Two Sides of the Coin
Rating: Teen/Mature
Part Eight
"What did you say?" Liz asked. She put the coffee cup she had been holding down on the table carefully and focused her full attention on Zan.
"I said that I saw everything. "There wasn't anything that happened in your life that I didn't see. Except for when you went to Vermont," Zan added as an afterthought. "I stayed in Roswell after you left."
"Why?"
"Why did I stay when you left?" asked Zan.
"No, why were you there at all. Why did you do that, and why didn't you let us know you were there?"
"You saw what happened to me, Liz. You know what they tried to do to me. I had to get out of there. And Max knew. He knew I was there."
"He what?" Liz asked. Her hand trembled as she placed the cup she had been holding back on the table. Coffee sloshed over the rim, forming a sticky brown puddle on the table, but Liz ignored it and focused intently on Zan.
"It's simple, Liz," Zan said, caustically. His pride still stung from both Liz's display of powers at his expense, and the fact that she called him Max. As immature as he realized that it was, he wanted to hurt her the way she had hurt him. "Are you ready to hear what I have to say, or are you going to keep running away?"
"I'm not running away!" Liz said, hotly.
"Babe, you've been running one way or another ever since Max healed you. Now are you ready for the story."
Liz nodded slightly and tried to control the tremor in her hands as she lifted the cooling coffee to her lips. Zan was right, she had been running, but it hurt to hear it coming from him.
"Any how, after Lonnie and Rath did their thing, I took a powder and headed off to Roswell. I found Max almost right away, but I wasn't sure I wanted to hook up with him. Not after what I saw, anyhow."
"Why, what was he doing?" Liz asked puzzled. She couldn't think of anything Max had ever done that would have made Zan want to avoid him.
"He was singing with a mariachi band underneath your window, that's what he was doing," Zan said, his disgust with the entire event still apparent. "How freaking queer can you get?"
"It wasn't," Liz said. "It was sweet and romantic and…Wait! That was the night the other Max appeared. Was that you? Are you the reason Max and I lost almost a year together? I swear, I'll kill you if I find out it was because of you."
Zan laughed, partly because angry Liz reminded him of a kitten who was cranky that she couldn't reach a particular toy, and partly to hide his desire to have her react as strongly to him, as she did Max's memory.
"Relax, babe. That train wreck wasn't my fault at all. You really did have a visit from good old noble Max of the future. Well we're pretty sure he was from the future. At that point, neither one of us were to sure about anything, including each other."
"I'm confused," Liz said. "Are you telling me Max knew about all of this?"
"Not at first," Zan said. "Look, I'm doing a lousy job at explaining all of this, I'm sorry. The first time I found Max was the night he was singing to you. You sent him away, but I decided to stick around. I had to see what kind of chick would make me, I mean him, act like such an ass. Anyhow, I climbed up the fire escape and that's when I saw him. To say I was freaked was an understatement, and I decided to lay low for a while."
Zan paused in his tale long enough to give the waitress his order. He looked to Liz to see if she wanted anything, and she shook her head negatively, and waited for Zan to resume his story.
Anyway, you and Valenti came up with your plan to drive Max away. Personally, I thought you were stupid for not going to Max and telling him, but hey, who am I to throw stones, right?"
"I couldn't tell him," Liz said. "The other Max said it would mess everything up if I did, and that if the two of them came into contact with each other, they'd die."
"Yeah, well, who knows if that was true," said Zan. "So you and Valenti did you're between the sheets thing, and the bottom fell out of Max's world. I followed Max to some hokey little park. I wanted to tell him I was here, and let him know what had just happened. When I found him, he was sitting on a bench, and Tess showed up. Pretty damn convenient if you ask me," Zan added. "That's when she started working her mojo on him in a big way."
"What do you mean?" Liz asked.
"She started mind warping the hell out of him, bit by bit," said Zan. "Making him think that she was all sympathetic and totally on his side. And I'm sorry to say, old Maxie boy started falling for it. Max finally went home and that's when I knocked on his window. The rest, as they say, is history."
"I don't think so," said Liz. "Because my version of history is considerably different than your version of history. Please, enlighten me."
"It's not all pretty," said Zan. "Why do you want to relive it all again?"
"Because apparently everything I knew was a big fat lie, that's why!" Liz shouted. The booths surrounding theirs quieted as everyone stared in their direction. Liz, instead of backing down, turned and glared at each and every patron that was staring at them, until one by one, they returned to their meals and the conversations around them picked up again.
"At least you didn't send me flying across the floor this time," said Zan.
"Shut up, and keep talking," Liz said. "Are you telling me that Max knew all along that I never slept with Kyle?"
Zan nodded imperceptibly, and Liz felt her heart thudding rapidly in her chest. All that time, wasted, for no reason at all.
"Liz, you made an incredible sacrifice for Max," Zan said. He reached across the table and took her hand in his. Max knew that, he really did, and he didn't want to belittle it by coming to you and saying 'hey, guess what, you didn't have to rip my heart out like that.' He wanted to find out as much information as he could about what was going on. Does that make any sense to you?"
"But what about after he figured it out? What about Alex, and Tess? Why did Alex have to die, and why did he sleep with her," Liz cried. The anguish in her voice didn't even come close to comparing to the pain she felt in her heart at losing her best friend and Max's betrayal.
"Look babe, I told you this wasn't going to be easy," said Zan. "You want I should stop?"
"No," Liz said, her face a mask of resolution. "I need to hear it all."
"Neither one of us knew what Tess was doing to Alex, we really didn't. If you don't believe anything else, please believe that," Zan practically pleaded. "Losing Alex practically killed Max. He felt like such a failure because he couldn't protect him."
Something in Zan's voice made Liz look at him carefully, and in his eyes, she saw pain. It was almost like Zan himself was hurting over Alex's death. But that didn't make any sense. Zan didn't know Alex. He wouldn't be broken up over his death.
"I know Max was upset about Alex," Liz said. "He was upset enough to sleep with Tess, remember?"
"Max didn't sleep with Tess, Liz," Zan said, softly.
"Yeah, he did," Liz insisted. "There was a baby and everything, remember? Or oh, weren't you around for any of that."
"I was there, and I'm telling you, he did not sleep with Tess. She wasn't pregnant, and she never had a baby."