Page 54 of All That We Are Together

She grunted while I lit up, and stood there beside me with her hands on the railing. The dark night sky was dappled with stars.

“So…” I asked, “What’s this all about?”

“About? I don’t know what you mean.”

“You being here…”

“I just wanted to know how you were,” she repeated.

I tried to be strong and ask her the question I feared most, because maybe deep down I already knew her well enough to feel what she was feeling, and so I knew it would make me suffer. And it was still hard for me to face things. To accept them.

“Does this mean you’ve forgiven me?”

She waited a moment before responding.

“I’ve forgiven the Axel who was my friend, my family.”

“What about the one who used to fuck you?”

“No. Not that one.” I felt her staring through me. It stung.

And yet, in the midst of that pain, I understood her need to separate things, and that perhaps that was the only way she could get close to me again without reproaching me. We hadn’t talked aboutit. She hadn’t asked me to explain myself. And her reactions hadn’t been what I expected. It was as if nothing had happened, and we could go back to before, back to what we once had before the two of us decided to cross that line and everything changed.

I took a long drag and blew out the smoke.

“I get it,” I whispered.

Leah suddenly looked away, discomfited.

I leaned against the post as she stepped back, seemingly needing to leave, then started pacing nervously from one end of the porch to the other. I don’t know how many minutes passed that way. All I could think of was cutting through the distancebetween us and kissing her until we both forgot who we were and the history we were dragging behind us.

I clutched the railing.

“It’s fine, Leah, everything’s fine. Stop doing that.” She stood still then and ran a hand over the back of her neck. “I was serious when I said that. I understand how you feel.”

“Bullshit.”

“Babe…”

“You’ll never understand, Axel.”

I knew then I was never going to win that war. She had locked the door and thrown away the key, and I wasn’t sure knocking it down or waiting until she figured out how to let me back in were the right options.

“What about him? Doesheunderstand?” I asked.

Her eyes opened like saucers, and she shook her head.

“I’m not talking about him with you.”

“Why not?” I decided to bet everything on that card. “You’ve forgiven me, as a friend anyway, right? Then show it. I’m here. All I want is to talk. According to your reasoning, that should be easy.”

“He’s a good person,” she said.

“What’s his name?”

I don’t know if I needed to torture myself, but the one thing I wanted to do then was keep pulling harder and harder on that frayed fragile cord that united us until we were close enough that there was barely any room left to breathe. I didn’t care if it hurt. I didn’t care about anything anymore.

“Landon.”