I thought of the girl in my house. How complicated she was. All the knots I had untied little by little without grasping how many there still were to discover.
And at the same time, I liked that.
The challenge. It was almost a provocation.
I snuffed out the cigarette just as the cat appeared on the porch. It looked at me and meowed.
“Well, one time can’t hurt. You can spend the night.” I opened the door, and it shook off and went inside as if it had understood me.
“Poor thing!” Leah came over.
“I’ll go get a towel.”
We dried her off, rubbing her while she snorted and pawed at us.
“You know who she reminds me of?”
“Very funny,” Leah replied.
“You’ve got a lot in common.”
“I’m going to get her some dinner.”
She served her a dish of leftover soup, and the cat finished it while we sat on the wooden floor in the living room watching her. I lay down, falling backward with my hands behind my head. “Day Tripper” started playing, and I mumbled along distracted while she smiled and relaxed. The tension from fifteen minutes before had dissipated.
“I’ll look for some old clothes she can sleep on top of.”
“No, I’ll take her to my room,” she said.
“Are you joking? I wouldn’t trust her. She seems nice when she wants to, but she could reveal her claws at any moment. Have we never talked about what makes cats so awesome?”
“No, it’s not one of our regular topics of conversation.”
“Well, we should. They’re independent, curious, and they sleep a lot. The three keys to a happy life. They’re wild and solitary, but they’ll let themselves be domesticated in exchange for comfort. This is how it must have been at first: ‘Hey, human, I’ll pretend to be civilized and you stuff me with food, protect me, and take care of me. Deal.’” Leah started laughing and I stretched out more on the floor, just as a lazy cat would do. “Don’t laugh. It’s true.”
“I think I’ll try and sleep with her.”
“Okay,” I said, standing up. “If she attacks you and you need help, shout and I’ll come for you.”
She rolled her eyes. “Good night, Axel.”
“Good night.”
47
_________
Leah
That week, i concentrated on school. I tried to pay attention in class, finish my homework during the day, and study in the afternoon while Axel was working. On Wednesday, I had coffee with Blair. On Thursday, when the math teacher asked me a question and the whole room was silent, expectant, I managed to answer without my voice giving out on me. When it was time to go, I pedaled fast, leaving my nerves and insecurity behind.
“Do you have a lot to do today?”
“Lit and Chemistry,” I responded.
“What record should I put on?” Axel got up.
“Whatever you like. I don’t care.”
I opened my books, sat on my side of the desk, and started to do my work. We didn’t talk again all afternoon. Now and again, I would look up a bit and watch him draw. He was my exact opposite. He didn’t let himself go; there was no emotion, nothing to pour into what he was doing. He was delicate, with well-planned, subtle lines and little room for improvisation. But there was something captivating in his movements, so contained, so willing to maintain a line between himself and the paper.
“Stop watching me, Leah,” he murmured.
I blushed and looked quickly away.
* * *
When Friday came, I had the feeling this had been the most normal week of the past year. I had studied, I had hung out with a friend, I had exchanged a few words with a classmate after lending her an eraser, and Axel’s presence still gave me a tingle in my stomach.
That was how my life used to be. Or pretty much.
When I got home, I had left my bike next to the wooden railing and my backpack on the porch when I saw the cat sitting there giving me a serious look.
“You hungry, pretty girl?”
She meowed, then followed me into the kitchen, as if she were perfectly in her rights to spend another night at the house. I looked in the pantry.
Axel appeared ten minutes later, still wet.
“What’s the cat doing in the house?” he grunted.
“She came in on her own. What’s for lunch?”
Axel grimaced. He grabbed a T-shirt he had left on the back of the sofa and put it on, stretching his arms. I tried in vain not to look at his torso, his golden skin, his defined muscles…
“What are you in the mood for?” he asked.
“Anything would be fine.”
“Spinach egg scramble?”
I nodded, and a little later, we were eating on the porch. The afternoon was calm, and since it was a Friday, I put off my homework for the next day and fell asleep in Axel’s hammock. I didn’t really know how I felt. Sometimes good. Sometimes horrible. I could change from one mood to another in the blink of an eye.
In the evening, while Axel was cooking, I painted awhile. Brush in hand, I hesitated and looked over at the little suitcase full of colored paints, all of them still unopened except for the red from the other day, all of them so pretty, so impossible to reach…
“The tacos are ready,” Axel said.
“Okay. Coming.”
I cleaned my brushes and helped him get the dishes out.
When he finished, instead of making tea, he told me to come inside and he brought down the bottles from the cabinets. Rum. Gin. Tequila. He leaned on the bar in the kitchen and raised an eyebrow mirthfully. “What are you in the mood for?”
“A mojito?”
“Done. Crush some ice.”
Axel grabbed sugar and a couple of limes from the fridge, then went outside to pick some of the mint growing near the porch. We made a pitcher and he shook it to mix the ingredients.
“I present you with the finest mojito in the world.”
“Let’s see if it’s true…”
He watched me go out onto the porch with a grin. “If at any point I see you’re about to wind up stripping naked in the middle of the living room, I’m stopping you, okay?”
I could feel my cheeks burning. “You said it never happened.”
“And it never did. I’m just giving an example.” He took a sip and licked his lips without taking his eyes off me. I felt a shiver. “Be good and satisfy my curiosity. Did you used to get drunk a lot? Is that why you put it on the list?”
“No way. Just a couple of times.”
“So what happened at the festival?” he asked, serious.
“Nothing. I drank three beers and obviously I didn’t digest them very well.”
“Okay, well, take it easy. Little sips, like a baby.”
That hurt, and I tried to strike him dead with my stare. It seemed like he was constantly pointing out I was just a girl to him on purpose. And this wasn’t the best time to show him he was wrong, not when I was so dependent, when I hadn’t been able to get over losing my parents the way everyone else does.
I drank half my mojito in one sip.
“I wasn’t kidding, damn it. Baby sips.”