Summer Solstice

sequel to Winter Solstice

By RosDeidre

DISCLAIMER: The characters of Roswell are the property of Twentieth Century Fox Television and Regency Productions. All original characters and concepts are the property of the author. No profit has been made from the distribution of this work of fiction.

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PART ONE

It’s hard to stop holding your breath once it’s become second nature. Liz may be healed and well and the leukemia all gone, but I’m not breathing, not yet. Sometimes I wonder if I ever will be again.

“Michael, please stop worrying so much,” she chided last night, as we lay in bed, discussing the doctor’s appointment today. “You’re suffocating me like this,” she said, and I drew her tight against my chest. Memorized the scent of her for the millionth time, always afraid that it might be my last.

Earlier today, at the doctor’s office, I couldn’t sit still. I kept pacing back and forth across the waiting room floor, thumbing through magazines, watching the clock. Watching her. She made a frustrated face at me, begging me to settle down without so much as opening her mouth. I heard her inside my head, telling me to shush, to stop rattling in her head so much with all my nonsensical fears. She was frowning, little lines forming around her dark eyes, and all I could think was how beautiful she looked.

Baby, I said, I’ll relax once I hear what the doctor says.

She smiled, and went back to knitting a blanket or whatever it is this week. Her mother taught her when she first got sick; point eventually came when she didn’t have the strength for it anymore, and then another point came, this past January, when she had the strength to pick it up again. So she sat there this morning, while we waited for the doctor to call her name, needles clicking back and forth and I felt her stillness form inside of me. It swelled right in my center until I felt quiet and patient and able to put up with myself, at peace with how I am, just like she always manages to make me feel.

After that, the nurse called us back, then the prognosis came, and exactly as she predicted, the beast was still in full remission. Her weight was on the low side, but up two pounds from last month and gradually coming back; the doctor seemed encouraged by her progress. Yet somehow all that peace she’d mapped inside of me earlier vanished, replaced instead with roiling anger. Outside, at our car, I shook my head and muttered at her that she better start taking better care of herself. Argued that she needs to get more rest, needs to work less at the café, to sleep longer and harder and stop ignoring the way her body rebels against her impossible schedule. “There’s a lot I want to do,” she explained calmly, but I just stood there, shaking.

“You won’t be able to do any of it if you die,” I snapped. “Will you, huh?”

“Michael, I am fine,” she said, wriggling the keys from my hand and opening the car door while I stood there huffing at her. “Let’s go. It’s way too hot to talk about this out here in the parking lot.”

“Baby, if you don’t take care of yourself, you’re gonna get sick again,” I continued, as she slid into the driver’s seat and ignored me standing there on the burning asphalt beside the open door. I ached for that peace she’d given me just thirty minutes before.

“Come on,” she urged, turning the key in the ignition, smiling up at me. “We’ve got a lot of cheesecakes to prepare.”

“You think Max can just keep on fixing you?” I huffed, slouching beside her in the car, staring out the window as we pulled out of the professional complex parking lot. We know the attendant by name after all our time here. Juanita. And Juanita knows Liz as the miracle girl; they all do around here. After Max’s voodoo trick, we weren’t sure what to say, so we just told the doctors we believed in the power of prayer.

If you get sick again, Liz, I warned as we waved a greeting at Juanita, He might not have the cure. He might not even be around.

Michael, please stop it.

I’m not doing anything! I shouted inside of her, and she cut her eyes at me irritably, silent. “What?” I cried aloud, feeling powerless and frightened and like this demon that still haunts her blood is somehow a living part of me.

“Michael, I haven’t been sick in half a year,” she explained, quiet as she turned a corner, onto the main drag of town. Red, white and blue bunting waved across the street, advertising the 5K run in the morning. The Race for Independence, it’s called even though it’s a good two weeks before the Fourth of July; really it kicks off the first day of summer. She kept driving, silent, on past the Crashdown, glancing sideways at her father perched atop a ladder with a large flag in his hands.

After a while she asked, “When are you going to let this go?”

“When I know it won’t come back.”

“We won’t ever know that, Michael,” she said simply, and I couldn’t look at her. Slouching further down in the seat, I raked a hand through my hair—it’s way too long and in need of some shaping, but Liz likes it this way, and I like how she combs her fingers through it every night in bed. I like how she twists it in her hands when we make love, and how curling against me afterward as she falls asleep, her small body rising and falling with her quiet, dreamy breaths, she still has her hand right there.

I had a dream last night. She was behind the glass counter in the café, apron on, tallying the day’s receipts. She looked up at me, smiled as she so often does. I remember thinking that she’s absolutely gorgeous—more beautiful now than when we first got together, than before she got sick. I was going to say that, in the dream, but her smile slipped a little and in a whisper-thin voice, she told me her bones felt like paper. That they felt like chalk. And then she collapsed right in front of me.

I have dreams like that a lot.

So I can’t breathe, can’t let go, can’t stop suffocating her with all my insatiable fears.

“I haven’t felt that way in months,” she announces ambiguously, staring at the road ahead. I turn toward her, unsure. Like paper. Like I’m going to float away, she says. I haven’t felt that way since Max came home.

Is that what it was like, I wonder. How it felt when she almost died?

“Liz, if you get sick again—if I lose you? I won’t be able to take it. Don’t you understand?”

“Michael, we’re never given any guarantees,” she answers, reaching for my hand. It’s small and surprisingly cool when our fingers lace together.

“I know that.”

“I want to have a baby.”

Groaning, I blow out a breath. We’ve talked about this. Often. And she knows where I stand on the matter. The doctors have said it’s a risk; her body is weakened from the long-term effects of her disease, from the chemo, from the intense drug therapy. It’s not a good idea to have a baby—if we’re even capable of conception—because she might never survive the strain.

“No.”

“You can’t just decide!” she cries, her dark eyes wide with sharp anger, when she turns to stare at me.

“No, way, Liz. It’s not ever gonna happen, so let it go.”

“God, sometimes I hate you.” I see the tears fill her eyes, and they fill mine, too. “Well, if it keeps you alive, then hate me all you need to,” I answer as we pull into the space outside our small restaurant.

“It’s not your choice to make.” Her voice is hollow, tired.

“I’m your husband, baby. I’m part of this, too.” I try and sound gentle, placating, when I feel anything but that. What I feel is alien and angry and like I could cause a few ripe explosions around this block of cars. Rubbing my hands together, I try and stifle the banking energy within my palms, within my body, this riotous need to protect my soul mate.

“After everything,” she answers, staring at me hard. “After all that we fought through, how can you do this to me?”

Opening the car door, I turn to her. “Because I can’t lose you, Liz. I couldn’t lose you before, and I sure as hell can’t now.”

I leave her there, in the car. And it’s a long, long time before I hear the bell over the door tinkle, signaling her entry, a long time before heat from the June afternoon firestorms into our boxcar of a dessert café. By the time she does come inside, I’m in the back, fiddling with some red and blue frosting and I hear the soft clattering of her sandals on the polished tiles. She doesn’t stop, doesn’t poke her head in to talk to me, and I hear her weary footsteps as she hauls her body upstairs to our new apartment.

****

He’d left the examination room. He thought the doctor was finished because I told him so, and he went on to pay the bill. That’s when I asked and the doctor agreed to call me later. So now I’m on tenterhooks, waiting here beside the phone. Thank God Michael needed to frost all those holiday cheesecakes for the street fair tomorrow morning. Kicking off my sandals, I lie down flat on my back, staring at the bedroom ceiling that swims a little overhead. If he had any idea, he’d know there’s a reason for all his worries. He’d remember that he is so connected to me, that he can’t possibly tune out the truth.

Thank God he only thinks he’s overreacting, I sigh, rolling onto my side to wait for the call from the doctor’s office. Curling into a fetal position, drawing my knees up to my chest, I’m glad he has no idea, because I couldn’t handle him knowing, not this soon, not yet. I’ve never met a stronger man, or a more vulnerable one than my husband, but it’s clear I have to protect him from this.

****

The restaurant’s not open today. It’s a Wednesday and that’s our usual baking day, but about three o’clock, I hear a soft rapping on the front glass door. Wiping my hands on my apron, I round the corner and find Maxwell, his face pressed up against the glass, peering inside. With a casual wave, I let him know I’m on the way. He backs up, shifting his weight as he shoves his hands into his pockets. I still can’t quite get used to the way he looks, even after all this time. He’s lost some of the weight, but he’s still a heavyset guy, and the fullness of his face always shocks me. So does the well-trimmed beard that shadows his jaw.

“Hey, man.” I open the door, but not all the way. He stares at the ground, away from me. This should be easier by now, this awkward thing between us. “What’s up?” I prompt him, and he looks at me. His golden eyes are a little lost, darting from side to side. Finally he asks, “Everything okay?”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m not sure,” he answers, staring past me into the restaurant. “Just is it okay? With you…and Liz.”

“I think so, man, yeah.”

“Good,” he answers, nodding resolutely, backing up a few steps. “Good. I’m glad.”

“You leaving already?” I call after him, as he turns to head down the sidewalk. So many of our interactions end like this: unsatisfying, incomplete. I need more of him than this, by God, but I’m not sure how to ask for it.

“Kyle and I are going for a run,” he explains, glancing at his watch.

“Now? The race is in the morning.” Kyle has had him running for months now, one reason he’s lost the weight that he already has; that, and the fact that he’s left off the booze for the past few months.

“Kyle wants to go on a short run, so…” he shrugs, explaining as he continues to back away from the door. I notice he’s not dressed for exercise: he’s wearing khakis and a t-shirt.

“Why don’t you come by for coffee later,” I suggest. “Liz would love to see you, Maxwell. She needs—”

“Can’t.” He gives me an apologetic smile, backing away from me. “You know I can’t.”

Leaning my head against the open door, I watch him disappear around the corner and pray it isn’t the last I ever see of him.

****

“My name is Max and I’m an alcoholic.”

“Hello, Max!” they shout in unison and what I really want is to slide out of my seat and onto the floor. Hello, my name is Max and I’m an alien freak. What if I said that? I suspect it would not go over very well.

Across the room, Sheriff Valenti gives me an encouraging nod. He’s my sponsor, ironically enough. He got sober about five years ago when he finally realized that a few nightly beers had turned into a twelve pack. So when I started coming around this A.A. clubhouse, he offered to sponsor me. Of all people, he understands my special challenges in making the twelve steps work. Even acknowledging a higher power is a strange proposition for a hybrid being like me. But lately, I’m starting to suspect someone’s been guiding my ship all along.

“Uh, it’s been ninety days and I haven’t had a drink, but lately it’s gotten harder…” I begin, wondering how I can explain that with Liz in this town, and with feeling her all the time--and feeling her with Michael—I’m constantly torn up inside. Something’s wrong and I don’t know what it is, and possessing that knowledge is enough to make me go insane. I settle on a lame, “It’s hard not to drink, that’s all.”

In exchange I hear a few platitudes, then an equally lame, “This program works if you work it. Keep coming back.” It just feels good to know that I’m not completely alone—after a lifetime of feeling unique. There’s a circle of strangers around me who understand how overpowering my compulsion to drink can be.

What they don’t understand—and I wish I could verbalize—is that I’m an alien with a terrible sixth sense when it comes to my soul mate and her husband. I wonder if they’d understand if I likened it to The Princess and the Pea? Whatever Michael and Liz’s problem is, whatever is eating away at the both of them, that thing is the pea in my mattress every night. It’s the pebble in my shoe every day. God, as much as I love them both, it kills me not to know what that problem is.

Kyle tells me I’m imagining things. What does Kyle know? He’s as pathetically alone as I am, without so much as a single date in the past six months. He’s in a platonic partnering with Tess that I don’t pretend to understand. He tells me they don’t sleep together—haven’t in years—but that they’re soul mates or something like it. They see each other every day, sometimes for breakfast, sometimes for lunch, sometimes just to watch videos on his couch. And this is the one I really don’t get: sometimes she spends the night in his bed, but he swears all they do is “snuggle.” I ask him if he still thinks about sex with her and he just smiles. He asks me if I’d still think about sex with Tess Harding if I weren’t her lover anymore. That question always makes me blush.

You see, I’ve never slept with a woman—alien or human. That train passed me by thanks to my unique heritage. If I kiss someone, they could know everything in the space of three flashes, so I’ve kept to myself. No wonder the booze tasted so incredibly sweet when I was alone every night.

Staring down, I realize I’m holding the basket of money that’s being passed around the room. I toss in a few dollars to support Alcoholics Anonymous and wonder what Kyle is up to tonight.

****

Kyle looks at his watch, squinting out into the darkness from his apartment door. “Evans, we’ve got a race at seven a.m.,” he cautions. “You do remember that, right?” He’s wearing boxers and a loose t-shirt from the Roswell Fireman’s Run last fall. Hot To Trot 10K the shirt says, with little bursts of flame shooting out of a pair of running shoes. Standing in his doorway I feel awkward and overweight and old. How can he look so fit and healthy when I’m completely worn out already? I’m all used up and he’s in better shape than he was years ago. As if he’s reading my mind, he asks, “You lose some more weight, Evans?”

“Shut up,” I say, frowning and sucking in as much of my portly stomach as I possibly can. “You going to ask me in or not?”

“Let’s go for a walk,” he replies, opening the door wide. “You need it.” Kyle’s taken it as his mission to get me healthy and in shape. So far, I’m down by about twenty- two pounds, but I’ve got a good thirty more to go. “Let me go get some pants on,” he offers, heading down the hallway toward his bedroom. I notice that he still has the sleek, muscled body of a football player, even at nearly thirty years old. He returns a moment later wearing a pair of khaki shorts and tosses me a bottle of water. “Drink up. You need it for tomorrow morning.”

“Lucky me, my very own personal trainer.”

“Some people pay the big bucks, you know,” he laughs, opening his door for me. “So how come you don’t charge me?” I ask, wondering for the first time why he doesn’t, when down at the Y he gets at least forty dollars an hour. He shrugs, laughing. “Guess I like you, Evans. Plus I owe you.”

“For what?”

His blue eyes widen, genuinely filled with surprise as he says, “You saved my life. Duh?”

“Oh. That.” I’ve never considered it in the cosmic scheme of things. After all, I did what I had to do that day—it was my fault anyway.

He laughs sardonically. “Yeah. That. Way I figure it, Evans, I sort of owe you big time.”

“You wouldn’t have been shot if it weren’t for me.”

He shakes his head in disagreement. “I don’t keep track of that part,” he answers. “Just the life-saving part.” With that, he slaps me on the back. “Come on, get walking, old man. Geez, how could a guy with a body like you had let himself go like this?”

I was trying to kill myself, Kyle. I even open my mouth to say so, but then close it again. “Alcohol can be pretty cunning and powerful.”

“Yeah? Well when I’m done with you, you’ll look like the svelte alien king again. In fact,” he hesitates, looking me over, then says, “I even see a little bit of that green svelte guy now.”

I slug him in the arm and tell him to shut up with all that talk of the old days. We walk for a while, down the familiar streets, until we come to the park. There are tables set in every direction, small placards with family names atop each one, reserving them.

“Your folks coming to the summer picnic tomorrow?” he asks, lifting a placard and reading it.

“Of course,” I laugh. “This is their scene.”

“Not yours?”

I don’t answer that, because he knows I can’t stop running. I’m trying, staying here in Roswell these months, but the burn to move is in my blood now. Maybe it always was coded into my alien DNA—that I’m a journeyer, a nomad, a wanderer. Maybe I can’t stay still like my human parents do. Then how does Michael manage it, so comfortably and easily, with his little restaurant and his wife? Because he was handed my destiny, a rogue voice whispers in my head. But the voice is lying. I would have been a warrior, a leader. Now I’m just an overweight drunk trying to stay sober, five minutes at a time.

****

The darkness of our small bedroom is punctuated by the periodic sound of fireworks, lights flashing on the ceiling like heat lightening. If I still kept my journal, I’d have written in it tonight. After all, I’m the keeper of a powerful secret, and with Michael beside me I wonder how long I can hide it from him. He worries so much, all the time—and now I worry that if he discovers the truth, it will tear him apart.

But Michael lives inside of me, so it’s only a matter of time until he discovers what I’m hiding, discovers that today I built a silent wall between us, a barricade to obscure what the doctor told me. The call came while Michael worked downstairs, just like I knew it would. I rested while I waited, rested because I knew my weakened body required it—lately I can hardly move I’m so tired, but I’ve hidden that from my husband, too. For now. So that he won’t worry more than he already does.

Lying here beside him, in the dark, his soft snoring becomes staccato occasionally, startling me. Rolling onto my side, pressing closer, I notice that his mouth hangs slack. He’s absolutely exhausted—and to think he chides me for working too hard. Michael’s driven by so many demons, I can’t possibly count them all.

My only wish is that he find his peace, understand how deep my love runs for him. That I don’t ache for Max, despite those doubts I hear inside his mind occasionally, even after everything we’ve been through. And I don’t begrudge what happened to our restaurant when I got sick: how could he possibly have kept it running with all the medical bills and time spent taking care of me? That my dad helped us open up this new place, this much smaller, quainter little café, that’s all I need. But Michael thinks he should’ve kept the other one going, should’ve been able to make the finances work well enough. I know he worries it broke my heart, losing our dream that way, but the only real dream I ever had was spending my life with him. So he doesn’t need to give me another thing, if only he saw it that way.

Fireworks erupt again, splashing colors across his face. I lift my hand and cradle his cheek within my palm. I love you, I whisper inside of him, even though he’s sleeping. Michael, sweetheart, please don’t worry so much about me. I love you and I’ll be okay. We all will be.

Pressing a kiss against his temple, I pray that the words will reach like a tether inside of his dreams, a lifeline between our two lost souls. Sweetheart, let it go…let it go, I say and breathe into him all my tenuous strength.

You’re all I’ve ever needed, Michael. Just you, I murmur into his dreams, into his rest. Closing my eyes I settle into him, closer than close. I don’t worry about keeping that barricade up; the truth is coming, it’s unavoidable now. It’s only a matter of time.

PART TWO

Kyle sits beside me on top of a picnic table. We’re inside the dark gazebo, right in the middle of the park. Not really a gazebo, actually, more like a covered picnic area; we’re cloaked in shadow and somehow, strangely, we’ve both gotten really quiet. I’m not sure what to say to my good friend, here in the night, watching fireworks illuminate the sky on the other side of town.

“That’s a good one,” I venture, when an explosion of pink and purple fills the desert night.

“Won’t be long until the big finale,” he says, nodding as he takes a gulp of water from our shared bottle. Again, we fall silent and I try and think of something useful to say. I arrive at, “How’s Tess?”

His eyebrows cock upward, quizzical. “Why?”

Shrugging, I reply, “I don’t know. Just how’s Tess?”

“She’s doing good. Wishes you didn’t avoid her so much,” he chuckles. “I just tell her the truth—you avoid everybody but me.”

“It’s definitely not personal.”

“Well, she kind of wishes,” he hesitates, and I know he’s trying to be diplomatic with whatever’s coming next, “well, that you’d go see Liz. They got to be really close when she was sick, you know.”

Something knots hard inside of me. “I can’t go see Liz, Kyle.”

“You saw her last December.”

“That was different. She needed me.”

“I think they both need you now.”

I nod, staring at my hands, extending my fingers and studying my fleshy palms. I hear Liz inside of me, last winter, hear her voice, as she whispers, I’d have known these hands anywhere. As if they hadn’t changed so much.

“Something’s wrong with them, Kyle,” I answer, staring up at the inky sky. “With Liz…or Michael. I’m not sure which one.”

“They seem good. If you’d just go see them--”

“I don’t have to see them,” I snap, feeling electricity mount in my chest. “I feel it, Kyle. All the time, don’t you understand?”

“No. Explain it to me.”

Closing my eyes, I command the power to settle down inside of me. I have to be careful, back here in Roswell. Years away spoiled me too much—without the others, my energy dimmed. Back here, in such close proximity to Michael and Isabel and Tess, the slightest provocation can ignite it unexpectedly. Especially living on the edge like this.

“I-I don’t know how to put it in terms that will make sense,” I say, raking a hand through my hair.

“Try me.” Kyle laughs. “I’m pretty used to all the alien psycho babble, remember?”

“Okay.” I nod and decide to give it my best shot. “Okay, after I healed Liz, that day in the Crashdown, things began changing between us. This…awareness formed, linked us. I felt her all the time, and that didn’t go away until…until…”

I don’t think I can possibly tell him the next part, it’s just too painful—thank God he finishes for me.

“Until that night you thought she got together with me?” His voice is quiet, heavy. I just nod, and feel jittery and restless and wish I could leave this town. Maybe I will leave after the race in the morning. “Evans, we didn’t, you know,” he confides, motioning his hand between the two of us significantly. “Didn’t get together.”

This time I laugh. “You make it sound like you’re talking about you and me.” He stares at me blinking, and stammers, “I-I meant Liz, Evans. Liz and me.”

“I know that, Kyle.” He appears visibly relieved, as if a burden has been lifted and for some odd reason, this fact makes me smile.

For a while, we don’t speak. There’s only the sound of booming noises off in the distance, colorful flashes. “So how come it changed?” he asks. “Between you and Liz? What made that awareness go away?”

For a moment, I consider answering his question with a lie, something that won’t betray how much the truth hurts. But I can’t lie to him, not with the honest way he’s watching me.

Raking my fingers through my hair, I admit, “I shut her out, Kyle.”

Stupid, idiotic, asinine me; I shut out the one person I loved more than anyone else in the world. If I hadn’t, I’d have figured out the truth. And he understands that completely, because he whispers, “Oh, shit, man.”

“Yep. Oh shit about covers it.”

“But you’re feeling her now?”

“I healed her again,” I admit, smiling thinly at him. “It opened a bridge--”

“That you aren’t shutting off again.”

“You think that’s wrong?” It’s strangely important to me, what Kyle thinks of this admission.

Rubbing a thoughtful hand over his jaw he shrugs. “Don’t you guess she already knows? Wouldn’t she feel it, too?”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” The future is undecided. That’s what he told her, I learned that after the fact, too. Funny, but I find myself staring down at my hands again, sensing the energy that swells within them. Too much possibility in this town, too much always out there to set off my powder keg: no wonder I burn to leave.

“I guess it feels kind of like a curse, doesn’t it?” he chuckles. “The gift that keeps on giving.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Well, if you heal people, you’re kind of stuck with them.”

“In a way. Maybe. Maybe only certain people.” Maybe only the love of my life.

He pauses a second; I hear him draw in a slightly nervous breath, then he asks, “So, Max? How come you don’t avoid me?” He never calls me Max. As far back as I can recall I’ve always been Evans. “You avoid Liz and Michael and everyone else. Why not me?”

“I’m not sure.” When I first came back to town, I stayed at his apartment for a while. He made me feel accepted—he didn’t put pressure on me. Our relationship has always been paved with a lot of ambivalence, which meant his generous, open friendship when I came back to Roswell surprised me all the more.

“You healed me,” he observes in a hyper-casual way, leaning back on the picnic table, back onto his elbows. “You feel that kind of connection with me?”

“It was Liz, Kyle. Just Liz.” Turning to him, I level him with a hard stare that suggests he better not even think of jerking me around about this. He holds his hands up in mock defense, “Okay, Evans, just asking. You had me curious, that’s all.”

“That’s between only the two of us.”

“Of course.” Again, the terrible sense that some kind of danger or problem is hounding them. “Maybe she’s sick again,” I say aloud, shivering. “Maybe that’s it.” My heart begins to race like mad, and I clasp his forearm. “Has Michael said anything about her health? About the cancer?”

“Max, she’s fine, honest. I stopped in there yesterday and she was cooking like thirty or forty cheese cakes in the back. Really happy, too. She just misses you. So does he.”

“Happy.” I feel numb inside at just the thought of that word. I want her happy, I do. But it seems like something alien, not meant for me.

“So why’d you ask about Tess?” He doesn’t even seem to realize the subject change is abrupt. I shrug, answering, “I don’t know. I just wonder why you two aren’t together, a couple.” I think of the crazy alter-destiny that my other self spoke about: that I was to be with her. Why can’t some future version of this me send myself back to 2000 and stop that other guy from fucking everything up?

He’s chuckling awkwardly. “You know, that’s a good question, Evans. About Tess.”

“So what’s the answer?” I glance sideways at him, but he’s looking up at the sky, watching the fireworks. After a moment, he blows out a breath and laughs—too loudly, really—and says, “Well, I guess the fact that she wanted a boyfriend who could actually sustain some sexual interest for long periods of time was the main issue.”

“Tess is totally hot,” I argue, turning to him in surprise.

“Sure she’s hot.” He gives an embarrassed smile. “But I don’t think you’re grasping the real problem, man.

“Wh-what?” And then I understand, completely and without any need for further illumination. I sputter at him, “Oh. Oh, okay. Okay.”

“You get it now, Max?” He laughs, but won’t look at me.

“You didn’t used to be that,” I hesitate, feeling confused, thinking of how into Tess and Liz and other girls he used to be. “Well, that way. You didn’t used to be that way at all. Did you?” I wonder how I might’ve missed something that is so apparently obvious.

“We’ve all changed,” he answers cryptically, tearing at the label on the water bottle. “It wasn’t just you and Liz. Things happened in our…circle…that changed us all. Hell, even my body is different because of what you did to me.”

“What does that mean?” I can’t help it, I feel defensive automatically. And like he’s insinuating something that makes me squirm a little, sitting there beside him, the way he’s talking about his body and what I did to him.

“Don’t freak, man. I’m just saying I feel different,” he answers. “I never felt the same again after you brought me back.”

“Now you sound like Liz.”

He lifts his arms over his head, stretching, catlike. The muscles in his triceps ripple enviably; beautifully, I think, and then he asks, “So you got anybody, Evans? Back in Arizona or wherever the hell you were. We’ve talked about me, what about you?” As if it’s a casual question, although somehow, right inside of me, I know that it’s not. It’s a deep, important issue to him.

I hesitate, wondering if I should admit my current infatuation. “There’s this girl Miriam, in A.A.”

“I know Miriam,” he answers, knowingly. “I’ve seen you talking to her. She’s kind of cute.” He thinks he’s being generous. Miriam is my kind of girl, not Kyle’s—not that he apparently has a kind of girl anymore. She has soulful dark eyes, dark hair, cut hyper-short. She’s shy and sort of bookish, but there’s something vibrant in her that draws me in every time I see her.

“I’m not sure she knows I exist,” I laugh, like it’s not a big deal, and he looks at me. Softly, he answers, “Everyone notices you, Evans. Of course she knows you exist.” It’s all he says, but there’s a whole world of meaning attached to those few simple words.

“Kyle.” I notice that his chin is covered in a peach fuzz goatee, something new he’s obviously trying. For a fleeting second, I have the urge to take my fingertips and touch it. See what it feels like, if it’s as soft as it looks. I wonder if it would tickle if I did. I wonder what it would feel like to take my calloused fingertips and slowly stroke his lower lip, feeling the play of those bristling hairs against my skin.

I push the thought far from my mind. “Kyle, I like Miriam. From my recovery group.”

“I know, you just said,” he nods, kicking at a loose rock on the bench. “I think she likes you, too.”

“Really?”

“Sure she does. She looks at you whenever I pick you up. Besides, Max Evans always gets the girl.” An intent expression comes over him, and he says, “Just don’t forget, I’ve seen things Miriam isn’t ever going to see.”

I can’t help smiling. “At least we don’t think so,” I tease. “You never know when I might tip my hand.”

When he looks up at me, there’s pain in those blue eyes that throws me. All the wisecracking, all the defenses that I’m expecting are gone. There’s just a vulnerable, naked expression that I don’t really know how to answer. Softly, he continues, “And I’m the one who ruined your life that night. With Liz when we made you think--”

“No,” I cut him off, “that’s not true.” What ruined my life was her winding up with Michael later on.

“She never told me why,” he answers, frowning. “I never understood why she did that to you and she never told me.”

“It’s okay, Kyle,” I explain, picturing him in that bed just like it was tonight, not ten years ago. Picturing him bare-chested beside her. “I know why.”

“I told her I wouldn’t if it was because she wanted to hurt you.” Everything inside of me aches for a drink; my hands tremble, I close my eyes because the thirst is that overpowering. “Did she want to hurt you?” Kyle asks, quiet.

“No,” I say. “It killed Liz, what you two did.”

“It killed you.”

Yes, it did kill me. I’ve been dead ever since, but lately, lately maybe something’s thawing out inside of me. Since I came back to Roswell.

“Evans, it wasn’t just Liz and Michael and Isabel who missed you all these years.” Only when he says that do I realize I’ve drifted away, back to the open road, back to the booze, back out of this town.

He’s watching me— that studied, careful look Liz gives me most times these days when I do manage to spend five minutes with her.

“I’m okay, Kyle,” I assure him. “Don’t worry.”

“We all worry.”

“Don’t. I’m sober and it’s okay.”

He gives an ironic snort of laughter. “I’m not just talking about the drinking.”

“What are you talking about then?”

He stares down at his hands. “Liz. Michael. You.”

Something snaps inside of me, this furious deadness that slumbered so long flares up and I shout, “Kyle, listen, don’t ever talk to me about that again. I’m over it.”

I jump off the table and storm away, hands trembling, wondering if it would take me five minutes to hit the Little Green Men Package Store. They know me, from ninety days ago. Ninety days off the stuff, back to it in five minutes.

Across the grass, I hear the dry blades bending beneath each step of my running shoes. I hear Kyle behind me. Following me, shadowing me. Just like he did when I got back to town. Come out running with me, man.

I can’t run five feet, Kyle.

So what, we’ll walk.

“Evans, look, slow down.”

“You’re not my sponsor, Kyle.”

“No, but Dad would kill me if you did anything stupid on my watch.”

I dig in the pocket of my khakis, and produce a flat green chip. “Know what this is?” I ask him, slapping it into his palm, like its money on the counter of a bar, like a cold beer is going to come sloshing across to me.

“Your ninety day chip.”

“Very good. Ninety days I’ve managed to stay sober.”

“That’s a hard ninety days, too,” he answers, dropping the chip back into the center of my hand. For a moment, our palms make contact, and I feel the warmth of his skin touching mine. “Congratulations, Evans,” he announces, and our hands press together—then part.

Not sure when, but he’s come really close, into my physical space but I don’t know how to move away. I’m rooted here, staring at the chip in the center of my hand. One by one, he closes my fingers over the shiny surface. “I like you sober a lot more than drunk.”

Then, so softly I’m not even sure he’s done it, he leans in and kisses me. “Congratulations,” he whispers again, brushing his lips past mine like a fleeting whisper. A fleeting, stolen kiss, with fireworks overhead. Stunned, I wipe my mouth, staring at him in disbelief.

“I’ll see you in the morning,” he answers, brushing past me with all his usual cocky bravado. He didn’t just kiss me on the mouth. He didn’t just tell me he wanted something more than our friendship. Did he?

“Kyle,” I call out to him, as he walks away from me, leaving me in the dark. “I like Miriam.”

“I know.”

“You should know that,” I press, and he turns toward me, with a dopey, disbelieving smile, and says, “I lied to Liz.”

“About what?”

“I did see flashes. When you healed me,” he answers, folding his arms over his chest. “I saw a lot of stuff that I never told anybody about.”

“Inside of me?” I ask, shocked.

“That wasn’t what got to me, though,” he explains, stepping close again. “It was the dreams.”

I nod, saying nothing. Wanting to say so much. Instead, when he steps into the shadows where I’m standing, I lift my fingertips and I do trace them lightly over that goatee, feeling the prickling softness of his new beard. Feeling the way it shapes over his jaw and chin, appreciating the texture. The warm skin beneath— scented like Polo cologne, but mixed with an earthiness all his own. The alien in me smells things all over him that he has no idea are there, that nobody else could detect if they had to. He worked out this afternoon, maybe around three. He showered an hour or two ago; he drank a diet coke. He snuck an Oreo that he thinks I won’t know about. He sneaks them often.

In the distance, I hear more cacophonous celebration; an explosion of color appears overhead. He looks up, squinting at the display. “Only in Roswell would they have fireworks too early.”

Then, there’s the quiet sound of his quick breaths as he steps so close that my hand brushes his, that I can feel his sweet breath against my face. We’re completely shadowed, completely hidden and then I realize that the heavy sound in my ears is my own quick breathing, my own rush of blood and the pounding of my heart. I reach, cupping his face, and draw him in for a full, true kiss.

We’re hidden, here just beside the dark gazebo. There’s only the soft, scratchy brush of his beard against mine and the rough softness of his lips, as something unexpected opens between us, a fevered bridge connecting his self to my own. Even more surprising, as the flashes begin, and the sweet kiss grows more intense, more urgent, I don’t try and close myself off.

****

“You really have lost a lot of weight,” he says, as we step apart. His hand still clasps the waistband of my khaki pants, pressing against a somewhat flat abdomen that four months ago rolled and pushed against my too-tight jeans. “You’re definitely looking good,” he says with a self-conscious laugh, and I drop my gaze, feeling stupid for the kiss, despite the effect he just had on me. “I still need to lose another twenty pounds.” I sound shy, awkward. I’m reminded of kissing Liz, years ago.

I just saw things inside of him that I probably shouldn’t have seen. Which begs an important question: what did I just allow him to glimpse inside of me?

“No, you look great,” he continues, clearing his throat. “Really.” When I glance at his hand, still there at the waistband of my pants, he retracts it as if he’s been burned.

I stare at my Nikes, avoiding his eyes. “I-I shouldn’t weigh this much, even still.”

“You look great. Getting sober really agrees with you.”

“I’m not gay, Kyle.” I look up this time, making sure our eyes meet. He needs to hear what I’m saying. “You should know that I’m completely straight.” He laughs, and my face burns, as he says, “Sure, Evans. I hear you.” Then cutting his eyes at me, announces, “Night. See you in the morning at the race.”

This time he does leave me there, in the shadows, convincing myself that I’ve got a thing for Miriam from A.A. What is it they’ve said there? No relationships for a year? Maybe this is why. Maybe because relationships don’t make sense until you’ve been sober a year. It can’t possibly make sense that Kyle Valenti just had his tongue halfway down my throat, can it? No more sense than how amazing that kiss felt, I think, tugging uncomfortably at my khakis, adjusting them, as I head off across the open park back toward town.

My name is Max and I’m an alcoholic, I recite to myself, wondering if Kyle’s very far away yet, if maybe I shouldn’t follow after him and ask what that kiss really meant.

Fingering my chip in the palm of my hand, I keep walking away from him, away from the direction I know he’s heading, and tell myself it’s okay. It’s okay that I’m one very confused, alien, freaked out alcoholic…so long as I don’t drink tonight.

PART THREE

For an hour I stay there beside Michael, unable to fall asleep. My body’s already reacting, changing, becoming hostile to me; that I’m insomniac only illustrates that point. Finally I give up on sleep, and flicking on the hall light, I pad down to the café in search of some chamomile tea.

There’s the rushing sound of the air conditioner, kicking on even this late at night, more evidence of how sweltering the day has been. One glance at the clock shows me that it’s well past eleven. I pull my bathrobe tight and place the kettle on the stove, making a mental note to bring some teabags up to our apartment, so next time I can brew a pot without leaving our kitchen.

When the kettle begins to hiss and whistle something strange tugs at my awareness, at my periphery. Something solid makes me glance up—and I find Max outside the front door, staring in. He’s like an apparition and I jump, giving a little squeal and he waves at me, apologizing with his eyes. Those beautiful, familiar, wistful eyes.

“Hi,” I say, after turning the key in the lock and cracking the door open.

“God, Liz, I’m sorry,” he apologizes, looking past my shoulder, inside the restaurant. “I didn’t mean to frighten you.”

I touch him lightly on the arm, wanting to reassure him. “It’s okay, Max. It’s okay.” He hasn’t come to see me like this yet, alone when it’s only me. I don’t think I’ve been by myself with him—really alone—since before he left town years ago. “Come inside?” I ask, hoping. Again he looks past me, so I explain quietly, “Michael’s sound asleep.”

“So why aren’t you?”

I smile, despite myself, at his concern for me. How can he and Michael be so different, yet sometimes so much alike?

“Come on in for a cup of tea,” I urge, opening the door wider.

He shakes his head. “I just came to see if everything’s okay.”

“You already came by earlier. Michael told me.” He glances down the street, and I have the sense that he might bolt; he’s got that wide-eyed look that’s become so recognizable since his return in December. A look he had long before he ever left town years ago.

His gaze settles back on me. “I was worried about you.”

“Don’t be.”

Maybe with everything that’s changing in my life, I’m not willing to accept his distance tonight, but as he takes a step back, mumbling, “I shouldn’t have come,” I stop him. Stepping out onto the sidewalk in my robe, barefoot, I block his path and whisper, “Max, can’t you be around me at all? Even for just a few minutes?” My eyes mist and he becomes a tall blur, more like a memory than the changed man in front of me.

“It hurts too much,” he admits, that soft-spoken voice bringing me back to the present. “I’m sorry, Liz. I wish that it didn’t.”

Pulling my robe tighter around myself, I say, “It hurts me that we can’t be friends.”

“We’ll always be friends.”

I snort derisively, turning away from him. “After everything, Max, you could at least be honest with me.”

“Liz,” he insists, following me as I enter the restaurant. “You know I’d do anything for you…and Michael.”

“Then be in our lives, Max,” I answer, spinning to face him. “Please stop shutting us out.” He shudders visibly at my words, but I feel bold for some reason tonight. One thing I’ve learned these past few years is that life is a precious gift; you can’t spend time wasting it with broken relationships, lost time. “Last December, I thought I had you back,” I explain, searching his face. “That we all did.”

“I’ve never left again.”

“You never really came back,” I answer flatly. He doesn’t seem to know how to answer that, and for a long moment we stand deadlocked in a staring match, me with my bathrobe hanging open, gazing aghast at him—and Max looking anxious in the face of my confrontation. Finally, his gaze wavers, and he glances around the café. I’m not sure he’s ever been inside before. “This is nice, Liz,” he observes, nodding in appreciation, as he takes in the cozy booths and the floor to ceiling shelves filled with gourmet coffees and teas and exotic chocolates. We envisioned this place as a cross between a bakery and an old fashioned candy store, with a little bit of a coffee house tossed in for good measure. Smiling, he says, “I am truly impressed.”

“We had a restaurant back,” I hesitate, flinching to think of the pain we felt in losing our first place, more of a true restaurant, “before. You know, before I got sick. But we couldn’t keep it open when things got really bad.” I stare at the floor, feeling tears unexpectedly sting at my eyes. I’ve learned the hard way that you can grieve all kinds of losses: it’s not just dead people you have to bury. Sometimes it can be dead dreams or lost lovers. Or even a closed down little restaurant that you and your husband started from scratch.

“I wish I’d been here,” he says, carefully watching me. “Not just in December. Sooner.”

I suck in a strengthening breath, thinking of all the months I reached for him during my sickness. Especially during the chemo, when I started to feel as ill from that as from the disease. “Max, it’s okay,” I say, knowing how guilty he feels. I sense it, with him standing right near me. Max is the worst when it comes to blaming himself.

I’m thinking of the months after his return, when Isabel told us he’d drink himself into a stupor over at Kyle’s apartment every night. Kyle would call Isabel and his father, begging for their input, beside himself to see the state Max was in. But Kyle’s feelings for Max have always run deep ever since the day he was shot.

Kyle told me one day, when he stopped in for coffee, “He’s angry at himself that he wasn’t here sooner.”

“Did he tell you that?” I demanded and Kyle just laughed, saying, “He didn’t have to tell me. Hello? This is Max Evans.”

“Max,” I ask, setting out cups for our tea on the counter. “Are you doing all right now?”

“Liz, I’m fine, I promise.” Leaning on the bar, he laughs, “Besides, I’m not the one who’s been sick. The question is how are you feeling, Liz?”

For a moment, I stare at him, dumbfounded that even after so many years, he can be so stubborn, so unwilling to fail me. Just as adroitly, I reply, “I’ll pour some tea and we can talk about that.”


****

Whatever it is, whatever is wrong here, I must figure out a way to simply ask her, I think, watching Liz tiptoe toward me, mugs of sloshing tea clasped in both pale hands. Her face has more color now, but it’s still washed out. Dark circles still line her eyes. She’ll never be the same, I realize, as she takes the seat opposite me in the corner booth by the windows.

Something’s wrong, something more than this distance she’s named in our friendship.

“What are you doing out so late anyway?” she asks, blowing on her tea to cool it off.

Oh, nothing, Liz. Just marking time with your ex-boyfriend’s tongue halfway down my throat.

The thought occurs to me and then I blush. Horribly. Oh, God, please don’t let her notice, I think, fiddling with a sugar packet, feeling heat creep all the way into my ears. Please don’t let her get a random flash and see me kissing Kyle over in the gazebo at the park. Please don’t let her see all those flashes he left inside of me.

I cough. “Kyle and I went for a run.”

“Kyle really pushes you.” She’s grinning—does she suspect? I remember that I’m wearing khakis; I’m hardly dressed for a jog around the block.

I take a sip of my tea, answering, “He’s a good personal trainer.”

“So I’m told.” She’s still looking at me, and the feverish feeling in my face grows more intense. This is Liz, after all, and she’s always been able to gaze right into me; I’m obvious to her, even when I’m trying to be cagey.

“What’s his deal, anyway?” I ask, although I’m quite certain of “his deal” after tonight.

She laughs, methodically stirring cream into her tea. “Don’t you know, Max?”

I laugh, too. “I think I’m beginning to figure it out.” Queer as a three-dollar bill, I’m about to say, until she surprises me with, “Guess he fell for the Evans charm, same as me.”

My mouth falls open and I don’t know what to say to that. I sputter and try to think of something coherent, and her hand flies over her mouth. “I thought you just said you knew,” she manages, black eyes growing huge.

“That he’s gay, yeah,” I answer in a choked voice. “I figured that out finally.”

“Oh, God, Max,” she laments, shaking her head. “I mean, I thought you knew—the rest.” I won’t tell her that I think I figured that out “the rest” quite well tonight, not even an hour ago, right when Kyle kissed me full on the mouth.

“Let’s change the subject, okay?” I insist, still stirring my tea, avoiding her gaze.

“You’re blushing,” she observes and I refuse to look up. “Let’s change the subject, Liz.” Leaning back into her seat, she studies me intently. This was a huge, monumental mistake.

“So you promise me you’re okay, Max?” she asks, going back to our conversation earlier. “A.A. is really helping, I guess?”

I don’t want to talk about my sobriety, not with her for some reason. Besides, I need to know the truth about her. “Liz, I’m more concerned with how you’re doing.”

“I’m fine.” The answer comes out too curt, too abrupt.

“I feel it, Liz, so don’t lie to me.”

“Feel what?”

“You’re sick. That’s it, isn’t it?” I demand.

“No,” she says, her black eyes growing wide with frustration. “You, Michael, who’s next?” She shakes her head in disbelief.

“Something is wrong here,” I insist, tapping my finger on the tabletop as I glance around the restaurant. “Is it Michael? Is he sick?”

“Max, we’re both totally fine. You’re the one we’ve all been so worried about.”

Closing my eyes, I concentrate and the sense grows keen within me, answering like an audible echo. It’s her body. Something is different, changing, morphing. “It’s you,” I insist, my eyes remaining closed. “It’s the change in you I’m feeling.”

“He doesn’t know yet, Max,” comes her whisper. When I open my eyes, I see tears glinting in hers again. “Please don’t say anything.”

“When did it happen?” I reach for her hand, needing to have contact.

“It’s not the cancer--”

“What then?”

She says nothing, only offers a paper-thin smile as she slips her palm over her abdomen and I understand. I understand the secret I feel growing inside of her.

“He doesn’t know,” she repeats and the tears begin to fall. “It’s going to scare him, so please…”

I rise to my feet, stepping to her side of the table and squat low beside her. Taking her hand, I cradle it against my cheek, then slowly plant a kiss in her palm’s center. “Your wonderful secret is safe with me,” I promise. She cups my cheek with her palm, feeling it for a moment, then slowly the fingers trail into my hair, stroking, loving, feeling. “I’ve missed you so much, Max,” she says, the tears beginning to slide down her cheeks. “That never changed.”

I nod, because I know it’s the truth. “So has he,” she continues. “Please don’t keep shutting him out.”

“I don’t know how to let him back in,” I confess. “I would if I could figure it out.”

“Just stop running the other direction,” she whispers, wiping at her eyes. “If not for him, for me. Please.”

“I’m really happy for you two,” I say, lifting my fingertips to wipe away her tears. “This is amazing news.”

She’s beaming and crying all at the same time. “It’s going to be hard for him, Max.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The doctors didn’t think…” her voice trails off, she looks past me. “They thought I should wait a lot longer, after the cancer. Give my body time to recover. Michael’s kind of latched onto that.”

“He’ll be excited when you tell him.” I know this, sure as I’ve always known Michael Guerin, as my brother, my dearest friend. When he hears her news, when it really settles into him, he won’t be able to stop his joy.

“Promise me you’ll be here for him, Max. Please.”

“Liz. Look, I’ve gotta go,” I say, rising abruptly to my feet, looking at my watch. “I’m doing that 5K in the morning.”

“Maybe you’d come by afterward?” she asks. “Bring Kyle? You can come over for coffee and breakfast when you finish.”

Bring Kyle. “Look, Kyle’s just a friend.”

“Of course he is,” she says, but her innocence doesn’t run very deep. She touched me, a moment ago. I kissed her palm. That means the gazebo kiss may not be so private after all. “I know you’re doing the run together in the morning,” she explains and maybe that really is all she meant.

“Oh,” I answer, nodding. “I’ll try and swing by, sure.”

Glancing at the wall clock, I realize it’s nearly midnight. “I’ve got to go, Liz,” I say. “It’s late.”

“Please, Max. Michael needs you now. More than ever, okay?” she says. “Promise me you’ll think about not keeping him out for the rest of your life.”

“I’ll try, Liz.”

“He talks about you all the time, you know,” she says, smiling. “A day doesn’t go by that we don’t mention you in some way.”

Knowing this fact pleases me; despite myself, I smile at her, at the thought that I’m still important in her world. Walking to the door, I have another thought, and turn back to ask the question— one question that has haunted me all these years, the one question that drove me to the bottle and beyond and back again.

I ask it, because one thing I decided ninety-two days ago was that I needed to know her answer.


****


“Do you ever think how different things would be?” he asks, shoving his hands deep in the pockets of his khaki pants. It’s hard to adjust to how different his appearance is—the bearded man in front of me is beefier, heftier than the one I loved. But still beautiful, in a different sort of way, especially those eyes.

Standing, I follow him toward that door, asking, “Different, how?”

“The night of Gomez.”

“Oh, Max,” I say, blanching instantly. The thought of ever having become Max’s lover is as disconcerting now as the thought might have been of giving my virginity to Michael, once upon a time. I never stopped loving Max, but I stopped imagining being with him many years ago.

“Sorry,” he mumbles quietly, staring down at the floor, “I shouldn’t have mentioned that.”

“No, maybe you should mention it.”

“I think it’s better that I don’t.”

“I think it’s something we need to talk about,” I insist. “What didn’t happen between us.”

“You chose him,” he blurts, unabashed fire flashing in his eyes when he looks up. I notice that his hands are visibly shaking, and he says, “It doesn’t matter what might have been. You chose my best friend. You love him. You gave yourself to him.” His voice rises, sharp. I feel weakened, drained and wobbly on my feet. “Liz, I understand that he’s the one, not me. That you chose him.”

“You’re right, Max,” I agree and it’s like I might float away; I grasp at the back of a chair, steadying myself and he looks disconcerted. “Liz? Are you all right?” he asks, dark fear filling his eyes. I can already see him backing down, second-guessing this confrontation.

“I am fine, Max.” I annunciate each word clearly, all my anger toward everyone for hovering over me—fussing at me—surfaces, directed right at him. “Stop worrying! I didn’t die—you didn’t let me, remember? You’ve never let me die.”

“Is that really how you feel?” he whispers, narrowing his eyes as he watches me. “That I didn’t let you die?”

I pace the tiled floor of the café, agitated and shaking just like he is, and cry, “Healing me has cost you everything, Max.” I’ve wanted to tell him these words for such a long time.

“No,” he disagrees, shaking his head vehemently. “No, that’s not true, Liz.”

“You want to talk about what might have been?” I ask, voicing my own nagging question. “What if you’d stayed in the booth that day in the Crashdown?” My voice breaks, a harsh sound.

His own is measured, quiet, even. Lacking any doubt whatsoever. “You’d be dead.”

“Maybe. Maybe not.” The future is undecided. “Maybe you’d be happy now. Maybe you would have gone to college, had a future. Kept your secret hidden. Maybe I wouldn’t,” my voice breaks, rasping, “have known Michael. Loved him, had a, a…” Without meaning to, I begin to cry. All this tension between us, all this love I have for them both, all the things I regret and cherish. And what does Max do? He rushes me, opening his arms, his face a mirror of all the crumpled pain that he must see in me.

“Liz,” he shushes me, drawing me into his strong arms, “Liz, no. Don’t blame yourself.”

“You’re so unhappy,” I sob, feeling his sure hands close around me. I haven’t been this near to him—except that night last December—in twelve years. It feels like yesterday. “It’s like I did this to you.”

“Never, Liz. Never. I asked you to do it, remember?”

“I should’ve told him to go to hell!”

“You would never have done that,” he says. “You would have done anything I asked, Liz. Of course you did it.”

I sniffle loudly, “I loved you.”

“And I’m not quite as unhappy as you think,” he answers, stroking my hair and just holding me. I close my eyes. Like a baby, that’s what I feel, breathing him in. Not like a lover, or a temptress or anything touched by sin. I just feel like I’m safe, loved, like nothing could ever get to me again.

“Promise me you won’t leave anymore,” I beg. “Promise me you’ll stay here, let all of us love you.”

“I’m not going anywhere,” he assures me, holding me against his chest. He doesn’t even feel like the same man to me, his physicality has changed that much.

Pulling back I look up into his eyes and am surprised by what I see. He’s smiling, oddly, like he’s thinking of something else. “What is it?” I ask. The smile broadens, like there’s a secret he’s keeping to himself: a wonderful, delicious secret.

“Liz, I think I’m going to be okay,” he answers opaquely. “I know it, somehow. Today.”

“What about yesterday?”

“I thought I would drink.”

“Earlier today?” I press, needing to know.

“I was awfully close.”

“Now, though?”

Again, a very odd smile, like he’s sharing a secret with someone else, someone other than me. I can’t help wondering who that someone is, who can make Max Evans smile, dimples and all, like that. I can’t help wondering if it’s somehow possible that Kyle’s the one responsible for that look.

“Everything’s changing, Liz,” he replies, and I think he even blushes a little as he says it. “I’m changing. That’s what’s happened today, and something tells me there won’t be any going back.”

PART FOUR

It’s well past eight a.m. and I’ve had my shower, but Liz is still sprawled across the bed. She’s not just dozing or merely sleeping: she’s downright catatonic, her dark hair fanning across my pillow, her mouth slack. When she was sick, her sleep was often fitful, marked by periods of restless moans and cries. But sometimes, especially toward the end, it was bone-deep, right down to the marrow—like now. Standing in the doorway, sipping from my coffee mug, I can’t help but fight the old fight, that fear she won’t still be here in another month.

But then I shake it off, the irrational anxiety, and instead allow myself the stolen pleasure of simply watching my wife. I never expected to encounter beauty at moments like this one—not until we were lovers and in so deep, there was no going back.

We barely spoke last night. When I came upstairs, done with the baking, she was busy on the Internet. She hosts a support group for kids with cancer now. Two weeks ago one of her young friends, a freshman in college off at Iowa State, died. Well, he wasn’t a freshman anymore—he had to leave in the middle of the year, right after Max healed her. He had to go home and slowly pass from this world into some other one. Liz spends a lot of time with these kids these days, trying to encourage them. She tells me it’s the least she can do with Max’s gift.

I’m choking with fear; she’s running at life. Hard. As much as I’m afraid of death, I think she has a calm understanding of her ultimate fate. Maybe staring down the barrel of the thing like she did all that time can bring a positive change. But while her soul’s more beautiful than before, mine feels a shade darker. And it’s getting darker all the time.

When Maxwell appeared yesterday, I wanted to tell him I understand these ghosts that keep him running, because they’re the same ones that keep me standing still. I miss my best friend, my brother, and it hurts all the more having him live a mere five blocks away. Like the other day, when I was cleaning out the storeroom in the back, had the dock door open tossing some boxes out and I saw Max jogging. He was with Kyle and some other guy I don’t know, the three of them just kind of chugging along—pretty slow, I guess, for Max’s benefit, cause I’ve seen Kyle run a hell of a lot faster than that. But they were laughing, the three of them while they jogged, and by God the fit of jealousy I felt inside was almost unmanageable. That Max could hang out with anyone and be normal, feel normal, well I despised the fact that it couldn’t be with me.

Could it ever have been? I’m not really sure anymore; all I know is, standing there on that loading dock, broom in my hand watching my lost best friend, I despised everything inside me that was different that day.

****

“So, uh, I told Liz we might come by.” I kick at the asphalt, toweling my sweaty face off with the t-shirt I just earned by finishing the race.

“You serious, Evans?” Kyle asks, chugging down several gulps of water.

“She invited me and told me to bring you, if I wanted.” I put it out there like it’s no big deal, the way Liz suggested I bring him along, as if he were my date. Almost as much of a casual thing as me stopping by her place for breakfast. How should we order these equally monumental events, while pretending they mean nothing?

He stares past me, into the crowd, like he’s a thousand years old. “Huh, interesting.”

“I went to see her, uh, last night. After…”

“After?” he asks, smirking, but I won’t give him more.

After we kissed in the park, Kyle. I use the t-shirt to wipe at my face again, at least make a pretense of it. I’m no good at this, never have been, and I’m feeling particularly bad at it with Kyle today.

When I remain silent, stubbornly so, it seems Kyle’s eyes might actually pop out of his head, as he stares at me. Everyone wants me closer, I know. Yet nobody’s gotten me closer all these months besides him. And nobody’s gotten as close as he came last night, with that brazen, provocative kiss…since Liz. I haven’t dared kiss anyone who didn’t know what I am, much less make love or fall hard. Or do more than go for a movie or dinner.

That’s all I’ve wanted with Miriam these months, watching her from across the smoky A.A. clubhouse. And now here I am, gasping for air, and I’m thinking about the way Kyle’s new goatee felt beneath my fingers last night. He knows all that I am—all that I’m never going to be—and he still kissed me last night.

“Evans, you okay?” he asks, skeptical as he watches me work hard just to breathe. “Cause you’re looking really…red. In the face.”

He takes a step closer, into my space, his clear eyes flashing with something very secret, very forbidden, right here on the public main street of Roswell. “So tell me, Evans. Are you all right?” He knows damn well that I’m not. And he’s definitely not asking as my personal trainer, not today.

“I thought you’d think it was a good idea, me going to see Michael and Liz.”

“That’s not what I’m talking about.”

“I just ran a 5K.”

“Not talking about that either.”

When I don’t answer, but instead study the crowd of people, feeling exposed for so many guilty secrets, he leans close, whispering right into my ear. So close that I feel the warmth of his breath, he says, “I’m guessing you shaved the beard for me.”

I walk away at that one, brushing past him with my own ballsy bravado, shoulders thrust back, chest out. “I’m gonna go get some coffee and eggs, Valenti. Come along if you want.”

Behind me, I hear him chuckle. “Touchy, touchy. You never change, do you, Ben Kenobi?”

“Wrong solar system,” I quip, not even looking back.

“That’s okay,” he teases, falling easily into pace beside me, “You can still be my hero.” His voice pitches high and girlish and I can’t help laughing.

“Then you can still come to breakfast,” I say.

He smiles at me; an easy handsome grin and something strange twists low in my stomach. Something I’m not sure I’ve ever felt before, a kind of quivery uncomfortable sensation that I definitely don’t like—but that I instantly crave more of, all the same. “You look good, Max,” he says, serious now. “Without the beard. Really good.”

“More like myself?” I ask, as we walk down the sidewalk, toward the café. Catching my reflection in the mirrored glass of a shop window, I quickly suck in my stomach, as Kyle turns to inspect me. “You look great, Max. That’s all,” he says, surprisingly serious. I wonder if he’s thinking of our kiss—I wonder if it mattered like I think it did.

“Michael’s going to flip out,” he cautions. “You do know that, right?”

Suddenly I’m not so assured about this plan of mine. “Is this a bad idea?” I ask, panicked. “Maybe I shouldn’t go there.”

His voice gets soft, and I have to lean closer to hear him say, “Don’t you get it, man? He’s going to freak cause he’s not going to believe it.”

“Oh.” Their small café, tucked between the post office and a florist, inserted almost like a narrow afterthought, appears right in front of us.

Kyle sighs, shaking his head, walking right past me. “Evans, your problem is you never did realize how much you meant to every last one of us.”

He leaves me there, following after him—to think on his words, I guess. Or perhaps to warn my best friend that finally, at long last, I’m coming home again.

*****

It’s like one of those movies, where the bank robbers enter, and everything falls into slow motion. I’m standing there, at the counter making Liz a bagel with cream cheese—breakfast in bed is my plan—and next thing I know Kyle bursts through the front door, eyes wide. And then there’s Max. Entering our place, a little uncertain, but looking more like himself than anytime since he’s been back in town. Reminds me of the days when I worked at the Crashdown, the way he’d pass through the door, eyes searching the place for Liz or me or even Maria. Always vaguely lacking confidence, while looking perfectly assured all the same.

Then it hits me: he’s shaved his beard. He looks like my lifelong friend again, the guy who first saw me years ago, up on the rock when we’d come out of the pods.

“Maxwell,” I say, wiping my hands on a towel and stepping around the counter. How the hell did Kyle manage to pull this one off? Without even meaning to, I throw him a desperately grateful look.

“Just, uh, finished the race,” Max says, slowly unfurling a t-shirt to show me. “They gave me this.”

“Way to go,” I enthuse, aware that I’m scowling, even though I don’t mean to be.

“Uh, just…” he loses his way, hesitates, looks to Kyle. Kyle finishes, “We came for breakfast. We the first ones here?”

“Is there a plan?” I ask, glancing between them.

“I told Liz we might come by,” Max says, tipping his chin upward. I can’t miss a certain defiance in his gaze, a certain way he’s letting me know he’s talked to my wife, alone and without me. It’s important to him, that I understand something unique bonds them together that I’ll never share—that in another timeline they were lovers, husband and wife. Warriors, fighting side by side.

“She’s lying down,” I admit, feeling the familiar wave of fear choke me. “Isn’t feeling very good.”

“Is there a problem?” Max asks, but I have the strange sense that he’s only paying lip service to the question. What exactly did Liz tell him, when they talked?

“When’d you talk to Liz?” I demand, trying to sound casual when I feeling anything but that way.

“Last night.”

“Last night,” I repeat, knowing I’d been in bed asleep.

“I thought some of the…others were coming,” Max explains, shifting on his feet. “But maybe not.” He’s flushed and nervous seeming, and I know it’s not just the run. Kyle flips open his cell phone, saying, “Let me try Tess.” When she answers on the other end of the line, he plugs his ear with his forefinger walking toward the door, lost in a hushed conversation. Max and I are left staring at one another, awkward and without a word to say. “I think Liz is sick,” I admit after a silent moment, every one of my latent, stifling fears rushing to the surface of our quiet moment together.

“Michael, I’m sure she’s fine.” He says it too easily, as if he knows our business.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I huff.

“I healed her. That’s all.”

“But you just said she’s fine. How do you know that?” I ask, searching him for any ounce of reassurance he can offer. “Can you even know that?”

He hesitates, scratching his ear thoughtfully, something I’ve seen him do hundreds of times over the course of our lives. His mouth opens, and then closes again: he’s self-editing. I need to know what he’s chosen not to say, and a little too roughly, I grab his arm. “Tell me, Maxwell.”

Then he smiles. A warm, genuine thing that I swear I haven’t seen on his face in years now. “Liz loves you, Michael. That’s all.”

“She loves me.”

“You’re really lucky.”

“She’s pregnant.” I say it, because I know it. Clear as I’ve ever known any truth, just the way that Max Evans is smiling at me, a little giddy and joyous, and it’s the opposite of last Christmas. It’s everything that his midnight homecoming that night was not.

“I didn’t say that,” he half-cries and half-laughs, his golden eyes darting wild.

“Yeah, Maxwell,” I grouse, shaking my head and grinning at him, “you didn’t have to.” Then, I do something very odd. I open my arms and pull him into an awkward embrace and I don’t think I’ll ever let him go. “Maxwell,” I say, feeling tears burn my eyes. “Welcome home, man.”


*****

I can’t believe Michael didn’t wake me up. My hair is still damp, but I’m tired of standing here, holding the hair dryer when all I want is to sit down. My stomach is swashing and swimming and I’d better get some toast to eat. Forget my usual bagel—the very thought makes me want to be sick. Nothing sounds good, but I know I need to eat before everybody gets here this morning.

I sent midnight emails to Maria and Alex and Tess. I hope I’m not wrong, in thinking he’ll come this time.

As I close our apartment door behind me and I step onto the landing, I hear voices downstairs. The café doesn’t officially open for another hour, but I hear Michael talking to someone. We thought of opening early to handle the race crowd, but we knew Dad was better equipped for those kind of numbers. We’re little more than a cozy coffee and dessert place—at least for now.

When I reach the bottom of the steps, I grip the railing tight and feel the floor swell upward toward me. Across the room, Michael’s seated with his back to me, cocked backward in his chair, bandana on his head. I’ve asked him not to sit in the chairs that way dozens of times, explained that he’ll break them, but there’s no point. I see him first, and then my eyes track across the table, and a slow smile forms on my face.

Max is smiling. Right there, across the table from Michael, he’s eating breakfast, smiling and talking softly. And he looks like himself for once.

Kyle’s sitting beside Max and he’s smiling, too.

The only person whose expression I can’t read, from my clandestine place across the room, is my own husband’s. But then something warm invades my mind, the sensation of him. Not looking at me, not talking, but he’s reaching into me.

Silently, I drop to the bottom step, catching myself. I’ve got to gather my strength because the room all around me feels swimmy, like it’s darkening.

The warmth increases, becomes fiery and determined. Becomes his voice, my lover’s voice, my husband’s. “Liz, you trying to kill me?” The words resonate in some deep place, hidden within my bones.

What do you mean? Because Max is here?

Not Max. No. God, I love you, baby.

You’re happy, then? That he’s here, I almost add, but don’t—yet he hears it anyway.

No idea how you’ve pulled this off.

Maybe I should go back up, I say, burying my head in my hands, feeling the sinking pull of nausea.

He’s here to see you, too.

There’s the staccato sound of group laughter, and lifting my head, I see Michael leaning forward, pouring them all more coffee, and he’s telling a joke of some kind. On my interior, there’s silence for a while. Only it’s not empty: there’s a golden warmth burning inside my whole body, catching fire, cell by cell.

While they laugh, familiar and joking with one another, I notice the way Kyle’s slipped his arm along the back of Max’s chair, kind of propping his forearm there. They’ve shared a kiss between them—at least that much, maybe a lot more. I know it, because when Max touched me last night, I saw it. Saw into him. He thinks I don’t know things. That he’s shut me out completely, but ever since that night last December, he’s reopened something between us. It’s not sexual or romantic, but it is a bond of love. And that’s nothing new, because I will always love Max.

That’s why I want him happy.

Max has remained clueless about Kyle’s feelings for him, all these years. But that kiss I saw last night gave me hope—maybe Kyle’s finally started gathering his nerve. We talked while I was sick, and the talking became a lot more intense last winter, when we thought there’d be no more time. He asked me a lot of questions, about how Max healing me had changed me.

He wondered if seeing straight into someone, even for as little as thirty seconds, was enough to make you love for a lifetime. I remember lying there, in my makeshift hospital bed in the middle of the living room, feeling like only a thin string was holding me down. I was a balloon, weightless, ready to float away. Kyle took my hand, and held me here, squeezing until my wedding ring pushed hard into his hand, until he’d tethered me to the earth.

I told him it was Max. Seeing inside of Max was enough to make you fall that hard. I said it, thinking about the first time Michael and I kissed, that night in the Crashdown. Yes, seeing inside someone for as little as thirty seconds could make you love an eternity.

“I dream about Max,” he said, pulling the blanket up close around my chest, tucking it around me as he talked. “A lot. It started that summer, after I was shot. Random dreams at first, but then they became more focused. When I’m dreaming, it’s like…”

“It’s like what, Kyle?” I pressed, opening my eyes wider. I’d been wandering in and out of sleep for a while, and wasn’t sure I hadn’t slept through something crucial.

“We’re connected. Cause of what he did, healing me.”

“Maybe you are,” I answered, then fell hard into a snowy sleep. The landscape was covered with dense banks of white, stretching in every direction, me in my mittens and heavy long coat, dark against a drift of nothing.

Kyle came again, taking his faithful place by my side; Tess talked to Michael while he sat with me. It was just a few days before Max came to my door, and I’ll never forget what Kyle said that night.

“Liz, I keep trying to find him and bring him back.”

“Calling him, you mean?” I asked, unclear. For a fleeting moment, I pictured him literally thumbing through phonebooks, town after town. Maria, Isabel, Michael, Tess—they were all desperately searching, hoping he might still come before I died; might come and manage to yank me back from the brink.

Kyle shook his head, his blue eyes growing dark. “No, Liz,” he said, smiling wistfully. “I keep trying to reach out to him. With my spirit—just like you do.”

And Kyle was right; I had been reaching out to Max, feeling for him, taking my spirit-hands and extending them in a perfect arc around me. I’d been doing it for years, since before I became sick; I’d been doing it much more often toward the end.

What I hadn’t known was that Kyle had been doing it, too. I’ve never been sure which one of us finally brought him back, or if maybe it wasn’t both of us.

Looking across our restaurant, I notice again the way Kyle has his forearm resting casually on the back of Max’s chair. I know he doesn’t feel casual—hasn’t felt casual since Max came back. What discipline it must have taken, to be the only one who could coax him near like that.

Michael rises to his feet, walking my way; he spies me in the darken stairway, and I hear him tell Max and Kyle that he’ll be right back.

Grabbing my hand, he pulls me up the stairwell with him, until we’re on the first landing and I’m being wrapped in his large embrace. I bury my face against his chest, holding tight as my legs grow wobbly and weak. “You could’ve told me,” he whispers, stroking my hair, running his hands all over my body.

I know he doesn’t mean about Max’s visit today. He knows everything, of course he does—how could I have thought he wouldn’t?

I heave a weary sigh. “I don’t want you to be upset,” I say, and he’s touching me everywhere, large hands on my back, cupping my face. Tilting my face until our eyes meet. Tears glint in his eyes. He knows it all, has always known everything I try to obscure away inside of me. I think he knew me before forever, I just didn’t realize it.

“It’s true, isn’t it?” he asks, his dark eyebrows knit into a terrible, joyous scowl.

Yes, I answer within him, whispering the word over his heart. We’re having a baby together.

You’d better take damn good care of yourself, Liz, he cautions, but he’s smiling, and it’s like a light is shining from his inside. Staring into his eyes, I remember how I felt for that sliver of a moment when I left this world last winter, that millisecond before Max brought me back. I will go there again someday, but I don’t want to go without taking memories of our children with me.

I nod my head, crying, saying nothing and he bends down until our lips press together. Until somehow I do promise him that I’ll be all right throughout this pregnancy, remain healthy and vital and alive. Until urgently we begin to kiss, and the kiss—with all its energy and heady fire— says everything we can’t find a way to speak between us.

We’re not promised anything, Michael, I tell him. We only have right now. It’s the only gift we ever have. The only thing we ever know for sure.

Placing one large hand over my abdomen, I feel his heat radiate on my inside, feel it wrap around our baby, a protective cocoon around such a small, fragile life.

Right now, my strong husband says. Yeah, baby, right now is a great place to be.

****

The sun is finally setting, the longest day is almost done, and out here in the desert, a startling chill fills the air. One thing I never forgot in all my years away—in Arizona and California and even over in Texas for a time—cool comes without apology to the New Mexico night.

“It’s been a long time since I’ve seen this view,” I acknowledge, feeling the dry air burn my nostrils, as I stare up at the stark, jagged rock formation that rises above the pod chamber. “It’s been a long time since I’ve wanted to, actually.”

“Yeah, Evans, I kind of thought it might be a good idea.” Kyle brushes off his hands from where he had to catch himself against an outcropping on the way up; it’s steep, even for someone in great shape like he is. Me, I’m huffing and puffing, but not nearly like I would have been six months ago.

“So why did you bring me here?” I ask, gesturing derisively toward the chamber. “I mean, you know I don’t want this anymore.”

Folding his arms over his chest, he gives me one of those patented Valenti glances, utterly cocksure and challenging. “To remind you of who you are.”

I turn from him, walking to the cave entrance. Passing my hand over the rock, a glowing, translucent handprint answers me, but before the entry can slide open, I jerk my hand away. “I know who I am, Kyle.”

Behind me, I hear him step closer, shadowing me. Like he’s done from the moment I came back into town, never backing down.

“But there’s a point to it all, Evans,” he answers with surprising ferocity. “What we’ve all been through as a group, that’s what I’m saying. There wasn’t some mistake.” Maybe it’s the athlete in him, the competitor, but we’ve always gone head to head like this.

“I don’t believe in destiny.”

“Okay, let me put it in more spiritual terms,” he pushes. “You have a calling.”

For a while, we’re quiet and I think on that, walking out to the edge, staring down the long, rocky hillside. Looking up at the darkening evening sky, scattered with color and light, it’s hard to believe that somewhere there’s a world that supposedly needs me. Somewhere there are enemies who supposedly wait. For so many years, it’s seemed like a big cosmic joke, with me as the punch line.

“But what if there’s not a point?” I ask, scanning the sky. “At least not to this version of it all?”

Kyle seems to consider this question, his eyebrows lifting quizzically. “Is there another version?”

“Let’s pretend that there could be. Another version where I’m happy, where I’m with Liz, where we did make love that night when--”

I catch myself in time, but his blue eyes grow wide; I’ve said far too much, because Kyle’s mind is doing fast calculations. “When you didn’t find her in bed with me?” he asks, quiet and serious. “Is there another version like that?” He seems almost panicked.

Shrugging, I simply say, “Not anymore, there’s not.”

His eyes close and if it weren’t almost dark, I’d swear all the color drains right out of his face. “Evans,” he says, swallowing, “I wouldn’t want to think I did that to you.”

“I did it to myself, Kyle.” Maybe one day, I’ll tell him all the hidden facts, make him understand—but only if I’m sure he won’t flagellate himself for it.

“I told her it couldn’t be to hurt you,” he whispers, back to his words of last night. “That it couldn’t be why we did that.”

“She did it to save me. She did it because, in a weird way, I asked.”

“You sure?” the blue eyes don’t look quite so hopeless now, lifting to meet mine. I find there’s purpose here for me, in making sure he doesn’t blame himself. “Yeah, Kyle. You helped us all out, okay?”

Reaching for a stone, he hurls it down the side of the rocks, and it makes a hollow, jagged sound as it bounces down the edge. Quietly, I steal a look at him, at his profile. There must be Native American blood somewhere in his gene pool. I can see it in his cheekbones, his profile; like so many people around this town, there’s something beautiful and exotic in his distant bloodline, despite the clear blue eyes. He catches me staring, admiring him and I turn away fast, afraid he senses my thoughts.

“You mad at me about last night?” he asks, surprising me in his directness. One eyebrow lifts, as he adds, “About what happened?”

“Mad?” I laugh, looking at the purple in the sky, not meeting his gaze. On this longest day of the year daylight is too tenacious and refuses to give up the fight. “No, Kyle, not mad. Hardly.”

Digging in my jeans pockets, I search for something that I want to give him, something I decided on earlier today, during our run. Curious, he watches until I produce the familiar green object, and reaching for his hand, gently plant my chip in the center of it. “I want you to have it.”

“Your ninety day chip?” he asks, surprised. “Why?” He studies it, turning it in his hand, as I straddle a large rock, stretching my legs out. He settles right beside me; we’re sitting closer than we were last night on the picnic table. In fact, I’m aware that we’re very close, my thigh pressing flush against his, and I feel the defined cordons of muscle in his quadriceps. His body is all roughhewn, strong toughness, something like mine used to be.

“Are you going to explain why I should have this, man?” he presses, tossing the chip into the air and catching it. “You worked hard for this thing.”

“Because in another eighty-seven days, I’ll be getting another one. My six month chip.”

He seems confused, and asks, “But you don’t want this one?”

Drawing in a steadying breath, aware that my heart is pounding sharply within my chest, I slowly admit, “Well, I kind of liked the way you congratulated me for this one.”
Something devilish twinkles in his eyes, something that makes me feel awkward and fumbling, more like a seventeen-year-old than the thirty-year-old I am.

“So I can congratulate you again, huh Evans? That’s what this is all about?”

Staring down at my hands, which I notice are shaking visibly, I continue, “Yeah, Kyle, I kind of thought, well, maybe you’d hang onto it until then.” My voice comes out thick, hoarse, betraying my emotions despite my effort at being self-possessed.

“Three months is a long time to wait, Max.” Max again, not Evans. Somehow my first name sounds intimate, suggestive as it passes across his lips. Somehow it causes that same strange twisting feeling, really low in my stomach and makes me shiver.

“Well,” I say, the sensation tightening harder, moving lower, “A.A. would say to wait a year.”

“That’s for a relationship, not a kiss,” he prompts, leaning closer, staring into my eyes. I need to touch his beard; need to lift my fingers and feel the way all those hairs will prickle my fingertips. I need to look away.

“Like I said,” I answer pointedly, staring at his truck parked down in the basin, “My sponsor would advise a year.” I look anywhere but right at him.

“Since my dad’s your sponsor,” he answers, laughing quietly, “why don’t we leave him out of this?”

“That could be negotiated, perhaps.”

“So says the king.”

“Shut up,” I bark, but I feel him edge infinitesimally closer, am aware of the strong muscles in his thighs, pushing hard against my own.

“Eighty-seven days, huh?” he answers stoically. Twirling the chip in his palm, it seems whichever way it falls will determine my future. “I guess that’s not so long, not really. A long time to wait for just a kiss, though.”

This time I turn to him. “Doesn’t it all start with a kiss?”

“It started with a kiss last night,” he whispers, leaning in close. I see his lips part and can no longer fight it. Like last night, I have the urge to touch him, to feel the scruffy softness of his new beard, to explore the full texture of his mouth. Lifting my fingers, I trace them over his lower lip, relishing the surprising softness of it.

Like winter static, I receive two staccato flashes from simply touching him. The first is of me last night, kissing him in the park: it’s less of an image and more of a sensation, how it must have felt for him, an explosion of intensity that causes me to quiver on impact. The next flash is more perplexing—and arousing—it’s of me with my shirt off, sprawled in his bed. Not me of long ago, with the well-honed body, but me of exactly right now, overweight and far from physical perfection. Only, seeing that flash I realize I don’t look nearly so bad as I think I do. Then I hear his words of last night. It was the dreams that got to me.

We pull away from one another, and I blink back the visions that speed through my head. “Did you get flashes with Tess?” I ask, a little too breathless.

“Did you just get flashes from me?” he counters with a dry laugh.

I try and play it off, try and pretend he didn’t open me up last night, didn’t take his hands and pry open all the frozen places I’d shut off. Didn’t get inside me, not nearly as easily as he did. “What makes you think that?” I question, rubbing a hand over my eyes.

He smiles, cocking an eyebrow upward. “Me human, you alien.”

“So that always happens?” I ask, unsure, unable to quash my curiosity about all that’s opening between us. “Whenever one of us and one of you--”

Ironic, but I’m the alien coming to my human friend for advice; beyond Liz, I have no experience to draw upon.

“No,” he cuts me off, “It’s not really about you being an alien. At least not entirely. Nothing ever happened with Tess and me, not really.”

“Nothing like, well uh, like when we, uh--”

I’m babbling at him, and revealing far more than I intended. He smiles, doesn’t judge or mock me. “It seems to be a lot more about the chemistry,” he answers plainly. “Between alien and human. That’s how Liz explained it to me once.”

“We can rely on her to have it right,” I agree, approving of her theory. I turn to him, wondering why it is Miriam has totally evaded my mind all day. Why nothing but our “chemistry session” last night has hammered along in my thoughts, and say, “So it’s a plan. Eighty-seven days, then.”

“Yep, eighty-seven days, Evans.” Then he laughs, that familiar sardonic laugh that I’ve known for such a long time now, saying, “Just don’t fall off the wagon, cause that sobriety counter can’t go back to zero. I’ll go nuts.”

We grow quiet for a long while, staring at the nighttime sky. Until stars fill the expanse overhead, until we stretch out on our backs on the rock and say nothing, just breathe in and out. Until I wonder if I can possibly endure eighty-seven days without seeing if I imagined things between us last night.

Feeling for his hand, there in the dark, I whisper, “You know, I did hear that some groups have a four month chip.”

He laughs out loud— a giddy happy sound and I literally feel it vibrate all through me—as shyly we lace our fingers together.

“What’s so funny?” I ask, as our hands close tight.

“Nothing,” he says, turning his head so we’re staring right into one another’s eyes. “It’s just that the four month chip is pink, Evans. Didn’t you know that?”

“No, I think I missed that part.”

“Well, if you’re serious,” he says, his lips so close to mine that I feel his warm breath, “let’s call it a date.”

“A date,” I repeat, my face flushing hot.

“Yeah, you’ll give me your pink chip and I’ll,” he pauses, leaning in until his lips press softly against mine, until I can taste him, “congratulate you.”

“Congratulations,” I whisper back at him, trailing my fingers through the short, soft hair along the nape of his neck. It’s not really a kiss we’re sharing, not really, as the link between us sputters to life.

“Then again,” he halfway begs, sounding husky and breathless, “we could start all that tonight.”

“Who needs eighty-seven days,” I agree, drawing in a ragged breath, aware that his hand has closed around my neck, pulling me near.

“Or twenty-seven,” he murmurs against my lips, hesitating for one last moment, waiting for my permission, I suppose. And then, despite all my earlier protestations, it is a kiss we’re sharing. A deep, luscious kiss that’s so much more than a mere kiss should ever be.

As I feel the rushing fever open between us, feel him become effortlessly wide and connected and beautiful inside of me, some lost voice of mine whispers, Liz, I’m happy now. Look at how happy I can truly be.





THE END