Page 17 of All That We Are Together

19

Leah

I wanted to see no one. I didn’t want to think. I went to class, slept, and painted. I had the feeling I was trapped in a giant snow globe and someone had shaken it and all I could do was watch the snowflakes fall around me. I walked and walked, but somehow, I kept ending up in the same street, looking into the same eyes. And no matter how much I tried to run away, when I reached the end of the road, he was always there.

20

Axel

“We can’t offer anything else? Sweeten the deal? Talk to her school?”

“Axel, why are you so fixated on signing this girl?” Sam leaned back in her chair and looked at me the way she did when she caught her boys getting into trouble. Lines crossed her forehead. “She’s good, but I’ve never seen you show this kind of interest in anyone.”

“She’s…” I couldn’t tell her the truth. I couldn’t talk about her out loud with another person.

I’d only had a few conversations about her, with my brother, and that was at the beginning, when I still could hardly find the words to define what I felt because in truth, I didn’t feel it yet.

“I’ve got a hunch,” I said.

I got up and went back to my office. I opened the desk drawer and took a pill for my headache. Usually I try to avoid medication, but that day, I thought my brain would explode. It had been that way for a while now. Obviously, my mother had insisted I go to the doctor, and I finally gave in so she’d stop calling and buggingme about it. The diagnosis? Tension, too much alcohol, too much caffeine, emotional stress, anxiety, not enough sleep…

I made a few phone calls and spent the rest of the time staring at the photo the art gallery had sent me the week before. Those three paintings titledLovecaptured in an image that failed to contain all the things they represented. I sighed and slipped it back into a folder.

I left early that day because I was supposed to meet with Justin in the afternoon. I couldn’t remember anymore the first time he showed up at my home with his kids in tow and a surfboard under his arm, ready to let me teach him something he’d always seemed to hate. It didn’t matter; it was now a family ritual, and we arranged to do it regularly.

My nephews cornered me when they got there, shouting while their father tried to calm them down and keep them under control. They hadn’t taken after him, not at all. They were wild and not too interested in following the rules their parents set for them.

“Can I take your board?” Max asked.

“Obviously not.” I tried to laugh.

“Come on, Uncle Axel!” he shouted.

“Me too!” Connor looked at us.

“Boys, take your own boards,” Justin griped. “It’s time to go down to the water!”

They ran across the sand toward the shore while my brother and I continued at a more leisurely pace. I could feel him staring at me. I rolled my eyes, because I had already told him, the week before that I’d gone to see her at the gallery, and naturally, he wasn’t just going to let the subject slide.

“Did she answer you about the offer?”

“If she’d said yes, I’d know, right?”

We got into the water. My nephews were a few feet away, close to some smaller waves next to the shore. I think my scowl was enough for my brother to understand I needed some time alone on my board to burn off the energy I’d accumulated and wear myself out, even if—unfortunately—that still wasn’t enough to let me get any sleep. I concentrated on my body, on my posture, my balance, on hugging the walls of the waves as if nothing else existed.

When Justin got tired of doing the same thing, he came to find me. Connor and Max were already on the shore laughing at some joke only the two of them understood. I stayed there stretched out on my board next to my brother under the orange sky.

“You can’t go on like this, Axel.”

“What I can’t do is stop being this way.”

“You know I get you, but still…”

“She’s going out with someone.” I spat it out just like that, and the words seemed to stick in my throat, sharp, hard. “I don’t know what I was expecting, but not that, dammit.”

“It never crossed your mind that she might meet someone in three years?”

“Meet, yeah. Fall in love, no.”