For Life or Love?
“What are you thinking?”
Liya whispered to me, lying next to me on the bed, as I lay there beside her, both of us naked and covered in the purple bed sheet, with me playing with the blades of her black hairs that curled subtly at the ends just like the outlines of waves do when they hit you at your feet on the beach. Her hair smelled like the morning sea winds hitting me on the face, invigorating me. And her eyes on me, like sunrays piercing through the clouds after a rainy night. This was my beach, my heaven. Moving myself away from the heavenly beach at times, I would caress her soft white cheeks and her lips ripening red just like strawberries do in spring, all the while thinking how on Earth I managed to get her and what the hell she sees in me? Maybe after all, to my surprise, I was such an amazing person that even I could not believe it.
“Nothing”, I replied.
I could hear the birds chirping outside and the winds playing the melody in the wind charm. The sunlight slithered through the window, passing through the white curtains, highlighting the crimson coloured walls of the room, and getting pierced by the blades of the ceiling fan. It fell on her face, illuminating like the yellow flames of a candle certain portions of her face. Her sapphire eyes amplified the golden glow of the morning and shined brighter than my hopes.
“What are you thinking?”, I asked her the same question.
“I’m thinking ‘what are you thinking’”, she chuckled and drew forward to plant a gentle kiss on my lips. I could feel the wetness of them, the sweet flavor of her saliva, like nectar, just like it had been the night before, and the night before and the many nights before.
The sunlight basked the room and there it kindled a certain warmth; I could feel it as she rested her head on my shoulder and I embraced her within my arms and smooched her. She fiddled with my shaggy hairs and we kept on kissing. She mounted on me – we still under the blanket and I could see her perfect round breasts and her tiny nipples that despite the warmness of the room were erect like they do in winter nights; and the blanket perfectly covered her bare back, dropping from her shoulders all the way to her feets, and above us formed our tiny little blanket igloo.
“I need to go”, Liya said softly.
“I only wished you could stay a little while longer.”
“I did, and I still would have if I could. But the time isn’t ours anymore.”
A warm breeze blew in, raising the curtains and breaking my trance, and in that moment, she was gone – gone like a leaf in the tropical wind. The blanket that till then sheltered her back fell on me and she was there no more, like it had been for almost a year.
I knew I had fucked up the perfect thing between us – badly. We had been together for almost three years and now I was all alone, in this concrete house, lying on this bed, in this warm tropical sun, while she was there with another guy, a businessman as far as I remember – Greg, his name was. Or Alex. Or Doug. Or whatever, who cared.
I got up, put on my shorts, sat at the edge of my bed and looked for the pack of cigarettes that were always constant on the lamp table next to my side of the bed. I took one out and lit it to calm my nerves – to suffocate to death the feeling of missing her that so burned within me. I hadn’t written anything good in nearly three years; the last date I can remember I wrote something worth reading was on 8th of October, the day she slipped away from me and I just stood there letting her go, unable to do anything; and since then I had been shit-wrecked about her – I see her everywhere, with me, beside me, every where, every time; but I know she isn’t there, that’s just her mirage, my nostalgia, making me feel that things were better in the past, though they weren’t.
I stood up, went to my table where my typewriter lied and poured myself some whiskey and gulped it down in one go. I set up the paper on my typer and poured myself another one and attempted to write anything worthy but couldn’t. I punched the words “Liya Liya Liya...” again and again and again.
“It’s not going to help”, I heard a familiar voice calling for me, coming from my bed behind my back.
“Why?”, I asked the familiar beautiful woman that lay there, covered in the same purple sheet, on the bed.
“You couldn’t keep me when all I wanted was you.”
“I know I fucked up. Can’t I get one more chance?”
“It’s late...it’s too late. Today is my wedding with Bill, don’t you remember?”
“Bill. That’s his name”, I suddenly recalled.
“Perhaps I would like to see you for one last time.”
“You know what I miss about you the most?”, I asked her.
“What?”
“Your eyes and how they would kill me every time you looked at me, and your smell. I miss your smell. When you left I couldn’t wash the sheets because I didn’t wanna lose that completely. You. It fucked me for a long time because I would wake up and smell you and I would think you were there; my heart would break all over again.”
She laughed.
“Maybe it’s time for me to disappear again from this bed sheet. I don’t think you would have washed the sheets”, she smirked.
“If I can make you laugh like that then why can’t we be together?”, I whispered.
The honk of a car passing by brought me back to my table and to my typewriter. I looked at the paper and all there were were the words “Liya” punched all over, just like I had been doing since the past year. I rolled out the paper and crushed it into a ball and threw it. We loved each other too much, too much, and I think we made a mistake of getting it right the first time and that put an insane amount of pressure on us to keep it going and we buckled.
I looked up at the clock and saw it striking eleven o’clock. Her wedding was after an hour. I dressed up, put on my finest black suit, but I didn’t shower. I wanted the smell of her from the sheets to be with me for one last time.
I drove to the chapel where her wedding was to be. I saw her dressed in her white gown that we once went together to shop for. “I’ll love to wear that when I marry you”, I remembered her saying, and I also remembered her crying away from me days later. But now she looked happy with an invigorating smile on her face. I felt good too for a moment there – seeing her happy was the only thing I had desired from my whole life. Bill stood there, waiting for her, on the stage.
For a moment I looked from a distance that she would search for me in the crowd, to catch a glimpse of me for the last time, but she didn’t. She didn’t want me anymore. Maybe the whole time I was the only hurdle in her life.
I drove away to the nearest pharmacy and bought some drugs – some sleeping pills and other stuff. I went to the liquor store and got a fifth of whisky. I drove back home.
I went to the table and sat there on my chair and rolled another paper on my typewriter, and poured myself the fifth till the brim of my glass and unloaded couple of pills I had just bought.
I wrote
If I could crumble,
build me.
If I could cry,
hush me.
If I could walk,
walk with me.
If I could love,
love me.
If I could err,
forgive me.
If I could drift,
chain me.
If I could come back,
bring me.
If I could stay,
hold me.
If I could live,
be with me.
I lit a smoke and got ready to gulp down the glass in one go. I heard a whisper from my back.
“For life or love?”, Liya asked
“For myself”, I answered, and drank.
And I was at my beach again. It was raining hard. There was no sweet smelling wind hitting me on my face but a storm blowing my hair and splashing coarse salty water on my face. I looked around and there was no one to see. This time I was all alone. I shouted “hello”, the words came out of my mouth but there was no sound. The waves came to attack me, dragged my feets away and I fell on the wet sand. Drenched, I stood up and spat out the salty water. The clouds covered the sky, there was no light, no sun. The sun had set. The night had kicked in. It got dark, too dark to see.