Disclaimer: Ummm, do I really need to do this?
Author's notes: Hope you guys all like!
ParkerEvanss: Yeah, I had to leave there. How else was I suppose to make sure you'd read the next chapter? I'm glad you like Justin's POV, especially since I'm a girl, it's nice to know that I can write a guy's POV all right.
Galatea: I'm glad you're having fun with my fic.
Whose Who? Part 4
Justin's POV
So, where was I? Oh, my trip to Roswell, as I told you last time, Alex invited me to come down. Actually more like begged. Why, you ask? To be honest, it's because he missed my company; you don't buy that, huh? Well, I tried; seriously though, he did beg me to fly down from Chicago to Roswell. What was the emergency? Nothing much, just Maria's mother's wedding to the town sheriff. What can I say; Roswell is a small town.
To keep the explanation short, before going to college I took piano lessons for 12 years, and played both for my school's jazz band, and accompanied the orchestra and choir. Apparently the guy who was suppose to play with The Whits and Maria during the reception bailed on them a month before the wedding. According to Alex and Liz, both Maria and her mother were not pleased (I read that as ballistic). My sympathies were with those two, and to Ms. Deluca's fiancé. Luckily for Alex and his band members, he remembered that I used to play, so he called me up and I said "Okay."
Granted my reasons for going weren't just because I'm a nice guy, because I am; but also because I figured that I could find out more about my roommate and his elusive lady love. Hey, don't stare at me like that, it's not like I went down there and asked everybody that I met if they ever saw Alex with Isabel (I'm still assuming her name is Isabel because of that picture). But I was tempted. Like I said before, I was pretty confused about the whole subject matter when I left Cambridge for the summer, so when Alex asked me to come I decided that going would be the best way for me to figure things out. That and Alex assured me that seeing Maria and Liz in their waitress uniforms for the Crashdown Café was something I shouldn't miss.
It was an early June wedding, so I came down during the few days of May to rehearse with the band. Needless to say, Maria was nervous because the event was very personal to her that also made her a bit moody, but Liz and the others kept reassuring her that she would be wonderful for her mother's wedding. Liz was also pretty busy with her parents' diner because they were catering the reception, and both Alex and Liz had their internship at Metachem to worry about as well. I spent most of my time wondering the different sights with none other but Maria's soon to be stepbrother, Kyle Valenti.
Kyle, unlike the others in their group stayed in New Mexico for college. He attends Las Cruces where he obtained a scholarship to play basketball there. I asked him if he wished he could go to Boston where Maria, Liz, and Alex are, he told me that while he missed them, he was happy at Las Cruces and that "it's important for one of them to be near home." I remembered frowning at the wording of his statement, but decided that it must have been a private thing and decided not to pursue it. He took me to the UFO Center where apparently the guy who currently owned the place is a bit of an eccentric alien nut; claimed to be abducted by aliens. He tells the tourists about the time about four years ago, where he was in Roswell and then four days later found himself in New York. Kyle assures me that while Brody's stories are a bit outlandish, they're great for the town's reputation and economy because of the tourists.
While at the center I noticed that in one of their display an old newspaper clipping from about 5 years ago. It talked about a shooting, which occurred in the dinner owned by Liz's parents. I looked at the title of the display, "False Alarms," apparently the display was about different events around the world where people claimed aliens intervened in some event only for it to be proven to be a hoax or hallucination. Kyle saw my interest in the display, and gave me a small grin, "Yeah, that was not a fun day."
"What happened?"
"Oh, some guys got into a fight and one of them had a gun and it went off at the Crashdown. The noise surprised Liz; she fell down knocking a bottle of ketchup and spilled it all over herself. A couple of tourists where there for our Crash Festival; so, they thought she was shot; that the ketchup was blood, and some alien went up to her and healed her."
"Sounds like real fun."
"Yea, but a lot of good came out of it."
"Like what?"
"Well, Liz dumped me."
"Huh?" I gave him a weird look, and he laughed at my confusion.
"Long story, but sufficed to say, she found the love of her life because of the shooting, and in some strange way because of that I found mine." He confided. "In fact, Alex, Maria, and even my dad, I suppose, owe those idiots at the diner a bit of thanks, because if they weren't there that day, I'm not sure if things would have turned out the way they did." Did I mention that the guy was a Buddhist? It would explain his way of thinking, don't you think?
I left the center feeling a bit confused, by our conversation, but didn't really put much thought into it because I wrote it off as Kyle trying to not be nervous about the upcoming nuptials between his father and Maria's mom. I mean you should have seen Maria two days before the wedding. She really didn't want to mess up at the reception and couldn't help but run through all of the worst-case scenarios at the Crashdown in front of us. It wasn't until Liz mentioned the time that Maria stopped her rantings only to begin again on a different subject. "Oh, no it's 9. I forgot to set the VCR. Michael's going to kill me for not taping the game for him."
"Maria, calm down, it's only one game, besides it's not like the Coyotes are playing." Alex reminded her.
"It's the Stanley Cup finals," she retorted back heatedly, "I promised I'd tape all of the games during the Stanley Cup run."
Kyle seemed surprised by this news, "What a minute, not only have you been taping all of the Coyotes' games, but you promised Guerin that you'd tape all of the games during the post season?"
She nodded, and I felt impressed by her dedication to her boyfriend. I briefly wondered why he wasn't able to watch the games, and asked myself if Maria's boyfriend was somehow related to Alex's or Liz's significant others. "Maria, I'm sure that ESPN will re-run the game tonight sometime in the early morning like 2 am or 3. Just check the listing on the Internet tonight before you go to sleep. Stop stressing, I'm sure that things will be okay." I told her.
She looked at me, unsure of herself, "How do you know?"
"I'm from Chicago, remember? Hockey's a religion in the Midwest. Besides, I've missed a couple of games during my stay at Cambridge because of study group or exams. I just remembered that if they were on cable, ESPN or ESPN2 sometimes re-broadcast at 2 or 3 am."
Maria gave me a grateful smile before relax a bit before her mind found another thing for her to obsess over. Then Kyle made a smart remark that at least neither Isabel nor Tess was here to plan the wedding. Alex, Liz, and Maria grinned at the observation. Maria laughed, "Oh, yes, can you imagine the Christmas Nazi and Tess together? Heck, Kyle, you and your father got off easy. I'm sure Tess would have wanted you to wear a tux with tails."
"Yeah, and knowing her, she wouldn't tell us until two minutes before we're suppose to get dressed in them too."
All of them cracked up again at the observation, leaving me a bit confused until Kyle explained that when Tess spent her first Christmas in Roswell, she informed both Kyle and his father, that she had invited Ms. Deluca over for dinner one night, about 10 seconds before she actually showed up at their doorstep. I couldn't help but chuckle of the mental image of two bachelors hurriedly cleaning up their house for a guest, even if I didn't know who this Tess person was or her relationship to the group.
Jadeling's notes: Okay, enough from me. Time to cook dinner.