Stay With You (Anthony Rizzo)

70

Maliyah

"Are you ready now" Anthony asks for the 100th time since he got home and I start to laugh at his impatience.

"Sorry if I'm taking so long but you didn't exactly give me a lot of information to work with" I remind him.

"So what, dress cute isn't enough now" he asks.

"No... it's not" I giggle.

"You look good no matter what you do, can we go now" he begs and I roll my eyes.

"Fine. Let me put in some earrings and we can go" I tell him.

I finish getting ready before he grabs my hand and running out of the apartment. He pushes me into his car and we drive out into the city. We didn't always have free time to just be in the city so I get really excited as we approach downtown. There was plenty of people out and about and I was just happy to be able to be out here with everyone else. As we continue to drive along I see four hot air balloons sitting in the park and I instantly perk up. They were huge and blown up ready to be ridden.

"No way" I squeal as we head towards the balloons.

"You don't know if those are for you" he accuses.

"Are they" I ask.

"Not the point" he claims.

"Wait... I see my family and your family out there. It has to be for us" I insist.

"Well it's mostly for you" he admits.

"I knew it" I cheer. "We get to go flying again" I smile.

"We do. But I'm not driving this time. I'm gonna enjoy this ride as much as I can" he insists.

"Good. That means I can hold your hand the whole time and we can just fly away together" I insist.

We park in the parking garage by the park and I practically run out to the balloons. I go over and say hi to my family and Anthony's family too. It's not too often we're able to all be together and I'm happy that for whatever reason we can be one big happy family. We talk around for a while before I finally had to ask.

"So what's going on here, why are we all going on a hot air balloon ride" I wonder.

"Your boyfriend planned this... ask him" Johnathan claims. I turn to Anthony who was standing by the hot air balloon we went in the first time. He gives me a big smile as I make my way over to him.

"You aren't going to tell me... are you" I ask and he laughs.

"Nope" he shakes his head and I roll my eyes. He calls me over with his pointer finger and I end up by his side, right where I'm supposed to be. "After you" he says as he opens the door to the basket. I walk into the basket and he follows me in.

Everyone gets loaded up into the four balloons we had but Anthony and I had a ballon to ourselves... with the guy driving of course. We all get up high enough before we fly high above the city. I look into the other baskets and see our families very much enjoying themselves. They were taking pictures and try their best to behave themselves. Well at least my family, Anthony's family wasn't a problem. Mine... mine was always a problem. But it was a beautiful sight to see, to be up in the clouds with the people I love more than anything. I always dreamed of flying and I couldn't imagine it happening without these great people up here with me.

"Okay, this is the best thing that has ever happened to me. I can't think of a better moment than this one. But I still don't quite understand why you did all of this" I admit as I turn from the beautiful view below us to Anthony. Who was still quite a great view himself.

"Because I wanted this moment to be something really special for when I proposed" he claims and my eyes get big. He carefully watches for my reaction but I get frozen.

"When you what" I gasp as he smiles at me. He reaches into the corner of the basket and pulls out a little black ring box.

"Now I'm a little too claustrophobic to get down on one knee, so bare with me" he starts. He opens up the ring box and inside I see the most beautiful ring ever. It wasn't huge but it defiantly caught the sun light. "I always knew that I would feel scared when I proposed to you, but never did I think I would be dangling thousands of feet over the city scared shitless. But there was no better way I could think of proposing to you than in the clouds where you always seem to dream big.

I remember when I asked you if you wanted to get married earlier this year and you said you wanted to wait. I didn't want to, I was ready to get down on one knee right then and there and start the rest of our forever. There wasn't a doubt in my mind that you were the one I was going to spend the rest of my life with, but proposing back then would have given us more problems than solutions. It wasn't a problem of whether or not you and me would end up together, it's always going to be you and me, but rather a question of when we were ready to be everything we wanted to be. We needed time to let things fall into place, time to figure things out and fall more in love along the way. It's not that we weren't ready to devote ourselves to each other, it's just that we didn't have a good foundation to build on with you finally getting out of the hospital and us trying to figure out how to live a life outside the hospital.

And so we grew, I watched you defy all odds and take something like cancer and turn it into motivation. I watched you take life in your hands and mold it into whatever you want it to be. And you made this wonderful life we have today filled with friends and family and sweet memories. I cannot begin to explain to you how proud I am. You are such a incredible person and it makes my heart so happy to see you get to where you are now. Cancer is just at word now and you not only beat it, but everything else it burdened on you. You overcame something no one should ever have to go through, and you did it all while loving me. That's true strength.

So now that you're better and we're well on our way to being the best we can possibly be, I really wanted to ask you this question.

Maliyah... will you marry me" he asks and I smile. I try to speak but nothing comes out so I just nod my head. "Yes" he asks.

"Yes" I whisper and he matches my smile. He takes the ring out of the box before slipping it on to my finger. It fit perfectly as the sparkly rock now sat there.

I suddenly grab his face and pull him into a deep kiss. I hear our families start to cheer as it sets in that we're still up in this balloon. When I open my eyes I see him staring at me and my heart beats even faster, which I didn't know was possible.

"I love you so much Tony" I insist.

"I love you most."