Page 35 of All That We Are Together

“Calm down,” I said. “Everything was fine.”

“But Leah said you’re going to represent her…”

The closest airport was in Brisbane, and every time they left for a trip or came back from one, my parents would try to see her.

“Yeah. What’s the problem?”

“After what you did…”

That fucking hurt. I guess the years always give you a different perspective, and what had once seemed wrong or forbidden was starting to appear in a different light. I no longer saw things the same way. And if I could have gone back in time… Let’s just say the last night Leah and I saw each other would have had a very different ending. I would have kissed her, taken her in my arms, carried her to my bed to make love and talk about our plans for the future, about keeping up a long-term relationship until she was done with school. With time, Oliver would have understood, just as he did later, after he left and the years gave him some tranquility. The same would go for my family. I just needed to be firm and take risks for what I loved.

And what I loved was her, in a way almost beyond reason.

But I hadn’t done any of that, so all I had was this parallel reality that would never exist because I didn’t lift a finger when Leah vanished from my life. She had struggled, had come for me, to my house in the morning, had tried to convince me that what we had was worth it, had cried in front of me without hiding oreven bothering to wipe away her tears, and I did…nothing. Same as always. Nothing. Stood still, not even taking a step forward. Or backward. Anchored in the middle of nowhere, holding myself back.

“I didn’t do anything wrong,” I replied.

“Showing up without warning!”

I grabbed her arm to keep her from rambling on forever, and she stopped.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. Not even back then. Three years ago.”

“Axel…” She looked at me with a mixture of tenderness and disappointment. “What happened was bad. Leah was just a girl, and she had been through a really difficult time.”

I could feel my jaw tense. I took a deep breath.

“You have no idea what we experienced when she was at my house. It’s easy to judge things from the outside without bothering to understand them. I…I fell in love. That’s it. I never thought it would happen, but it did. And what we had was real.”

I walked off. I’d never talked to my mother that way; I usually spent all my time with her joking around, grumbling, being sarcastic. After what happened, I’d never bothered explaining things to her; I’d let her yell at me, and I’d taken it all in because I thought that I deserved it.

“Axel, honey…” I let her hug me.

Justin and the twins entered the kitchen before we could keep talking, and I was grateful for it in part, because I wasn’t used to the idea of saying what I felt aloud, and when I did, it felt as if I were suddenly empty inside.

I grabbed a beer out of the fridge and returned to the living room. My father was sitting next to Emily watching the sports news. He looked at me, apparently happy.

“What’s up, dude? How’s life?”

“Just trying to make it,” I replied.

“Peace and love, son, peace and love.”

I smiled. I smiled for real.

35

Axel

Sam took off her glasses while I flopped into the chair in front of her desk. I looked around as always, noticing the silly gewgaws she’d stuck in the corners, her kids’ drawings, toys they’d left lying around when they came to visit, family photos…

“You got something to say?” She looked amused.

“I just wanted to make sure you’d talked to the shipping guys.”

Leah and I had agreed that we’d move the paintings from her studio to the gallery the following week. Taking advantage of the end of class, she was going to come to Byron Bay for a few days to help organize the exhibition.

“I talked to them; everything’s good to go.”