Hi everyone!

So, my travel to Australia is getting closer by the second. And because of that I decided to update some chapters on this story, so you can read whenever you have the time. And we'll just "meet" again when I have fixed an internet connection "Down Under".

Elementalmoon – That girl at the end of the previous chapter has no relevance. I only wanted to give the reader a view of Max and Liz from an outside observer. Thank you so much for the feedback!!! :-D :-D

Jazzypunker – Yes, Liz's boyfriend is still in the picture. But I'm taking care of that, don't worry :-) Thank you so much for the feedback!!! :-D :-D

Take care everyone!!

*hugs*

Josephin

Chapter 16


"I promise you, that's what I think about."
Liz laughed in response. "I say flower and you think about bread?"
"Yes. I thought there was free speech in this game."
Liz held up her hands in front of her in resignation. "Okay. Alright. Bread it is. Then I say cookies."
"Milk."
"Is there a story to why you think about bread when you hear flower?"
This caused Max's face to break into a big grin and he answered with mock sternness, "No, there isn't."
Liz pouted playfully, "You must be a stern teacher."
"I try."
"Okay… you said milk, then I say cow."
"You know what? Your replies are so predictable."
"I don't know if I should be offended or not," Liz said, traces of laughter still lighting parts of her face.
"No, no, you shouldn't be offended," Max hurried to apologize. In his hurry he automatically placed his hand over Liz's, which was resting on the table. They both froze as his palm made contact with the back of her hand. Liz's breath caught in her throat and her whole body tensed, unable to do anything else as the sparks of attraction raced through her body. Max stared at their hands, feeling the warmth of her hand seep into his cold bones, thaw his frozen blood and put his heart into marathon. Afraid of what he was feeling, he pulled the hand away from hers.

"Uhm…"
Liz couldn't help but feel disappointed that he had pulled away. She thought that the insecurity thudding inside of her was the worst, until she saw the fear in his eyes.
"Max?"
She was quickly reminded of the day at the mall, of their first turbulent meeting. She had seen the same fear in his eyes then, only a thousand times more intense.
"Wh-what I mean is… you say what is expected of you." Max forced himself to remain calm, feeling the beads of cold sweat on his forehead. He had to face his demons later. He could feel Liz's eyes searching his face. Her confusion and insecurity were so thick around him that he could have touched them. He kept his eyes cast downwards, intently watching the tablecloth. He could feel that she was fighting with herself. Should she investigate further why he had reacted the way he had or should she just pretend like nothing had happened?
"What do you mean?"
Relief flooded Max. She would let it pass. She wouldn't probe him, interrogate him like Isabel. He looked up and met her eyes. She was looking at him with earnest interest and it gave him the strength he needed to not get up and run away.
"Have you ever lived outside the bounds of what is predictable?"
"Well, sometimes I wear black instead of red," she teased.
"Really?" Max asked, leaning forward with an exaggerated expression of surprise.
"Yep," Liz answered proudly. She leaned back in the chair, never once breaking eye contact. "What about you? How unpredictable are you?"
"Not very," Max confessed with a sheepish smile.

"I figured."
"But wouldn't it be fun to just not think sometime? Not plan ahead."
Liz frowned and bit her lip in a general expression of disagreement. "Nah… I don't know. I like to have a plan."
"How often can you say that you stick to your plan? Plans work with grocery shopping, but too much planning in real life never works."
"Then tell me, Max Evans," Liz leaned forward in her chair, resting her chin in her hands as she challenged him with her eyes, "What is so bad about predictability? Isn't that what creates a feeling of safety? That you know what's going to happen."
"But you can never really know that. The real world doesn't follow your planned list. You might want to control it through the list, but you can't."
"You have to have a plan," Liz said, frowning at the resistance he was putting up.
"Why?"
"Because…because…" The subject was starting to unnerve her. It was the planning, the predictability that she based her whole existence on. It was planning about the future that had kept her alive all those years in the hospital bed. She had always associated unpredictability with something negative. Her heart disease was unpredictable. She never knew when it was going to stop beating. In an effort to win over her heart disease, win over the unpredictability, she had constructed a world where everything could be foreseen, where she could follow her plans and her routines. It was something she had longed for in the hospitals. It was something she correlated with a normal life.
"How did we get away from the game?"

He could see that the subject made her feel uneasy. He couldn't help but wonder why. Why did a subject of unpredictability make her fidget with her fingers and put a frown on the forehead of that beautiful face of hers?
"Let's change the rules then," Max suggested.
He could see the relief smooth out the frown and he relaxed.
Liz picked up her cup of hot chocolate and took a sip. "What do you suggest?"
"That you try very hard to be unpredictable in your answers."
Liz rolled her eyes. "But that will destroy the whole purpose of the game. The funny thing about this game is that you say the first thing that comes to mind."
"I don't think you are doing that anyway," Max said, his voice bearing a hint of tentativeness of maybe hurting her feelings. But she just put the cup down and looked at him, a fascinated smile playing at the corners of her mouth.
"You don't?"

Maria always said that. They had spent an endless amount of hours playing that game and Maria always accused Liz for censuring what came out of her mouth. But Maria had known Liz since they were small. To hear the same words that often came out of her long-time friend be spoken by someone she hardly knew caught her interest.
"I think that you are too afraid to let people know what you really think." He didn't know why he was being so brutally honest with her. He never talked to someone like this. But there was something about her that made him want to get under those socially acceptable layers and get to know the real Liz Parker.
She took a deep breath and made a decision. For once, she was going to try and remove the constant restrains she had on herself.
"Okay, let's try it."
The surprise on his face almost made her laugh. He hadn't predicted her to say that. "You want me to…?" She nodded and watched his eyes warm. "Okay. Uhm… Sunshine."
"Life."
"Death."
"Hospitals."
"Surgery."
"Pain."
"We are getting really dark here," Max teased, memorizing her every word.
"You wanted honesty," Liz smiled. "It's your turn."
"Sleep."

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Max held the door open while he glanced at his watch.
"Do you have to leave?"
He turned to look at her, once again feeling blessed to be in her beauty. "Another ten minutes…"
She smiled and he thought that it was genuine happiness in her eyes. "You want to go for a walk? The park is really beautiful."
How could he resist? "Sure."

They started walking down the street, immersed in a comfortable silence. It was Liz who decided to break it. "So…"
"So…"
"Which day of the week is your favorite?"
He looked at her sideways. "Is this another game?"
She ducked her head, a cute blush rising on her cheeks. "Sort of." She looked up at him, seeing the amused twinkle in his eyes. "Maria and I had a lot of time to kill when we were young."
He thought that was an odd thing to say. "Why's that?"
She paled slightly at his question as the magnitude of what she had implied had her hurling back to the reality she had so easily forgot in his presence. "Well, you know. Relatives coming over to visit and bad weather and stuff. You have to find something to do."
"Right." He searched her profile. Why did he get the feeling that she was lying to him? But more importantly, why did that bother him? He barely knew her anyway.
"It's Friday."
She looked up at him. "Why?"
"I don't know… Maybe it's because I'm at my sister's then…"
"Michelle," Liz said knowingly.
"Yes."
"She really means a lot to you, doesn't she?"
"She means the world to me," Max answered. There was a brutal honesty in his statement that made her eyes linger on his face. But he turned it to the other side, hiding his face from her. She swallowed and decided to let it drop.

"It's Sundays for me."
He turned to look at her again. "Why?"
"Silence. No one else is home. It's only me and my cat and a good book."
For not the first time, Max was reminded of how different she was from him. He hated to be alone. He hated the silence. The silence spoke of too many things that he didn't want to hear. But there were times when he needed to be alone too, times when he couldn't escape himself.
"What's so great about silence?"
"I don't know," she contemplated his question, "I've never really thought about it. I just… I don't have to…" listen to the beeping of heart machines, listen to an endless line of questions about her wellbeing, assure everyone that she was fine, "There is just so much noise in the world. Cell phones. Cars. Air conditioning. It's just nice to hear the silence sometimes."
"Maybe…"
"What's your worst day?"
"Tuesdays."
"Why?"
"Because I'm alone."
Liz looked at him, embarrassed that she had just preached about the holiness of being alone and it was what he hated the most. He gave her a lopsided smile, which eased away the sharp edges of the embarrassment.
"Why don't you like it?"
The answer to that question was easy. He didn't like himself.
But he couldn't tell her that. "I guess I'm just a people person. I like being around people."
Somehow, Liz had difficulty believing that. He didn't strike her as a people-oriented person at all. At dinner at his sister's, in a large group of people, he was quiet and introverted. He had talked a lot with her, but when they had gathered around the table he didn't often take part in the conversations. He was an observer. Just like her.

"What's your worst day?" he asked, feeling that he needed to put a stop to something. Feeling like he had been caught.
"Mondays."
"Predictable," he teased.
"Yeah, I know," Liz giggled. "But that's the truth. It's the first day after the weekends. It's just boring, you know."
"Yeah, I know."
Liz was thinking about all the questions she was being bombarded with on Monday morning. If she had eaten too much, eaten too little, exercised too much, exercised too little, slept too much, slept too little, taken her pills when she had been alone, what she had been doing… Max was thinking about what a relief Mondays were. When he was able to go back to work and escape his own thoughts. It was then that he could immerse himself into the children's questions and correcting their homework. The day he could hide from himself.
"What is your favorite date?" Liz question broke him out of his reverie, but not far enough for him to collect himself before he answered.
"The 20th of June."
"Why?"
"That's the day my son was born."

Even though they didn't have any physical contact, they weren't touching in any way, he could feel her tense beside her. It was like the air molecules between them froze, creating an ice between them. He didn't dare to look at her. He didn't want to see the shock he knew he would find on her face.
"I…I didn't know you had a son," she said, her voice barely a whisper.
"He…" Max swallowed. "He died. He was killed in a car accident two years ago."
He could feel the familiar tightness in his chest, the tears pricking the back of his throat and he was already fighting to regain control over himself. He didn't know why he had told her that. He didn't tell any strangers a thing like that. But Liz wasn't a stranger, not anymore.

He jumped when he felt her hand brush against his. He turned his blurry vision to look down at his hand and felt, more than saw, her hand lace with his.
"Max, I'm so sorry," she whispered.
Her heart ached when she watched him fight to control his feelings and she squeezed his hand harder. She desperately wanted to remove that agony from his posture, and she was already kicking herself for starting this stupid game.
He nodded and took a deep breath, his whole body shaking from the magnitude of it. He needed to get himself together. He couldn't break down here. He hadn't cried over Tess and his son since their funeral and he wasn't going to start now. Unconsciously, he squeezed Liz's hand harder to get the strength he needed to straighten his back and push the memories back to the hidden caverns of his mind.
"This was a stupid game," Liz said.

"No…" His voice sounded throaty to his ears and he cleared his throat. "You would've found out sooner or later…"
Even though he could barely think beyond the pain the memories of his child's death had brought, he was glad that she knew. For some reason, he wanted her to know.
"Are you okay?" she asked worriedly.
He forced himself to smile. "I will be."
"I'm sorry. I can't imagine what it would be like to lose a child…"
"Can we please not talk about it?" he asked softly, his voice breaking with the emotions which were yet to be hushed inside of him.
She bit her lip. "Of course."
They started walking again, now in silence, but Max's grip on her hand didn't lessen and their fingers remained entwined. She didn't want to let go either.

TBC…