Page 85 of All That We Are Together

She seemed doubtful. But she went on:

“When will I see you then?”

It had been years since I’d seen her smiling like that.

71

Leah

There are wounds that cut straight into the flesh, and those are bad, but still worse are the ones that don’t bleed, that seem scarred over, but when you touch them, they hurt just like the first day.

Axel was my wound.

March

_____

(SPRING, PARIS)

72

Axel

I looked at the immense blue sea through the oval window, heart still uneasy, because flying wasn’t my thing.

“What are you thinking about?” Leah asked.

I turned to look at her. She was gorgeous.

“Trust me, you don’t want to know.”

“Just say it.”

“Fine.” I leaned my head into hers to be able to talk without others hearing. “I’m thinking about how we’re more than twenty thousand feet in the air in a tin can, and I don’t trust it, and neither of us can get out…” I looked down at her lips, which were moist. “And I guess if I was looking for the perfect moment to tell you that I’m still wild about you, this would be it. Or to tell you I don’t know how, but I’ll keep trying every day to get you to forgive me. Or that I’ve been about to kiss you so many times…”

“Axel…” She was tense, her breathing accelerated.

“But those are just suppositions.”

I smiled innocently, and she released the breath she’d been holding in.

73

Leah

We’ve all got our defense mechanisms. Against pain, betrayal, danger. Channeling emotions, knowing how to digest them and internalize them, isn’t always easy. In my case, the hardest thing was the end point. I’d think and think and think about the same thing over and over, turning it over, looking at it from different angles and perspectives until I’d found what for me was a valid conclusion. And then…I wouldn’t know what to do with that conclusion. What do you do with feelings once you’ve labeled them in your mind? Order them by color? Put them in a box? Let them accompany you throughout your day, learning to wear them like a scarf that squeezes your neck tighter and tighter?

I didn’t know how to let go. How to let my thoughts be.

Maybe that was why I still hadn’t talked with Axel, because a part of me resisted it. I had infinite reproaches, but I couldn’t let them out, even though carrying them around was eating me up inside and they seemed to weigh on me more every day. I was scared. I didn’t want to open the box where I kept all that ugliness, all that happened between us.

It scared me that the line between hate and love was so fine, so slender that you could jump straight from one extreme to the other. And I loved him… I loved him in my entire being, with my eyes, my heart. My entire body reacted when he was near. But another part of me hated him. I hated him with my memories, with words never uttered, with scorn, and was incapable of opening my arms and offering him forgiveness, however much I wanted to do so. When I looked at him, I saw black, red, throbbing purple: emotions welling over. And feeling something so chaotic for him hurt me, because Axel was a part of me. He always would be. Despite everything.

74

Leah

A taxi driver was waiting for us at the airport.