Epilogue

Six Years Later...

Dropping his keys onto the kitchen bar countertop, Max took a quick glance around the apartment he shared with Liz. Moving noiselessly throughout their home, he failed to catch a glimpse of her petite frame. Despite the fact that six years of connecting and living with her had managed to suppress his awareness of his surroundings to a point where he could easily blend in, it was still his habit to leave as quiet of a footprint upon his senses as possible. Plus, he had long since learned that sneaking up upon Liz had its benefits. Long ago, he had lost count of how many times the ability had afforded him the chance to surprise her in the shower or watch her silently, unsuspected from a doorway. On the other hand, they also went through more dishes than the average couple, but such a loss was a worthy sacrifice in his opinion.

As he moved, he stripped, peeling off the sticky clothes which clung to his still damp with perspiration skin. Despite the fact that the heat of summer had yet to settle upon Dallas, a sunny, May afternoon was nothing to scoff at... especially when he had spent the last two hours down at the local community center playing basketball with a group of teenage boys younger and, apparently, more resilient than he was. The day's high had only touched the mid-eighties, but, still, Max was a sweaty mess.

First, it was his shoes and socks. He toed them off as he moved across the large, central living space of the flat he shared with Liz, picking them up and holding them in his hands as his now bare feat greedily sunk into the thick cushion of the carpet. Bypassing the guest bathroom, he peered into the room that doubled as their office and guest bedroom... not that anyone from Roswell made it to Dallas all that often. Still, when they did, it was nice to have a place to comfortably put them, especially given the fact that their guest bedroom was situated on the opposite side of the apartment from the bedroom he and Liz used as their own. Not finding her there working on her thesis, he lifted his arms over his head and removed his t-shirt. Immediately, the cool air of their air conditioned home made his balmy skin break out in goosebumps, but the sensation was quickly suppressed as his body, once more, adjusted to the fluctuating temperatures.

Max was just about to make his way towards their bedroom when he caught a glimpse of the sight he sought through the double windows which looked out onto their balcony. He should have known. When they were looking for a place to live after relocating to Dallas to attend grad school and start their first real, adult jobs, Liz had asked for one thing concerning their prospective apartment: she wanted a balcony. He had been more practical, trying to find a place somewhere equidistant from the UT Southwestern Medical Center – Dallas, where she was studying for her Masters in Molecular Biology, and from Dallas Baptist University where Max had decided to enroll for his own graduate degree in school counseling.

Max had also been worried about parking, about laundry hookups, about having a dishwasher. They had been surprised, though, at how easy it was to find something which fit both Liz's more romantic ideals for their first real home together and his functional ones. Now that they had it, though, even he had to admit that their balcony was his favorite place as well. It was private, overlooked the waterfront and downtown Irving, and it was the perfect place for the two of them to unwind after a long, stressful, jam-packed day. Their lives were anything but peaceful – what, between both of their studies and their full-time jobs: Liz as a clinical laboratory technologist and his as a high school psychology teacher, but the balcony afforded them their own slice of relaxation on a daily basis.

Quickly, Max made his way back out into the living and dining room, electing to deposit his clothes in their bedroom before using its second access door to join Liz outside. Whether it was because of his surreptitious movements or because she was too engrossed in whatever it was she was working on, her laptop balanced on her crossed legs, Max was able to make his way over to where Liz sat, the end of the lounge chair she occupied free for him to claim as his own. He kneeled upon it, leaning forward to both get closer to the woman he loved and to peek at whatever it was that had captured her attention so completely.

"Should I be jealous," he teased, already grinning as he anticipated both her reaction to his sudden appearance and the proper greeting he had planned for her.

She gasped, though, shying away from him, and, almost immediately, Max's playful smirk turned into a frown, and his brow furrowed. "Don't, shoo, get away," Liz ordered as she backpedaled as far away from him on the chair as she possibly could and held her computer up and away from his prying gaze. "You can't look!"

"Liz, I've seen pieces of your thesis about a thousand times already. If you haven't realized it yet, you mutter parts of it under your breath while you're working on it, while you're cleaning. Hell, you once started talking about your topic while you were sleeping." Leveling her with a pointed gaze, he admonished, "just be warned that I will draw the line during sex. If you even once mention your paper while we're..."

"Okay, okay, I get it, but, for your information," she informed him haughtily, "I'm not working on my thesis. In fact, I finished it earlier."

His eyes lit up with joy and congratulations that Max didn't even attempt to disguise. "You did?"

Liz nodded, sighing dreamily. "All I have to do now is print it out, get all my signatures, and then turn it in for binding."

"Well, then, we should celebrate." He leaned forward to kiss her, but, before he could, she squirmed away from him, apparently still paranoid that he would catch a glimpse at her laptop. Leveling her with a pointed gaze, he asked, "do I even want to know what you're attempting to hide from me?"

She laughed. "Max, it's nothing bad. You just can't see it."

"Well, that's enlightening."

Rolling her eyes, Liz finally closed her computer, setting it aside on the patio table next to them. Now capable of directing her full attention on him, she wrapped her arms lazily around his neck, pulling him closer, and unfolded her legs to curl them around his hips. He settled into the juncture of her thighs comfortably. As she ran her fingers through his sweaty hair, she murmured, "you reek."

"So romantic," he taunted, nuzzling his face into the hollow of her neck and causing Liz to giggle and burrow closer to him despite his unpleasant scent. After dropping several kisses upon her delicate flesh, he once more looked up to meet her coffee gaze. "So, tell me, Miss Parker: what exactly were you looking at that had you so engrossed?"

"All I'm going to say is its bad luck for you to see it before the wedding."

"Ah, that," Max replied with a big, goofy grin upon his face. Pausing, he reached behind him to remove her left hand from where she had it entangled in the ends of his hair, bringing it forward so as to caress his lips against the warm skin where her finger met the platinum of her diamond engagement ring. He had surprised her with his proposal during the tension-filled madness of midterms, creating a bubble of excitement in between the chaos of papers, exams, and presentations two months before. Now, they were planning an August wedding – a final hurrah to their life in Dallas and a proper segue into their married existence elsewhere. Returning back to the moment at hand, though, Max questioned, "I thought that superstition applied only if I saw you wearing your wedding dress."

"Let's just say that I'm not willing to tempt fate. The last six years with you have been perfect; I want the next sixty to be so as well."

"I want the same thing," he confided in a whisper, rubbing their noses together before finally giving Liz the hello kiss he had been intending to since he first opened the door to their apartment. He tasted her languidly, luxuriating in the freedom to do so. It didn't matter how many times they were together intimately, Max never once took a moment he shared with the woman he loved for granted. Then, with one last provocative swipe of his tongue against her bottom lip, he pulled away, hoping that the seductive embrace they had just shared would be enough to tempt her into showering with him. "So, you found your wedding dress this afternoon?"

"I did," Liz confirmed.

"Did you find anything else, make any other decisions without me?" Because he was about to have the next three months off, while Liz would still be working full-time, he was determined to shoulder much of the burden which came with planning a wedding. Though their nuptials would not be a massive production – after all, neither of them had large families, he still wanted it to be beautiful and memorable for Liz. Plus, with their families eight hours away, neither his mother nor Liz's would be able to help with the planning very much, and Maria, though Liz's maid-of-honor and quite excited for them, had a life of her own to live. On top of everything else, Liz had to finalize her application to her PhD program of choice, they had an apartment to pack up, and they had an entire new life to build together.

"I found Maria's bridesmaid dress, but I'm still trying to narrow down which location I think we should book at the Arboretum.

Max shrugged, standing up, prepared to solve that problem for her. "Why don't we just go tonight and check it out. We'll make an entire evening out of it. We'll go into Dallas and stop at the Arboretum on our way to dinner. After all, like I said before, we need to celebrate."

Liz's eyes lit up with anticipation and excitement. Standing with him, she cupped his face. "Oh, I like the way you think, Mr. Evans."

Without warning, he scooped her up in his arms, lifting her so that her legs could circle him around his waist as he walked them both into their bedroom. Liz laughed the entire way. "Well, then, come on. Time's a wasting. We only have a little bit of time before I need to leave for my meeting, and we need to get our shower in before I go."

"Our shower?"

Max smiled brightly. "It's almost summer-time in the South, darlin'. We need to conserve water."

She tossed her head back in amusement, her long, thick hair cascading down in a rich shower of decadence. "I can't believe you used that line on me!"

"Hey, you're the scientist. I shouldn't be telling you anything you don't already know."

"What, that my fiance is the lamest pick-up artist in the entire state of Texas?"

He pinched her butt, making Liz squeal. "And that's a good thing, isn't it?"

Before allowing her a chance to respond, though, Max covered her mouth with his own, kicking the bathroom door shut behind them.

; : ;

"... and, now, in three months' time, my fiancee and I will be getting married, we'll be moving to Baltimore, Maryland. I'll be starting my first job as a guidance counselor – hopefully, helping kids who were just like me in high school... and some who weren't as well, and she'll be working as a clinical laboratory scientist and starting the PhD program in the Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. It's not Harvard... like her father always wanted for her," Max admitted with a slight chuckle, meeting the interested, amused, pleased glances of the men and women surrounding him, "but we weren't sure if we were ready for those Massachusetts winters yet."

It had taken him six years before he felt ready to completely open up and share his story with his fellow AA members... an albeit slightly edited version in order to maintain his anonymity... in more ways than one, and it felt good – like a fitting conclusion to their lives in Texas, their lives before their marriage. In talking about his own past at that evening's meeting, Max felt the last link to his former addiction break, and he knew without a doubt that he'd never take another drink again. While he would still attend meeting, he knew that the temptation had finally, once and for all, been conquered. This also meant that he felt he was now ready to be someone else's sponsor.

"Best of all, we're buying a house. It's this historical, brick, central hall colonial, something so... normal. It's got four bedrooms, a large, family-friendly, eat-in kitchen, and a big, fenced-in back yard. It's the perfect place for my fiancee and I, in a few years, to start and raise our family." Becoming more serious, Max sat up straight. "When I think back to what my life was like six years ago and then compare it to what it is now, I realize that there was one key thing to my sobriety: trust. My getting clean was dependent upon one moment: that night when I was finally honest about who I was with the woman I love. For the first time in my life, I really allowed someone to know me; I let her in. If it wasn't for that moment, then nothing that has happened since would have been possible. We're not islands. We can't survive on our own... no matter how much we initially might think and want otherwise, and it was only with this realization that I was able to find true and lasting serenity."

After he finished talking, the meeting closed with its traditional prayer and the socializing which always came afterwards. Some nights, he joined in; others, he didn't. It usually depended upon how much grading he had to do... or how good he thought his chances were of convincing Liz to be naughty with him and spend the rest of the night in bed together rather than working on their respective school and work commitments. With an evening out on the town planned with his soon-to-be wife, Max had no plans to stick around long. His intentions, though, were sidelined as, while he was walking towards the door, a new visitor to their meeting that night stepped into his path.

"Hey," the other man greeted, awkwardly shuffling his motorcycle boot clad feet and shoving his clenched fists just that much deeper into his jeans pockets. "Do you have a minute," the stranger requested.

Max nodded, leading him outside to the parking lot where they could talk in private. Briefly, he recalled another monumental conversation held in a similar parking lot years before, but he quickly brushed his recollections aside, for the man before him deserved his undivided attention. Without hesitation, he got to the point. "You're new."

"Yeah, well, this isn't the easiest thing to do in the world."

"What, admit that you have a problem," Max supplied, questioning.

"No," the other man contradicted, shaking his head in a negative fashion to further emphasize his response. The stranger had long, dirty-blond hair which hung down into his eyes and cloaked his face, and his shoulders were hunched forward as if exhausted from a lifetime of carrying an invisible yet no less heavy burden. "This," the world-weary guy gestured between them. "Opening up. It's like you said before," he continued on, "how learning to trust someone was the hardest yet most important thing you've ever done."

"I never said it was the hardest," Max corrected, though there was no censure to his tone. In fact, a small smile accompanied his words. "And is that what you're doing? Are you trying to open up to me?"

"I'm here, aren't I? I'm talking to you."

"There's a big difference, though, between talking to someone and talking with them."

The stranger snorted. "I just had to pick the shrink to confide in, didn't I?" Before Max could reply, the other man was continuing on, "look, I can't promise that I'll tell you everything about my life. There are things that... well, let's just say I have some secrets, and they're going to stay that way."

"But," he prompted.

"But I'd like for you to be my sponsor."

"And I'd be honored," Max said. "But, as I told the group just a few minutes ago, I'm moving across the country in a few months."

"That's cool," the blond guy replied with a shrug. "I don't like to stay in one place for long anyway." As if to support that claim, he then glanced around them, looking over his shoulder as if uneasy and fearing somebody was watching or listening into their conversation. "After you leave, we could email, maybe talk on the phone some. Whatever."

"That's not the ideal set-up for a sponsor/sponsee relationship."

"It's better than nothing, and you're the first guy I've met at any of these meetings who I felt comfortable enough to even think about talking to... or with."

"Fair enough," Max agreed, holding his hand out to shake the stranger's. "In that case, the name's Max Evans. If you have a cell phone, I'll program my information into it for you."

Digging the requested electronic out of his back pocket, the other guy gave him what he requested while holding out his free hand. "Here. Give me yours and I'll do the same."

After several minutes of typing, the two men handed the other their respective phones back. "And your name," Max had to ask, obviously his new sponsee was too keyed up, too nervous, to realize the fact that he had failed to introduce himself.

"Michael Guerin."

They parted ways then, but Max couldn't help but look back over his shoulder at the retreating form of Michael Guerin. He was standing by his car, keys in hand, ready to unlock his door and drive away, but something made him pause. Just as he had felt his ties to his past snapping just moments before inside, after talking to Michael, he had felt something else change inside of him as well. Though it wasn't unsettling, he knew that his life was about to change yet again. There was just something about the other guy... something that he couldn't quite put his finger on.

But he'd solve that puzzle another day. After all, he had a lifetime to do so. In the meantime, however, he had a fiancee back at home waiting for him, a wedding to plan, and a finished thesis to celebrate. Life was... pretty much perfect.