Maxie had never once been jealous of Lulu Spencer. She had always known that she possessed something that the other blonde did not. Whereas Lulu was cute, Maxie was sexy. While Lulu was the kind of girl guys brought home to meet their mom, Maxie was the girl they wanted in their bed. Lulu was forever blaming others for her circumstances, but Maxie had been carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders for years. Other than their hair color, living in the same small town and having people in common, the two girls couldn't have been more different.

Yet, Lulu had the one thing that Maxie wanted more than anything in the world. Maxie was envious that Lulu still had Johnny's heart, even if she didn't always have his attention. She saw the way that Johnny watched her now, after their day in the apartment after he'd fought with Lulu. He watched her every move, waiting to catch her eye when Lulu was looking away. If it had been any other guy at any other time, that probably would have been enough. However, Maxie had gotten a taste of what it was like to be in Johnny Zacharra's arms and now she was addicted.

That's why when she came home to a dim apartment on Friday night, she wanted to kick herself for not staying at Jason's longer. She happened to walk in on Johnny and Lulu finally making up – right in the middle of her living room on the couch. Averting her eyes, Maxie muttered an apology as she fled from the room. A few minutes later, she heard Johnny and Lulu start arguing again. Turning up the stereo, she drowned out their voices in a vain attempt to remain unattached from the situation. She wasn't sure if they were fighting because of what she had interrupted. She didn't want to know. She just wanted to forget seeing Johnny's arms around someone that wasn't her.

No matter how loud the Imogen Heap song blaring on her stereo was, she still heard the loud and angry sound of a door slamming. Maxie turned down the dial and stuck her head out into the hallway to see which one of the lovebirds had left. A few moments later, she saw Lulu head toward her room, her eyes red with tears.

"Are you alright?" Maxie called out to her, surprising both of them. Lulu looked up and nodded silently as she played with the knob on her bedroom door. "I'm sorry. I didn't know that you guys were going to be here. I didn't mean to interrupt anything."

"It's not your fault," Lulu shrugged. Even though she knew it was a lie, she couldn't really blame Maxie directly. It was clear that Johnny was distracted the minute her roommate came home. He had been like this all week, ever since the morning after their big fight when she'd returned home and apologized. "He just needed to get out of here, take some time to think. We'll be fine. We always are."

Maxie nodded thoughtfully, "Right, well, I hope so."

"Thanks, I think I am going to get some sleep. If Johnny comes home, just tell him to come on in," Lulu retorted. "I'll see you in the morning."

"Good night," Maxie replied before shutting her door again. Her back slid against the heavy wood surface as she slid to the ground. Drawing her knees up to her chin, Maxie tried not to dwell on Lulu's words. Of course they would make up, they always did. She felt guilty that she wished that this was the fight that would break them up. What kind of friend was she? Then again, she had never claimed to be Lulu's friend exactly. The only person she really called her friend was Spinelli. Then again, she had betrayed him by sleeping with Johnny and keeping it a secret.

Hours later, after Maxie had finally managed to find sleep, she could hear Lulu's soft voice coming from the living room. Maxie rolled over, pulling the blanket over her head to drown out the conversation. The last thing she wanted to hear was Johnny's apology followed by their make-up sex. Trying to get comfortable, she cursed under her breath at the drama that her life had become. She used to thrive on this kind of stuff, but those days were long gone.

Finally, almost begrudgingly, she pulled back the covers and listened for Johnny's voice. "Lulu, I'm sorry, I should have stormed out like that," Maxie could overhear him saying. "You just have to understand where I am coming from."

Maxie didn't wait to hear Lulu's reply as she crept toward her window. Lifting the pane, she crawled over the sill and out onto the adjoining fireplace that led from both her and Lulu's bedrooms. The stars twinkled above in the velvety spring sky. She pushed the window closed after her, putting a silence to the reconciliation conversation going on in her living room. She was really glad that there were only a few more months left on her lease. Even if it meant living with Mac again until she found a new place, she knew that it would be better than having to put up with Johnny and Lulu any longer. It was just too much now.

She sat alone on the fire escape for a few more minutes until she saw Lulu's light go on in her bedroom and two shadows emerge in the window. Maxie crept back in the house in search of coffee in the kitchen, craving a warm brew that could provide her with the comfort that she needed. She made a single cup before heading back for her fire escape. With a blanket wrapped around her, she curled up on the metal grate and looked back toward the stars. It was nights like these where she wondered if BJ and Coop and Jesse and Georgie were up there watching over her. She liked to think so. It was a comforting thought to think of having so many guardian angels.

Maxie was out there for more than a half hour before she heard the window to Lulu's bedroom slide open. She looked up to see a pair of familiar dark eyes glittering back at her. Johnny sauntered over to her corner of the fire escape, clad only in a pair of plaid pajama pants. He sat down next to her silently, reaching for her mug to take a long sip. He handed it back over to her with a smile before moving over so that his back was flat against the rail beside her.

"Hey, you."

"Hey," she replied back softly. "Lulu asleep?"

Johnny shrugged nonchalantly. He really hadn't even bothered to check to see. He had seen Maxie slip out here a few minutes and couldn't wait to come to her. "Sorry about earlier. I know that it was awkward for you."

"It is what it is," she replied. "But yeah, it kind of sucked."

"You've been avoiding me all week."

They weren't looking at each other as they spoke. Their eyes were fixed on the stars. "I'm not really sure how to do this," she confessed. "Usually, I manage to push the guys away before I really get the chance to get this far. If not, something happens and they end up leaving me. Logan is the only guy I've ever dealt with who was in a relationship and we basically hated each other. You're different. I kind of like you."

"Likewise, Jones," he said quietly, bumping her shoulder. "I want to see you again."

"I can't," Maxie said firmly. "Not while you're with her. If you want to be with Lulu, then you need to give it all you have. I don't want to be the other woman. What we had was fun, Zacharra, but it wasn't right."

"You like to be bad."

"I do," she admitted, "but I'm not that person anymore. It would be so easy for me to play the vixen. It's a role I know and do well. It's familiar. The thing is that I want to be more than that now. I can't put Lulu through that again. Even if I don't particularly care for her some times, Spinelli does. It'd break his heart to know what I've done – that I'm still the person that he thought I'd left behind. I don't want to be that girl, Johnny. I want to be more than that."

"You have no idea all the things you are, Jones." It was only then that he realized that he head reached for her hand and entwined their fingers. It was so natural, completely unconscious. "Maxie…"

His voice was low and hoarse. She knew what that tone meant. It meant trouble. "Johnny, I can't," she repeated. Her voice was quiet but firm. She meant it. There was no way she was going to be this girl again. She had done it the other night, but she had had a lot of time to think. "She deserves someone who is going to love her, Johnny. If you want to be with Lulu, you need to be with her. I can't be the girl that comes in the middle of that. I won't play second fiddle to anyone."

Reaching for her cup of coffee again, he took a long drink to give himself just a minute longer to think. He knew that he had to choose his words carefully. "You're not coming in the middle of something that wasn't already broken to start with."

"You need to tell her that, not me."

"I know," he replied. "I know."

"Can you do me a favor?"

Johnny looked over at her. He knew that he would kill for her. "Anything."

"Don't break my heart," she warned him. "If you choose Lulu, just tell me. Don't drag it out, don't make excuses. Just don't break my heart."

He wrapped his arm around her and pulled her closer to him. He wanted to kiss here there, beneath the glow of the pale moon, but he knew that it would be risking a lot. "Someone's heart is going to get broken here. I'll do everything in my power to make sure it's not yours."

"What are we going to do?"

"Figure this out."

"Easier said than done," she muttered. "Is it bad that I want you to kiss me?"

"I was just thinking about that," he grinned. She leaned her head on his shoulder, allowing him briefly to brush a kiss over her forehead. It was subtle but sweet. "I need to get back in there…"

"Yeah."

Her reply was sad and broke his heart a little more than he expected. "I keep waiting to wake up and know exactly what I'm supposed to do here. Sometimes it's so clear to me. I found Lulu on the edge of town, and I thought it just had to be fate. I needed to believe that she would fix everything I thought was broken about my life," he confessed. "I was so sure I knew what that would relationship would be but I had no clue. I never knew that being with her would cause me to walk away from my family, from everything I've ever known. Now it's like I'm always fighting to hang onto the very things that define me – the things that made me the man she fell in love with. Every fight we have is about someone else, usually you or Claudia. I can't keep fighting with her over things I shouldn't have to apologize for."

Maxie thought about pointing out that he probably had something to apologize about when it came to her, but she knew that wasn't really the point. The point was that Lulu made him feel like someone he wasn't, and she knew what that could do to a person. She could so easily be his savior but she wouldn't. He needed to figure this out on his own. Unlike Lulu, she knew that she couldn't fix Johnny. He wasn't even as really broken as he thought he was. He would figure this out on his own and come out stronger on the other side for having gone through it. Maxie was a living testament to that.

"I don't know a lot about relationships. I've messed up a lot of good things in my life because someone thought they could save me. The thing I've come to realize is that the only person who can really save me is me," she told him. "Lulu loves you, Johnny. If you want to be with her, you have to let her. You just can't lose yourself in the process."

"That's the thing though," he countered. "I feel like I already have. I'm not this good guy that she wants me to be. I am the son of a mobster. No matter how much she wants me to be something different, I will always be a Zacharra. I will always do what it takes to protect my family and what's ours. Even if I am just a mechanic, I will still have this life in me. It's innate."

She thought not for the first time how she could live in this life with him and accept it blindly, having total faith that he would do what it kept to protect her from it. Maxie had believed in Johnny's ability to serve and protect long before she even liked him as a friend. "You seem to be fine with who you are, Johnny. That's a rare gift. Don't lose that for anyone – not even Lulu."

"You sound like Claud."

"Well, I could say a lot of things about your sister, but I would never call her a stupid woman. It's clear that she loves you more than anything or anyone in the world. You always talk about this secret that would destroy you and Lulu. I don't know much, but I know that it has something to do with Claudia. It's the only way you would keep a secret that big – to protect her."

"Maxie," he warned, "please don't go there. You would hate me, too."

Maxie shrugged. "Who am I to judge, Johnny? I've done a lot of horrible things in the past, stuff that you probably can't even imagine me doing. You know what I put Lulu through and the fact that I used pills to lure a married man into my bed for months. I'm not exactly innocent."

"Nothing like what I did…"

"I may be a lot of things, Zacharra, but I don't judge," she reminded him. "It's just not my style."

His fingers couldn't help but seek out hers again in the dark. This was the happiest he had been since that night in the kitchen, for those few hours when he had allowed himself to be completely lost in someone else. And it was different this time. He was just sitting on a fire escape with a pretty girl, holding her hand beneath the spring sky. A different version of him would be trying to put moves on Maxie, but he was perfectly content to sit here just like this with her.

"Someday I will tell you my secret."

And just like that, it was out there. Someday he knew that he would confess the truth to her. She would keep his secret and stand by his side despite knowing what a monster he could be. Maxie had seen him throw around his last name like it was the world's most powerful weapon, knowing that sometimes it was. It didn't scare her when she saw the fire in his eyes. In fact, it drove her to stand by his side and fight along with him. In the end, Johnny knew that was what he needed. He needed someone who was his equal, not someone who looked down at him or someone that he was going to have to protect. That had always been the problem with Lulu. He was always trying to be good enough for her or save her. Their love had always had a shelf date, and he knew that the relationship would soon reach its expiration.

"Well, you know where to find me," she nodded toward the window. "I'm going to go in."

"Yeah, I should get back in there," he said, echoing his earlier sentiment. He stood up and then helped Maxie to her feet. They were close to each other in the shadows of the night. Her hands slipped around his waist as she pulled him into a hug. He relaxed in her embrace, allowing a moment of brief comfort. "You're the girl I'm going to want."

"You're the boy I already do."

The whispered confession in the dark was more than anything Maxie had told a boy since Cooper had died. It spoke of an affection that went beyond friendship and admiration, like the bond she shared with Spinelli. Even if she hadn't wanted to admit, she had finally said the words aloud. She wanted to be with Johnny Zacharra just as much as he wanted to be with her.