16. More

ELIZABETH

It was the first Thanksgiving I spent with someone I called family. Aunt Rose made the best turkey and before we started to eat , all three of us held hands and said grace. It was my first time saying grace as well. I loved everything about that day. We did nothing significant but everything about that day was special to me. Aunt Rose picked out the old photo albums lying in the music room and all three of us went through them. Aunt Rose told me a lot of Michael's childhood stories and both of us laughed a lot but Michael obviously didn't. I saw pictures of Aunt Rose and my mom as children as well. She didn't look happy, there was a sadness beneath her eyes back then as well. Was she ever happy in her life? My thoughts quickly shifted when Aunt Rose picked up an album that had a lot of pictures of Uncle Robert and Michael. It's shocking how alike they look. I saw how both Aunt Rose and Michael held back tears when they saw Uncle Robert's pictures. I wish I had a chance to meet him. I wish I had a chance to meet the younger version of Michael. He was adorable as a kid. How was he single until now!? In the evening , Aunt Rose retreated to her room , leaving Michael and I near the fireplace.

" You look so cute here" I said pointing at a picture of 5yr old Michael. He was holding a big pumpkin with his not so big hands. He was giggling at the camera.

" Err.." that was all he managed to say

" You know there's one thing I always wanted to ask you" I started

" Shoot" he said a little amused

" How are you single until now? I know that you are shy , you don't really talk well with strangers but seriously how?

He laughed at that.

" Come-on, don't be modest"

" I'm not being modest at all. I mean yeah, girls did hit on me from time to time but no one ever actively pursued me or something. I wasn't really popular in school you know" he said shrugging his shoulders.

" Really? How? Why?" I asked confused.

" Hmm, I was always traded for the popular guys or the sporty guys. They all saw me as the guy who liked Harry Potter, who spent more time in the library than in parties" I still didn't understand.

" What's wrong with Harry Potter?"

"Haha. Nothing is wrong with Harry Potter per se but they didn't consider it a guy thing" he said air quoting the guy thing part. What a shame.

" I'm telling you Michael, girls back in Washington have no taste whatsoever"

He laughed at that too.

" I always wanted to ask you something too" he said with a slightly serious tone.

" What's that?"

" Do you miss your mother ?" He asked in the softest tone possible. He looked at me like I was a wounded cat. Maybe I looked like one.

" I'm sorry, I just-

" No, don't be, I just didn't expect the question coming that's all"

" It's just, you never talk about it El, you talk about everything else but not this. I ,um, I just wanted to know, that's all"

Translation: I want to know the ugly parts of you too.

It's not like I wasn't willing to talk, I can talk to Michael about practically anything. It was more along the lines of : I was afraid/ ashamed to talk out loud. I collected my thoughts for a moment. Frank Sinatra was playing in the background. Aunt Rose played his greatest hits before going back to her room and none of us bothered to stop it after she left. We loved Sinatra. After what felt like an eternity I spoke.

" Do I miss my mother? Sometimes I do, sometimes I don't. Growing up.. has been tough for me Michael. All the countless times I sat alone at the dinner table wishing someone, anyone would give me company, all the times neither my father nor my mother bothered to show up for parents meet at school, all the times families celebrate festive season together and while I was all by myself. I missed them, both of them when I was young. As I grew, I started missing them less and less. There was a point in time when I hated them, my mother more so than my father. He chose to leave, that was his decision. She chose to stay and yet didn't fulfill her promise. I clearly remember the day my love for her completely changed. It was the day I got my period for the first time, it was December 4th, I was 13. I didn't really know what a period was, I had no one to tell me. The only information I got was from our health ed class which I didn't pay enough attention to and belly , who was the only girl friend I had. So we were in math and my skirt got stained pretty bad and I didn't know what to do. Belly... she asked some of class girls for a tampon , only a handful of them got their period at that time. Our math teacher, she asked me if I wanted to go home and I said yes. They called my home several times but nobody attended the call because nobody was there. Principal James took both me and belly to his home. It was belly's mom who took care of me,who bought my first tampon , who gave me sex Ed in her own way... She made me feel safe and happy. I spent last year's Thanksgiving there as well. I'm forever grateful to them. Sometimes I get this overwhelming feeling... I don't know how to put in words. I want to ask her why she's doing what she's doing. Why in all these years, she never loved me in the way a mother is supposed to love her daughter, why she forgot I even existed, what did I possibly do to deserve that from her. I get so scared when I think about me being a mother, I cannot even imagine it"

" Is that why you don't submit your best art?"

" I've never admitted this before but I paint a lot especially during these holiday and festive seasons. Ever since I can remember I've never spent any birthday of mine without crying. These Thanksgivings and Christmases made me sick. I used to hate that while the rest of the world is happy, joyous, celebrating with their families , I was wallowing in this pit of misery. So I did the thing I knew, I painted"

" Hmm"

" It's my biggest fear Michael, that I'll end up just like her, I already look like her, I feel it's just a matter of time that I'll end up like her."

" Why do you even think that" he barely whispered

" We're too alike Michael, atleast from what I can remember, she loves art, I love art, she has this amazing ability to detach herself from things she doesn't care about, I have that too and she feels so less , so little, like she has no heart , I feel the same Michael, like there's so little to me. Look at me, I already detached myself from my own mother!" God, my throat was closing up

" I've never met your mother El but I'll say this for sure, you are not your mother, you will never become like her. You're too kind, too good , too empathetic for that. You just think you are detached from her El, if you really are, you wouldn't have tears in your eyes now."

At that tears dribbled down my eyes and quietly wiped them off with the back of my hand.

" I wish you could see what I see when I look at you" he said leaning forward taking my hand in his.

" What do you see?" I asked surprised.

" I see everything Elizabeth, I see everything in you and this fear of yours... it's irrational. I don't know what to say except, you will be a great mom one day El, you might not exactly know what to do but you know what not to and you will never put your child through anything you have been through, consciously or unconsciously. " I looked at him stunned. No one has ever said this to me probably because I never admitted this out loud but hearing from Michael made me feel.. made me believe in his words.

" You still don't get it do you? You are the most beautiful girl I have ever seen in my entire life El. There's so much more to you El. You are More, More than me, More than anyone. You've been through all this and still turned out to be a wonderful human being. So don't ever think or feel that you are less in any way. You are a splash of brightest of the colors, you are a fucking rainbow. " He said every word with so much intensity and passion I got lost in them.How could he see a rainbow when I had only black and white to me? " Silence stretched between us. Tension was building up with every second.

" Do you like this song?" he asked weakly. Fly me to the moon was playing.

" Yes" my voice cracked. So I cleared it

" That's good because I freaking love this song" he said and jumped out of the sofa . He started singing mimicking holding a microphone in his hand. All the tension that built up went out of the window along with all of my thoughts .I started laughing at his horrendous singing.

Fill my heart with song

And let me sing forevermore

You are all I long for

All I worship and adore

In other words, please be true

In other words, I love you

He sang running around in the living room, smiling and dancing and Michael absolutely CANNOT dance. I was clutching my stomach and laughing at this point. Tears were rolling down by eyes for his jazz dance moves during the instrument bridge part. Then he ran towards me, yanked me from the sofa and started making me dance.

Fill my heart with song

Let me sing forevermore

What are you trying to tell me Michael?

You are all I long for

All I worship and adore

We started slow dancing at this point, looking into each other's eyes.

In other words, please be true

In other words, in other words

I so wish it was true Michael. I wish it could be possible

I love you

As the song came to end, Michael hugged me tight, like he never wanted to let me go. That was when it occurred to me. You know how a prism disperses white light into it's individual colours, creating a rainbow? That's who he was , a fucking prism. That's how his heart was :Beautiful, multifaceted and crystal clear, pure and unique in its own way, bringing out the best in everything, choosing to see the best in everyone. My Michael, the best person I've ever met in my entire life. My Michael. My heart was filling up with so much love, I cannot possibly put this feeling in words. It was like I was flying, soaring high in the sky and like I was drowning at the same time. My heart was thumping against my chest. I hugged him with the same intensity as he did, breathing in his scent. He smelled so good, like cedarwood and ....Michael.His heart was beating wildly against his chest, just like mine screaming . When we broke apart after a while we stared deep into each other's eyes. At that moment, time stopped. There was no one else but us. Just him and me. Neither of us did anything, we just stared at each other. I felt like I knew him even before I knew him. It was complex yet simple my words will do absolutely no justice to what I felt.It was the purest , most intense emotion I ever felt in my entire life. We didn't even touch each other but I felt him everywhere. I never thought I would experience a feeling like this. It was not just love, it was so much more than that. Love felt like a very small word for what I felt in that moment. It was like someone cast a spell upon us, momentarily freezing time, so that we were suspended in time and space for a fraction of second. I slept very peacefully that day. But the next morning I woke up with fear, fear of fucking things up. Reasoning crawled back into my mind and it made me realize why we were together in the first place. Over the next couple of days I tried to tell him that we should stop whatever it was that we were doing but I couldn't, not when his entire face light up everytime I smiled at him, not when he ran his hand over my cheek everytime he said good morning or good night and not when he tucked my hair behind my ear and ran his hands through my hair. I physically couldn't. My throat closed and words didn't come out of mouth. So I decided to postpone it. Michael spent the entire Friday trying to teach me how to play chess. Needless to say I was a disaster at chess. At nights Aunt Rose and Michael would play the piano, all those classical tunes I listened to while I was growing up. They played a few tunes together, smiling at each other the whole time. It was a beautiful sight to behold. He was the happiest when he was with his mother and I absolutely loved it. On Saturday when we were watching the TV together like we usually did with one hand distance between us, Michael decided to close it by scooting over and draping his arm over my shoulder.He had the remote in the other hand and looked straight at the flat screen. I couldn't help myself , so I wrapped my hands around his torso and rested my head over his chest.I felt his smile over my head and he kissed my hair softly.His heart initially went into an over drive just like mine but eventually settled down to slow and steady beats. That day we had the most goofy smiles plastered to our faces. Heaven forbid, we were in love!. Oh god! What do I do! I don't want to mess this up. I don't to throw away the only family I have with this. Sunday came in the blink of an eye and it was time for me to go back to my.... it didn't feel like home anymore. My home was here, with Aunt Rose and Michael. It will be if I did the right thing. Will Aunt Rose have a problem with the two of us dating? Absolutely not. I knew that, he knew that. What we also knew was we didn't want to put her in a position like that especially when we were not sure about anything ourselves, when we were this young! Who knew how this is going to end? We will be going away for college anyway. But what I felt for Michael, I never felt it for anyone. Oh god, why is my life a never ending tragedy?. The safest way to keep both Michael and Aunt Rose in my life was to leave the things the way they are now, by being friends and only friends with Michael. I should be the one to do it. To tell him that we can't do this, that I can't lose the family I have. So I did.

It was afternoon and I would be leaving in a few hours. Both of us were lounging in the small backdoor space .

Say it , say it. I couldn't. Both of us did not say a word for the longest time. I had a feeling that he saw this coming.

" You know we cannot do this Michael"

I barely whispered.

" Yeah I know" he said staring into space.

" If things were different-

" No, if things were different we wouldn't even be sitting here about talking this. If things were different you wouldn't even look at me"

" That's not true" I said shaking my head

" It is true, because I wouldn't be like this if I weren't my mom's son" he said looking into my eyes. Now that was true, I did not fall in love with Michael for the way he looked, it was far far beyond that, I fell in love with him for who he was as a person, as an individual and that was because of AunT Rose, I will not deny that. I loved the fact that he thought about it this way. Oh my god I love him even more now if that was even possible.

" So let's not regret anything okay, let's not do this to ourselves" he whispered looking into my eyes. I cannot do this anymore. I nodded my head, got up, ruffled his hair and left without looking back because I knew that if I did I wouldn't leave. Something shattered inside of me while I walked away from him. It was then I realized that I did have a heart, a heart that was brought back to life by the one person I left behind, a heart that just broke into a million pieces.