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I didn’t look for it again until the night when everything started to change.
28
_________
Axel
The sun was already up when I woke up.
I was disoriented when I opened my eyes. I wasn’t used to being in bed with the sun shining high in the sky. But I mean, I also wasn’t used to popping a boner looking at a naked Leah or staying awake till 5 a.m. unable to stop thinking about something that hadn’t happened.
I sat up slowly, exhaling.
While I was heading to the bathroom, I started thinking of all I needed to say to her. It was going to be complicated to start with, because I didn’t know what the hell to say. First rule: No kissing. I clicked my tongue, cranky. Second: No getting drunk and throwing up in my living room. As far as getting out of the shower like that, well, we’d need to talk that over, too.
Things were going to be different all right. And she needed to start cooperating.
I opened the door resolutely, angrily, but when I looked up, I was frozen, unable to turn my head away from the window that opened onto the back porch.
Leah was there in front of a canvas that was no longer white, and she was filling it with chaotic black and gray marks. I walked over to the window frame in silence, as if every brushstroke were pulling me toward her. I watched her run the brush across the canvas with a trembling hand.
I don’t know how long I stood there on the other side of the window before deciding to go out onto the terrace. Leah looked up at me and I sank into her reddened eyes. Afraid, ashamed, wanting to run away.
“Last night never happened,” I said.
“Okay. I’m sorry… I’m really sorry.”
“You can’t be sorry about something that never happened.”
Grateful, Leah lowered her head and I stood beside her, looking closely at the canvas. I could see it well now. The gray splashes were stars in a dark sky; the lines falling downward and ending in curls made it seem as though the night were made of smoke. Really, all of it was smoke. I realized that as I saw how it twisted at the edges, as if that gloom were trying to escape the edges of the canvas.
“It’s fucking sinister,” I said with admiration.
“It was…it was supposed to be a present,” she stuttered.
“A present.”
“A present. An apology. For you. Painting, you know.”
“Leah, did you start painting again for me?”
“No. I just…” The brush shook in her hand, and she tried to set it down on the railing, but I grabbed her wrist to stop her.
“I don’t want you to stop. Not because you regret something that never happened, but because I need it. Even if it’s black and white, I don’t care. I need what was there before. To see through you the things I could never find in myself. Look at me, babe. Do you understand what I’m trying to tell you?”
“Yeah. I think so.”
29
_________
Leah
He never told oliver what happened the night we went to Bluesfest. That week with my brother was a mental rest, without pressure, without anyone nipping at my heels. Axel made it hard for me to breathe. It was as if all the feelings I struggled to keep under control overflowed when he was there, and I didn’t know what to do about it. Every time I took a step back, Axel pushed me forward.
“I was thinking…” my brother told me on Saturday, one day before he left again, while he was drying his hair with a towel. “You want to go out to eat? We could take a little stroll too.”
“Sure.”
