“Axel, thank you for this. Thank you for everything.”
I opened my eyes and analyzed her expression. We were close, and only her tousled hair came between us. “Don’t thank me. We’re a team, remember?”
“I thought you said tribe, and you were the chief.”
“True.” I laughed. I raised a hand, serious now, and touched her arm to get her attention. She pulled away brusquely. “Hey––you remember what we talked about at the beginning of the month?”
“Yeah, I remember.”
“Well, we’re almost at the end, and I want to ask you the same question as when we started. Are you ready?”
She shook her head, and I suppressed my desire to hold her and protect her from her own thoughts, the harmful ones, the fucked-up ones. I kept going despite her silent plea.
“You want to be happy again? With everything that implies. Assimilating the past, learning to leave it behind, smiling when you get up every morning without feeling guilty for doing it when they’re no longer here. Look at me, Leah.”
She did. Her eyes peered into mine while she nodded slowly, and my chest swelled with pride.
38
_________
Leah
I looked away. i couldn’t keep staring at him.
A soft quiver overcame me. A quiver with his name, because I knew it too well, so many years, so many moments… I took a deep breath, telling myself, You can control this. You can. I stood up.
Did I want to be happy? Yes, a part of me did.
I looked around. We were on a peak that seemed to be the furthest edge of the world, under a midday sun. The cape’s form looked like the tail of a green dragon on the edge of the Pacific Ocean, with sugarcane and macadamias. I looked at the turquoise water, the shapes of the sparse clouds.
“Leah, watch out!” Axel shouted, but I didn’t have time to react before a gigantic wave soaked me from head to toe. “Are you okay?”
“Are you laughing?” I shouted.
“Shit…yeah.” He laughed harder.
“You’re…you’re…” The words got stuck in my throat while I squeezed out my T-shirt, walking away from the edge of the promontory.
“Incredible? Amazing? The best?” He was following me.
“Shut up,” I said, smiling, and shoved him.
“Hey, don’t touch me. Not all of us feel like getting all wet in the middle of the day.”
I looked at his perfect smile, the one I had recreated so many times, drawing a waning moon, and the sparkle of his eyes, which were dark blue like the deep sea, like a stormy sky.
I shivered, not from the cold, but because of Axel.
Because of what he had always been for me. Because of the memories.
39
_________
Leah
Platonic friendships are like that; they stay with you forever. The years pass, and while you forget kisses and people stroking your face, you do keep on remembering that smile from that boy who was so special to you. Sometimes I thought that was what I felt, because it was platonic, because it was never requited, was like a question left floating in the air: What would it be like to kiss him? Years back, before I fell asleep, I used to imagine his kisses. In my mind, Axel’s kisses were warm, overwhelming, intense. Like him. Like his every gesture, his soft way of moving, his vivid expression full of unsaid words, his serene face with its clear lines…
I asked myself if the rest of the world saw him this way too, if those girls who turned around to watch when he passed had noticed all the things that made him special. How direct he could be, how hard he was beneath that easygoing appearance, how afraid he was to hold a brush in his hands if no one had told him what to paint…
Why was it so hard to forget a love that was never even real, that never existed?
Maybe because for my heart…it just was.
40
_________
Axel
“Another round? my treat.”
Oliver clicked his tongue. “I shouldn’t drink more.”
“I shouldn’t, it’s not right, I chipped a nail, what the fuck happened to my best friend? Come on, enjoy the night.”
“I should call and make sure she’s got keys.”
“Cool, do that and get it over with for once.”
My friend got up from the red wood table where we’d just had dinner. He walked off a bit to talk to Leah, who luckily, since she was friends with Blair again, usually had her phone on her. Not like me, it was as if my subconscious refused to give in to that device that forced me to be available twenty-four hours a day. That night, Leah had agreed to go with my parents, Justin, Emily, and the twins to a flea market outside the city, so I hoped Oliver would relax a little bit.
“Okay, everything’s cool; she’ll go home on her own.”
“See? It wasn’t so complicated.”
“Order me something strong.” Oliver smiled.
Like the good friend I took myself to be, I walked over to the bar. The dinner service was over and there was a musical atmosphere in the place full of colorful chairs and weird prints. I greeted one of the bartenders, an old friend from school, and ordered two drinks.
“Bring me up to date before I’m hammered,” Oliver said, licking his lips after taking a long sip. “How are things with Leah? Everything normal?”
She got naked, she kissed me, I remembered, but I ignored that fleeting thought and tried to make the image of her body fade into the background. But I couldn’t. She was a fucking demon. I would go to hell for being unable to forget a single curve, a single fucking inch of her body.
“Yeah, everything’s great, you know, routine.”
“She’s better though. She’s different.”
“Sometimes a change of scene is good for a person.”
“Maybe. True. And how are you?”
“Nothing new. Lots of work.”
“At least your job is bearable. I swear to you, one day I’m gonna get up, go to the office, and try and kill myself with the stapler. How can anyone keep from losing their mind in one of those cubicles? They’re like little jails.”
I laughed.
“I’m serious, you wouldn’t last two days in there with all those rules and all the jerk-offs there…”
“Let me remind you I was an intern in an office.”
“Yeah, maybe you forgot that you set off a fire extinguisher and sprayed the boss’s office before taking off laughing like a fucking madman.”
“Guilty as charged. But he was an idiot; he deserved it. It was a kind of poetic justice on behalf of my colleagues and all the future interns who were going to pass through there. They should have started a fan club for me or something.”
“Yeah, just what you needed. Order another.” He raised his empty glass.
“What am I, your fucking slave? I invite you to dinner, I babysit for you for free, I put up with your whining…”
The waiter passed by our table and Oliver ordered another round, giggling.