Magali – I don't think anything will really be explained in this chapter. On other places where I'm posting this story, this chapter even served to confuse some people further. At least you will get an answer to if Maria remembers or not (hopefully). Thank you so much for leaving me feedback and letting me know what you think!!
Juxi – I'm happy to hear that you've decided to read this story of mine even though, to be honest, 99 of the story is focusing on Max and Liz. I hope that you will keep reading and thank you so much for leaving feedback!!
Small disclaimer; The first part of this chapter has lines taken from the pilot episode. If you don't recognize it, I suggest you go and re-watch the first episode ;-) This is my interpretation of that scene. Feedback is appreciated and highly recommended…
Two
Liz laughs softly to herself as she walks back to the cash register. Maria joins her, shaking her head at her. "You are sooo bad girl," and casually adds, "Oh, and Max Evans is staring at you again."
Liz's eyes widens in disbelief. "No way." Turning around, she finds Max, sitting in the booth he always occupies. "Maria, that is so in your imagination."
Max meets her eyes and she swallows. The eye contact only lasts for a brief second before Max innocently looks down at the table. Liz collects herself and turns to Maria who is positioning the coffee to be reheated and points in the direction of where Max is sitting. "Max Evans?" Her finger points to her own face. "This? No, nah-uh…it's not…"
Maria steps up to Liz and cradles her face between her hands, addressing her like a child. "And with those cheeks!" Liz giggles. "Preciosita tan linda!"
"Maria!" Liz exclaims. For some reason she feels bubbly today, like she is tingling all over. "No, okay?"
Maria laughs softly, satisfied to have embarrassed her friend, and walks back to prepare coffee for the customers.
"And even if I weren't, I'm going out with Kyle," Liz continues. She leans against the counter, feeling the need to defend her relationship with her current boyfriend as Maria laughs softly next to her. "I mean, he's steady and loyal," her alien replica antennae bounce on her head as she strives to justify her choice of boyfriend and Maria turns to her, looking at her incredulously with two cups of coffee in her hands. Like she's reciting a shopping list, Liz finishes methodically, "And he appreciates me."
Maria, slightly bored with the normalcy and goodness of Kyle Valenti through Liz's description, walks past her. "Sounds like you're describing a poodle."
Liz looks after her friend, sighs and lifts herself off the counter where she has been half-sitting. Just because Maria is only interested in dangerous men, doesn't mean that she has to be. She has to admit, boring as it might sound, that she likes the predictability in her relationship with Kyle. She even welcomes it. She likes to know what is going to happen so that she can plan ahead. You always have to have a plan.
Loud voices at the front of her parents' restaurant interrupt her train of thought and she automatically jumps as the sound of shattering glass spills through the room. Before the danger of the situation has time to sink in, Maria turns around and screams her name. Time seems to slow down as Liz stares into Maria's terrified face. Maria turns around and Liz stares at the men who are now standing.
"I was supposed to get the money today. Not tomorrow!"
Her eyes widen in shock, her mouth falls open as she watches one of the men pull out a gun.
"Won't need money if you're dead."
Out of the corner of her eye she sees Maria pull herself down under a table, into safety, and some part of her brain registers the other customers doing the same. But she can only stare, her feet rooted to the floor. Liz, get down! The voice is clear in her head, but her body refuses to follow orders. Her eyes keep staring at the gun in the man's hand as the men engage in a short struggle before the trigger of that same gun is pulled and the loudest sound she has ever heard explodes in the room.
She stares as the men look in her direction, fear on their faces, and scramble off the floor. She frowns. There's a numbness spreading throughout her body and for some reason she is finding it hard to stand on her legs. She doesn't notice how the men hurry out of the restaurant as her legs give away under her weight and she falls to the floor.
A burning sensation quickly replaces the numbness. It feels like her skin is on fire. It's concentrated in her abdomen but is rapidly spreading to the rest of her stomach. She tries to scream, but nothing comes out of her mouth. The pain. Pain like she's never known before is engulfing her and she feels herself faltering, feels her grip on consciousness slipping away.
She doesn't notice when her shirt is ripped open, doesn't feel the cool air graze her skin. She doesn't hear the groan of fear and is not aware of the fingers against the base of her chin as someone whispers, "It's gonna be okay."
She's sinking further into the painless state of unconsciousness, a place she wants to be. But someone is preventing her from slipping any further. Someone is pressing a large warm hand against the back of her head, softly coaxing her with her name to return.
"Liz. Liz. You have to look at me." There's desperation in his voice and she feels herself forcing her eyes open. She needs to see who it is. "You have to look at me."
She finds herself looking into a set of amber-colored eyes and in her pain-induced haze she manages to register the thin sheen of wetness in those eyes. She winces as pressure is applied to the open wound in her stomach, but the discomfort lasts for a mere second only to be replaced by warmth and lightness. She can't see anything. It is as if there's a shield in front of her eyes, distorting the surroundings. She can see him as a shadow, leaning over her. No, 'see' is the wrong word. She can sense him leaning over her.
As her body fills with a white light and comforting tingles of warmth, which has her shaking, twisting and gasping under its force, she is assaulted by feelings that aren't hers. Desperation, fear, sadness, but most of all… Love? As she's about to emerge herself deeper into that comforting feeling, she is jolted back to the real world. That's the only way she can describe it. It's like she's falling, and she hits the floor, hard. The blurriness dissipates and the world around her snaps into clarity.
Max Evans is leaning over her, his face only a breath from hers. His breathing is haggard and she can feel him trembling against her body. There's relief in his eyes as he stares into her confused and shocked face.
"You're all right now," he whispers. He moves away from her and she feels the cold air hit her exposed body.
A need, may it be for explanation or comfort she's not sure, shakes her being. She watches as he looks down at her stomach, repeating, "You're all right now."
Off in the distance she hears a hurried voice. "Keys! Now!"
She watches him turn his head away from her and throws something, probably the keys in question, to someone behind him. With a new kind of hurried desperation, Max turns to the shelf hanging off the wall and grabs a ketchup bottle that he slams against the edge of the shelf, cracking the glass, making the red sauce pour out.
Catching her eyes again, while covering her abdomen in cold mashed tomatoes, he says with urgency, "You broke the bottle when you fell," he's backing away from her and she wants to yell out to him, to tell him to stay, but he continues backwards his movements filled with paranoid distress, "spilled ketchup on yourself."
His movements slightly still as he locks eyes with hers, pleading her, "Don't say anything, please."
He doesn't wait for her reply, but disappears from her view. She hurries to get her legs under control and pulls herself up into standing position. Clutching the ends of her open turquoise alien-themed dress together her eyes track Max's journey out of the restaurant. When he pushes the glass front door open, he turns around and looks at her before he jumps into the waiting jeep and drives off. And it hits her. She was dying but he brought her back. Somehow he brought her back.
As the dream world gives way to the real world, Liz faintly hears Maria's question merging the dream with reality, "Are you okay?"
She opens her eyes slowly, looking out in the darkness of the room she shares with Maria. She can tell by the deep breaths she hears from the other bed that the roommate in question is very much asleep. A shiver runs through her body and for a total of five seconds she fights with the need to talk to Maria, before surrendering. The floor is cold against the soles of her feet as she hurries across the floor. Maria is curled up at one edge of the bed, so Liz pulls the cover downwards and buries herself in the semi-warm environment of Maria's bed.
"Liz?" Maria murmurs, sleep heavily coating her voice.
"Maria, I need to talk to you."
Maria gives a whine of protest and turns to face Liz. "It's in the middle of the night."
"Ria, was I ever shot?"
Suddenly, Maria is very much awake and her wide open eyes are staring at Liz in shock. "What?!"
"I know it might sound weird," Liz continues, "but was I ever shot? Did I like forget it or something?"
"What the hell are you talking about?" Maria whispers. This conversation is freaking her out.
"Because you know how sometimes people who are in trauma can suffer selective amnesia, or something like that."
Liz is babbling, trying to justify her statement, as Maria stares at her with open alarm.
Swallowing, Maria finds her voice. "When was this supposed shooting?"
"Uhm… you were there," Liz rakes her memory, seeing Maria in her short hair. Maria had hated that short hair, still to this day claiming it was the worst mistake of her life. "You had short hair."
Maria scrunches her nose in disapproval at the mention of her choice of hairstyle.
"That's when we were 16," Maria says.
"We were talking about how Max Evans is always staring at me. You know, he used to sit in that booth close to the window with Michael and Isabel."
"Uh-huh," Maria says.
"And I was explaining how Kyle was a really good guy-"
"Oh my God, that day."
Liz stops and it is now her turn to stare at Maria. "You-you remember? It happened?"
"How could I forget? You had just given one of those photos of your semi sun-melted plastic dolls to one of the UFO-fanatics and there was an argument."
"Between two men," Liz whispers, afraid as she listens to Maria retelling Liz's dream.
"Yes, and a gun went off."
Liz notices that she isn't breathing when Maria stops and she draws a deep breath, wetting her dry lips. "And then?"
Maria smiles reassuringly. "Nothing happened. No one got injured. Everyone ducked and the bullet lodged itself in the wall at the back of the restaurant. It was pretty close to you though, because you were standing in the back."
Confusion mares her beautiful features as Liz tries to get her head around the altered ending. "But…" she shakes her head in a sign of disbelief. "I was sure… Why don't I remember that?"
"You don't remember that day? I guess, well, you were a bit shaken up. You were standing pretty close to where the bullet flew."
"And Max?" Liz swallows.
Maria's eyebrows bury in her hairline. "Max Evans? What about him?"
"What did he do? Did he run up to me?"
Maria frowns. "Why would he?" Maria scrutinizes Liz. "Lizzie, are you sure you're okay? Where's all of this coming from? Why do you suddenly believe that you were shot?"
"I dreamt it," Liz answers honestly. "Just now. I dreamt that I was shot that day and Max… Max made the pain go away."
Maria stares at her for a few seconds before she breaks out in laughter. "He made the pain go away? Liz, are you listening to yourself? Have you been reading too many romance novels lately?"
Would you listen to yourself?
Liz pulls back as the harsh voice rips through her subconscious.
Maria looks at her worriedly. "I think you should go back to your bed and try and get some sleep. I think you really need it."
Liz nods and, with mixed feelings of fear and hope, she gets back into her own bed, closes her eyes and waits for another dream to come.
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She steps closer to her reflection, running her finger over the purplish areas under her eyes. Shaking her head at her latest inability to sleep, she picks up a cover stick from her backpack and smudges it over the signs of her insomnia. When she's done, she gives herself a once over, grateful that Maria forced her to take a shower this morning. It's odd what absent-mindedness as a result of lack of sleep does to you. She didn't think she could forget such a vital thing like showering. She braces herself against the sink as a wave of weariness courses through her. The last couple of days have made her realize just how beneficial sleep is. It prevents your brain from going into overdrive, overheating and eventually melting. But lately she seems to be lacking the natural mechanism to prevent meltdown.
Liz pulls a water bottle out of her bag and takes a sip, closing her eyes to steady herself under the onslaught of dizziness. Putting the bottle back in her backpack, she pushes the strap over her right shoulder and maneuvers her way past girls combing their hair and reapplying make-up. She pulls the door open and another wave of dizziness hits her. She unconsciously fumbles for support, but finds nothing and she's dangerously close to falling when two strong hands grasp her upper arms and steadies her. The dizziness grows stronger and she feels close to fainting as her mind is suddenly battered by images. Images of her and Max Evans. Holding hands, hugging, dancing, laughing, kissing, caressing. Her head is bent as she tries to focus outside of the images. She must be going crazy. But then the images cease and she looks up, finding familiar amber eyes looking straight at her.
TBC...