it seriously, but at the same time as if it were obvious, and as if we were wasting time staring at each other with several feet between us. I walked toward him, weeping and grinning, remembering the night he took me to the center of Paris and I came forward without hesitating, recollecting all the good we’d shared, a whole life.

“What would you have done if I didn’t come back?”

“No fucking idea,” he sighed.

I stopped in front of him, with just a few inches between his mouth and mine, breathing him in, absorbing that scent of the sea that I had missed so much. I couldn’t stop crying, but for the first time in ages, they weren’t tears of sorrow. They were tears of relief. Of joy. Of the good fortune I now felt. Of my heart, which was beating so hard. Of my yearning to touch him. And kiss him. Kiss him until I couldn’t kiss anymore.

His lips were moist. He was so close I could almost feel them, and I remembered what his tongue felt like, his hot breath caressing me. We looked at each other. We looked at each other for an eternity, and the air around us turned electric. Axel slid a hand down to my waist and I looked down at those fingers that seemed to be feeling me to assure themselves that I was real, that he really did have me in front of him, and that our bodies still reacted even to those minor gestures. I looked up and dove into his eyes, blue as the ocean.

“So you’re painting again.”

It was a lame remark, but Axel grinned.

“So it seems.”

“You’ve got to tell me why.”

“Because I was scared to forget all the things I had inside me; there was so much there, too much… And you know I’m not one for words, but look around; what you see here is all we are together. We are the sunrises on the beach, the sound of the sea, starry nights on the porch, the urge to tear off each other’s clothes, our songs, the red of sunset, all the brushstrokes I laid down thinking about you. We’re these walls surrounding us, all that we’ve lived. And everything that’s still to come.”

“Axel…” I was bawling uncontrollably.

“Don’t cry, please.” He pulled me in tight, and I felt that at last I was home, that everything I wanted was in front of me and I could choose it without needing it, after living, after finding myself, after understanding who I wanted to be.

I pulled back and wiped my eyes.

“I had a speech prepared…”

“Babe, I can’t wait anymore.”

“…but I need to kiss you instead.”

“Thank God.” He touched the hem of my dress and pressed his lips into mine, and I melted in his arms in that house full of paint, of stories and scars that Axel had covered over with brilliant colors.

I closed my eyes and smiled as I kissed him slowly.

And then we were new. A blank canvas. But one filled with reflections from the colors that had been there before and those we uncovered and left slowly behind. A white tinted with orange. A bluish white. A yellowish one. A white shaded green.

A white of its own. Unique. Ours.

Epilogue

_____

(A STRETCH OF SEA AT DUSK)

He’s lying on his surfboard looking at the sun’s soft reflections on the surface of the water just before it disappears over the horizon. All at once, he remembers that day years back when he was in this same stretch of sea asking himself if he was happy and finding a shadow of doubt inside himself, minutes before his best friend asked him for a favor that would change his life forever.

Now he knows that happiness is complicated and fickle.

That it’s risk, searching, learning to jump into the void…

And he did jump, a long time ago now. He thinks about that as he leaves the water and walks slowly to the house outlined between two palm trees, with ivy trying to climb over its roof. Then he sees her. He smiles slowly. She looks up.

From inside, he hears the happy chords of “Twist and Shout.”

They watch each other as he climbs the steps of the porch. He stops next to her and looks at the complicated lines crossing that canvas full of color, so hers, so his, so chaotic, so measured. He doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t have to; he just smiles proudly before he goes inside.