Page 29 of All That We Are Together
“Maybe if you’d at least let me see it too…”
“Maybe one day I will. Later.”
That wasn’t an option then. If I could have, I’d have kept Axel from setting foot in my attic, and yet, for some reason, I also wasn’t really bothered by his doing so. Maybe because Axel had already seen every part of me, from a thousand different angles, without any shield there to protect me. I didn’t have anything to hide from him. And that showed me I had made a mistake in thepast. Because when you open yourself up completely to a person, you become transparent to them. And when you give everything, then you’re empty inside. I didn’t want to commit that error again. While I was with Axel, I was so unaware, and I kept nothing of myself back. I didn’t give him my heart piece by piece; I handed the whole thing over to him, eyes closed, without hesitation. Just the opposite of what I was doing with Landon…
It was different with him. We were taking short steps down our path, almost as if we were gripping a handrail. I didn’t feel unstable the way I did with Axel, worried I’d slip or fall around every corner. I had my hands on the controls, and now I was terrified of letting them go.
“Come here.” Landon hugged me.
“I’m sorry this is so complicated.”
“We’ll get used to it.” He kissed me on the head. “I’m sure this will be a great opportunity for you. It’s funny, just a few nights ago I dreamed you made it and your paintings were hanging in the best galleries in the world.”
I pulled away from his chest and looked him in the eyes.
“Why are you so good to me?” I moaned.
“Because I’m your best friend.”
“You’re much more than that.”
I hid my face in his collarbone, and I stayed there for I don’t know how long, feeling the warm comfort of his neck against my cheek. Landon was a pillar, and I was walking around and around him, unable to step away, afraid of falling.
I guess a first love is always full of shortcomings and insecurities, but it’s also special, magical. When you find out what it isto be in love, you feel emotions you’re not ready to embrace, let alone deal with. And so you just feel: you love, you throw yourself into it. You don’t hit the brakes because you haven’t yet realized you’re about to crash into a wall at the end of the road. But then you find out. That’s the problem. And when you feel that tickle again, you remember what happened, that sudden blunt pain, and you decide to take it slower, but that has its consequences: reflection instead of impulsivity, calm instead of intensity. And you start to see gray where the colors used to be vibrant.
I helped Landon clean up the kitchen later before I left. I’d been so flustered when I left my room with Axel that morning that I hadn’t even thought of taking my books for the next day in case I decided to stay over. So even though I didn’t feel like being alone, I told him goodbye and walked to the dorm. I was in the mood to stroll and clear my head.
When I got in, I took a shower. I let the hot water run a long time and concentrated on that feeling, letting my muscles relax while the tension from the day vanished. I’d been distracted during class, thinking how surreal it was that Axel had walked to school with me just a few hours before like it was nothing after three years of not seeing each other.
That’s how things were with him. Different. Illogical. Maybe that’s why it was so hard to understand him, because we didn’t think alike. I was incapable of feeling or thinking something and not shouting it to the four winds; I got carried away by my urges, by the first sign of an emotion. Not him, though. He could hold it in. He gathered up his emotions and hid them away in the closet or buried them, and then he just went on with his life.
I got out of the shower, leaving a trail of water, because I forgot to grab a towel. I dried off once I got one out of the closet and put on some comfy pajamas, then brushed my hair and left it loose so it would dry. When I looked at myself in the long mirror, I thought again about cutting it—it was getting too long.
I got into bed. Then I sensed him. Him.
My cheek on the pillow, I felt the tears filling my eyes, and I closed them so they wouldn’t pour out. I took a deep breath, bringing his scent inside me… I thought of the shell I had put away, how it had helped me fall asleep so many nights during those early months, but I resisted the impulse to take it out. And I knew…I knew I’d have to get up, strip off the damned sheets, put them in the laundry bag, and fetch new ones from the dresser. Georgia had given me three different sets the year before. She was always planning ahead.I’m sure Oliver never thinks of these things. She was right.
But for some reason, I didn’t do any of that. I stayed there swallowing my tears, smelling him next to me, and remembering how beautiful it had been to have him in my life: showing him every painting I did, inviting him to every birthday, seeing him smile slowly, our eyes meeting in the middle of a Sunday family meal…
I missed my life from before. Everything. My parents. The Nguyens. Us being a family. Waking up every morning and staring into the blue, blue sky…
32
Axel
I got there a half hour early, so I leaned on the wall of the university’s main building and waited, looking at the interwoven clouds crossing the leaden sky. I hadn’t slept all night, and my head hurt, but I was so used to both that I didn’t even think to grab an aspirin before I left the house. I regretted it now, because I wanted to see everything clearly, be at a hundred percent when I entered the studio.
For the first time, I understood Sam.
I understood the sense of expectation she showed before visiting each of her artists and seeing what they’d been working on during the preceding months. She often said it was magic, like looking at an entire world contained between four walls. And there was nothing I wanted more than to see the lines and colors of Leah’s world.
I saw her in the distance as she walked distractedly along a path surrounded by plants. She was wearing headphones, lost in thought, in threadbare shorts that revealed those long legs of hers that used to wrap around my waist while I sank inside her. I triedto clear those memories away, because we were so far from that moment now that it almost seemed like it had been other people instead of us.
She looked up and saw me. When she reached the wall, she took off her headphones, and I bent down to kiss her on the cheek, even though I knew it bothered her. I saw she’d been biting her nails, and her eyes were nervous.
“I promise it won’t be as horrible as you think,” I whispered. “I’ll just take a quick look around; we don’t have to do everything today.”
“No. We should go ahead and get it over with.”