Leave Me

“Liaya?” I try to whisper as my tears fall to the collar of my tuxedo—I fail when I hear pleading screams echoing through the speeding train. My lungs collapse, and my heart sinks to the pit of my quivering stomach. They couldn’t have gotten to her. Where are the police? Where is my fiance? I hear gunshots flying across the train as I hold on to the pillar. My knuckles turn white against my bronze skin as I bite down on my lower lip. My nostrils flare, and the intoxicating scent of flesh and blood and gun powder fiddle with my nostril. I grit my teeth as I sink back under my seat, hiding from the gunmen as they step through the train, their boots nearly entering my line of sight. 

Two minutes ago, I was sitting beside my fiance, soon-to-be wife, and mother. I was whispering sweet nothings into the air, dreaming about the new house I bought us in New York. She loved it—she loved it so much she gave me a tender kiss against my cheek despite her wincing from our child. Two minutes ago, I was pressing my ear against her warm stomach as our son. Joseph was kicking her. We’ve been trying to have a child for two years. She looked up at me with her teary emerald eyes and laughed that same laugh I was introduced to the first day I met her in high school. That same day, I fell in love with her because she saved my life. She saved my life from suicide and laughed at me when I said I was serious. Except, she didn’t laugh at my decision. She laughed when I told her no one loved me, that I would always be alone. She laughed because she told me nobody should be alone and that nobody should die alone. But those were the good old days, back when she was Liaya, the innocent swimmer with a 4.0 GPA, and I was Liam, the school jock, with the kind of ego that made her father kick me with the tip of his pointy boots the first time I met him. 

“Liaya?” I cry, my tears streaming down my already-damped cheeks as I gulp down salty snot. I can’t help but picture my fiance lying on the floor without me, probably halfway across the train. And I lost her. I didn’t go running after her when she toppled to the floor and skid through the floorboards. I didn’t go running after her when she cried my name. 

I never cry any more. I never feel anything for anyone besides Liaya. I haven’t cried this hard since the night my mother passed away. My father took it out on me. He said my mother’s cancer had risen because of my lack of commitment around the house. He threw out a whip and carved deep scars against my back. Each one is delicately fresh with pain even though I’m twenty-one, a successful lawyer, and I haven’t been back in Arizona since that very night. The night Liaya saved me by simply talking to me, she insisted on living with her. She hid me around the house, keeping me locked up in different rooms so her parents wouldn’t catch us. I fell in love with her smile, her laugh, her touch, her warmth—I fell in love with her because even though she was beside me on the edge of the bridge, pulling me down, the only thing that kept me from jumping was the thought of turning down a chance of receiving love. I didn’t know Liaya at all, but I knew the time would change that, and at that moment, I wouldn’t give up the opportunity of finding love, my sweet love. 

“I would never let you go. Nobody deserves to be alone, not you or me. Nobody.” She had her hair tied up in a bun, and her face was dripping with water. 

I looked up at her and furrowed my brows. “What if I am a nobody?” 

“You’ll never be a nobody to me. You’re not nobody to mother nature or the flowers around us. My mother used to tell me that flowers only grow when the souls around them are happy and alive, living up to their full potential.” 

“I can’t feel anything, though. Just let me—”

“You will feel everything again, and I won’t let you. You’re my friend now, and if you die, I think I’ll lose a bit of my soul with you, and then the flowers won’t grow.” She explained, pressing our foreheads together. I didn’t realize I was holding in a breath until I relaxed against her. My muscles stiffened with anticipation. 

I looked up at her, seeing a part of me I didn’t recognize in the reflection of her eyes under the moonlight. “What’s your name?” 

“Liaya,” she said proudly. I offered her a sheepish smile. I wondered how her name would feel against my lips. “My mom gave me my name because she loved lilies, but she didn’t want to name me Lily. It’s too basic. She wasn’t like that,” she looked up at me, and her face suddenly shifted into a more plastered expression.

“I’m Liam,” I said, “It’s a pretty basic name.” 

“I don’t think your basic, though.” She suddenly stilled, furrowing her dark brows into a knot. She cleared her throat and changed the direction of the subject, “Names are so overrated, I don’t think you need to call somebody by their name to get their attention. I think you should be able to feel them.”

“I still can’t feel anything,” I kid with her, grinning foolishly as she inched towards me. 

She arched a brow into the air and cocked her head to the right in a teasing manner, “I think you’ve felt everything,” she placed a hand on my heart, and I flinched. She quickly stepped back, “I just don’t think you’ve ever felt anything but pain.” She looked at me for a moment, really looked at me like I was more than just the rumors around school, more than just the loser that contemplated suicide and walked around the halls with a dark hood on, screwing everyone up. She looked up at me like I deserved to feel everything, even though I felt nothing. 

She never let me be alone. Not at school, not at home, not at work—she was everywhere and everything. She was under my skin when I went to work, texting me and calling me numerous times, so many times I got fired from my first job. She said it was for the best, though. I still think she just said that because she hated me working at a low-level law firm. But I left for her. She was at school, laughing and making jokes I couldn’t dare to laugh at. Jokes about our principal and my father jokes I couldn’t feel in my stomach even when I shook nervously with silent laughter. Smiles and laughter that never reached my eyes. She just stared at me knowingly. And she waited, waited for me to smile. And on my nineteenth birthday, I finally smiled. I smiled for her, and for the years I wasted buried in my father’s home, the years I wasted to feel pain. I smiled because she brought me a bag of freshly cut mandarines and a handful of flowers from our garden. I smiled because she told me I would never be alone, that I was never alone—and for the first time in my life, I believed her. 

The train comes to a sudden stop. My body slams against the seat, my head is aching with a throbbing painful pulse as I let out a grunt of pain. I look around for any boots, any sign of life or movement—none. I stare up at the sky. It’s a faint bluish-green color. I recognize the color. That same colored sky my mother died under, the same colored sky I nearly died under. I grasp the metal pole under my seat and push my entire body with enough force to balance me on both legs. I stare at a full but empty train. There are piles of dead bodies at each corner, darkened flesh and fresh red blood crowding the darkened floorboards. And silence. Silence—pure silence echoing through my pulsing ears. 

“Liaya?” I step towards the exit of the train, my body close to the windows as I slowly tip-toe through the wounded bodies. There is a sickening pattern amongst the wounded. Their hearts are shot, a bullethole at their backs. I gulp down salty snot as I continue searching for Liaya. I would recognize her dark red hair from anywhere. Liaya is not on the train. 

I pry open the doors, my knuckles painfully white as I push through the crowd of fallen bodies. And then I see her. Liaya. “I found you,” I say, whispering over her body as it lays on the grassy floor. “I found you,” I say just under her ear. I try to convince myself between tears that she’s still alive. I blink back the murky water as I touch her heart, her wounded heart. I just stare at her, her warm hands, and her fallen chest. Joseph. I focus on her every movement, my hands shaking as I collapse to the floor. I couldn’t have lost her. I turn to her, wiping my tears as I bring my hand to her forehead, wiping away a drop of blood from the top of her hairline. I see her body trembling for a moment. I pull off my tuxedo and wrap it around her. “Don’t leave me alone. Please.” 

“Liam. Jos-Joseph,” she manages to say. I hold her hands as I cry into her stomach, my forehead lining with her belly button. I shake my head as I press my ear to her stomach. I still hear the little guy squirming around. He is our everything. He is ours. He doesn’t deserve to be alone while he watches his mother die. Just like me. “I have to leave you.” 

“Liay-Liaya. You promised—we promised we would never leave each other. Don’t leave me,” I plea between weeps, my chest rising and falling as I caress her stomach. She doesn’t stop shivering, and her eyes are sunken to the back of her head. 

“I have to leave you, but take any part of me, any part of us, and bury me with it,” she says, her whispers breaking between forced breaths. I take her in my arms and press our foreheads together, “Liam? Don’t leav-leave hi-him alone. Le-let the flower go. Let me go.” 

“Why?” I call out as she shuts her lips one final time. I feel a tear hit her blushed cheeks as I cry out to the sky, “Lord, why? Mother nature, why?” Why would you take my flower, my love, my person? She saved me—why couldn’t I save her? 

I look around us, the trees circling around her shivering body as I walk over to the fresh blue pond. The sun hits her beautiful face, her skin glistening in the sun as I bring my lips to her forehead, picking up three lilies and placing them above her stomach. I kneel to the floor, searching the bright sky for answers as I take in the whiff of pollen—my nostrils flair as I cry into her stomach one final time before calling 9-1-1. 

“Joseph, you won’t ever be alone, and neither will I,” I drop a floral seed into the soil beneath us. Two years ago today was the first time I ever believed your words, and that makes me smile. “Let us grow together.”