Page 32 of All That We Are Together
“Quite a bit more time, Leah. I need to organize them—you’ve got to help me with that—and I need to appraise them, and I’ll need Sam’s opinion for that. Don’t worry, I’ve already snapped a few photos. Then we need to choose some to take to the gallery. Maybe you’ve got some ideas there.”
“What do you mean?”
“Are there any pieces there that are special to you?”
“I guess. Listen, about before…”
“There’s no need to talk about it, Leah.”
I knew with Axel silences said more than words, but I needed to lay the groundwork before we went any further.
“You’re really going to make this easy for me?”
His eyes looked straight through me. I shook.
“Yeah. And you?”
“Me? I always made things easy for you…”
“You’re wrong there, Leah.”
The waitress returned and left the sandwich and tea on the table. Axel leaned back in his chair before taking a few distracted bites, as if we hadn’t been talking about us, about everything, just one minute before.
I concentrated on the grain of the table’s surface.
“So…you’re going out with someone,” he muttered. I looked up and just nodded. “Good. I’m happy for you.” He sucked in a deep breath, drank his tea down in one gulp, and stood up. “You want to leave the keys with me? I can come by your dorm later if you don’t feel like waiting here.”
I thought of how freeing it would be to take a walk and not have to pass through the door of the studio with Axel once more on my heels, but then I saw his expression, and something changed. I don’t know what it was. Nothing special, nothing revealing. Actually, his face was almost inscrutably plain, and yet…
“No, I’ll go with you,” I replied.
The creaking of the steps was the only sound that accompanied us as we climbed up to the attic. This time, I stayed beside him while he took photos of each picture from different angles and organized them into three groups.
“The good thing,” he said, pointing at them, “is that they’re easy to differentiate. Those are darker, more visceral. The ones on the other side are brighter. And the rest…I’m not really sure how to catalog them.”
In this last group was the painting with our slice of the sea, along with others, the symbolism of which wasn’t even clear to me, but still, they were things I’d just wanted, even had to paint.
“What about them?” I asked.
“Nothing. I’m just not interested in them.”
I blinked, surprised.
“I don’t get it. You said I was good.”
“Of course you are, but there’s better and worse stuff, don’t you think?” I could see he was trying to take it easy on me, as if my ego were made of glass, and that irritated me. “As for this one…” He grabbed the picture of the sea. “I want to buy it. Name your price.”
I opened my mouth, then closed it again.
“Have you lost your mind?” I shouted.
“No. I like it. I’ll hang it up in the kitchen.”
“Axel, this isn’t a joke.”
“I’m not joking, Leah. Name your price.”
There he was, the same Axel as always, the one who could knock me off-kilter with three or four words. Even if he was trying tomake things easyfor me, he would always be complicated. I tried to stay afloat, to keep from falling into the trap.