10
_________
Leah
The water struck me, and I closed my eyes.
Then the color was gone, and I felt safe again from those memories that try sometimes to creep in, the life that was no longer there, the things I used to want and no longer cared about. Because it wasn’t fair that everything remained the same now that nothing was the same. I was so far away from my former life, myself, that sometimes I felt like I had died that day, too.
I opened my eyes.
The water was whirling around me. I was sinking. But there was no pain. There was nothing. Just the salty taste of the sea in my mouth. Just calm.
And then I felt him. His hands pulling me into his body, his strength, his momentum tugging us upward. Then the sun hit us as we broke the surface of the water. I felt nauseated. I coughed. Axel ran his fingers down my cheeks, and his eyes, their blue so dark it looked black, stared me straight in the face.
“Fuck, Leah, babe, are you okay?” he asked, calling me babe, the way he had before. Ever since I was a child.
I looked at him, shaken. Feeling…feeling something…
No, I wasn’t okay. Not if I was feeling him again.
11
_________
Axel
Panic. losing sight of her—that was panic. My heart was still in my throat when we got back home, and I couldn’t stop thinking about her sinking in the choppy waters, how fragile she looked. I wanted to ask her why she hadn’t tried to come up, but I was scared to break the silence. Or maybe what I was really afraid of was her answer.
I stayed in the kitchen while she showered, looking out the window, tossing around the idea of picking up the phone and calling Oliver. When Leah came out and looked at me, nervous and ashamed, I had to hold back to keep from letting loose on her.
“How are you?”
“Fine, I just got lightheaded.”
“When you fell in the water?”
She looked away and nodded.
“I’ll be in my room,” she said.
“Fine. But I want to talk to you tonight.”
Leah opened her mouth to protest, but then she went into her room and closed the door. I took a deep breath, trying to calm down. I walked barefoot onto the back porch, sat on the cracked wooden steps, and lit a cigarette.
Damn right we needed to talk.
I took a last drag before going in again. I walked over to my desk and rummaged through the papers until I found a blank sheet. I grabbed a pen and wrote down all the questions that had occurred to me in those three weeks. I put the paper down close by and went on writing while I made dinner. I got the salad ready and knocked at her door. She didn’t object when I said we should have dinner outside.
The sky was covered in stars and I could smell the sea.
We ate in silence, almost without looking at each other. When we were done, I asked if she wanted tea, but she shook her head, so I went to the kitchen to put the plates in the sink. When I came back, Leah had her back turned, leaning on the railing and staring into the darkness.
“Sit down,” I told her.
She sighed loudly before turning around. “Is this necessary? I’m leaving the day after tomorrow.”
“And coming back a week later,” I replied.
“I won’t bother you.” She looked at me, pleading. She reminded me of a frightened animal. “I didn’t want to go; you’re the one who made me get in the water…”
“That’s beside the point. We’re going to spend a lot of time together this year, and I need to know things.” I took a sip of tea and glanced down at the sheet of paper in my hand covered in questions. “To start with, don’t you have any friends? You know what I mean, people to hang out with, like other girls your age.”
“Are you kidding?”
“No, absolutely not.”
Leah paused. I wasn’t in a hurry, so I got in the hammock and left my tea on the wooden railing while I lit a cigarette.
“I used to. I do. I think.”
“How come you never go out then?”
“Because I don’t want to, not anymore.”
“How long is it going to be that way?” I asked.
“I don’t know!” She was breathing fast.
“Fine…” I noticed the wrinkles in her forehead, the way her throat moved as she gulped. “That answers three of my questions.” I looked at the paper. “How’s school going?”
“Normal, I guess.”
“You guess or you know?”
“I know. Why do you care?”
“I never see you studying.”
“It’s not really any of your business.”
I tapped my chin a few times. Then I looked at her. As an equal. Not as if she were someone who needed my help and I was ready to give it to her. I saw fear in her eyes. Fear because she knew what I was going to say to her.
“I don’t want to have to remind you of this, but for a year, your brother’s been killing himself working for you, so you can go to college, so you can get ahead…”
I closed my mouth when she started sobbing.
I got up, feeling like an asshole, and hugged her. Her body shook against mine and I closed my eyes, holding on, holding on even though it hurt, because I wasn’t about to say sorry for what I’d said, because I knew this was how it had to be.
Leah pulled away and wiped off her cheeks.
I stayed there beside her, my arms on the wooden railing around the porch, the damp night breeze blowing around me. I grabbed my notes.
“Next up.” I had her right where I wanted her: open right down the middle, shaking. Stripped of the armor she wore at all hours. “Why aren’t you painting?”
If I hadn’t seen so many different things in her eyes, I could have sifted through the parts I was dissecting to try and understand her––but I wasn’t there yet. “I can’t stand colors.”
“Why?” I whispered.
“Because they remind me of before, and of him.”
Douglas Jones. Always covered in paint, colors, life. I had a lot of questions left on the page. Why can’t you accept what happened? Why are you doing this to yourself? How long do you think you’ll be like this? I balled it up in my hand and slipped it into my pants pocket.
“Are you done?” she asked, uncertain.
“Yeah.” I lit another cigarette.
“I thought you quit.”
“I did. I don’t smoke. Not the way smokers do.”
She smiled. It was a timid, fleeting smile, but for a millisecond, it was there, illuminating her face, tensing her lips, just for me.
12
_________
Leah
I don’t remember when i fell in love with Axel. I don’t know if it was one day in particular or if the feeling was always there, asleep, until I grew up and became aware that it was love, wanting someone, yearning for a glance from him more than anything else in the world. Or at least, that’s what I thought when I was thirteen, when he was living in Brisbane with my brother. If he came to visit, I would spend the night before sleepless with butterflies in my stomach. I used to write his name in my day planner, talk to my friends about him, memorize his every gesture, as though they hid some important message. Later, when Axel came back and settled in Byron Bay, I started to love him down to my bones. All I needed was to have him close and let that feeling grow even as I kept silent, as though it were in a locked box where I protected it and nurtured it with my daydreams.