"Roni. Please don't do this. Baby please!" He begged me as he sat at my feet in the living room.
How can one be okay with this? He is choosing to leave me and the relationship we were in going on 6 years and he is choosing to go off and be with a group of guys who he called friends but they weren't friends at all. I tried to gather my thoughts about how I was going to respond to this. I still can't begin to understand why he is throwing this all away.
"Roni." He paused. "Veronica, please say something to me." His voice was barely audible.
"Why?" I spoke, with my voice barely over a whisper, trying my hardest not to cry. I needed an explanation for him doing this, this close to our anniversary and why he was choosing his 'friends' over me.
"It's for my career. My music. The guys and I have been able to record an EP and need to take this chance for us to get the record and finish what we started a few years back." Andy trailed off waiting to see if I was going to say something, but at this moment there was nothing I could say.
"This is what we had planned when we first got together Roni."
Now he was trying to pin this on me? It wasn't what I wanted and I was going to set him straight.
"Don't you even say that this is what I wanted because it wasn't. I wanted you in my life and wanted a life with you. It didn't have to include the music but if it did I was understanding. I was understanding of all the late night practices in my basement. I was understanding of the debt that we went through because of having to buy new instruments and equipment. But it was never what I wanted." I paused trying to prevent the tears that pricked my eyes. This was going to be the breaking point.
"Andy, I told you from day one that I would be magnanimous of your dreams and never once stopped you from reaching them but this is just something I don't understand. Do you remember what you once said to me about your dreams? 'They weren't worth perusing unless you perused them and I was by your side.' Does that not apply to you anymore?" Pausing, I waited for him to respond back but he wasn't saying anything. I was going to wait for his response but I still had more to say.
"You are leaving me to go after your dream with the 4 people you address as your 'friends' but I am not sure why they are still your 'friends'. Do you not remember what they did to you? Or do you choose to look that over because you need them and they need you to make this dream a reality?
"Andy don't forget that night they left you to die in the street." He gasped at my attempt to bring that memory back to his mind. "Don't think I forgot because I didn't. I remember that night frequently, as I revisit it in my dreams. You were left to defend yourself in an alley with 7 guys beating you. I was on my way to my family reunion and I got a call from Caty who said you were being jumped.
"I turned around and came to you instead of going to my family because I cared for you and loved you. There were only three people trying to defend you and those three were girls. It was me, Caty and Tori. Three girls trying to fight off 7 guys who didn't care who they were fighting. Thankfully the three of us knew how to fight or we would all have been dead."
He flinched at my last words because he knows it is the truth. Caty, Tori and I fought them off enough to get them to finally leave. We knocked out three and I think that was the moment they realized they needed to leave. All of us were battered and we had to make the journey home. Caty was black and blue, with a fractured nose and had fractured her right wrist and a few broken fingers. Tori, had a broken cheek bone and a black eye, and had a broken wrist as well as covered in bruises. Andy was the worst having a few broken ribs on both sides, broken wrist and fractured jaw. I had broken knuckles, broken nose and cheek bone and four broken ribs. My wrist was also fractured. We all were black and blue from the bruises and bloody from the cuts we had gotten and from the cuts that we had caused.
I traced the scar on my hand that was there from having the surgery on my knuckles and the memory was still very vivid. It was a living nightmare for all of us. I glanced up at Andy through my eyelashes as I waited still for him to respond he was reliving his nightmare.
"Andy, I don't bring it up because I want too, I knew the fear that you get from reliving that night and I as well. I only bring it up to show you that I was me and my two girlfriends who helped you that night not your so called friends." I finished my sentence barely over a whisper because I was going to loose it if I continued to talk about this with him.
"Andrew, if you want to leave, go ahead. I don't want to stop you from accomplishing your dreams but you are to make your choice. If you leave and expect to come back, that wont happen. So just know that this may be the last time you see me." The tears were falling down my cheeks, because I knew deep down this was the last time he would be in my life. I got up from the couch and headed up the stairs towards our room to embrace silently that I was loosing the love of my life.
Our home was unbecomingly silent. Andy still didn't stir downstairs and nor did I upstairs. My cries were quiet, no audible sound just the continuous flow of tears down my cheeks. Moments passed of our home being quiet for what felt as hours, when quietly I heard music cocooning our home. The music was sad and melancholy but it was a beautiful piece. One that I knew by heart. I could see how he played, gracefully moving his fingers across the ivory keys and becoming lost within the notes of the music. No longer could I stand to not be able to see him and watch him play, I got up off of our bed and headed down stairs.
The house was dark except the illuminating glow at the grand piano that sat isolated against the back wall. He was faced away from me as I approached him and the piano and he continued to play the piece. I noticed that it was coming to an end but he didn't even seemed distracted by it as he already had what he was playing next in his mind. I stood at the edge of the hallway and watched him transition from the first piece into the second which just so happened to be my favorite piece by Yiruma. Playing the piece he conveyed his heartache and pain through the song and it broke my heart. I left my spot in the hallway and stood behind him and placed my hand lightly on his shoulder to let him know I was here.
As I placed my hand on his shoulder, I could feel him physically relax. He knew the best way to communicate with me when his words failed him was through the sounds his fingers made. Even though it wasn't anything of his own, the message he sent with it through the way he played always said what he needed to say. Just before the crying had stopped, it proceeded again just by seeing the pain I had just caused him. I gave him the choice to make between me or his music, which I knew was extremely hard for him to do. The music was who he was. It made him who he is today and I knew I couldn't ask him to choose me or the music because it was impossible.
I placed my other hand on his shoulder and let him play the last bit of the piece by Yiruma. The music slowly left the room as he finished and grabbed my hands interlocking his fingers in mine pulling me against him. He kissed my hand and whispered words that I wasn't able to understand and hugged me to him. He let go of my hands and turned around so now that he was facing me and my heart broke 100 more times than before. Andy was playing the piano and portraying his feelings has he was crying. I never saw him cry in the 5 years we were together and the 4 years before that when we were friends growing up together.
As he wrapped his arms around my waist to pull me closer to him, I notice he was fighting hard to stop the tears that wanted to fall down his cheek. I wrapped my arms around him and held him close to me until he stopped. He whipped his face and looked up at me quickly pulling into his lap, snuggling his face in the crook of my neck.
"Roni. I am so sorry." He whispered as he kissed my cheek.
"You should not be the one apologizing. Its should be me. I told you to make a choice and that is something that I can not ask of you and can not live with if you should choose me or music. I love you too much to make you have to choose between the two things you love the most. I just have one thing to ask you about this predicament we are in."
I felt a smile appear on his lips as I gave him a new proposition to make our lives easier and still able him to follow his dream. "What is your request?"
"Please find your way home." I said with a lump in my throat just thinking about him and I not being together was hard.
"Veronica." He paused cupping my face in his hand, my green eyes to his crystal blue ones, "I would never forget where home is. I promise I will come home as soon as things subside. If I don't come home here Ohio, I will come get you and we will make our home in California. I never break my promises and you know this. I will keep it and I will come home to you."
"I love you Andy."
"I love you too, baby."
Was it hard to believe that this would have been the last time that those words would have been exchanged between us?