Passion is Love's Phoenix

"I'll be back..I want to do something in the room real quick " Ava said in a tone full of suspicion as they got to their room's floor.

Liam, who was a little in the dark about what she was up to and about what 'this' was up to, just stood still and nodded with a smile as she walked away to her room.

"That's enough, Greg. I'm done with you!" An old woman in her late eighties screamed from a room at the end of the hallway.

This was a trigger that fired Liam into a memory slip.

******.                **********

"What is their idea of enough? Another Forbes' recognition or a fucking new Bloomberg plaque?" The crying and enraged Liam said to Charlotte who sat next to him on an idle bench.

"You really can't be mad at them for wanting to make a better world that includes you, too." Charlotte said with sympathy that failed to console Liam.

"A better world for me is one where my parents love me more than they love their work." Liam said with utter emphasis.

"Liam, your parents love you. That might not seem like much, but it's worth something." Charlotte said in a calm voice as she stretched her hand towards his shoulder to pat him.

"Love is only worth a lot when it's expressly given. They don't understand that. I don't want money!" Liam screamed with obvious frustration he'd been nurturing for a while.

"We hardly want what we already have." Charlotte replied under her breath as she looked away from Liam's face.

"Oh, whoa! I feel so better right now. That's so comforting." Liam replied with excessive sarcasm.

"You know, sometimes you can be so selfish that you forget others who love you also have their own lives. Take me for example, my grandma passed over the weekend, but you didn't know because in reality you're more concerned about venting about your own issues that mine don't even get to breathe." Charlotte replied with sincerity that pierced Liam's heart.

He'd been a dick, a bad friend and he felt guilty for it all.

"Oh, my God, Charlotte. I'm sorry. You're right.. I've been,

… I am a dick, and you didn't deserve that. I'm really sorry." Liam replied, with his guilt getting the better of his apology.

"It's okay. I gotta get to class now. See you tomorrow, Liam." Charlotte said as she walked away from Liam feeling a less burdened as she'd been heard.

People begin to heal the moment they feel heard. Sometimes, the best gift is not the imperfect apologies or the curated empathetic speech, but just silence. Solemn silence.

Liam sat on the bench with his feelings biting every end of his sleeves. He'd been selfish.

*******.       ********

"Liam? Liam?" Ava said to his face which was immersed in this memory he'd been having.

"God! I'm sorry." Liam said sharply as he sobered up to reality quickly.

"Are you okay?" Ava asked with concern as she took a step back from his face.

Liam didn't know what to say, then he paid attention to her and realised that she looked different. She was in a different t-shirt and had an enchanting perfume that accompanied the melody of the beguiling red colour she had on her luscious lips.

"Up until a second ago, I wasn't, and now I'm not. I'm enchanted. You're gorgeous." Liam said with boldness Ava's face couldn't resist as it tore up in a thousand shades of Aphrodite's blush.

Ava could bury the murmurings of the butterflies in her belly but she couldn't hide her excitement as it lit her face up with a smile that stirred one up in Liam, too.

"Oh, I'm sorry.." Ava said as she mistakenly stood on his right foot while she moved towards him awkwardly. She was about retreating in teenage embarrassment but Liam wrapped his right arm around her waist and held her still and much closer to himself.

Who gives any worthy fucks about the shoe??

"Shhhhhhh!" Liam said as her lips shivered in search of words to fill the lustful space between them.

With a bubble's distance between their loose lips, their eyes passionately traveled within the orbits of the other's.

Liam seized the moment. He reached for her lips with his tender lips that had heaven as flesh and waters of Babylon as juices which Ava found a home in. 

Their lips exchanged letters in italics; the kind their words could not compose in a hundred years.

"A kiss can burn a planet, and can set half the earth ablaze."

When their urges had been fulfilled, their lips understood that they had to return to their abodes. 

Ava's smile was a continent of beauty and Liam's smile could not hide its admiration as it peeped from the corners of his lips.

"Things change because time happens." This sentence politely inhabited Liam's mind as his fingers knotted in symphony with Ava's as they stepped into the escalator.

Those words might have been hard to place but it felt like the truest thing ever said. Liam understood the hard way that time's continuity was the reason behind the constant called change.