Michael's POV
That piano.
That's one of the many things that made me fall for her. There was just something about the way she played. The way her long skinny fingers danced across the keys. She had way of making people feel what she was feeling just through the harmony of a song. From the first day I met her I was always mesmerized by her. Just the way she spoke, the way she rose her eyebrow at someone while she was speaking to them. The way she sung, but it wasn't until that day I heard play the piano in the studio that I realized she had to be mine. I knew I loved her, and I realized everything she had gone through I told myself to that I would do anything to show her that she could be loved. It became a desire, a need. And in the process of that, she did the same for me too without even realizing it.
Liyah could be a pain. I realized that after a month of knowing her. She was sassy, caustic, and extremely uncooperative. When she was hiding something, or she didn't want to talk about something that she know will cause her some form of pain, she would do anything to keep me from figuring out what was wrong. Even if that meant hurting me in the process. Sometimes I wondered if she realized she did it. The fact that she didn't want talk about all that had happened really hurt me in a way. I understood why, but she had to understand that I loved her and cared about her. I wanted to know everything that went through her mind. Every cutting pain that had her cry next to me when she thought I was sleeping.
I think her problem was that she spent her whole life hiding her feelings from everyone. Her sister, her aunts, and no one put forth the effort to get it out of her like I did. She never spoke to them and told them everything the way she told me. She said that she felt like they wouldn't understand. She spent her whole life building walls around her and blocking everyone out, and now that she finally let someone in she's second guessing herself. I could see it in her eyes.
When I walked into our apartment, that's exactly what she was doing, playing her keyboard, right by the window that was opened wide enough to let the warm California heat in. She would often complain about that keyboard, saying that it was nothing like a real piano. It didn't have the same sound is what she told me, it didn't have the same effect. I told myself that I would have to get her one, but I wanted to wait until we got a bigger place. I wasn't planning on staying in the apartment for long. It was entirely too small for us, and I wasn't even allowed to have my animals there.
She was in the middle of a song that she was singing. " Just don't give up I'm workin' it out. Please don't give in, I won't let you down. It messed me up...." She stopped and glanced up towards the ceiling. Humming the lines over again to herself. "Need a second to breathe." I tapped her on her shoulder and she looked up at me, startled."Can you make your presence known for once?" She always asked that question when I scared her.
"It's no fun that way." I told her as I kissed her on her forehead.
I held up the bags I had in my hand. " Guess who doesn't have to cook?"
Her eyebrow began to rise as she eyed the bag. " What did you get?"
"Bill and I got Mexican food, and...." I smiled widely holding up the other bag. " Baskin Robin's Ice cream." I sung. It was our favorite, one of things we did often when we weren't that busy was eating Baskin Robin ice cream and watching movies.
I saw a little smile on her lips. " Is this your way of apologizing? " she asked, as a slight smirk came upon her face. "Because if it is, you're gonna have to try a lot harder than that, baby."
I ignored her comment." I got your favorite!" I said. " Do you still feel sick?" I asked, remembering that she was nausiated earlier after leaving the center, she didn't even go to that meeting she was supposed to be at. She called and said she didn't feel good and the meeting was canceled. Aparently it was extremely important for her to be there.
She shook her head. " I feel a little lightheaded, but that's it."
I walked over to the dining room table and placed the food down. When I walked back to her I touched her face with my hands, rubbing my thumb across her damped face." It's probably from all that crying you've been doing."
She narrowed her eyes at me. " I haven't been crying."
I pressed my lips in a hard line. " Yes you have, don't lie to me."
She rolled her eyes at me, and began playing again. This time she was just playing something random. " Liyah?"
She kept playing for a moment and then stopped with a sigh and rested her head on her hand. She looked so drained. So lost, as if something was eating her up inside. "What Michael?"
"Why have you been crying."
She huffed and turned on the stool. " I have a lot on my mind, okay."
"You haven't talked to me about it."
"Why do you want to talk about it?" She asked, rolling her eyes. " Why can't you understand that I just want some alone time right now? I don't need to be smothered."
"Because I know you, Li. And if you don't talk about it, you will do nothing but hold it all inside, and when you hold it in, you try to ignore the pain, and when you do that you tend to have an attraction to razor blades."
She threw her head back and groaned loudly into the air. " Why do you make me sound like some kind of a drug addict? I just don't feel like being bothered right now!"
I rolled my eyes. " How many times did you say that to Sasha or Liana and they just left you alone, and you ended up hurting yourself?"
She stared at me, glaring as if I was the one she wanted to hurt. "God, you make me sick!" She hissed as she stood up from the stool and began to walk away.
I grabbed her arm, stopping her in her tracks. "Liyah, please don't walk away from me!"
"Why do you always do that?!" She asked, with tears in her eyes. "Huh? Why?"
"Do what?"
"This! Making me feel like I'm so.....so damn weak. Like I can't do anything on my own without you being right there next to me? Why do you sit here and point out all my insecurites and make feel even more worse than I already do?"
"I'm trying to make see that you have a problem, Li-"
" Look, I got enough of this phsycological shit from Dr. Johnson, I don't need it from you!" She snatched her hand away from me and began to head towards our bedroom, then suddenly she stopped in her tracks and turned aroound, crossing her arms across her chest. "Why did you call her?"
My eyebrows frowned in confusion. " Who?"
"Dr. Johnson. Why did you call her?" She asked. " I was fine until I had to talk to her today."
"I didn't know what else to do! I was worried about you and you wouldn't talk to me!"
"You should've just came to me instead of going behind my back and calling her! This relationship is supposed to be open, right?"
I frowned at her. " There you go being all hypocritical again."
"I am not-"
"Yes you are! You want me to tell you about that, but when it comes to something important, you don't wanna talk about it!"
Her eyes averted between the wall and back to me. " That's besides the point. The point is, I was fine until you called her and made everything worse."
"Liyah, you know you were not fine." I told her as I walked up to her. " After all that happened-"
"No! Stop!" She yelled, covering her face with her hands. " I don't want to be reminded about that!"
" It ain't gone go anywhere if you don't talk about it, Liyah." I was trying to keep my voice at stable level. Yelling at her would only make things worse. "You can't keep holdin' all that stuff in, you are gonna lose your mind."
"So what?! So what if it hurts me, and I break down?!" She asked. " I'm at the point where I don't even care anymore. All I want to do is be happy! That's all I want!"
" Liyah, you ain't go be happy if you don't learn to let go of what happened to you!"
"You act like that is easy! It's not! You try letting go of something like that, and tell me if it's easy! You try it and tell me if it's easy!" She began pacing fast in front of me. " Everybody don't have that will power like you do Michael! To just forgive, and brush things off! I can't do that, because every time I do, I can't help but to remember what happened that day! And every time I do, it makes me wish that man was dead." A tear began to fall from her eyes, she was shaking, her fist was beginning to ball up so tightly that I could see her veins pop up. I tried to touch her, to hold her in my arms and keep her from crying but she stepped away from me. " Don't touch me! Do not touch me!" She closed her eyes tightly and began to breathe. " I do not need you to sit here and tell me I have problems. I know I have issues, but it irritates the hell out of me when you sit here and play therapist with me. It's embarrassing., and it's really embarrassing when you go behind my back and call my psychiatrist and make me talk to her. "
"Well, what else was I supposed to do, Liyah! Huh? You wouldn't talk to me so I had to do something. I thought I lost you, when they called me and told me you fainted and that they were taking you to the hospital. You gave me a heart attack! So yeah, I called her because if I hadn't, you'd probably be dragging that damn razor blade on your skin right now!"
"SHUT UP!" She growled through her teeth. Liyah's flashed with anger, her face hardened as she turned to the shelf she was standing next to, picked something and throwing it across the room. One by one. I watched as she began throwing records and tapes all over the floor as a slang of profanity began to spill out of her mouth. I watched in awe as she started throwing all of her glass and wooden decorations to the floor, they all shattered and broke into pieces. She threw photographs to the floor, and at the wall. Photographs of us, her family the girls. Screaming and yelling at me. Cursing Melvin, her mother, Leena. Her face was beet red, her eyes were a reddish brown. She looked like the devil and it scared me half to death. She was like a tornado, destroying everything in her path.
She went into the kitchen and began throwing glass dishes. Letting them all crash to the floor into little pieces. She threw wine glasses, cups, bowls. She knocked over chairs, and stools. She pulled pictures off the wall, throwing them across the room in great rage. She then walked over towards her keyboard and pulled it off the stand. My eyes widened when I saw what she was about to do. "No Liyah, Don't!" She threw it out the window with a loud piercing cry escaping her lips. She then fell to her knees, her hand resting on the window cill while the she covered her other one with her mouth, trying to muffle her screams. She began banging her hand on the cill with her fist. " Damn you!" She screamed. "You made like this!"
Silence fell upon us. The loud silence weighing heavily on my ears. Silence never meant anything good, neither did the sound of madness, or the sound of pain. None of it was right for us, there was usually music, laughter at our silly jokes, and the sound of making love in the night. All the sound of happiness, the sound of joy, love. Right now, the only sound was her agonizing cry. That painful cry piercing at my ears. I watched as she bend over, her head touching the floor. She was shaking still and her face was wet from the sweat and tears that was invading her pretty little face. I wasn't sure if I should have held her or stayed away. It was like a monster had escaped her.
"Liyah?" I asked, faintly as I walked towards her. I got down to my knees and crawled over to her, pulled her into my arms and began removing the pieces of hair out of her face. "Liyah?" I said again. She turned her head away so I wouldn't see her cry.
I sighed and pulled her tighter to me. " Just let it out, Li. Just let it all out..." I said as I began to rock her as if she was child.
She cried for five minutes, if not longer. Then there was only the sound of our breathing. I thought that she was sleeping until she moved her head from my shirt to look at me. Her eyes were red and puffy. "W-why?" She sniffled, and looked up at me, her eyes heavy with tears. " why do you put up with this?"she asked. "Why don't you just leave?"
I shook my head and wiped away her tears. " Ssshhh...." I told her. " You already know the answer to that question."
"I'm sorry!" She cried. It pained me to see her cry. It touched apart of me that made me want to cry. It broke my heart, made me feel like her salty tears were pouring to an open wound. Like someone was slowly stabbing me in the heart. I was a sensitive man already, but there was something about her that made me feel like a child again. It made me cry with her. I didn't want her to hurt anymore. She had been a broken-hearted girl for too long, and it was time for her to be happy.
She was apologizing over and over again, and it was only making things worse. I could feel her pain as she cried into my shirt, clutching unto it with every agonizing sob. I pulled her face up to mine until our lips met. "Stop apologizing," I whispered to her.
She laid her head on my shoulder. "Make it stop." She begged.
"Make what stop?"
"The pain..." She whispered as more tears fell from her eyes. "Please?" She pulled her head off my shoulder. " Make it stop. I don't wanna hurt anymore."
I wiped away more of her tears and pulled her face closer to mine. Our lips naturally met again, this time more aggressively than it was before. I pulled her closer to me again, our lips not breaking away. I began lifting up her shirt as I continued to kiss her passionately. I wasn't sure what she meant by taking her pain away, but at the moment that was the only way I knew how, by making love to her. By making her feel good like I had the night before. Even though the apartment was a mess that didn't stop us. I don't think anything ever stopped us.
•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•~•
I always loved the way she sounded when he did this. She sounded like a quiet little bird all the way until we reached the climax, that's when she got a little bit louder. Right now, she just sighing as I pressed my lips against her neck and continued to move slowly inside of her. Her legs were shaking around me, as she pulled me tighter against her, it was something that she always did, it was almost as if she was afraid I would leave, and stop loving her.
She dug her hand in my hair and was softly tugging on it while our mouths moved together in synchronization. I kissed her harder and began kissing down her cheek and to her neck where she loved for me to kiss her the most. I began to suck on her neck as I continued to move inside if her. Her body began to shake a little bit more, and thought she was about to erupt. I liked the way her skin felt on my tongue, which was one of the reasons why I did it so much. I could only imagine the sensation she felt from it.
When I finally found the strength in me to stop. I began kissing again as I moved pieces of hair from her face. I looked down at her, she was beginning to look like the girl I knew and loved. The girl I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. She was breathing, trying catch her breath. I climbed off of her, and pulled a thick blanket off the couch and covered us both with it. She turned and rested her head on my chest and placed her leg on mine. I kissed her forehead and held her tightly against my body. I loved the way she felt lying next to me, her small body against mine, it felt as though she was meant to be there in my life. She was meant to be the one I shared my life with. It was as if she was that missing piece I had been looking for all along. I began rubbing her shoulder and kissing her face. " Marry me." I said, between each kiss. I don't know why I said it, the words just slipped out.
She looked me confusingly. " What?" She asked.
" Marry me." I repeated.
Liyah raised her eyebrow at me. " Michael, I-"
I pressed my lips against hers again. " Sshh...Liyah." I already knew what she was gonna say. " Hold on." I told her as I stood up from the floor. I went into the bedroom and went inside my drawer where I kept it. I pulled out a long sleeved shirt for her to wear along with it and walked back into the living room where she awaited.
I handed her the shirt and watched as she put it on. When felt as though she was ready I took the box out and showed it to her. A gasp escaped her lips when she realized what it was. " Liyah, I know you said you wanted to wait, but-"
"Michael, I-"
I placed my fingers over my mouth, stopping her. "Please, just hear me out."
"Okay." She said, holding her hands up in surrender.
"I have had this ring for almost eight months now. And if I had my way, we would've been married by now." I told her as I moved closer to her. " I know you said you wanted to wait, but I'm at the point to where I can't wait any longer. Our careers ain't gone do nothin' but get bigger and I want you to be here with me as my wife not my girlfriend. "
She shook her head at me, looking as though she didn't know what to say. "Michael, I said I wanted to wait because I'm still trying to figure this out. I'm still confused about who I am, and after all that just happened this shows me that I'm not at all who I thought I was. I don't know me. You don't even know me like you think you do. I need to know who I am before I can go making commitments to you."
I disagreed with what she was saying. "Liyah, I know you. I know you more than you know yourself." She gave me look of doubt. " Like right now I know you're thinking that I don't."
"You can read my expressions, so what?" She shrugged.
" I know that your nonchalant act is just a way for people to not know you're hurting. I know that the reason why you hate the sound of the rain because it reminds of the day that your grandma died. I know that the reason why you love Camellia's so much is because that is the only thing that reminds you of a good part of your child hood. I know that the reason why you are so quiet on the September 28 is because that was that day that man hurt you. Wasn't it?"
She glanced away, trying to avoid the eye contact. I lifted my fingers and pulled her face back towards me. " I know that the reason why I have to hold you so close every night while you're falling asleep is because you are so afraid of being lonely that you don't want remember all those times you've fell asleep crying because you felt so alone, and I know the reason why you're so afraid is because you feel like love won't last long. You think it's too good to be true, and you don't wanna let anyone inside those walls of yours because you're afraid of being hurt."
" How'd you know that?"
"Liyah, you don't have to tell me everything for me to know. I pay attention to you. I hang one every word you say, on everything you do. Because I'm in love with you. You have to believe me. That's why I stay here. With all the drama you put me through, I'm still here because I love you. And I promise you Liyah I will be there to help you through your doubt's and your fears. I'm not here to hurt you, I'm here to love you." I looked down at the little box and opened it. The ring shined right before her eyes. "But I need to know that you will do the same for me. I know you love me, and believe it or not, you saved my life the same way I'm trying to save yours. So what is it that you want?" I took the ring out. " Will you marry me?"
She had tears in her eyes as she looked at me and back at the ring. My heart was racing as I waited for an answer. I was waiting for this day to come, but i never imagined what I would I do if she told me Yes or no. She took a deep breath and then looked at me and leaned in and kissed me softly. Her brown eyes met mine and she nodded her head slowly, but surely. " Yes."