84
_________
Axel
I knew by the sound of the door Leah was home, but I didn’t move. I stayed there on the porch, elbows on the railing, a cigarette between my lips, watching the smoke twist before the wind drove it away.
Then I felt her arms wrap around me from behind. I closed my eyes. I felt like shit those days every time she left the house and the weight of guilt came down on me. But I was happy again when she came back and greeted me with one of those huge smiles that took up her whole face.
“How was your afternoon?” I asked.
“Good. I was with Blair and Kevin for a while. Then I went to the café and I brought you a piece of cheesecake,” she said, standing beside me and kissing me. “Your favorite.”
I pulled her in, devouring her until I was breathless. I stroked her tongue slowly with mine, as if it was our first kiss, because with Leah everything was like that, as if every kiss I’d ever had was just a rehearsal for when she arrived. I didn’t want to think why or when or how, because I was afraid of what I might discover, that maybe I’d always felt something for her. Not love. Not desire. But a connection, as if that halo in her pictures that drew me in was an invisible thread that somehow tied me to her.
“What’s up?” She looked at me with worry as we separated.
“Nothing. I missed you.”
“Missed you, too.”
“Let’s go make dinner.”
I stopped thinking about anything. Just about her being there, the dimples in her face when she smiled, the finger she brought to her mouth when she tasted the sauce, which made me hard right away, the shimmer in her eyes every time she looked at me.
We had a relaxed dinner on the porch, and she washed the dishes while I heated up water for the tea. I sat down on the cushions and Leah sat between my legs with her back to my stomach. I lit a cigarette and held my hand at a distance so the smoke wouldn’t bother her. The music was audible from the living room. It was perfect, and I had the feeling it was not the first night we were that close, that there had been many others, but with different forms, colors, and textures. It was natural to me to wrap my free hand around her waist and pull her closer to me. She took a deep, calm breath.
“I can hear your heart from here,” she said.
“What’s it sound like?” I took a drag.
“I don’t know. You. Things. I wish I could paint it.”
“Paint a sound…” I whispered. “Good luck with that.”
Leah laughed softly and we fell silent again. I didn’t need to talk when I had her close. I closed my eyes while “Pepperland” played. I thought how that night was like all the ones I had spent alone on that porch through the years, but just more…just more, period.
“What do you like about me?”
“Everything.” I smiled because I couldn’t remember anyone asking me something so girlish. But I liked it.
“Come on, don’t be shy.”
“Your ass, your tits, your…”
She pinched me on the arm, grumbling, then I spoke into her lips.
“I like the sound of your laugh, I like your contradictions. How intense you are, almost overwhelming. I like the way you feel and trying to guess what you’re going to say, even if I’m always wrong. I like this house when you’re in it…”
She hushed me with a kiss. I separated her legs, sat her straddling over me, and slid my tongue into her mouth. Leah sank her fingers in my hair while we dry-humped. A wave of heat passed through me and I could only think of being inside her, as if that was where I belonged forever.
“You’re killing me,” I panted.
“You’re killing me. You have been for years.”
I was blinded. All I could perceive was how good she smelled, how soft her skin was, how sweet her voice was whispering my name. I put my hands on her thighs, and pulled down her cotton shorts and her underwear before doing the same with mine and plunging inside her. Without a condom. I held my breath and clenched my jaw, trying not to move. I moaned when she did, dancing over me, sinking her nails into my back.
“Wait…fuck, wait…”
But she didn’t seem to hear me, and I lost all sense of reason when she looked me in the eyes as she fucked me on that porch where I had started to fall in love with her. I held her hips, listening to her breath, wanting to tear off what clothes she still had on to caress every inch of her body with my fingertips.
I was out of breath as I saw her orgasm under the stars. So powerful over me, so committed to that instant without thinking of anything else. I clenched my teeth when a lash of pleasure struck me, and pulled out before coming in my hands with a groan.
She hugged me. I tried to catch my breath.
“Leah, this isn’t… Never again…” I managed to say.
“I’ve taken precautions,” she said, shaking.
“You should have told me.”
“I…I couldn’t think about anything else.”
I calmed down and kissed her on the cheek. “We need a shower,” I said, picking her up.
I took off my dirty clothes as we walked through the living room, and I stripped her naked after putting the plug in the bathtub and running the hot water. I looked at her from every angle, noticing every line, every curve, every mark on her skin.
Leah blushed. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing. Go on, get in the tub.”
Memorizing you to draw you, I told myself, but I pushed that thought out of my mind, because I would never do that, would never paint her; there was no way I could capture her.
I sat behind her, hugging her, and turned off the water when it was near the edge. We got into the bath with the music still playing in the living room. I leaned my chin on her shoulder and closed my eyes.
“Yellow Submarine” started playing. She moved.
“Remember the night you asked me if I heard a song in my head when I met my soul mate, and I said yes?”
I nodded against her cheek.
“It was with you. And this was the song. Years ago.”
The notes milled around us.
“Tell me the story,” I whispered.
“I had just turned sixteen. You didn’t come to my birthday because you’d been in Melbourne with some friends, and you gave me a nib pen. You said it was so I could keep making magic.”
“I remember that.” I kissed her on the temple.
“I started hearing this song in my head just then. And I felt…I felt the impulse to tell you something important, but I couldn’t. I had a knot in my throat.”
“Babe.” I hugged her tighter.
“All you heard was ‘We all live in a yellow submarine,’ but for me it will always be the first time I said I love you looking into your eyes, even if I used other words to say it.”
My heart skipped a beat. And I realized we were a puzzle that had been put together with the passage of years. The difference was that Leah had always had all the pieces, and I had taken years to find them.
85
_________
Leah
I had always loved him. But I used to love him from afar, looking at him up on a pedestal, unable to touch him. The things we can’t reach or can’t have always acquire a certain added value, like those paintings no one pays attention to until they find out they’re by a famous artist of the day and cost a fortune. For years, I had idealized Axel, I knew that. That he bewitched me. That I worshipped the ground he walked on. That his approval every time I picked up a brush meant everything to me.