Page 34 of All That We Never Were

“Who knows. Probably from nowhere.”

“Axel…” She shook her head.

“What? If I was a cat, I’d want to be wild. Look at her; she probably lives in the woods hunting, and when she wakes up one day and feels lazy, she says, ‘Fuck it, I’ll stroll over to Axel’s house and empty out his pantry.’ So here she is.”

Her laugh filled the porch, me, everything.

The cat purred after finishing, while Leah stroked her back, and then she lay down on the floor and didn’t move, looking at us under the evening sun on a regular, ordinary Wednesday. I stretched my legs. Leah was sitting cross-legged.

“So, picking up where we left off: Do you understand?”

“What’s there to understand. I have to do what you do.”

“Exactly. You’re so reasonable, babe.”

“Don’t call me that,” she whispered with a hard, intense stare.

“What?”

“That…babe,” she managed to say.

“I’ve always called you that. It’s not… It doesn’t mean…”

“I know.” She looked down, and her blond hair hid her expression.

I needed a few seconds to take that in, to try and understand it. I had the feeling that I had spent years around a person I’d never managed to fully understand. I had remained on the surface, without scratching through or clearing the dust lying over the things people try to forget and leave locked up in the attic. And in those moments, I had her there in front of me, so different from what I remembered, the same, but different. More complex than ever, more mature but also harder to understand.

“Fine. I won’t call you that again.”

“It’s not the word; it’s the way you say it.”

“You want to tell me what you mean?”

She shook her head, and I didn’t push it.

I got up, went over to the record player, and chose an Elvis Presley LP. I put the needle in the groove and stood there watching the vinyl spin softly while the curved lines shifted. Then I went outside.

We spent that afternoon of music in silence.

32

_________

Leah

I remember the first time my heart broke. I had imagined it would be a hard crack, blunt, something that happened all at once. But it wasn’t; instead it was piece by piece, little sharp fragments. That was how I rang in the new year.

I was fifteen and my parents had gone to Brisbane to celebrate with the Nguyens, to a party with friends who had an art gallery Dad had worked with. I begged for weeks, and finally they agreed to let me stay with Oliver and Axel.

I had never put on makeup before, but that day Blair helped me: a little mascara, blush, and almost transparent lipstick. I wore a tight black dress for the first time and left my hair down. When I looked at myself in the mirror, I saw myself as mature and hot. I smiled until Blair started laughing behind my back.

“What are you thinking?” she asked me.

“That I’d like for tonight to be my first kiss.”

Blair sighed aloud and grabbed the lipstick from my hands to put it on herself there in front of the mirror. She turned around and arranged my hair over my back.

“You could kiss any guy in class.”

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