Page 48 of All That We Are Together

I wished I could plant my lips on that smile.

41

Leah

I said goodbye to Axel when he closed the gallery at midday, and I walked to the Nguyens’. I got the urge to listen to some music along the way and stopped to pull out my headphones. I skipped through several songs on the sidewalk until I reached those of a band I’d barely listened to those past few years. I hit play and heard the first chords of “Hey Jude.”

I started strolling again to the song’s rhythm.

Georgia greeted me with one of those hugs that squeeze the breath out of you. Daniel just clapped me on the back as he accompanied me to the living room. The table was set and full of food.

“You’ve outdone yourself. This is too much.”

“I know how much you like a good roast. Sit down before it gets cold, honey.” They sat with me. “There’s also cheesecake for dessert.”

I tried not to get too excited.

“You’re gorgeous. Look how long your hair is!” Georgia poured me some water and grabbed the knife to carve the meat.“Now we need you to tell us every last detail about the exhibition, don’t we, Daniel?”

“We sure do.” He smiled affably. “We knew you’d make it.”

“I mean, it’s really all thanks to Axel.”

I don’t know why I felt the need to point that out. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do, because I noticed Georgia had to take a sip of water to get down the bite of food she was chewing. But still, it was true. Despite everything, it was Axel’s doing, like so many other things. He may have made mistakes, but that didn’t take away from his virtues.

Georgia was nervous as she looked at me. Her husband smiled with pride though.

“My boy’s intuitive. He’s got a good head for business.”

“That doesn’t surprise me. He seems to like it.”

“We hope it lasts.” Georgia sighed and twisted her paper napkin up between her fingers. “With all that happened, we…”

“What my wife’s trying to say is it isn’t any of our business,” Daniel said, cutting her off, but she gave him an irritated look and continued.

“It is our business in a way. What I want to tell you is, I know Axel can be complicated, and what he did was wrong. But he’s not a bad boy, and you know that. We don’t want you to vanish again, Leah. These years have been hard on all of us.”

“What he did?” I asked.

“I mean, you were just a girl.”

“He didn’t do anything wrong.”

“Think about all you’d been through.”

That stung. I blinked. It was strange; I felt this pressure in mychest. To me, the one thing Axel did wrong was be a coward, not face up to everyone else and himself, and in that way he failed himself, and he failed me too. That was what I couldn’t forgive. But hearing those words from his mother, I started to understand the burden he was under. Not that I was justifying his actions, but I realized he might have been scared, and that none of this was easy…

I wanted to free him from that, at least with his family. I put my silverware aside and took a breath.

“I know we’ve never talked about this before, I guess because it was easier to ignore it and just keep going like it was nothing…” Georgia was watching me, expectant, attentive, a little abashed. “But in all honesty, I didn’t fall in love with Axel those months we were living together. I fell in love with him long before. I always loved him. And I wanted to be with him. What happened between us wasn’t bad. It was anything but.”

“Leah, you don’t have to go on.” Daniel reached across the table and squeezed my hand.

But I wanted to go on, because I needed things to be clear, and because Georgia’s silence was killing me. I blinked to hold back my tears.

“If I’m here today, it’s thanks to him. Because I didn’t want to paint. I didn’t want to talk. I didn’t want to live. And Axel…awakened me. And in a way, despite everything, he’s the one who gave me the future I have now.”

Georgia got up, eyes glazed, and left the room. For a long minute, all was silence, it seemed it would never end, and then Daniel surrounded me with a warm paternal embrace.