Page 55 of All That We Are Together

“Do you go to school with him?”

“No.”

“He doesn’t paint?”

“No. Do you?”

“Me?” I asked, confused.

“You’re still not painting?”

“Correct. Did you expect otherwise?”

“I don’t know. I never know what to expect with you.”

“Is that good or bad?”

She shook her head, as if she weren’t sure what she was doing there on my porch, and she brought her fingers to the bridge of her nose.

“Could you take me to the hostel, Axel?”

“I can. Now ask me if I want to.”

“Do you want to take me…?”

I was going to respond. I was going to say no, goddammit, she should stay, forever, but when I saw how her eyes were pleading with me, I had a change of heart. I could almost hear her in my mind saying, “Please don’t do this. Please, please, please.” And however shitty it was, I thought: better to have a bit of her friendship than lose all of her again forever.

“Wait here, I’ll go get the keys.”

Five minutes later, we were in the car.

We barely talked as we passed through the streets on the way to the hostel. When we got there, I didn’t cut the motor; I just pulled over to one side of the road.

“Thanks for coming. And thanks for dinner.”

“It was nothing,” she said.

We looked at each other in the darkness. The light of a far-offstreetlamp glanced off the windshield. The street was deserted, and it had started to drizzle.

“So…friends?” I asked.

“Friends,” she answered calmly.

I stopped her as she opened the door.

“Are you really going to leave without giving me a kiss?”

“Axel…” Her eyes drilled into me.

“Sorry. I’m a bad little boy.”

I pointed to one of my cheeks, and I could see she was trying not to grin as she bent over and gave me a kiss so soft I could barely feel it. She got out before I could complain, and I stayed there smiling like an idiot while she crossed the street and went upstairs.

46

Leah

I was reading a magazine on my parents’ porch when Axel appeared. I remember it was summer, I was on break from school, and I couldn’t stop thinking about what Jane Cabot, a classmate, had told Blair and me a few days before: she had kissed a boy. She was the first girl in our class to do it.