Page 3 of All That We Are Together

We walked slower once we caught a glimpse of the restaurant.

“I hope you like your parties without surprises,” he joked, and then he turned serious. “Everyone’s here. Sometimes, when you get all shut up inside yourself, locked away in that attic, I worry about you, Leah. I want you to enjoy tonight.”

His words made me melt, and I hugged him tight.

I promised I would.

A smile spread across my face as I stepped over the threshold to the restaurant and saw our friends getting up from the table in the back to sing “Happy Birthday.” People pinched me and kissed my cheek, and then I sat down with them. Almost everyone who was part of my life in Brisbane was there: my classmates, but especially Morgan and Lucy, the girls I met my first month in the dorm and hadn’t separated from since. They were the first ones to hand me a present.

I unwrapped it carefully, without my customary impatience, picking at the tape with a fingernail and folding the paper before thanking them after seeing the drawing materials they knew I needed.

“You’re the best, you shouldn’t have done this…”

“Don’t start crying!” Morgan shouted.

“I wasn’t going to…”

“We know you,” Lucy cut me off.

I laughed when I saw her face.

“Fine, no tears, just fun!” I looked over at Landon, who was grinning with satisfaction and winked at me from the other end of the table.

When the party was over, it was late and I’d drunk way too much, especially knowing my brother, Oliver, was coming to see me the next day. But I didn’t care. Because under the lights of the bar where we landed for drinks, I felt good, happy, surrounded by Landon’s arms and my friends’ laughter. I stopped thinking about the people who weren’t there, about Axel’s deep voice congratulating me and the gift he’d given me that year in a parallel reality where the two of us still were, somehow, the same people who believed they’d never be apart.

It had taken time to understand it, but…life went on. Axel hadn’t been my destiny, just the beginning of a stretch of the path we walked together, holding hands until he decided to take a detour.

I lay down drunk in bed, and the room seemed to spin around me. I hugged my pillow. There were times when I barely thought of Axel, hung up on my classes, the hours I passed in the attic, thetimes I was with Landon or the girls. But he always came back. Him. The feeling that I still had him under my skin was bothering me more and more. The memories started to glow in moments I least expected: when I saw a stranger holding his cigarette between his thumb and index finger, when I smelled tea, when I heard a certain song, saw some silly gesture…anything, really.

I remembered what I was keeping in the top drawer of my nightstand, but I resisted opening it and picking up that object purchased in a flea market not long after I got to Brisbane.

I closed my eyes tight. Everything was still spinning.

I asked myself what he was doing in that instant…

4

Axel

I took one last look at the gallery before leaving and going home. I walked back, because I was never in a rush. No one was waiting for me.

But that day, I was wrong.

Oliver was sitting on the steps in front of the door.

For some reason, it hit me just as hard as it had the first time I saw him there four months before. Because I wasn’t expecting him, obviously, and because…fuck, because I could hardly breathe when it hit me how much I’d missed him during those years when he was away.

So just like that, Oliver showed back up in my life the same way he’d disappeared.

I was paralyzed, and it took a few seconds to convince myself he was real, but he was, and he hadn’t changed a bit. He shot me a nervous glance, and when I opened the door and asked him to come in, he didn’t reply; he just followed behind me. He grabbed the beer I passed him, we went out on the porch, and we smoked a cigarette in silence. I don’t know how long we were there, hoursmaybe, or maybe just twenty minutes. I was so lost in thought that I didn’t know. All I can say is when he got up, he hugged me with anger and love at the same time, then left without saying goodbye.

It happened a couple more times, him showing up at my house by surprise. I knew he’d be coming when he went to visit his sister in Brisbane; he always tried to see my family for a bit on his way. For three years, we didn’t see each other. He had kept up that routine but hadn’t once bothered to come say hi. Then, eventually, something or other changed his mind, and one day there he was at my door. I didn’t ask why. Nor did we ever talk about Leah. We had a tacit agreement, and there was no need to discuss the ground rules. We knew them by heart. We started to be friends again. But the friendship was…different, because when you break something and put it back together, it’s never perfect. You always see cracks and rough edges that weren’t there before.

“I didn’t know you were coming,” I said the fourth time he showed up.

“Me neither.” He followed me inside. “Actually, I didn’t have any days off, but I was able to make a last-minute change…”

For Leah’s birthday…Fuck. I closed my eyes.