~~~~~
Part Two
Max POV
~~~~~
I asked Maria to help me carry my bags when we pulled up to my childhood home. All the lights were off when we pulled up, but as soon as Isabel ran in, it began to come to life. It was the little piece of Roswell that I didn't think had ever changed, and I cherished that.
Michael followed Isabel, knowing that I needed to talk to Maria and that that was why I had asked her instead of knowing that he would help or just doing it myself. I had only two bags, so Maria and I stood by the back of the car for a moment, both knowing that we weren't still out because of the luggage, but neither knowing how to start the conversation.
"What do you want Max?" Her question wasn't said bitterly, or even with the slightest hint of agitation; she really just wanted to know. January in Roswell could get chilly, or at least we thought so, and neither of us really wanted to just stand outside like that.
"I need you to go to Portland," I told her. I smiled slightly. "I left your present there."
Her eyes narrowed on me. "What?"
"I found something-someone-in Portland. I promised to meet them tomorrow, and you need to keep that date for me." I turned my hand over, showing her the address which I had written down moments after Liz had fled the store. "There's a little coffee shop at this address. Can you be there by noon?" She nodded. "Can you make up a plausible excuse for leaving on such short notice? I don't think that anyone else needs to know about this just yet."
"Well, of course Max, but who is it?"
"I found Liz," I said. I picked up my bags and left Maria to gawk at the place where I had been standing.
~~~~~
I had almost forgotten why I came back to Roswell on such short notice- almost. When I walked into the house, it instantly hit me. It was just. darker there. Every light in the house was on, but something was missing. There was a feeling, a dread almost, that made it all seem very grave and somber. That was when I realized that they had waited until the very last moment to call me.
My parents had been the last ones that we had told. Isabel had finally won our battle, and my wedding gift to her was the truth for our parents. Of course, as Maria told me, Isabel would need something solid also. That was why I got her the toaster. I don't think that she liked that as much as she would have, had it been on her gift list.
I had never seen my father look quite as fragile as I did that night. I could tell that he couldn't move from his place beneath the pounds of blankets that my mother had placed on him, and I could see the frightening shade of gray that had consumed his skin. "Has a doctor seen him?" I asked, taking on my normal pre-med persona.
"No Max, you're our doctor," Isabel said, quickly growing irritated.
"You still should have taken him in," I told her. "I'm only a med student Isabel. You can't just rely on me for all of this. Just because I can heal doesn't mean I can fix everything. Plus, I would know more about what was wrong."
"We didn't want to take the chance of it not being normal," Michael said. "Things may have cooled down for the time being, but we didn't want to risk being sloppy and having things start up again. I, for one, have liked this piece of normality that we've had."
"Alright, but why would you think that someone would go after Dad?" I asked, placing my hands on either side of my father's head. "I mean, aren't we generally the targets?" Through the connection I now had with my father, I began to look for something wrong with him. I asked him what he felt with our shared mind, and he began describing symptoms from more diseases than I cold name. I spent the next hour healing him, and I began to think that my sister may have been smart in not taking him into the ER. When the glowing in my hands finally faded I told my father to get some rest and went to my old room to do the same. The brigade followed me.
"Max," Isabel said, a tremor in her voice, "why did that take you so long?" I sighed and ran a sweaty hand through my hair.
"I think that it may have been a very smart decision to not take Dad to the doctor." Isabel's eyes clouded with fear and she looked back and forth between Michael and me, slowly, just as she had with every attack that we had ever had during our high school years. "There's just no way that he could have that many problems. Someone would have caught sight of something years ago. I mean, he had everything from Polo to the flu to the common cold. It's just-it's impossible."
"Great," Michael said. "So I guess vacation's over. What are we going to do? This has to be alien."
"Who could have done this Michael?" Isabel asked, rubbing her forehead. "I mean, we got rid of everyone. Who's left?"
"Maybe it's Khivar," Maria mumbled. Three pairs of eyes turned to her. "What? I mean, he's the only other one that we know is out there. He's the loose end. Plus, you either believe that you have that one man left, or you believe that there is another species out there that has the ability to infect a man with dozens of diseases. I vote for Khivar."
Isabel sat in the char by my desk and began to rock herself. "Oh God, I thought that this was all over. I thought that we were done. We left him alone. Why is he coming after us after all these years?"
"He's a tyrannical leader," Michael mumbled, "and he thinks that we're a threat. He build a freaking species of human snakes to come after us. I'm just glad that he's finally got off of his ass and came after us himself. At least now we can end it once and for all." I saw Maria looked at him, about to say something, but she stopped. If hope came with the theory that there wasn't another species after us, and it was just the run of the mill evil genius with insurmountable alien powers, she wasn't about to crush it just because she could.
"Look, I think that we should all just go to bed for tonight," I said, beginning to feel the wear from my flight and then an hour of healing. "We can talk in the morning."
"You can talk without me," Maria said, remembering our earlier conversation. I had to give her credit. I didn't remember what she was talking about until she grinned at me from under place beneath Michael's arm. "My agent called me out. I've got to go tomorrow. He wants me to record another demo."
"I don't think that you should go," Michael said, becoming no more protective than usual. "Now isn't the right time."
"Michael, this is my dream. I won't give up my dream for some psychopath. Plus, I'm probably safer away from here. They won't go that far out of the way just to get me."
"But-"
"No, I am not going to be locked in by this. I'm living my life Michael. I'm going."
"I'll take you to the airport," I told her. Michael and Isabel looked at me, but didn't say anything. In silent agreement, everyone left my room, at least for a few minutes, but just as I began to fall to sleep, Maria came back in.
"Max," she whispered, nudging my shoulder, "Max, wake up."
"I'm awake," I mumbled, not opening my eyes.
"I need tickets. They won't just let me on the plane because I'm pretty."
Had I been more awake, I would have had a witty reply for that, but I already had one foot inside the dream world. "Take my credit card. Call one of the airlines, and get yourself on an early flight."
"Okay-"
"And Maria," I added as an afterthought, "I mean really early."
"Yeah, I got it." She sighed and I could hear her grab my wallet from the desk where I had thrown it. "Early," I heard her mumble as she closed my door. It was bound to be interesting.
~~~~~
Maria's POV
~~~~~
Max didn't realize what he was getting into when he told me to get him up early. Granted, I'm not a morning person, but Max didn't add the fact that I hadn't seen my friend in over half a decade into the equation. Maybe that was why he was so surprised when I go him up at three o'clock to go to the airport. My flight was at six, but I wanted to be there as soon as possible. Max rolled back over and slept for another half hour while I got ready. I finally got him up with a glass of very cold water hovering over his head.
He was pretty much silent during the whole ride to Roswell's tiny airport. After I got checked in he went and got us both coffees from one of the vending machines in the runway hallway since nothing else was opened yet. He told me that as soon as the Cinnabuns opened he would go and get us breakfast. Beyond that he didn't really speak unless I started talking and forced him to answer me. I could tell that he was dying because he had to stay in Roswell.
"She will understand Max," I told him. "It's not your fault. It's not like you're just ditching her. I mean, if things get bad, I could always tell her what the flight cost, as a last resort, of course."
Max arched his eyebrow at me. "How much could the ticket have possibly cost if it makes up for me not coming?" I looked at him. "Never mind, I don't want to know."
"It won't even come up Max. She'll understand. You're father was sick. You had to come home."
Max's eyes widened when I mentioned his father. "Maria, you can't tell her what I told you about my dad. Don't elaborate on his sickness." He looked at the floor, but I had still caught the flash of guilt in his eyes. "I don't want to draw her back into this."
"I still don't understand why everyone else couldn't know that you found her."
"She's not ready for it. I don't think that she was ready to see me there. She'll come back if she wants to see everyone. It should be her choice. I shouldn't have even told you."
"Don't you ever try to keep something like this from me! She was my best friend. If Alex were in town, I would be pulling him along with me, and you know that. You did the right thing by telling me and don't you ever doubt that."
"In your eyes, I know I did. I just don't know how she will feel about it."
"All that you can do is hope for the best. Don't put this on your shoulders too Max. This is not, in any way, your fault. Relax while I'm gone. Spend time with your family. Don't go looking for trouble. With what we found out last night it may be one of your last chances to relax for a while." I looked over my shoulder and saw the lights at the Cinnabuns store turn on. "Now you have a promise to keep. Maria needs sugar to go with her caffeine this morning."
~~~~~
Liz POV
~~~~~
Jerry was gone when I woke up. I didn't know if he was down at the bar or actually at work, but I was happy for the quiet. My clock said ten o'clock when I finally bothered to read it, and I thanked God for the fact that I had the day off. Somewhere between coffee and a shower I found myself thinking back to a time when bruises only came from clumsiness and beer was only for parties.
Jerry had not always been a violent man. I never would have gotten as close to him as I did if he had started out like that. He was as gentle as a teddy bear when we first met. On our first date he took me to the local amusement park and won me a goldfish and a Tasmanian devil stuffed animal. He had dropped me off at my dorm room with a simple kiss on the cheek and plans for another date. He realized that I had been hurt, and he took it slow.
He didn't ask about my past. When I asked him why, he told me that he wasn't a part of it, and so he wanted to focus on our future. He didn't pressure me when I couldn't bring myself to take the next step with him, and when I finally was ready his touch was more gentle that anything I had felt in a long time. With him, I found myself letting go of the past. The hours that I spent with him were hours where I didn't think about Roswell or anyone that I had known there. I wasn't crying over Max or wondering if Maria had finally gotten Michael on her leash when I was with him. I saw myself looking to the future, and then a future with Jerry had seemed very promising.
It wasn't until after college that things started to get bad. Jerry had trouble finding work, and I was still in college, finishing the classes that I needed to pursue a job as any kind of scientist. Jerry was the one who had told me not to give up on anything that I wanted. He was also the one that told me that we couldn't pay for college on just his time to time jobs. He was the reason that I dropped out and started looking for work. Once he even asked me why I refused to ask my parents for help. I told him that I didn't want to go back to my past. He scoffed and left the room.
That was when I started to notice that he was drinking more. He would come in the middle of the night smelling of beer and tell me that he had been working the graveyard shift. I wanted to believe him. I really wanted to think that he was still the good man that I had fallen in love with, but I was starting to forget that man, just as I thought I had forgotten the rest of my past.
It wasn't long after he started drinking that he started hitting me. Looking back, that's where I really knew that I was no longer the little girl from Roswell, New Mexico. Strong, opinionated Liz Parker would never have let a man treat her like I let Jerry treat me. I refused to admit that I had ever been that girl though, so I didn't compare myself to her.
When I looked at the clock again, I realized that it had been almost an hour. I pulled myself out of bed and hurried to get ready, using cover up to camouflage to black and purple bruises on my face and a long sleeved sweater to cover the large purple blemish on my arm. I grabbed my purse and my jacket and left, glad that I was gone before Jerry came back from where ever he was.
~~~~~
Max POV
~~~~~
I left Maria as she boarded her plane. I told her that I wanted to see her off, but she would have no such thing. She told me that I should go get presents for my family as a way of explaining why I just had to accompany my best friend's girlfriend to the airport. I reluctantly agreed, knowing that it would lessen the onslaught of questions that were sure to come.
I couldn't help thinking about the brown haired beauty that had occupied more of my adolescent thoughts that I cared to admit as I stepped into the airport gift shop. I knew that I should have looked for something better considering I really had forgotten to get them anything while I was on my actual trip, but I was far too tired from my flight and then Maria's early morning wake up call to think straight.
I could remember the night that Liz had left like it was yesterday. The rain had poured down in sheets, and, for the first time, I couldn't seem to block it out. Too much was going through my mind. I could still see Liz and Kyle lying on her bed beneath a mess of sheets, laughing over old memories that I could never be a part of. I could still hear her speech about Romeo and Juliet echoing in my ear. I want to be in love with boys. normal boys. The thought of life without her seemed unbearable. Little did I know it was something that I would be faced with all too soon.
I had heard her knock, barely audible over the sound of the rain beating down on the house. I held my hand out to her as she climbed in, and my heart soared as she wrapped her petite fingers around mine.
She dropped my hand as soon as she was in the door, and I finally took the time to look at her-to really look at her, and for once, something made me forget all about her and Kyle. One look into her deep brown eyes told me that she wasn't about to set all things right. She wasn't going to tell me that it had all been a lie, and that she loved me through it all. No, in her eyes I saw the one emotion that still seems to be stronger than love- defeat.
She looked at the wall behind me and asked if I would dry her off. She dropped the duffel bag she had been carrying on the floor, finally drawing my attention to it, and, once she was dry, asked me to dry it too.
I sat on my bed, gesturing for her to sit beside me, but she sat at the desk instead. Not once did she look at me. She didn't know that she didn't have to look at me for me to read her. I could feel her every emotion. I could see the pain in her eyes, and I knew that somewhere inside herself, she could feel my pain too.
"We need to talk Max," she mumbled. I could almost hear Maria's words: the kiss of death.
"I thought that you said everything that you wanted to when you came last night." I turned away from her then, not wanting the other images from last night to return. "I think that you proved your point."
"How do you even know what my point was?" She stood from the chair. "You assume that you know every last thing about me just because you want to, but it's just not true. How do you know that last night had anything to do with you?"
"So what," I asked, standing to be at her level, "you just sleep around when you get angry at someone? That's not you Liz."
"Why do you think that you know me so well?" She spun around so that we were face to face. "I don't even know myself as well as you seem to."
"I know that you wouldn't do that. I know that you wouldn't hurt anyone the way that you knew that that would hurt me."
"You think that I wanted you to see us?" My heart clenched as she referred to herself and Kyle as "us." They weren't an "us" anymore. They hadn't been an "us" for a long time.
"It doesn't matter whether you wanted me to see you or not. You knew that I would find out. It's been one day and half of our school knows already. I would have found out, and you knew that."
"Well maybe that's what I wanted," she mumbled.
"Why?" My voice dropped to follow hers, and a somber air filled the room. I didn't really want to know the answer anymore than she wanted to tell me, but now that it had been asked, there was no way out of it.
"Maybe it was the only way that I could find to make you see the truth."
"What truth?"
She sighed and ran one hand through her long silky hair. "The truth in the fact that we aren't meant to be. I can't keep playing this game Max. I can't keep fighting you."
"Why can't you see that I don't want my destiny? It doesn't mean anything to me."
"Maybe that's what you need to change." She looked at me, and I could feel the grave air of finality fall around us. I could see the familiar glint of tears in her chocolate eyes, but I couldn't tell if they were her own or simply reflections of the ones that I could feel forming in my own eyes. "Your destiny shouldn't be something that you hate or fear. It's who you were. If you hate it, you hate a part of yourself."
"Don't do this Liz," I pleaded, not knowing what else to say.
"It's already been done," she whispered tearfully. She leaned forward and eliminated the space between us with one final tearful kiss. My heart split into about a million pieces as she began to pull away, but my hands found their way to her shoulders and pulled her to me once again, and all of our shared anguish, all the pain of the past months joined together in that final kiss. When she pulled away again all I could do was watch as she picked up her bag and walked to the window. Deep down, a part of me knew that I wouldn't see her again.
When she had lifted the window she seemed to remember something and paused. She turned back and pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket.
"I don't want you to open this right away," she told me, again looking to the wall behind me. "Save it for when you really need me. Save it for when you can't find the truth in anyone." She looked up to meet my eyes one last time. "Will you do that for me?" I managed a small nod and she dropped it onto my bed and left me alone with the rain.
I shook my head, trying to clear the memory. Years had passed. I had eventually opened the letter a few months later when the group began to fall apart. I still have it in a hollow book on one of my shelves. Every once in a while, when I really need the strength that I only seemed to find in Liz, I reread it.
Right then, in the airport gift shop, I wished I had that letter with me.
I asked Maria to help me carry my bags when we pulled up to my childhood home. All the lights were off when we pulled up, but as soon as Isabel ran in, it began to come to life. It was the little piece of Roswell that I didn't think had ever changed, and I cherished that.
Michael followed Isabel, knowing that I needed to talk to Maria and that that was why I had asked her instead of knowing that he would help or just doing it myself. I had only two bags, so Maria and I stood by the back of the car for a moment, both knowing that we weren't still out because of the luggage, but neither knowing how to start the conversation.
"What do you want Max?" Her question wasn't said bitterly, or even with the slightest hint of agitation; she really just wanted to know. January in Roswell could get chilly, or at least we thought so, and neither of us really wanted to just stand outside like that.
"I need you to go to Portland," I told her. I smiled slightly. "I left your present there."
Her eyes narrowed on me. "What?"
"I found something-someone-in Portland. I promised to meet them tomorrow, and you need to keep that date for me." I turned my hand over, showing her the address which I had written down moments after Liz had fled the store. "There's a little coffee shop at this address. Can you be there by noon?" She nodded. "Can you make up a plausible excuse for leaving on such short notice? I don't think that anyone else needs to know about this just yet."
"Well, of course Max, but who is it?"
"I found Liz," I said. I picked up my bags and left Maria to gawk at the place where I had been standing.
~~~~~
I had almost forgotten why I came back to Roswell on such short notice- almost. When I walked into the house, it instantly hit me. It was just. darker there. Every light in the house was on, but something was missing. There was a feeling, a dread almost, that made it all seem very grave and somber. That was when I realized that they had waited until the very last moment to call me.
My parents had been the last ones that we had told. Isabel had finally won our battle, and my wedding gift to her was the truth for our parents. Of course, as Maria told me, Isabel would need something solid also. That was why I got her the toaster. I don't think that she liked that as much as she would have, had it been on her gift list.
I had never seen my father look quite as fragile as I did that night. I could tell that he couldn't move from his place beneath the pounds of blankets that my mother had placed on him, and I could see the frightening shade of gray that had consumed his skin. "Has a doctor seen him?" I asked, taking on my normal pre-med persona.
"No Max, you're our doctor," Isabel said, quickly growing irritated.
"You still should have taken him in," I told her. "I'm only a med student Isabel. You can't just rely on me for all of this. Just because I can heal doesn't mean I can fix everything. Plus, I would know more about what was wrong."
"We didn't want to take the chance of it not being normal," Michael said. "Things may have cooled down for the time being, but we didn't want to risk being sloppy and having things start up again. I, for one, have liked this piece of normality that we've had."
"Alright, but why would you think that someone would go after Dad?" I asked, placing my hands on either side of my father's head. "I mean, aren't we generally the targets?" Through the connection I now had with my father, I began to look for something wrong with him. I asked him what he felt with our shared mind, and he began describing symptoms from more diseases than I cold name. I spent the next hour healing him, and I began to think that my sister may have been smart in not taking him into the ER. When the glowing in my hands finally faded I told my father to get some rest and went to my old room to do the same. The brigade followed me.
"Max," Isabel said, a tremor in her voice, "why did that take you so long?" I sighed and ran a sweaty hand through my hair.
"I think that it may have been a very smart decision to not take Dad to the doctor." Isabel's eyes clouded with fear and she looked back and forth between Michael and me, slowly, just as she had with every attack that we had ever had during our high school years. "There's just no way that he could have that many problems. Someone would have caught sight of something years ago. I mean, he had everything from Polo to the flu to the common cold. It's just-it's impossible."
"Great," Michael said. "So I guess vacation's over. What are we going to do? This has to be alien."
"Who could have done this Michael?" Isabel asked, rubbing her forehead. "I mean, we got rid of everyone. Who's left?"
"Maybe it's Khivar," Maria mumbled. Three pairs of eyes turned to her. "What? I mean, he's the only other one that we know is out there. He's the loose end. Plus, you either believe that you have that one man left, or you believe that there is another species out there that has the ability to infect a man with dozens of diseases. I vote for Khivar."
Isabel sat in the char by my desk and began to rock herself. "Oh God, I thought that this was all over. I thought that we were done. We left him alone. Why is he coming after us after all these years?"
"He's a tyrannical leader," Michael mumbled, "and he thinks that we're a threat. He build a freaking species of human snakes to come after us. I'm just glad that he's finally got off of his ass and came after us himself. At least now we can end it once and for all." I saw Maria looked at him, about to say something, but she stopped. If hope came with the theory that there wasn't another species after us, and it was just the run of the mill evil genius with insurmountable alien powers, she wasn't about to crush it just because she could.
"Look, I think that we should all just go to bed for tonight," I said, beginning to feel the wear from my flight and then an hour of healing. "We can talk in the morning."
"You can talk without me," Maria said, remembering our earlier conversation. I had to give her credit. I didn't remember what she was talking about until she grinned at me from under place beneath Michael's arm. "My agent called me out. I've got to go tomorrow. He wants me to record another demo."
"I don't think that you should go," Michael said, becoming no more protective than usual. "Now isn't the right time."
"Michael, this is my dream. I won't give up my dream for some psychopath. Plus, I'm probably safer away from here. They won't go that far out of the way just to get me."
"But-"
"No, I am not going to be locked in by this. I'm living my life Michael. I'm going."
"I'll take you to the airport," I told her. Michael and Isabel looked at me, but didn't say anything. In silent agreement, everyone left my room, at least for a few minutes, but just as I began to fall to sleep, Maria came back in.
"Max," she whispered, nudging my shoulder, "Max, wake up."
"I'm awake," I mumbled, not opening my eyes.
"I need tickets. They won't just let me on the plane because I'm pretty."
Had I been more awake, I would have had a witty reply for that, but I already had one foot inside the dream world. "Take my credit card. Call one of the airlines, and get yourself on an early flight."
"Okay-"
"And Maria," I added as an afterthought, "I mean really early."
"Yeah, I got it." She sighed and I could hear her grab my wallet from the desk where I had thrown it. "Early," I heard her mumble as she closed my door. It was bound to be interesting.
~~~~~
Maria's POV
~~~~~
Max didn't realize what he was getting into when he told me to get him up early. Granted, I'm not a morning person, but Max didn't add the fact that I hadn't seen my friend in over half a decade into the equation. Maybe that was why he was so surprised when I go him up at three o'clock to go to the airport. My flight was at six, but I wanted to be there as soon as possible. Max rolled back over and slept for another half hour while I got ready. I finally got him up with a glass of very cold water hovering over his head.
He was pretty much silent during the whole ride to Roswell's tiny airport. After I got checked in he went and got us both coffees from one of the vending machines in the runway hallway since nothing else was opened yet. He told me that as soon as the Cinnabuns opened he would go and get us breakfast. Beyond that he didn't really speak unless I started talking and forced him to answer me. I could tell that he was dying because he had to stay in Roswell.
"She will understand Max," I told him. "It's not your fault. It's not like you're just ditching her. I mean, if things get bad, I could always tell her what the flight cost, as a last resort, of course."
Max arched his eyebrow at me. "How much could the ticket have possibly cost if it makes up for me not coming?" I looked at him. "Never mind, I don't want to know."
"It won't even come up Max. She'll understand. You're father was sick. You had to come home."
Max's eyes widened when I mentioned his father. "Maria, you can't tell her what I told you about my dad. Don't elaborate on his sickness." He looked at the floor, but I had still caught the flash of guilt in his eyes. "I don't want to draw her back into this."
"I still don't understand why everyone else couldn't know that you found her."
"She's not ready for it. I don't think that she was ready to see me there. She'll come back if she wants to see everyone. It should be her choice. I shouldn't have even told you."
"Don't you ever try to keep something like this from me! She was my best friend. If Alex were in town, I would be pulling him along with me, and you know that. You did the right thing by telling me and don't you ever doubt that."
"In your eyes, I know I did. I just don't know how she will feel about it."
"All that you can do is hope for the best. Don't put this on your shoulders too Max. This is not, in any way, your fault. Relax while I'm gone. Spend time with your family. Don't go looking for trouble. With what we found out last night it may be one of your last chances to relax for a while." I looked over my shoulder and saw the lights at the Cinnabuns store turn on. "Now you have a promise to keep. Maria needs sugar to go with her caffeine this morning."
~~~~~
Liz POV
~~~~~
Jerry was gone when I woke up. I didn't know if he was down at the bar or actually at work, but I was happy for the quiet. My clock said ten o'clock when I finally bothered to read it, and I thanked God for the fact that I had the day off. Somewhere between coffee and a shower I found myself thinking back to a time when bruises only came from clumsiness and beer was only for parties.
Jerry had not always been a violent man. I never would have gotten as close to him as I did if he had started out like that. He was as gentle as a teddy bear when we first met. On our first date he took me to the local amusement park and won me a goldfish and a Tasmanian devil stuffed animal. He had dropped me off at my dorm room with a simple kiss on the cheek and plans for another date. He realized that I had been hurt, and he took it slow.
He didn't ask about my past. When I asked him why, he told me that he wasn't a part of it, and so he wanted to focus on our future. He didn't pressure me when I couldn't bring myself to take the next step with him, and when I finally was ready his touch was more gentle that anything I had felt in a long time. With him, I found myself letting go of the past. The hours that I spent with him were hours where I didn't think about Roswell or anyone that I had known there. I wasn't crying over Max or wondering if Maria had finally gotten Michael on her leash when I was with him. I saw myself looking to the future, and then a future with Jerry had seemed very promising.
It wasn't until after college that things started to get bad. Jerry had trouble finding work, and I was still in college, finishing the classes that I needed to pursue a job as any kind of scientist. Jerry was the one who had told me not to give up on anything that I wanted. He was also the one that told me that we couldn't pay for college on just his time to time jobs. He was the reason that I dropped out and started looking for work. Once he even asked me why I refused to ask my parents for help. I told him that I didn't want to go back to my past. He scoffed and left the room.
That was when I started to notice that he was drinking more. He would come in the middle of the night smelling of beer and tell me that he had been working the graveyard shift. I wanted to believe him. I really wanted to think that he was still the good man that I had fallen in love with, but I was starting to forget that man, just as I thought I had forgotten the rest of my past.
It wasn't long after he started drinking that he started hitting me. Looking back, that's where I really knew that I was no longer the little girl from Roswell, New Mexico. Strong, opinionated Liz Parker would never have let a man treat her like I let Jerry treat me. I refused to admit that I had ever been that girl though, so I didn't compare myself to her.
When I looked at the clock again, I realized that it had been almost an hour. I pulled myself out of bed and hurried to get ready, using cover up to camouflage to black and purple bruises on my face and a long sleeved sweater to cover the large purple blemish on my arm. I grabbed my purse and my jacket and left, glad that I was gone before Jerry came back from where ever he was.
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Max POV
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I left Maria as she boarded her plane. I told her that I wanted to see her off, but she would have no such thing. She told me that I should go get presents for my family as a way of explaining why I just had to accompany my best friend's girlfriend to the airport. I reluctantly agreed, knowing that it would lessen the onslaught of questions that were sure to come.
I couldn't help thinking about the brown haired beauty that had occupied more of my adolescent thoughts that I cared to admit as I stepped into the airport gift shop. I knew that I should have looked for something better considering I really had forgotten to get them anything while I was on my actual trip, but I was far too tired from my flight and then Maria's early morning wake up call to think straight.
I could remember the night that Liz had left like it was yesterday. The rain had poured down in sheets, and, for the first time, I couldn't seem to block it out. Too much was going through my mind. I could still see Liz and Kyle lying on her bed beneath a mess of sheets, laughing over old memories that I could never be a part of. I could still hear her speech about Romeo and Juliet echoing in my ear. I want to be in love with boys. normal boys. The thought of life without her seemed unbearable. Little did I know it was something that I would be faced with all too soon.
I had heard her knock, barely audible over the sound of the rain beating down on the house. I held my hand out to her as she climbed in, and my heart soared as she wrapped her petite fingers around mine.
She dropped my hand as soon as she was in the door, and I finally took the time to look at her-to really look at her, and for once, something made me forget all about her and Kyle. One look into her deep brown eyes told me that she wasn't about to set all things right. She wasn't going to tell me that it had all been a lie, and that she loved me through it all. No, in her eyes I saw the one emotion that still seems to be stronger than love- defeat.
She looked at the wall behind me and asked if I would dry her off. She dropped the duffel bag she had been carrying on the floor, finally drawing my attention to it, and, once she was dry, asked me to dry it too.
I sat on my bed, gesturing for her to sit beside me, but she sat at the desk instead. Not once did she look at me. She didn't know that she didn't have to look at me for me to read her. I could feel her every emotion. I could see the pain in her eyes, and I knew that somewhere inside herself, she could feel my pain too.
"We need to talk Max," she mumbled. I could almost hear Maria's words: the kiss of death.
"I thought that you said everything that you wanted to when you came last night." I turned away from her then, not wanting the other images from last night to return. "I think that you proved your point."
"How do you even know what my point was?" She stood from the chair. "You assume that you know every last thing about me just because you want to, but it's just not true. How do you know that last night had anything to do with you?"
"So what," I asked, standing to be at her level, "you just sleep around when you get angry at someone? That's not you Liz."
"Why do you think that you know me so well?" She spun around so that we were face to face. "I don't even know myself as well as you seem to."
"I know that you wouldn't do that. I know that you wouldn't hurt anyone the way that you knew that that would hurt me."
"You think that I wanted you to see us?" My heart clenched as she referred to herself and Kyle as "us." They weren't an "us" anymore. They hadn't been an "us" for a long time.
"It doesn't matter whether you wanted me to see you or not. You knew that I would find out. It's been one day and half of our school knows already. I would have found out, and you knew that."
"Well maybe that's what I wanted," she mumbled.
"Why?" My voice dropped to follow hers, and a somber air filled the room. I didn't really want to know the answer anymore than she wanted to tell me, but now that it had been asked, there was no way out of it.
"Maybe it was the only way that I could find to make you see the truth."
"What truth?"
She sighed and ran one hand through her long silky hair. "The truth in the fact that we aren't meant to be. I can't keep playing this game Max. I can't keep fighting you."
"Why can't you see that I don't want my destiny? It doesn't mean anything to me."
"Maybe that's what you need to change." She looked at me, and I could feel the grave air of finality fall around us. I could see the familiar glint of tears in her chocolate eyes, but I couldn't tell if they were her own or simply reflections of the ones that I could feel forming in my own eyes. "Your destiny shouldn't be something that you hate or fear. It's who you were. If you hate it, you hate a part of yourself."
"Don't do this Liz," I pleaded, not knowing what else to say.
"It's already been done," she whispered tearfully. She leaned forward and eliminated the space between us with one final tearful kiss. My heart split into about a million pieces as she began to pull away, but my hands found their way to her shoulders and pulled her to me once again, and all of our shared anguish, all the pain of the past months joined together in that final kiss. When she pulled away again all I could do was watch as she picked up her bag and walked to the window. Deep down, a part of me knew that I wouldn't see her again.
When she had lifted the window she seemed to remember something and paused. She turned back and pulled a folded piece of paper from her pocket.
"I don't want you to open this right away," she told me, again looking to the wall behind me. "Save it for when you really need me. Save it for when you can't find the truth in anyone." She looked up to meet my eyes one last time. "Will you do that for me?" I managed a small nod and she dropped it onto my bed and left me alone with the rain.
I shook my head, trying to clear the memory. Years had passed. I had eventually opened the letter a few months later when the group began to fall apart. I still have it in a hollow book on one of my shelves. Every once in a while, when I really need the strength that I only seemed to find in Liz, I reread it.
Right then, in the airport gift shop, I wished I had that letter with me.