A few words! The song I used for this chapter is what I believe sums up love; it's sweet, straight from the heart, and sounds like a song that someone spent an afternoon writing in their room. This week has also been filled with me completing summer job applications out the wazoo. Word to the wise: if you use drugs, have anger issues, or have committed any felonies, you can knock bagging groceries off of your job list. Happy Friday the Thirteenth as well...was this a bad day to update? :/
Also, many thanks to my reviewers Iwait4theRain, broken-paige, and Penny L. Pingleton; your words of kindness mean so much to me. I hope you enjoy the rest of the story too! :3
This is the first day of my life
I swear I was born right in the doorway
I went out in the rain, suddenly everything changed
They're spreading blankets on the beach
Yours is the first face that I saw; I think I was blind before I met you
And I don't know where I am, I don't know where I've been
But I know where I want to go
~"First Day of My Life" by Bright Eyes
The following morning, Tony was woken up by the low, droning hum of an engine. At first, he thought he was dreaming, for outside, was a sun rise - a clear sunrise not blocked out by smog. A beautiful sight Tony thought the sunrise was, but the sight next to him was more beautiful.
Maria looked so peaceful, Tony thought. So serene. So content. She was like that perfect sunrise on the horizon; full of hope and warmth, ready to take on the new day and leave the previous night behind. With a gentle hand, Tony shook Maria's shoulder to wake her - even though he would of rather left her alone.
"Maria. Maria, wake up."
Maria slowly opened her eyes, forgetting that she had spent the night on a bus. She was reminded of that, however, when she moved her stiff legs. After letting her eyes adjust to the daylight, she turned to Tony.
"Where are we?" Maria asked with the wide-eyed innocence of a child.
"We're - somewhere."
Maria sat on a bench, watching Tony as he paid for cups of coffee at a newsstand. This is for real now, she thought; no turning back. She and Tony were miles away from the city and left not even an imprint of themselves in that God forsaken place. No letters, no hints. Nothing. It was if they never even existed - which perhaps was for the better.
Like Tony had told her the previous night: "We'll go so far away they'll never find us." And far away they went indeed. Maria had yet to see a car on the twisty road that ran past the bus station. But it was only morning; she thought perhaps unlike people in the city, people in the country didn't drive at all hours of the day. That was one thing Maria knew she wouldn't miss: the noise. If things were always as quiet as they were now, she would enjoy her new life.
"Here."
Maria glanced up and saw Tony handing her a flimsy paper cup. "Thank you."
Tony smiled a bit and sat down next to Maria. Now, he didn't have to hide his love away; there was no one around but the man at the newsstand to see them. As Tony took a sip of his coffee (which tasted more like water tinted brown), he looked towards the lonely country road. He then looked to Maria, whose eyes were lost in her cup. He wondered what she was thinking. He wondered if they were thinking about the same things; like where they went from here or what the future held in its arms for them.
"Maria?"
"Yes?"
"What are you thinking about?"
Maria looked towards the fields that seemed to engulf the road in their green color. "I do not really know. But, sometimes that is better."
"Do you really think that?"
This time, Maria looked at Tony. She placed a hand on his and smiled. "Yes I do. I believe things happen for a reason and that God always knows what is best for us."
"I like the sound of that."
Maria smiled once again, giving Tony a feeling inside that made him as happy as a school boy on Valentine's Day. Never had he met a person, or a girl for that matter, who made him feel the way Maria did. Sure, Riff had set him up on plenty dates, but he didn't get this feeling from any of those girls. It was now Tony decided that only someone special could make this present feeling he had possible, like how only the right pieces in a puzzle fit together. Love is a lot like a puzzle he supposed; having to work a long time to find the correct pieces and fit them together, but in the end when everything is where it should be, you have a beautiful image to gaze at.
"Hey Maria?"
"Yes?"
Tony sat his cup down on the bench and took Maria's hands in his. "You know I love you, right?"
Maria smiled. "Of course I do. I love you too."
There was that feeling again. That beautiful, innocent feeling of love.
"The sky never looked like this city," Tony said one evening. He and Maria were seated on the cement patio of the motel they had been calling home for a week. The cars they watched earlier had been traded for the watching the sky, which was starting to succumb to the night. Maria unglued her eyes from the sky and smiled at Tony. Her nose twitched as Tony lit a cigarette. Tony took note of this and turned to Maria.
"Do you mind?" he asked as one end of the cigarette began to give off an ember glow. Maria shook her head before returning to talk of the picture-perfect sunset above them.
"Nothing compares to the sunsets in San Juan," Maria said as her eyes went back to the sky. As Tony took a drag of his cigarette, his eyes went to the sky too. The purple and pink hues above him seemed so pure, a contrast from the smog-filled skies he had been forced to gaze at for eighteen years. In fact, everything about his new surroundings was a contrast to the city.
The idyllic landscape reminded him of pictures in the gardening magazines his mother used to receive. They advertised pictures of open fields dotted with wild flowers, contained order forms to buy hyacinth and tulip bulbs, and reader-submitted tips on how to grow the perfect tomatoes; all of which were completely useless things in the city. For a while, Tony wondered why his mother wasted money on those magazines; she too must of known how pointless they were. Then one day, it hit Tony; those magazines gave his mother something the city never could give her: beauty.
That thought also made Tony wonder why Maria's family would want to leave behind a warm, beautiful island, for a cruddy, dingy city. He recalled one afternoon shortly after taking his job with Doc. Two men had come in, and while they read over stock prices in the paper, they argued about the causes of the recent influx of immigrants from that far away island. One of them had claimed it was due to a bad economy, while the other had said it was simply for a yearning of the "American dream". At the time, Tony disregarded their conversation; it was a boring topic that effected only business-minded adults and his buddy, Riff, who was sure those Puerto Ricans would stir up trouble for the Jets.
But now, things were different; now, there was Maria.
"What was it like?" Tony questioned, breaking the silence that had been between himself and Maria for awhile. He took another long drag of his cigarette, and watched the smoke get carried away by the summer breeze.
"What was what like?" Maria asked, her eyes only leaving the sky when a car pulled into the motel, sending a puff of dust up into the milky twilight. The smoke from Tony's cigarette, mixed with the acrid smell of car fumes blowing off the road, gave Maria a reminder of the city she and Tony left behind.
"Puerto Rico; what was it like?" Tony asked after exhaling a puff of smoke. Maria coughed, prompting Tony to conclude cigarettes were a thing she was not used to being around.
"Do you want to know the good or the bad?" she asked.
Tony traced a finger over Maria's cheek, putting her delicate, almost porcelain, features to memory. "Whatever you want to tell me."
"The beaches were beautiful," Maria paused as she coughed once again, "and so were the sunsets. But, there were also things that were not so beautiful, which is why we came here, to America."
Tony threw his cigarette to the ground and after grinding it under his foot, turned to Maria. "Yeah, but you only saw the city; the country is a lot bigger than Manhattan."
"Oh, but that did not matter. Just to know that I was in America was still wonderful." Maria scooted closer to Tony now that the cigarette had been extinguished. "Papa would tell 'Nardo and me about how wonderful things would be for us here. 'Nardo did not want to believe him; he said nothing could be better or come close to Puerto Rico." Maria's face took on a melancholy smile. "I think it was Anita who urged him to finally want to come here."
"Bet you were a little disappointed when you didn't see that 'ideal American life' those posters advertise, huh?"
Maria took in a shaky breath. She recalled the day she arrived in Manhattan; skyscrapers, traffic at all hours of the day, they were things Maria had quickly grown used to. It was the prejudice, the hate, the violence, that Maria had not grown used to. Countless nights, her brother would return home with some sort of injury, and while Bernardo had believed Maria was unaware of their source, he was way off.
In fact, it had been Anita who explained Bernardo's war games to Maria. It had only been three weeks since her arrival to America, that Anita had lamented to Maria about, in her opinion, Bernardo's foolish ideas. He claimed that his gang was his way of embracing American culture, and that it was the only way to stand up against those mocking white boys. Maria also remembered Anita calling her brother "a silly child" and saying that someday he'd get himself killed if he wasn't careful. Maria bet Anita regretted those words now.
"I was not disappointed; there were just things I could not get used to, that is all." Maria watched a lanky man walk out of the motel office and back to the car that had pulled in earlier. After removing a suitcase from the back seat, he made his way across the dusty parking lot and to the room next door. He gave a nod to the pair before walking inside.
"Maria?"
Maria pulled her eyes back to Tony, a task that was becoming easier to do everyday. "Yes?"
"Look, I know now, things may seem confusing, but they won't be like this forever; I promise."
"I know they will not; it will take time for things to get how we want them, but we will have each other."
Tony intertwined his hand with Maria's and smiled at her. "Yeah, we will."
It was now, the pair realized the sunset had long ago faded, and the buzzing neon motel sign had kicked on. Maria batted at a moth as it fluttered past her face, before it traveled to it's intended destination, that was the light bulb above her head. The sky was sprinkled with an array of stars; those tiny celestial bodies were something she hadn't seen for awhile. The nighttime city lights had been far too bright,and out shone even the most brilliant of stars. But here, outside the city, a world where artificial color and man-made lights were non-existent, she could see the stars once again; and this made Maria happy.
Maria glanced over at Tony, who seemed just as mesmerized by the starry sky as she was.
"I think I am going to bed."
Maria proceeded to get up, only to have Tony catch her by the hand. He pulled her close, and gave her a kiss.
"You can't get away that easy," Tony whispered, his lips only slightly pulled apart from Maria's. "I love you."
"I love you too."
They exchanged a kiss once again before Maria got up. She opened the door slightly, giving Tony a final smile before going inside. Once she was gone, Tony picked his pack of cigarettes up from the ground. The little cardboard box in his hands was part of the life he'd been trying so hard to erase. The life he once thought was the best life; a life full of fun and action. A life full of hatred and death. With that thought, Tony hurled the carton of cigarettes across the motel parking lot, finally ridding himself of the last binding thread that kept him sewn to the city.