Page 52 of All That We Never Were

“We can’t choose these things, Leah…” She gave me a gentle look. “How is living with him?”

I thought it over. I’d been in that house in the middle of all that nature for four months. I didn’t remember much about the first two months, which I spent shut up in my room. March had been chaos. I got mad at him, I lost control at Bluesfest, and I started actually painting again. When April arrived, Axel had tightened the reins, forcing me to make a decision. And sometimes, being the way you are is easier, more comfortable, than facing change.

“Up and down. It’s good right now.”

“Be you, Leah,” she said.

“What do you mean?” I grew tense.

“In everything. With Axel too. Be like you were before. Let yourself go; don’t think about things. Don’t you remember? I used to laugh when you said your breath stopped when you saw him or you’d die for a kiss from him, but I was used to it because you’ve always been a little over the top.”

I brought my hand to my chest. Blair was right, but I still felt very far away from all that, even if sometimes a memory flared up, even if it vanished as quickly as it arrived. These were peaks, but they were unpredictable. I still had on my raincoat, despite all the holes in it, and it was hard for me to recognize myself in that girl I’d left behind, the one who wasn’t scared to take a leap without asking how far it was to the ground.

I pushed that image and the nostalgia from my mind. “Talk to me about you. You going out with anyone?”

“I wanted to talk to you about that, but I wasn’t really sure how.” Blair shifted, uncomfortable. “Last month I went out a couple of times with Kevin Jax.”

I smiled almost from inertia. Kevin hadn’t only been the boy who’d given me my first kiss in front of the golden trellis at my home; I had also lost my virginity to him a couple of years later, when I decided the time had come to be realistic and admit that Axel would never look at me like a woman instead of a girl.

“So how was it?”

“Nice. Too nice.”

“How can something be too nice?” I put a bite of muffin in my mouth.

“Leah…” she grimaced. “I told him I couldn’t keep going out with him until…until I’d talked to you. You all were together for a while. And we’re friends. That always comes first.”

I felt a slight tingle in my nose and blinked to keep from crying. I looked at Blair, so transparent, with her dark hair tousled and that sweet expression on her face. I didn’t deserve her. I didn’t deserve a friend like that, so loyal even though I had ignored her calls for months and had pretended I couldn’t see her every time she came to my house to see me, telling Oliver to open the door and make up some excuse.

“You can go out with Kevin. He’s a great guy, he really is. I think you will make a perfect couple because you’re both so generous.” I rubbed my nose and took a deep breath. “I’m really sorry about how I’ve been these past few months. I’m trying to change. To be better.”

“It’s working,” Blair said.

I went back to Axel’s house walking slowly, observing my surroundings as I hadn’t for a long time. The rocky path was surrounded by leafy vegetation in infinite tones of green: olive green, moss green, bottle green, lime green on the younger leaves, mint green, jade green…

Recreating every color had always been one of the things I liked most. Mixing paint, trial and error, mixing again, brightening, darkening, looking for the exact shade I had in my mind and wanted to transmit…

I walked faster when it started to rain. The drops of water were big and the rain intensified as I kept going, as if telling me it was time to hurry home. By the time I closed the door, it had transformed into a storm.

“I didn’t know if I should come get you,” Axel said.

“I arrived just in time.”

The sound of the rain echoed through the walls.

“I think there’s still hot water if you want a shower,” he said, and then I watched him walk toward the surfboard leaning against the wall by the back porch.

“What are you doing? Going surfing?”

“Yeah. I’ll be back in no time.”

“No! Don’t go…”

“The waves are perfect, it’ll be fine.”

“Please…” I begged again.

Axel mussed my hair and smiled. “I’ll be back before you know it.”

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