Of all the scenarios I had imagined could occur at Bluesfest, this was the one I hadn’t expected. I thought she’d spend the night pissed off, on her own in some corner. Spend a little time with her friend and then call me when she got bored. I never thought I’d find her drunk and…in this state.
I parked in front of the house, still on edge.
The silence grew denser when we went inside and I threw the keys on the sideboard. I ran a hand through my hair, thinking of what to say and how, but finally I let go and shouted.
“So it’s true, I really am your fucking babysitter. What were you thinking, Leah? You go out one night after a year of not doing anything, and you end up like this? Can you not control yourself and act like a normal human being? What the fuck were you doing with that dude? Are you serious? How could you even think of just vanishing without your phone, without telling anyone, and…?”
I stopped talking. I stopped because Leah wrapped her hands around my neck, leaving frozen the words I would never utter, and kissed me. Fuck. She stood on tiptoe and kissed me. My stomach turned when her lips grazed mine, and I had to grab her hips to push her away.
“What are you doing, Leah…?”
“I just wanted…to feel. You said…”
“Yeah, but not like that. Leah, babe…”
I stopped, uncomfortable, seeing her there so vulnerable and small and broken. I just wanted to hold her for hours and relieve whatever she was starting to feel. I had forgotten how she was, that intensity that blinded her, that impulsivity that called to her to leap into the void.
Ironically, she was everything I wasn’t.
“I don’t feel good,” she moaned.
A second later, she vomited on the living room floor.
“I’ll clean this up, you take a shower.”
Leah stumbled off, and I wasn’t sure if she was well enough to shower on her own, but she stank like rum and I thought the water might clear her head.
I didn’t understand that last wounded look she gave me. That night, I didn’t understand anything.
I cleaned the mess while I listened to the water coursing through the pipes.
She had kissed me. Me. Leah.
I shook my head, confused.
I went to the kitchen when the water turned off. I looked around in the cupboards, but I couldn’t find any tea. I had used the last bag the night before. I tried to find something that would take the taste of Leah off my lips. And I wound up finding some cookies just as I heard her sweet voice behind my back.
“I need to know why you never noticed me.”
I turned around, surprised. There she was. Naked. Totally naked. Her skin wet, a puddle of water at her feet, her curves outlined under the moonlight coming through the window, her breasts small, round, and firm.
I was so stunned I couldn’t look away. My mouth went dry.
“Jesus. You want to give me a heart attack? Cover up, please.”
No, shit, don’t, because… My heart was about to jump out of my chest; if I blinked, I’d look down and see it lying there on the living room floor. Fuck…fuck… I don’t know when it happened or why, but my brain disconnected, as though someone had flipped a switch, and I stopped thinking. With my head, at least. I got hard.
That was the only thing that made me react. The excitement.
I grabbed the blanket on the sofa and wrapped her in it. Leah grabbed the edges almost from inertia, and fortunately, she held it over her body. I took a deep breath, my pulse still beating at a thousand, feeling like I was on fire there in front of my best friend’s sister. I wanted to bang my head against the wall.
“Go to bed. Now. Please.”
Leah blinked, about to cry, her eyes still glassy from the alcohol, and she went to her room. I stayed there, my breathing agitated, trying to take in all that had happened in a matter of hours.
26
_________
Leah
“Leah, you need to feel life. Always.”
“But what if what we feel isn’t always right?”
We were sitting on the steps of the back porch, and my mother was slowly braiding my hair, twisting the tufts between her fingers.
“You can be wrong. You can make a million mistakes. People are like that, we screw up, but that’s why regret exists, knowing how to say you’re sorry when you need to. But listen, you know what’s the saddest thing about not doing something because you’re afraid? As time passes, when you think about it, you have to ask yourself for forgiveness for not being brave enough. And reconciling with yourself is sometimes harder than doing it with others.”
27
_________
Axel
“I need to know why you never noticed me.”
The words echoed in my mind for the rest of the night. Lying in bed, unable to sleep, I remembered the day I went into Leah’s room to wait for her because her mother had told me she’d be there soon. I often hung out in the Joneses’ house whenever my parents went there to visit. I’d talk with Douglas, laugh with Rose, or examine Leah’s latest paintings.
I saw magic in her. All the things I never had.
I remembered an afternoon years back when I was waiting sitting in the chair at her desk. I was flipping through some scattered drawings among her papers. When I pushed some aside, I found a day planner open and full of notes like Turn in Biology homework Wednesday or B&L, friends forever. And next to them, a red heart with a name in the center: Axel.
I held my breath. I thought it might be a coincidence. Probably some classmate of hers had the same name, or some famous dumbass singer. Anyway, when she got home from school with a huge smile on her face, I buried the memory in some faraway part of my mind and left it there.
I didn’t look for it again until the night when everything started to change.
28
_________
Axel
The sun was already up when I woke up.
I was disoriented when I opened my eyes. I wasn’t used to being in bed with the sun shining high in the sky. But I mean, I also wasn’t used to popping a boner looking at a naked Leah or staying awake till 5 a.m. unable to stop thinking about something that hadn’t happened.
I sat up slowly, exhaling.
While I was heading to the bathroom, I started thinking of all I needed to say to her. It was going to be complicated to start with, because I didn’t know what the hell to say. First rule: No kissing. I clicked my tongue, cranky. Second: No getting drunk and throwing up in my living room. As far as getting out of the shower like that, well, we’d need to talk that over, too.
Things were going to be different all right. And she needed to start cooperating.
I opened the door resolutely, angrily, but when I looked up, I was frozen, unable to turn my head away from the window that opened onto the back porch.
Leah was there in front of a canvas that was no longer white, and she was filling it with chaotic black and gray marks. I walked over to the window frame in silence, as if every brushstroke were pulling me toward her. I watched her run the brush across the canvas with a trembling hand.