“You too. I like that pendant.”
“It’s a tree of life from the Kabbalah,” he said proudly.
I accompanied him inside. Mom came out to greet me and asked me if I wanted anything. When I said no, she furrowed her brow.
“Nothing? Not even a little tea?”
“No, I’m good.”
“Orange juice?”
I rolled my eyes and sighed. “Fine, an orange juice.”
“I knew you wanted one.” She winked.
My father sat in his easy chair and asked me about my recent work.
Mom passed me the juice a few minutes later and sat down with her hands crossed over her legs and a curious expression. “I don’t want to be rude, honey, but why are you here? You’re worrying me.”
“Why does everything make you think of something bad?”
“Believe me, every time they used to call me from your school, I would pray it was for a good reason, a trophy or an unexpected A, but it never happened. I realized I was only ever right when I thought it was something bad. You know I adore you, dear, but…”
“For fuck’s sake, that was forever ago!”
“That mouth!”
“I just wanted to bring you two your anniversary present.” I got up to take the slightly bent envelope out of my pants pocket. My mother’s lower lip twitched when I handed it to her. I waited nervously while she opened it, trying to decipher her expression, but it was almost impossible because she was excited, surprised, but also scared, with a tense face.
“A trip to Rome…” She looked up at me. “You’re giving us a trip to Rome?”
“Yeah.” I shrugged.
“But that’s…so much money…”
“It’s your dream, isn’t it?”
My father looked at me with gratitude.
“I don’t know…I don’t know if we can do it…” Mom put the plane tickets in her lap and brought her hand to her lips. “There’s the café and…other things. I have the cake competition…”
Dad took a deep breath, and I saw determination in his eyes when he turned to her and grabbed her by the cheeks. I wanted to get up and leave, let them have that intimate moment to themselves, but I couldn’t move.
“Honey, look at me. We’re going. And it’s going to be the first trip of many. We’ll dip into our savings account, we’ll get on that plane, and we’ll start a new phase. Are you listening to me? It’s time to move on, Georgia.”
She nodded slowly, almost like a little girl. Sometimes emotions and the way we assimilate them don’t have much to do with age. I thought about that and the different ways we all have of accepting the same thing, loss. I guess in a way life consists of trying to jump over the pits that show up along the way and spend as little time as possible lying on the ground uncertain how to get up.
I stood. My parents insisted I stay a while longer, but instead, I kissed each of them and said we would see each other on Friday night. I knew they needed to be alone, and I…wanted to be back with her.
Maybe because I missed her. Maybe because I’d gotten used to spending every second by her side. Maybe because I knew in a few days, everything would change.
101
_________
Axel
I walked in through the back door and saw Leah’s surfboard on the porch. I smiled at the thought of her feeling the need to get lost in the waves in my absence. I saw her through the door. Her back was turned, and she was kneeling on the floor in front of a big canvas with a palette full of fresh gobs of paint. All she had on was her bikini from earlier, and I caught a spectacular view of her ass.
I took off my shirt and walked over to her. She looked at me over her shoulder and smiled.
“Don’t move,” I said before I knelt down beside her. I hugged her, slid my hands under the fabric covering her breasts, and brushed my thumb against her nipple until she panted and dropped her brush. “I missed you.”
I closed my eyes and touched her all over, kissed her tattoo, sank a finger inside her, and her back tensed against my chest. I kissed her neck. I grabbed her by the hair. I smelled the sea on her skin and all I wanted was to lick it. I ran my tongue down her spine and felt every twitch in her body. I stopped thinking about anything. Except for her. Me. Us. How precious she was, how full of color…
I wasn’t thinking when I stretched my hand out to the palette next to us and buried my fingers in her paints. Then I ran them over her body: her back, her buttocks, her legs. I colored her with my hands on top of that canvas.
She sighed. “Axel…”
There was so much longing in her voice that I almost came when I heard her say my name that way. I held my breath and pulled her bikini bottoms down in one go. I unbuttoned my pants and took them off as I lay beside her and held her over the canvas in my arms stained with paint.
I pushed inside her. I closed my eyes.
I couldn’t see her face, but I could hear her rapid breaths. I rammed her again, holding her hips tight. Harder. Deeper. Leah moaned, shouted. I clenched my teeth and grabbed more paint and my hands covered her with it while I pushed inside her over and over, and it was never enough, nothing filled the hole in my chest at the uncertainty of whether or not this was forever. When her skin was covered in paint and sweat, I pulled away and turned her around, because I wanted to fuck her with my eyes, too, with my hands, with every gesture.
Leah’s breathing was agitated and her bare breasts rose and fell rhythmically. Her eyes were shining and pinned on me. Full of everything. Love. Desire. Need. Our gazes intertwined while I traced a blue line from her cheek to her belly button, slowly, so slow that every touch between her skin and mine was pleasure and torture at the same time. Her soft lips opened as she squeezed me against her, smearing me with the paint that covered her while I contemplated her, enchanted.
“I’m so fucking in love with you…”
“Kiss me.” She sank her fingers in my hair and pulled me close until our lips met.
She tasted like strawberry. She tasted like strawberry again.
She moved her hips in a circle. I exhaled and clenched my teeth.
“I could spend my whole life like this, fucking you and looking at you and kissing you.” I moaned and grabbed her ass to ram her deeper.
Leah bit my lip when I held her wrists down on the canvas and moved my hips against hers, making her mine, getting lost in her, giving her everything.
“Fuck, babe…fuck…”
She came. Her back arched, she moaned into my mouth.
Her eyes were glassy when she opened them again.
I kept ramming her. More and more and more…
“Tell me you love me,” she said.
I pressed my forehead into hers. My heart sped up, pounding hard, and I ran my lips softly over her, tasting her, tasting her tension, about to explode. I took a deep breath when she kissed me on the heart, in the middle of my chest, then I lost control and exploded with a groan that I silenced against her warm flesh.
I hugged her. Silence. I brought my mouth to her ear. “We all live in a yellow submarine.”
I didn’t move for what seemed like an eternity. Because I couldn’t. I was still inside her, over her body, and all I could think was that it was perfect, that there are things we seem destined for and that just have to happen. I breathed against her neck until she moved her arms to wrap them around me, and the touch of her skin made me open my eyes. I wrinkled my forehead and pulled away from her. I stood up. I looked at her lying there over that surface that was once white and that was now full of color, of us making love, of the image her body had made next to mine.