Page 95 of All That We Are Together
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
But he wasn’t. he got up and dropped the brush before turning around, kissing me on the head, and leaving me alone in the studio.
And my fingers burned with the longing to transform every heartbeat to a color, and every color to a heartbeat that would shake the canvas until it came alive.
85
Leah
The days were full of music again, paintings and shared dawns. Every morning, coming down from Montmartre, we’d have coffee and toast together for breakfast, or a baguette with marmalade and butter, and then I’d go up to the studio and start working while Axel met with Hans or got lost in the city till lunchtime.
He gave me space. He didn’t come back into the studio, and I focused on the canvas in front of me as if nothing else in the world existed. Before I knew it, I’d finished something I was satisfied with. That day, while I kept glancing over at the picture as I cleaned my brushes and tried to clean up a little, my phone rang.
I took the needle off the record and picked up.
“How’s it going, pixie?” Oliver said.
“Good. Better.”
A few days before, I’d called him up to vent and tell him how stressed I was at the idea of painting for someone else instead of myself. He had calmed me down, telling me the steps I needed to take.
“I managed to finish something decent for the exhibition.”
“I knew you could.”
I sat down on the stool, exhausted, thinking about how in just a few days I’d be back in a gallery full of people, and I hoped I didn’t feel as out of place as last time. Twenty artists would be exhibiting this time, young promises, Hans had told me when we had lunch with him a few days before.
“How’s everything with Bega?”
“Good, planning the wedding; she doesn’t seem to understand that we’ve got almost half a year to do it. How’s Axel? I haven’t talked to him since a week ago.”
“Same as always.”
“Are you guys…having problems?”
“No. It’s complicated,” I confessed.
“He loves you. You know that.”
“Why are you doing this now?”
“You’re right, sorry. Forget about it. It’s none of my business.”
“That’s not what I meant, but…”
“As long as I know you’re okay, that’s enough. Call me if you need anything, even just to talk, okay?” He hung up right afterward.
____________
I tried to put on my best smile every time Hans came by to introduce someone to me, or whenever someone was interested in my work, but since they were talking in French, I barely understood anything, and I spent most of the evening watching Axel conversing with William and Scarlett. I think I was the only person in theentire room who could tell how fake his smile was, how rigid his shoulders under that tight button-down shirt that he must have been wanting to tear off. And I imagine he was the only one there who could read what was hidden in the lines of that painting hanging on the wall: the love, hate, doubt, guilt, the indecision in those strokes that changed direction just as they seemed to know where they were headed.
In some strange way, everything connected us.
As if he could hear my thoughts, he turned and looked at me, then walked over slowly, rolling his eyes.
“How’s the night going?” I asked.
“Good. Interesting,” he replied.