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“And I’d make you say my name while I did it.”
I opened my mouth to say something, but nothing came out. We stayed there in silence, both of us breathing hard, not noticing the music or the people around us. Axel sighed and rubbed his face with his hands.
“We should go,” he said.
“Already? It’s early, and…”
“Leah, please.”
“Fine.”
64
_________
Axel
Oliver grabbed his pony of beer and smiled, relaxed. We were sitting on the porch steps, and the sea breeze was whipping through the surrounding brush.
“So things are happening with Bega.”
“That’s how it looks. I like her. I like her too much.”
“I can see that…” I took a sip of beer.
“I didn’t think I’d ever feel this way…”
“I never thought I’d witness it.” I laughed.
Oliver ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t know, at first I just liked her, but things got complicated. She’s…different. I know you think I’m not making sense, but it’s true, Axel. You think it’ll never happen, and then one day there’s someone you can’t get out of your head.”
“I need to grab a smoke.”
I went to the kitchen for my cigarettes. When I came back, he was uncomfortable, like when you’ve got a tiny stone in your shoe and it doesn’t hurt, but you can’t help noticing it’s there. I lit my cigarette.
“How are things around here?” Oliver clapped my back and I coughed up a cloud of smoke.
“Good. Like always, I guess.”
“I wouldn’t say that. Leah’s changed. A lot. For the past two months, she’s seemed like the girl I used to know.”
I swallowed the words burning in my throat because, from my point of view, she wasn’t at all like the girl of before. There were things that would never change, but lots of new ones too. The Leah who lived with me was more complex, more intriguing, and unfortunately for me, a lot more of a woman. She had her cold, distant side, the one that painted in black and white and spent hours shut up in the room with her headphones on or a piece of charcoal between her fingers. Then there was the other one, the unpredictable one who caught me by surprise and fucked up my life, stripping naked in the middle of my living room on a random night. I liked both of them, damn it, in some twisted way I couldn’t quite work out.
“Yeah, a little at a time.” I took a long drag. “Hey, when they gave you the job, didn’t you say maybe you’d be able to cut your time there short?”
“I was thinking about it, speeding things up…”
“Can you still?”
“Why, is Leah giving you trouble?”
“No, it’s not that.” I rubbed my face. “Forget it.”
“Come on. Spit it out.”
Oliver was impatiently awaiting a response. I could feel my heart beating faster. We had spent our whole damn lives together. Until a few years ago, I didn’t know how to do anything without him. He was the only true friend I’d ever had, almost a brother. And I was acting like a bastard.
“I was just saying, because of the dates. The idea is she’s going to go to college, right? So depending on when she starts, we’ll have to look at dorms. And so that made me think maybe I could take her one day to Brisbane, show her the campus… Maybe that would motivate her. I wanted to talk to you about it first.”
