'Excuse me, miss. Miss! More Saturn Rings over here!' Maria's head shot up in surprise. She'd been thinking about him again. Of course, she thought about him a lot anyway, ever since…well, today it was wrose. She was thinking about him constantly, and now she had a room full of people sniggering at her because she seemed to have spaced out for five minutes. This had to stop. Even if she refused to admit it, she knew it was true.
She missed him. Sometimes it hurt so much that she was willing to forget chance of ever singing again to have his arms wrapped around her, to tell him how much she missed him, and have things just the way they used to be. She missed being able to turn to him whenever something was going wrong. She missed being able to call him for no good reason, being able to hang out at his apartment, and she missed having somebody who knew her so perfectly.
Sure, she had Liz, but it was different. Liz still had her soulmate, and it was hard not to see two people so happy and perfect for each other and know you could've been the same. And even though Lizzie had been there for her through everything ever since she was three. When Pam Troy put gum in Maria's hair in third grade and Maria had to get almost all of her hair cut off, Liz had seen her crying and told her mother to give her the exact same haircut. Whenever Maria had a cold and couldn't go out and play with her friends, Liz stayed with her instead of having fun with the others. She had countless memories like that, but Maria knew that Liz couldn't be expected to stop going out with Max because Maria had gone and cut away half her life.
But what hurt Maria was that she knew deep inside her heart that Michael would've given up anything to see her happy, and that was why hanging out with Liz wasn't the same. Liz had her own life, but with Michael…Maria [I]was[/I] his life, and he was hers, and she knew it. That knowledge made her feel sick to her stomach, and it made her hate herself as much as she knew Michael hated her. She had seen all the changes in him. She knew him, she loved him more than anyone, how could she not?
Mr. Parker had changed their shifts so that they never worked together, and Maria was sure it had been at Michael's request. He just couldn't stand to be around her anymore. Even before the change, if her hand had so much as brushed against his when she handed her an order, he would flinch and this look would cross his face like he was trying to control his anger. And his eyes…he'd look straight at her like he could see into her soul for a split second, and sometimes she felt like he really was. Like he could see how much she missed him, how much she regretted her choice. But then, instead of taking her into his arms, he turned away and kept flipping burgers as if nothing had happened. Because to him, nothing had. Maria was just overthinking things, as usual.
The funny thing was, for the first week or two after they broke up, she got flashes from him when they touched. She knew they weren't deliberate, Michael didn't even seem to realize what was happening. And a few times, she would get a flash from just a moment of eye contact. From across the room, she could see into him just as well as she could the night before he was supposed to leave. She remembered that first flash perfectly, as well as the feeling it had given her. Reliving it gave her strength and told her that Michael would always be waiting for her when she came back.
If it was even possible, the flashes after the breakup had been even more beautiful and meaningful than that first one. She couldn't take it anymore by the time they were working at Santa's cottage, and she let herself slip. She kissed him, tried to get back what they had before but knew it wouldn't work. After she told Michael that they still had to be apart…the stone wall went all the way back up for the first time and she hadn't gotten a flash since. He hated her now. The question was, could she blame him? Some things you had to accept and move on, but she knew she never could.
'MISS! I'd like those Saturn Rings [I]now[/I], if you could just go get them!' Maria sighed. She could obsess over this later, she had a job to keep now.