Page 100 of All That We Are Together

“No! I didn’t leave! You threw me out of your life!”

“I know, and I’m sorry, but I thought…”

“It was the easiest thing for you. The most comfortable thing.”

“I thought it was the best thing for you.” I saw his jaw clench as he corrected me. “I lied to you because I didn’t know how to push you away from me, and if I’d told you the real problem, that I loved you too much, you would never have given in. AndI wanted you to live, Leah. I wanted you to go out and live, and then come back and choose me.”

“But why did you have to tell me you didn’t love me? Why couldn’t you choose another way to do things? I don’t know, talk to me, tell me we needed to take some time, and then later we’d figure out how to repair everything.” I was shouting. “But no. You destroyed me instead. You made me believe I didn’t matter enough to you, and I actually thought that for months and months, and then it turns out I was just too much for you. Ironic, don’t you think? Because it just so happens that you pushed me away, the same way you do with everything when it gets to be too much. The same as you did with painting. The same as you do with everything, dammit!”

I tried to leave, but he stopped me.

“Let me go!” I screamed in a rage.

“This conversation isn’t over.”

“It was over as soon as I realized you weren’t capable of being sincere. I should have understood a long time ago you never would be, that you’d always go looking for excuses…”

His face twitched, but instead of letting me go, he pulled me tightly into his chest, and his lips touched my ear as he whispered, voice cracking:

“I’m sorry I was weak, Leah. I’m sorry I was a coward. I swear, it’s still hard for me to believe that was me, but it was; it’s a fact and I can’t change it. I want to be different, I’m trying as hard as I can, but you’re right. I wasn’t perfect then, and I’m not now. Maybe I was wrong for pretending to be, and the undeniable truth is I’m a walking mistake, and I spend every day trying to changethat and regretting all that I’ve done wrong. I’ve been a terrible brother, a worse friend, and as for you, I…”

I covered his mouth with the palm of my hand.

“Don’t say more. Please, stop talking.”

I sniffled, hugged him, hid my face in his chest, grateful, relieved, because I’d needed him to admit that he was a coward, that he’d been wrong, I needed to know he was aware of it, but I didn’t want him to go on torturing himself, because even if Axel was all those bad things, he was many more good ones too. And what I had said that first day I let him into my studio in Brisbane was true. I’d hated him; I’d hated him a lot, almost as much as I had missed him.

We remained holding each other for an eternity. A perfect eternity, and I didn’t want to let him go.

“I want to show you something,” he whispered.

“Now?” I pulled away to look at him.

“Yeah. Or when we get through this.” He sank his fingers in my hair and smiled, and I tried to preserve that smile in my memory forever. “Come here, sit down.”

He grabbed the stool and placed it in front of the sink, pushing me softly until I sat down. In the mirror, I watched him pick up the scissors.

“Are you kidding?” I laughed between tears.

“It’s not like you did any better.”

I tried to sit still as he grabbed a long tuft, and I heard the click of the scissors as blond hairs fell all over the floor around me.

“I’m just going to try to even it up for now. Tomorrow, you should go and see a hairdresser. And hope they understand your French when you try to explain what you’ve done.” When he wasdone, our eyes met in the mirror. Axel ran his fingers over the nape of my neck and kissed me on the head. “You’re perfect,” he said.

“I know you think this is funny, but it isn’t.”

I got up. He was trying to bottle up his giggles.

“I was being dead serious,” he assured me. He put his hand out, and after a moment’s hesitation, I took it. “Now come on. I said I wanted to show you something. I want to be sure we don’t miss the last train.”

88

Leah

He was the piercing

Apex of the stars. He hurt.

---