Malachi and I

by J. J. McAvoy

  “You swore…” She bit back the sob. Biting her bottom lip, she drew in her breath before continuing. “You swore you’d play a song for me…what song was it? Beethoven’s Für Elise?”

  The moment the words left her mouth I knew where her mind had been. What she’d just remembered…and I felt that pain too. Stepping closer I kissed her forehead and she wrapped her arms around my waist.

  “Yes,” I said softly. “Do you want to hear it now?”

  She nodded against me but didn’t let go and I didn’t rush her. I wouldn’t rush anything. Feeling her like this. Holding her like this. I wanted to do it for as long as possible. It made…it made all the pain worth it when I held her.

  “Okay.” She sniffled as she let go and stepped back. She wiped her eyes and looked back to me. “Will you play it for me? Please?”

  “I swore I would, didn’t I?” I said to her as I took her hand and led her across the vinery carpets towards the black piano. I sat on the bench and held my hand out for her to come sit with me. She stared at it for what felt like hours, but it was merely seconds, before she took it. Slowly she sat beside me and lifted the cover of the keys. I hadn’t touched a piano in years…I hadn’t actually played the piano for much longer than that.

  My hands hovered over the keys as she relaxed against me. Closing my eyes, I couldn’t help but think of how strange this world was. How so many things could advance and how so many things often stayed the same. When my fingers touched the keys, it was as if I’d practiced all my life. I remembered every note and every key to Beethoven’s Für Elise. But what I remembered most of all was the feeling of her. Over a hundred years had passed since I’d played this for her—since we were behind a piano together—and yet it felt exactly the same. We were doing it again, picking up where we’d left off. In the middle of a love story that neither of us could control. The way she felt leaning into me, resting her head on my shoulder, right now, in this present moment, made my heart race and caused the room to spin around me.

  She was Esther in this life. Part of me had wondered if we weren’t…if we didn’t have the memories of our past lives, if we didn’t know that we were two souls bound together forever, no matter the time, place, or situation…would we still love one another? Would we still fall for one another and I’d gotten my answer. I belonged only to her. I was indisputably and conclusively bound to her. She was my Esther.

  Opening my eyes as I played the last note, my finger held the key down and the sound echoed through the room. When I lifted my hands off the keys she lifted her head and looked up to me. The look in her eyes…there were no words that could describe it, it was like watching the cosmos unfold.

  “Isn’t this the part where you kiss me again?” she whispered.

  “Yes. But I’m not sure if I should.” I found the strength to say in the small distance between our lips.

  “Why?” she asked.

  She really didn’t know?

  I placed my hands on the piano cover to stop me from touching her. “Because I don’t have the strength to stop kissing you, Esther. Now that you’re here, now that I can see and feel you, I don’t have the strength to—”

  Before I could get the words out her lips were on mine as her arms locked around my neck and she pressed herself into me. A moan escaped the both of us as our tongues met. My hands left the piano to grip her waist as she shifted on top of me.

  “You don’t need the strength the stop,” she whispered as she pulled back from me. Her hands fell from my face and began to undo the belt and buttons of her coat. When it opened, she was wearing nothing but…an oversized deep V-neck shirt

  “You came over like this?” I said softly staring at the mounds of her breasts.

  She placed her forehead on mine. “I watched you die. I felt you die…us die. I was so scared, Malachi. I didn’t think. I just had to come to you. I had to see…to feel that you were still here. So let me feel you.”

  It was all she needed to say. I gave in and covered her lips with mine again. Rising from the bench, I gripped her thighs as her coat fell to the floor and I walked us through the parlor, not caring that I that bumped into the corner table and lamp on the way towards the bedroom. Never had a few feet felt so far away. Laying her on the bed I took off my shirt just as quickly as she took off her bra, and before she could drop it to the side I was kissing her skin. I pushed her back down onto the sheets as I trailed my lips from her neck to the space between her breasts.

  She grabbed my hair as her body arched upwards.

  “Mal…Malachi…” She moaned out.

  My name on her lips, my lips on her skin. For this moment alone I was grateful, no matter what the future held.

  18. WHAT LOVERS DO

  ESTHER

  My head rested on his abs as he sat up against the headboard of the bed. The smell of sex lingered in the air around us as we laid there, naked and breathing it in. My body was aching in the best way…in ways I didn’t realize it could. How many times had we made love? Made love. I’d always laughed to myself about that phrase. Making love. It seemed so archaic, a term that only seemed to exist in between the pages of romance novels. And yet, the way he’d kissed me and held me and touched me—gentle the first time, rougher the second, and downright pornographic the third—yet all still passionate. Each thrust was a confession that gave me chills all over. It was like he knew exactly what my body needed and when it needed it…

  Was it because he’d been my lover so many times before?

  Wait, were we actually lovers?

  Holding on to the sheets I turned to look up at him but his eyes were closed. As I moved to roll over he put his arm around me. His eyes opened and I couldn’t help but notice how long his eyelashes were.

  “What is it?” he asked softly.

  The gentle look in his eyes, the sound of his voice, on top of the fact that the only thing blocking him from seeing me completely naked again was a thin sheet made me lose my nerve.

  “Nothing.”

  “Okay,” he nodded and closed his eyes again but he didn’t move his arm which rested right under my breast.

  “Okay? You gave up easily,” I joked.

  He nodded and without opening his eyes he said, “When you’re ready to ask I’m sure you will. Until then I’ll just wait and try not to be tempted by you.”

  I put my hand on my face, I wanted to laugh, not because he was funny, but because I felt so giddy, like I was a teenage girl or something. Biting the inside of my cheek, I ignored the second part of his statement.

  “I don’t know where we go from here,” I said to him and he didn’t reply so I kept talking. “I feel all lovey-dovey and it’s weird because I’ve never felt like this before. But I know that’s not true. Apparently we’ve done all of this before and that’s insane to me. All of this…is just…not only did I find out you’re …you and I’m…me and we’ve like…I just said ‘like’ unnecessarily because I’m rambling and I’m just going to think before I speak again.” I put my hands back on my face.

  He snickered and then just laughed. His whole body started shaking which in turn made me shake as well.

  “Shut up.” I frowned at him.

  “Sorry.” He laughed again, looking down at me. “You’re cute.”

  “I fell from tempting to cute?”

  He sat up and brushed my curls off my face. “You haven’t fallen. You’re tempting when you’re cute too.”

  I held on to his wrist as his thumb stroked my face. “Stop with all the romantic talk.”

  “I’m being honest; I didn’t realize it was romantic.” He spoke a little softer now. “Would you like me to stop being honest?”

  “Would you do whatever I asked?”

  The corner of his mouth turned up. “You know; you ask me this question in every life we’ve had.”

  I do?

  “It’s not my fault I keep forgetting the answer.” Why was that? Why did I always forget? Why did he always remember? Why was any of this
happening at all? I’d only seen one lifetime, not even the full lifetime—just the tragic ending—and the pain was unbearable.

  “Almost anything,” he answered, drawing me from my thoughts and based on the look in his eye, I knew he’d done it on purpose. “I’d do almost anything you asked.”

  “What wouldn’t you do?”

  He stared at me and I stared back waiting. He tried to move his hand from my face, but I held him still. “What wouldn’t you do, Malachi?”

  “Kill you.”

  Sitting up from his stomach, I no longer cared if the sheets fell off me. I’d asked something that part of me didn’t want to know. “Have I—past me—asked you to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “I did.” He frowned. “In November 1599. I was a prince in the Mughal Empire and we’d been thrown into the pit of the forsaken to die together. I thought…I thought I could ease your suffering…they poisoned you…” He hung his head in shame and a sadness so deep my heart broke for him and his suffering. How many lifetimes had there been since then that he’d been bearing that burden?

  “Why is this happening?”

  “I do not know.”

  “When will it stop?”

  “I do not know.”

  “Are we going to die?”

  “Everyone dies,” he reminded me. “So yes, we are going to die. I do not know when or how.”

  “But it usually happens shortly after we meet, right?” I was starting to feel panic set in.

  He took my hands and kissed them. “Yes, but we met months ago, Esther. This the longest it’s ever taken you to remember, so maybe…”

  “Maybe we won’t die until I remember everything,” I finished for him thinking quickly. “So, what if I don’t remember—?”

  “You’ve already started to, haven’t you?” he asked and I froze as I recalled the dream. He continued. “After the first one, the rest will come back sooner and sooner until everything floods your mind again.”

  “I’ll…” My voice cracked, but I need to say it. “I’ll fight it.”

  “How?” He frowned. “What triggered the memory you had? The music? We’ve heard so many songs together will you avoid them all? Will you give up books? Smells? Foods? You can’t.”

  “Why are discouraging me—?”

  “Because I don’t want you to give up on life. I’ve tried, Esther. I’ve tried not to remember. It’s agonizing and lonely. Remember how I was in Montana the day to took care of me? That will be you and in the end, the memory will still force its way through.”

  I could never forget the pain he’d been in. How he begged not to love her—me—again.

  “So what do we do?” I already felt so defeated.

  He pulled me into his arms and hugged me tightly. “We live for as long as we can. The best as we can. We focus on us now as Malachi and Esther.”

  “Esther and Malachi,” I said grinning and so did he…I loved how our names sounded together. But it also made me think of all the other names that had sounded so good together.

  “Aren’t you scared?”

  He kissed the side of my head. “The moment you aren’t in my arms or in my sight I will be.”

  “Then don’t let me out of your arms or sight.” I shifted in order to kiss his neck. I gently bit his skin and he gasped in shock but he didn’t stay that way for long. Instead, he flipped me onto my back and pinned my hands on either side of me.

  “Esther—”

  “Malachi.”

  I grinned and so did he.

  MALACHI

  Make her happy.

  That was the only thing I could think to do at this point. It was the only thing I cared about. From now to the end of my life—however long or short that was—I wanted to give her as many breathtakingly magnificent memories as I possibly could. Starting from right where I’d left off the last time we were together.

  “Not bad.” I licked the chocolate icing from my thumb.

  “What in the…?”

  I looked up as she came into the kitchen and her eyes grew wide as she looked over the chaos I’d unleashed onto the countertops, all of which were covered in flour, baking powder, and egg shells. She stood there, dressed in only my shirt, which she hadn’t even buttoned, and her lacy panties, forcing me to use all my strength to stay focused. Grabbing the lighter and the sorry excuse for a cake I’d made I stood in front of her.

  “Happy Birthday Esth?” She read out loud.

  “I ran out of space,” I shrugged. It was the thought that counted, right?

  “Malachi,” she laughed shaking her head. “You know it’s not my birthday, right?”

  “You wished for a birthday cake made by me so I’m fulfilling that wish,” I smirked as I clicked the lighter and held its flame above the cake. “Last year’s was not what it should have been and I’m sure this year was hard, so let’s re-celebrate it.”

  Teary eyed, she blew out the light and took the cake from my hand, staring down at it as if it were gold.

  “My wishes…you remembered.”

  I lifted a pen and the now butter stained paper she’d written on almost a year ago. The ink was a bit faded and the paper itself had been folded and unfolded so many times the crease in it was weak enough to be torn with ease.

  “You only wrote thirteen before…before leaving. You have ten more to add, well eleven since you’re now twenty-four,” I said as I swapped the cake in her hands for the pen and paper in mine.

  “What?” She looked down at the paper.

  “See the Seven Ancient Wonders of the World,” I repeated. “We’ve seen them all—and it’s a good thing too because the only one left to actually see is the Great Pyramid.”

  The look on her face was hilarious. I knew when she’d written that list she was merely kidding. She’d written it not believing that I’d ever actually follow through. But if I could I would have and if it were within my power to do so I would.

  “When was our first life?”

  It was the most rational question she could have asked me and I wanted to tell her the whole story but the thing was that it was so long ago, so many lives had come and gone since that one. Of all my memories it was the weakest, the blackest.

  “Malachi?” I loved how she said my name. How she whispered it, how she moaned it, how she screamed it out. It was all music to my ears.

  “You’ll need a knife for this,” I finally spoke again. Putting the cake down on the counter, I looked for where I’d seen the utensils. However, the moment I turned from her, she placed her hand on my back. I couldn’t help but shiver when she did.

  “You know, it’s funny,” she said tracing her fingers over my back, “I told my grandfather once that I didn’t know what I’d do without your words. Reading your stories always gave me strength to do better, love more, and be kinder. And he told me to be the bringer of your own happiness and optimism. Not a book. Not a man. But myself. And now I know it was myself…my past self-counseling my present one. It’s like I found a loop-hole. Grandpa, I’m not really obsessed with Malachi Lord’s books, I’m obsessed with myself and the man who loved me nine hundred and ninety-nine times over.” She kissed my spine and hugged me tightly, her hands on my bare chest. “I don’t need any other wish but to be with you.”

  Swallowing the lump in my throat, I placed my hand over hers and tilted my head back to look up at the ceiling.

  “You couldn’t have said that before I made the cake?”

  “And here I was baring my soul—” She tried to move her arms away but I held on to her.

  “You said you had an early meeting this morning, right?” I glanced at the clock…it was already five a.m.

  “Crap, yeah I needed to—”

  “Cancel.” I let go and turned around to face her. “While you were sleeping, I called and had the fridge stocked. You were right, anything can be delivered in this city. So, let’s stay for at least today.”

  “I thought you sai
d you didn’t want us to stop living life?” she asked as I tugged at the hem of her panties.

  “I did,” I replied as I grabbed her ass and pressed her body against mine, my lips at her ears. “Today I just want to live while inside you. For the first time in our lives, from sunup to sundown, let’s indulge in one another without any interruptions.”

  “I’m not going to be able to walk straight, am I?” She snickered as she played with the hem of my boxers.

  I couldn’t help but smirk at that. “When you can’t walk, I’ll carry you.”

  “You promise?”

  “I swear it.”

  “Then don’t hold back.”

  With pleasure.

  ***

  “Draw me like one of your French girls, Jack.”

  Glancing up from the sketchbook in front of me she stood in a soft pink silk robe which she’d pulled off her shoulders slightly, and she purposefully stuck out her smooth brown leg. She was the epitome of beauty but that line…I couldn’t help but laugh.

  “Really?” I asked between laughs.

  She grinned from ear to ear as she nodded and skipped over to the couch. “You have no idea how long I’ve wanted to say that line. And do this.”

  The moment she dropped the robe the laughter coming out of my throat morphed into a cough, as I found myself unable to look away from the curve of her breasts and her waist. I’d seen all of her by now and yet she still sucked all the air out of my lungs without exerting any effort.

  “Where do you want me?” she asked as she moved over to the couch while I struggled to get the air back into my lungs. Finally, she looked to me and her confidence dwindled and slowly her arms crossed over her chest.

  Placing the book and my pencils to the right of me I rose from the carpet opposite the couch and walked to her as she leaned back.

  “You’re making this much more intense than it was in my head,” she whispered when I tilted her chin back.