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“What’s with you?”
“It’s not the time, dear.”
She passed me the cheesecake and a knife, and asked me to serve it, and I left her alone with those thoughts she still didn’t want to share. My brother looked at me gratefully from the other side of the table. I started cutting the cake into pieces. I gave Leah the biggest one, even though I was pissed at her. Or at myself for how I was acting with her. Who knows.
Anyway, when I left that afternoon after saying goodbye to everyone and was walking through Byron Bay away from my parents’ place, I found myself waylaid by all the problems brought together between those walls with all the people gathered there. Emily, suppressing her reply. My brother, frustrated and insecure. My mother and her demons. My father and his conformism. Oliver and the burden he was dealing with. And Leah…
Maybe I was too used to the easy life.
Maybe I had spent half my life avoiding problems.
Maybe being alone looking at your belly button was the easiest way of surviving.
55
_________
Leah
“You want us to buy some takeout for dinner?”
“I’m stuffed,” I told Oliver.
“Too stuffed for ice cream?”
“That’s different.” I smiled at him.
I grabbed my jean jacket before we left, because it was getting chilly on those winter nights. I walked down the poorly lit streets with my brother, and I felt good. I felt like me. Like before. I felt the same when we sat on a patio close to the water and I ordered a chocolate pistachio ice cream.
In theory, it should have been the other way around…
I should have felt bad for what happened with Axel. Because he had disappointed me and disappointment always tastes bitter and is hard to swallow, but when you do, and you digest it, you can face up to things more easily, with a cooler head. Probably he wasn’t even aware of why I was upset. And realizing that in some way I was being faithful to myself made me feel stronger.
“I don’t want you to go,” I said. And it was true. For the first time, I wasn’t indifferent about who was at my side. I wanted my brother close to me.
“Three weeks will pass in no time.”
“Yeah, I can tell you’re dying for it to…” I looked at him, amused, and licked my spoonful of ice cream.
“Why do you say that?”
“Uhh, what’s her name, Bega?”
My brother nodded, slightly tense. “Don’t get ahead of yourself. It’s complicated.”
“I can imagine…”
“And you?”
“Me?”
“What happened to that guy you were going out with a while back?”
“Kevin? Nothing. He’s a friend. He’s with Blair now.”
“Wow. Are you cool with that?”
“Yeah, I was never that into him.”
