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I walked toward the entrance. Axel followed me.
I rang the doorbell. My stomach clenched when she opened the door. She was a young woman, around forty, with a sweet gaze, pale skin, slightly sunken cheeks. Tension encircled us.
“I was waiting for you. Come on in.”
I could see her hand was trembling as she leaned on the door frame. It was hard for me to say the words, but I knew I needed to do it on my own, for me, because he had been beside me from the beginning, supporting me and lifting me up, helping me to keep going, to get stronger. I tried to control my angst.
“It’s okay… Don’t come in…” I whispered.
Axel seemed surprised, but stepped back and put his hands in his pants pockets. “No worries, I’ll be here waiting for you. Don’t rush.”
I followed the woman inside, and my heart started pounding when she closed the door. I looked at her living room, the framed photos of two smiling children with gap teeth, the comfy, familiar-looking sofa where I ended up sitting down.
She asked me if I wanted something to drink, and when I shook my head, she sat down in a chair in front of me and started rubbing her hands together. “I’m a little nervous,” she began.
“Me too,” I admitted in a hoarse whisper.
I looked at her. I looked at the woman who had changed my life, who one day, after a twelve-hour shift at a hospital, closed her eyes for a few moments behind the wheel and crossed over her lane into the opposing one, where we were driving while the first notes of “Here Comes the Sun” played. I thought I should feel hatred and rage and more pain, but when I felt around inside myself and looked, all that was there was compassion and a bit of fear of how unpredictable life can be. Because that day I had been on the other side, but on any other day, I could find myself in her shoes, because there are things you can’t foresee and almost can’t forget. And when she told me in tears how sorry she was, I realized that my work in that house was done.
98
_________
Leah
It’s funny how things change. Some changes take years, a whole life, others happen in minutes. When I walked into that house, I was a different person from the one who came out just half an hour later. All it took was a couple of words. Often we see everything through filters, and then one day we start stripping them away and what’s left is reality.
When I came out and saw Axel leaning on the side of his car with his arms crossed, my knees trembled. Because I saw him more clearly. More mine. More him. More perfect. More everything. And I ran to him with my heart in my throat as if he were the one solid thing in the world, my world, the point everything else revolved around.
I hugged him. I grabbed his body, trembling but conscious of every detail: the softness of his skin, how good he smelled, how much I loved him, how important he would always be to me. I hid my head in the hollow of his neck and we stayed there, holding each other and swaying in the middle of the street, closing a trunk together that was full of pain before but where there were now only beautiful memories I never wanted to hide again.
“Months ago you said I thought you were an insensitive bastard because you kept pouring salt in the wound. And you were right. I thought about it.” I took a deep breath, getting lost in his blue eyes. “But you also said…that one day I would thank you, that I should remember that conversation…”
“Babe…” His voice was hoarse.
“Thank you, Axel. For everything. Thank you thank you thank you.” I hugged him again, this time harder, almost knocking him down against the car, and we stayed there a few minutes in silence, clutching each other.
99
_________
Axel
I turned up the radio when “A 1000 Times” started playing and put on my sunglasses as we drove away from that development and headed toward the coast. I looked at Leah out of the corner of my eye for a second, keeping that image for myself, her with her eyes closed, singing softly, the midday sun caressing her eyelashes, the tip of her nose, and her smile. And I remembered one of the first things Douglas taught me when I was young, that light was color, that without it there was nothing.
We stopped to buy some sandwiches and ended up on the beach. There was no one there, just some surfers far off. I took a big towel out of the trunk and stretched it out over the sand. Leah lay down, stretching her arms, and I had to suppress the urge to cover her with my body and caress her all over. I sat down beside her and waited until she sat up to give her some food. When she finished the last bite, she stood up, walked to the shore, and let the water splash her legs. I contemplated it, absorbed in how it seemed to fit in with the landscape, in the beauty of that picture, the peace that warmed my chest as I saw her there, so whole, so happy, so herself.
She ran over to me smiling and flopped down on the towel, her eyes squinting from the sun. Leah kissed me on the neck, the jawline, the eyelids, the lips. I let out a soft moan and got hard. I squeezed her against my body.
“You’re my favorite person in the world.”
I laughed. “And you’ll be the end of me,” I whispered.
Leah drew spirals with her fingertips on my shoulder and moved slowly down my arm. She asked me to close my eyes and try to guess what she was tracing out on my skin. I took a deep breath when I made out I love you. Love, Submarine. I liked how it made sense for us and no one else.
“Axel, do you think…do you think you could draw me?”
I opened my eyes and my pulse started racing. “I don’t know. No, I couldn’t.”
