Page 74 of All That We Are Together

Around 6 p.m., we left.

“What about the other pictures?”

“Don’t worry, they’ll take them to the gallery.”

“Okay.” I bit my lip. “Are you sure everything’s all right?”

Axel was toying with his keys. Instead of putting them in the ignition, he leaned back in his chair and exhaled wearily. Then he rubbed the bridge of his nose and clicked his tongue.

“I talked to Oliver last month…” Just hearing that made me nervous. “We talked about you. About everything that happened three years ago. About me. About what I did wrong, what I screwed up back then, and…”

“Please, no,” I begged him.

“Leah…”

“No.”

“Why?”

I realized this was an important moment, one of those that shifts the scale. I thought while my heart began to pound. I had the answer, but it hurt me to have to say it.

“Because then I’ll hate you, Axel. And right now, I can’t do that. You just appeared in my life again, and…I need you. I don’t want to think about everything that happened or why you did it. Still worse, how youcoulddo it. I don’t want to think about what might have happened if the university hadn’t offered me thatexhibition, if you’d never had the balls to come back into my life. I don’t want anything to break now, when we’re finally rebuilding our friendship.”

“I’d have found you sooner or later,” he said.

“Maybe. We’ll never know though.”

“I know, babe. I swear to you, I know.”

I swallowed, on the verge of tears, and noticed a bitter aftertaste, as if the words didn’t want to go down, and my thoughts were so wrapped up in all he was saying that I struggled to find the thread.

“Axel, I don’t want to lose you again.”

“I’d never let that happen.”

I’d never seen him like this. Weak. Insecure.

“I need more time,” I managed to say. “Then maybe one day…”

Maybe one day I’ll be able to look you in the eye while you tell me how the hell you were capable of giving up all we had, a story I was ready to sacrifice everything for. How you managed to sleep every night without crying. How things could be so volatile for you. And then, maybe I could start to believe you when you say you would have come back for me sooner or later, because three years is too long. Three years is enough to build something new. In three years I almost forgot the shape of the scar on your forehead and the exact tone of your dark blue eyes.

I thought all that with a weary heart.

“What do you want now?” There was fear in his voice, but also impatience, as if he needed to finally know.

“I want you to be my friend. I want you back in my life. Don’t you want that, too, Axel? To be able to spend time together, likethe other night?” As I reminded him of this, I grinned slightly, recalling how we’d both ended up lying in the middle of the road when he’d carried me piggyback and I’d tickled him. “I want the old Axel,” I concluded.

61

Axel

Maybe life is moments. Just that. Moments. And sometimes you show up at the right time, and sometimes you don’t. Sometimes a second changes everything. Sometimes time draws a line. Sometimes, when you want to talk, the other person isn’t in the mood to listen. These things happen, I guess. You want something, and weeks later you can barely remember what it is, or else it’s lost all its value.

And the worst of all that is that I understood Leah.

I’d needed three years to be ready. Three years of silence after telling her maybe I didn’t love her that much, and seeing how her face crumpled, and she was hurt and cried, and she ran off in the middle of the night. Three years being an idiot. She deserved an explanation. She did. I wasn’t even sure what to tell her or how, but I needed to try; but then I stopped to think about what Leah needed, and for the first time, I realized I should stop looking at my own belly button and put her feelings before mine, because that’s what you do when you love someone.

And so I swallowed my words.