The Astonishing Color of After(56)

His shoulder bones were sharp, sculpted, like they were designed to be attached to wings. Axel had a nice back.

Really, Axel had a nice everything.

Somehow in the last few years his wiry limbs had thickened and toned up. You could see the muscles starting to trace the edges of his upper arms. And his butt. I’d never spent so much time staring at a boy’s butt.

He stopped moving, like he could feel my eyes on him. “All right, are you done? I’m turning back around.”

“Okay, yes, me too, I’m done,” I said too quickly, all in one breath. I bent down to pick up my socks and hide my face.

Sleeping was something else entirely. Axel and I had slept in the same space plenty of times. But usually it was one person on a couch, the other on an air mattress. Or both of us in sleeping bags. And we’d sat together on a bed for countless hours, playing games with a deck of cards so worn we knew the ace of spades and the eight of diamonds just by the creases on their backs.

But sitting together was different from lying next to each other on the same bed.

The mattress was lumpy and sunken in the middle. Every time I shifted in search of a more comfortable angle, my body slid a little closer to his side.

Finally our elbows were bumping, and Axel started laughing.

“What?” I said tensely.

“This is the problem with only children,” he said. “You don’t know how to share space.”

“It’s not my fault the bed’s all sunken!”

“It’s fine,” he said, still laughing. “We can share the middle. Can you turn on your side?”

I turned my back to him, because even in the darkness I felt like he would be able to read my feelings in my eyes.

I could feel him scooting on the bed—it shook the whole mattress and sent me sliding down into the middle again. But then the shifting stopped.

“There,” he said, and I felt his breath on my neck. He was facing the same direction I was. I willed myself to relax, to loosen my limbs. Mere inches away, the heat of his body scorched me.

We weren’t touching, but we were so very close.

“Better?” he said.

I nodded first, then remembered he couldn’t see. “Yeah.”

We fell silent, and I listened to the sound of his breathing, so steady I was certain he was asleep. My body prickled, too awake and ultra aware. There behind me lay my best friend. Only a small strip of air separated us from full-on spooning. I pressed my hands together like in prayer, pinning them beneath my pillow so that maybe I would stop wanting to reach out and touch him.

A long while passed, and then Axel murmured something.

It sounded like he might’ve said, “What color?”

But I couldn’t be sure. I pretended I was already asleep.





58





Colors flash like promises and black flickers like static, like memories, and everything is falling, falling, remembering,

falling,

remembering,

the two words synonymous.





59





SUMMER BEFORE SOPHOMORE YEAR


In the morning when I woke up, I realized my body had turned a hundred eighty degrees, and my temple was pressed against Axel’s chest. He was facing me, his hand half on my ribs, half on my waist. Alarms sounded in my skull; I wasn’t wearing a bra. Panic made me roll away. His fingers trailed over my stomach, and something surged under my skin. I slid off the bed entirely, waiting for the heat in my center to settle.

Here was my best friend, asleep. No glasses on, dark eyelashes shuttered down against his cheeks. His shirt riding up, exposing part of his thin midsection.

Those lashes fluttered open. “What’s wrong?” he mumbled.

I shook my head. “Nothing. Um, what time is our bus?”

He sat up, rubbing his eyes. “Not till just after lunch.”

“Well.” I glanced at the hotel clock on the nightstand, with its demonic red dashes aglow in the shape of numbers. “It’s almost noon.”

Axel twisted around and snatched up his glasses. “Shit,” he said. “We were supposed to check out by eleven. Shit, shit, shit.”

On the bus I claimed the window seat in case I couldn’t bear to look at Axel and needed somewhere to put my eyes. But things seemed to have returned to normal. We pulled out our sketch pads and drew each other’s feet—mine in my worn sandals, the coral polish chipping off my big toes, his in a pair of gray socks and sneakers with green bottoms.

From the end of the bus line we caught a train to a town near Fairbridge. Axel called Tina to pick us up, because he knew her freak-out would be the mildest. He’d conveniently forgotten to tell anybody that he would be disappearing for a night.

Tina twisted around to look at us when we piled into the back of the car. “Axel, what were you thinking? Your papa was worried sick. You gotta learn to pick up your phone.”

Axel waited until she’d turned back to roll his eyes dramatically. “I know, Aunt Tina, I know. Trust me, it was important. Leigh needed me.”

Tina softened. “Leigh, sweetie, are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m good, thanks.”

“What about your mother? How is she?”

I stiffened. “You haven’t seen her?”