Page 21 of All That We Never Were

I grinned, and it almost hurt. “It’s what you always wanted to do.”

“It is. And you? Are you going to go to college?”

“Seems like it.” I shrugged.

That had been my dream a long time ago, but it seemed vague just then, and a burden. I didn’t want to leave. I didn’t want to be alone in Brisbane. I didn’t want to have to meet new people when I wasn’t even capable of relating to the people I grew up around. I didn’t want to paint or study or anything like that. I didn’t, but Oliver…

My brother had gone from living glued to his surfboard and walking barefoot at all hours to being the administrative director for a major travel agency, because he’d always been an ace with numbers, and one of the partners at the company knew my father and offered him the job two weeks after the accident. I remember Oliver told him, You won’t regret it, and my brother was a man of his word, the kind who always does what he says. The same way he saved his last dollar so I could go to college.

However much I hated the idea, I didn’t want to disappoint him, hurt him more, cause him more problems, but still, I didn’t know how to stop feeling this way, so sad, so empty…

“Axel seems like a straight shooter,” Blair said.

“He is.” And I was pissed at him.

“He also seems like he cares about you.”

I looked down at my plate and concentrated on the intense green of the lettuce, so vibrant, the red of the tomato, the amber of the pumpkin seeds, the yellow of the corn, and the dark brown, almost black, of the raisins. I took a breath. It was pretty. Everything was pretty: the world, color, life, like I used to see it before. If I looked around, all I saw were things I wanted to transform—make my own version of the salad, of the dawn in front of the sea, of the woods behind my old house that made me want to spend the rest of my life with a brush in my hand when I saw Axel’s expression as he looked at them.

21

_________

Axel

Leah was already at the door of the supermarket when I got there. She was mad. I ignored her furrowed brow, we got in my car, and we spent the whole drive in silence. I carried the grocery bags into the kitchen, and I hadn’t started to put the things in the cabinet when she appeared, gorgeous and incensed, surrounded by new outlines showing curves that had been vague the month before. Her eyes were gleaming.

“How could you do that to me?”

“That? Be more specific, Leah.”

“Betray me like that! Trick me!”

“You are thin-skinned.”

“And you’re an idiot.”

“Maybe, but did you have fun? What’s it like hanging out with another human being? Nice? Now’s the moment when you say, ‘Gee Axel, thanks for helping me take this step and being so patient with me.’”

But none of that happened. Leah blinked, trying to hold back tears of frustration, turned around, and went to her room. I closed my eyes, tired, and rested my head on the wall, trying to focus. Maybe it had been a bit rushed, but I knew…no, I felt that it was what I had to do. Despite her, even despite what I would have liked. Because seeing her like that, so pissed, so hurt, was a thousand fucking times better than seeing her empty. I remembered what I had thought that morning, about holding a string in my hand and pulling till it tightened…and that was what made me go to her room and open the door without knocking.

“Can I come in?”

“You already are in.”

“True. I was trying to be nice.”

She tried to strike me dead with her stare.

“Let’s get to the point. Did I trick you? Sure, a little. Was it for a good cause? Yeah. So I want to let you know I’ll be doing it again. And I know you think I’m an insensitive fucking asshole who enjoys pouring salt in your wounds, but one day, Leah, one day you’ll thank me. Remember this conversation.”

She brought a trembling hand to her lips and whispered to me to go before she got up, opened the window, and grabbed the headphones from her table.

* * *

The next few days, we barely talked.

I didn’t care. I couldn’t stop thinking about all I’d read about PTSD. And at least I had found a way to break the paralysis and apathy for a few seconds, and that was better than nothing. When Leah got mad, there was no indifference in her eyes, and her feelings took over and she couldn’t do anything about it. So I had her there, I was pulling the cord slowly, I just had to find the right way to do it.

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