The Astonishing Color of After(81)

“Why are you giving me that look?” he said.

“What look?” I prayed that he wouldn’t come over and see. It was a quick study, but it was obvious what I’d been sketching. I’d done a decent job capturing the expression in his body.

His face cracked into a wry grin. “You were drawing me.”

“Was not.”

Axel stood up and I flipped my sketch pad shut.

“Let me see,” he said, holding out his hands.

“No.”

“Leigh, come on, why are you being all weird?”

“I’m not.” I felt parrot green and five years old again. “I’m not being weird.”

Even though I was. I was being weird. How many times had we sketched each other? How many times had we sat side by side, drawing each other’s feet?

I guess the difference was, when he didn’t know I was drawing him, it felt voyeuristic.

He laughed a little. “You are totally being weird.”

I stood up and began packing away my pencils. I didn’t really want to leave, but I also didn’t want to continue this conversation.

“What color?” he said, and I paused.

I looked up at him, standing there beneath that sad basement lightbulb with his sleeves rolled up to his elbows. His expression was unreadable. I opened my mouth and hesitated against the truth.

Axel skipped toward me in a tackle that threw us both onto the couch. Most of my back landed against the seat, and Axel’s body was on top of mine for a moment that lasted both forever and no time at all. I was so aware of his smell, of the fleshy inside of his arm grazing the exposed part of my midsection where my shirt had ridden up.

My sketch pad slipped between us—and before I could react, he was already holding it far away where I couldn’t reach. My torso was pinned under the back of his right knee—not that I was fighting all that hard to be free of him. Axel was already turning the pages.

“Aha!” he said, triumphant, landing on the sketch.

I could see his expression from where I lay smushed into the corner of the couch, my neck uncomfortably bent. I saw the wide grin on his face, and I also saw the way it faded as self-consciousness seeped in.

He fell silent as he gazed at the picture. I wondered if he could see what I had allowed to crawl out of my heart and down my arm and out my fingers. The lines of his body sketched with such care and longing. The shadows in his skin filled in by a hand that wanted nothing more than to trace those dips and edges, those muscles and those angles.

“This is really good, Leigh,” he said very quietly. “You’ve gotten a lot faster.”

I felt his knee loosening above my midsection, and I pushed myself up into a properly seated position. His leg slid off me, taking with it the warmth and the thrill.

“Thanks.” I felt a million miles away.

“Do you have any others?” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Like”—he dropped his gaze—“have you drawn me before? When I didn’t realize? I’d really like to see them.”

It took a beat too long for me to process the question and then summon the best answer. “No.” I wondered if he could see the lie burning in my face.

“Oh,” he said.

For a moment I almost convinced myself that he sounded genuinely disappointed.

When I went home that night, I could still smell him from when his body had covered mine like a blanket. I lay in bed, my fingers retracing the places on my body where he’d made inadvertent contact. I imagined an Axel who might touch me on purpose, who might touch more of me.

What would that feel like?

A memory bloomed like a flame, ablaze and sharper than everything: Axel’s almost naked back on that summer night in that crappy hotel room. The tantalizing heat of his body as we almost spooned, that inch-thick layer of nothingness crackling between us.

My right hand ended up down between my legs and I wondered about sex. I thought of all the skin you saw in R-rated movies and the way bare limbs just slid together like they were made to be entwined. I thought of Axel, imagined us sitting on his couch and taking off our clothes.

I fell asleep full of wanting.





82





Why the hell did anyone ever invent a ticking clock?

I can’t shut out the incessant sound. Everything lines up to match its demanding rhythm. My inhales and exhales. The pulse between my ears. That vague drumming that I’m almost certain is only in my head.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

Who’d have thought a clock would turn out to be my worst enemy?

Sometimes when Mom was cooking she sank into this deep pool of quiet, and it seemed like the clock in the kitchen grew louder and all her movements fell in sync with the ticking.

Whatever she was chopping, her hands took on a steady rhythm. Her lips pressing in concentration, eyebrows knitting toward each other. She would silently drift from one side of the counter to the other like a dazed cat, her limbs soft, her gaze slightly unfocused.

Tick. Tick. Tick. Tick.

How I wish I could rewind to one of those days and step up beside her as she julienned peppers, as she drained the water from a glassy pile of mung bean noodles, as she stirred a pot of soup. I would touch her elbow and ask what she was thinking about.

Was she happy? Was she sad?