Page 93 of All That We Are Together

“Is it because of me?” I took a curt drag.

“No.”

I knew she was lying. And I guess she knew I knew that, because she stopped looking at me and started rubbing her fingers across the shag carpet.

“I guess it’s all the changes, you know? I’m used to working in my own space.”

I rubbed out my cigarette and stretched.

“You want to come with me tomorrow morning at dawn?”

“Okay.” She looked at me a long time, then smiled.

83

Leah

Climbing Montmartre every morning had a magical effect on me. Not so much for the walk in itself as for the way it made me face the rest of the day differently. Channel my frustration. Try to keep calm. Sitting there in the heights of the city after the laborious ascent, Axel and I would let the minutes pass while the sun rose in the sky and the day began.

The third time we did it, Axel looked at me, intrigued.

“What are you thinking about?”

“Butterflies.” He raised an eyebrow, and I laughed as the morning glow bathed the roofs of Paris. “I was remembering how, when I was little, I loved to lie in the grass in my yard and watch the butterflies for hours, the way they’d flap around the trunk of a tree. I was thinking about that feeling you get when you’re little, when you don’t have any obligations or goals, and you’re not living by the clock. That was so nice. Being able to just watch without a care. I wish it was like that now. But all I can think is how next week Hans wants to see something, and I don’t have anything halfway decent. And all I want to do is spend the rest of the day watching a million butterflies whirl among the flowers.”

Axel smiled. With tenderness. With love.

84

Leah

I spent hours looking at the blank canvas. Blocked, but at the same time with emotions bubbling up inside me. The problem was, if I let them out, I knew Axel would understand each and every one of them when he saw my work. He’d know if it was about Landon, about me, or worse, about him.

I was startled when he knocked at the door and came in with a bag and a package in wrapping paper that he set down in the middle of the studio to my evident disconcertment.

“What is that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? It’s a gift.”

“But…”

“Come on, open it!”

I knelt in front of the rectangular box and tore into the paper with the bright red bow. I smiled until my cheeks twitched with happiness and got up to hug him, even though my body screamed at me not to, because having him so close was complicated: hearing his heart beat against my chest, feeling his hands on my back, his hot breath on my neck…

“It’s precious! Thank you!”

“Wait, I’m going to turn it on.”

Axel grabbed the record player and put it on top of a wooden shelf full of art materials. It was a classic model, similar to the one he had at home.

“Where’d you get it?”

“In a secondhand shop.”

“We don’t have any records here though…”

He passed me the bag, which was still in his hands, then busied himself with the record player. I pushed some junk off the table and took the records out. I blinked to keep from crying, but at the same time, I was grinning. Frank Sinatra, Nirvana, Elvis Presley, Supertramp, Bruce Springsteen, Queen…and the Beatles. Always the Beatles. I slid my fingers slowly over the cover with the drawing of the yellow submarine on it and shivered when I realized he was looking at me.

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