Page 38 of All That We Are Together
He pulled away, turned around, and looked at me there in the shadows.
“I get it.” He kissed me on the cheek.
“Come with me,” I whispered without really thinking. “I’ll rent a room in a hostel. I don’t know. I can introduce you to my friends, show you the place I grew up…”
“Leah, you’re going to be working all day, and I’ve got things to do here; I can’t just drop everything.” He slid a lock of hair behind my ear.
“You’ll come to the exhibition, though, right?”
“Yeah, for sure. I’ll try to be there.”
I stood on my tiptoes to give him a slow kiss that warmed up my breasts. Landon’s lips were soft and firm, full of lovely promises that a part of me wanted to see fulfilled. But the problem was the other part, the one that wouldn’t give in, as if it were hanging on too tight to something else…
37
Leah
Axel wanted to oversee the entire process of packaging and transport. We started on Tuesday at the break of dawn and stayed with the workers who were wrapping the pictures and taking them down to the van. I grabbed a sheet of the bubble wrap they were using and entertained myself popping it while I sucked on a strawberry lollipop.
He came over after talking to one of the men.
“You bored?” he asked.
“No, but I don’t have anything to do.”
“You want to go to the café for a bite?”
“Sure.” I stood up and followed him to the street.
We sat at the same table where we’d been the day I let him into the attic for the first time. We ordered a couple of sandwiches and soft drinks.
“You seem absent.” Axel tilted his head.
“It’s not that, it’s just…it almost doesn’t seem real. I feel like this is happening to someone else, and I’m just here watching it like a spectator. Don’t worry about it.”
“No, I think I understand. You haven’t assimilated it.”
We looked at each other while they served our food. I broke eye contact, picking my sandwich up and taking a bite, even though I wasn’t very hungry. Axel ordered some fries, and when he asked if I wanted to share, I shook my head, because, dumb as it seemed, there was something intimate about that act, and it was still almost impossible for me even to look up, knowing he was right there in front of me. I hadn’t assimilated that either.
Him, the exhibition…everything had happened all at once.
I looked at his arms bronzed by the sun. His long masculine fingers. His nails—chewed. His gestures, all of them firm.
I looked at everything, honestly. Because there was something about Axel that entrapped me, and I gave in to it, capturing the little gestures and feelings, and then letting them go and letting thembe. He alwayswasin some weird way, and I was certain an artist could create a whole series of paintings just observing him attentively for a while.
When we were done eating, Axel went once more to the studio to make sure they’d left nothing behind. It was sad to see the place so empty, without all that work that had piled up because I’d never considered actually doing anything with it.
He made sure everything was arranged in the van, and said goodbye to the driver after repeating for a third time that Sam would be waiting for him at the gallery in Byron Bay.
“You’re a little obsessed, you know?” I said when we walked back to my dorm, where we had met to walk to the studio.
“I want everything to go well.” He smiled.
And that smile gave me goose bumps as we walked downthe street in silence. For the first time since we’d met again, the absence of words didn’t make me uncomfortable. It was a little like before, when we could spend hours with each other without saying a word.
When we reached my room, Axel grabbed my suitcase. I followed him as I ran down a list of all the things I had packed for those days in Byron Bay, because I always had the feeling I was forgetting something.
“Goddamn! What the hell’s in here?” he grunted as he lifted it to the trunk of his car.