Wide Eyed and Wasted
By Burningchaos, inspired by but not written around the song Wide eyed and Wasted from the band The Beautiful Mistake.
burningchaos@aol.com
Set several years after graduation, everything in the show has happened; Isabelle and Kyle have left the group.
I own nothing, not roswell or the song.
Polar stories
Rated TEEN for Language
Wide Eyed and Wasted
By The Beautiful Mistake
Get me through, through tonight!
Just a taste let it be sleepless nights,
You and me eyes are wide, out of line,
I’m alive?
Right now we’ll get through this,
We always do try to drive all the doubt,
From my mind, sit here and suck it up leave the day behind
I’m nothing but tired, I’m nothing at all, I’m nothing but broken
I’m ready to fall, comfort and confidence!
I’m bound this, is the only thing I can feel.
Something to guide me here, this will be all that I ask of you
It’s all I pray,
When will I get that my life is not something that means a thing,
I’ve blown it all away I’m nothing but tired, I’m nothing at all
I’m nothing but broken, I’m ready to fall.
I turn to you…
I burn for you…
I’m nothing but tired, I’m nothing but broken, I’m ready to fall
~*~
Part 1
Opened Eyes
It all began so harshly, the way she and I came together, the way she fell apart.
It is why we are alone now, cut of from the rest, hiding from them as we hide from the FBI.
Why, you ask?
I’ll tell you. Max and Maria are why. Who would have expected Max to break his wedding vows? To forsake the words to love, honor, and obey, to throw away Liz Parker’s love like yesterdays leftovers? Then again, who would have thought that Maria, the Maria who gave up everything to be with me, would betray me either? We certainly didn’t, but then the betrayed are always the last to know. How did we find out?
I will tell you that, as well.
One day, Liz and I were both off from our crappie on-the-run jobs and we decided to go surprise our beloved other halves. It’s safe to say, we were the ones surprised. When we got to the restaurant where Maria worked we found she was on break, so Liz and I went to look for her. What we saw… changed every thing. It was the day it all fell apart.
Liz and I looked at each other strangely as we heard noises coming from the alley where Maria likes to take her break. We were gullible, and both began to run, thinking something was wrong, that Maria was being hurt.
What we saw was far from that, in fact she looked to be enjoying herself as Max fucked heragainst the wall of the alley. They didn’t even see us they were so involved gasping and moaning. Liz went pale and started to shake as she ran to the van. I ran with her to make sure she would be okay, as if she would ever be okay again.
She looked at me through tear filled eyes, and asked in a whisper, “Why? Oh God… why wasn’t I enough? He said he loved me!”
Her voice was getting louder and bordering on hysterical, and I knew I needed to calm her down somehow, but as always, I didn’t know what to do.
So I just grabbed her and held her close as she sobbed… and sobbed, until I thought I would cry too from the rawness of her pain.
“Michael? Let’s get back home, please,” she mumbled against my chest, and I knew in that moment that I would never refuse her anything, that we were bonded too, but it was a bond of common pain, a bond created by being wounded, a bond of having given everything and being betrayed so cruelly..
I drove home in silence, unable to process my own pain; I was too worried about Liz as she was staring off into space, in shock.
And me? I was was so lost… this was beyond my capabilities, what was I supposed to do for her? How was I supposed to make her feel better, if that was even possible?
Arriving home to an empty apartment, I pulled Liz into the house, led her to the bathroom and drew her bath.
“Liz, get in the tub it’ll make you feel better, at least physically.”
I never needed Isabelle more, but she had left to try to be with Jesse. I could have really used her right about now. Hell Kyle could have been of help but he was gone too. He left, following after Iz to pursue a “normal” life. Whatever that meant.
Liz looked at me and nodded. I left the room to get her some clothes, which felt more then a little weird. After all, my hand was in her underwear drawer. I knocked on the bathroom door and Liz said nothing. I was worried, so I opened the door to see Liz sitting woodenly on the toilet seat, frozen with pain.
I knelt in front of her, looked deep into her pain filled eyes and started to talk in the most gentle voice I could muster. “Liz, I know it hurts. I hurt… but you have to get through this and I am promising you I will never leave you unless you want me to. I never break a promise, do I? No I don’t, we are in this together, so let me help you.”
Her eyes registered something that I couldn’t read and she nodded again. “You’re right. I’ll take that bath.”
So I left the room and waited. I knew they would be home soon, so I decided to pack all my stuff and Liz’s; we were going to leave, but first I had to call Iz.
He was grateful the minute he heard her familiar voice.
“Hey Izzy.”
“Michael,” Isabel greeted, her voice filled with pleasure.
“I need to talk to you about Liz. I’m worried about her.”
I didn’t have to see her to feel her concern. “Why?”
“We caught Max and Maria cheating on us today… and Liz is in shock or something.”
“Oh.” Her voice was unsurprised
Michael paused at the change in tone and attitude, “Iz, what’s going on?”
“The two of you are so clueless; they have been in love for months and have tried to tell you but ...”
“WHAT?!” I yelled in disbelief. “You knew about this and didn’t tell us? Why Iz?”
“Michael they have loved each other for like a year now but didn’t know what to do. They tried to tell the both of you and it never worked. So what were they supposed to do?”
At that, I hung up and threw my phone against the wall, we were betrayed at every turn and it felt like no one was in our corner… we were alone.
Liz came out of the bathroom dressed and saw the phone on the floor. “What happened? I heard you yell.”
I hesitated and then told her about Iz and what she said.
I saw Liz break even more that day, so I learned I could hate my sister too. Neither of us asked for this, we loved, gave all we had and it wasn’t enough, but at least we had each other. As I hugged this suddenly frail woman in my arms, the front door opened and I knew that the battle was just beginning.
Wide Eyed and Wasted - UC Mi/L TEEN {COMPLETE}
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burningchaos
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Wide Eyed and Wasted R 2/2
Wide Eyed and Wasted
by burningchaos
Set after graduation, everything in the show happened.
R
I own nothing
As Maria and Max walked in the door laughing, I felt the rage building inside me, rolling and seething like a hurricane-tossed ocean. I wanted to beat them down to make them feel just one iota of the pain they were making Liz and I feel. I was rooted to my kitchen chair though, and Liz had gone so white I thought she would faint. I would not leave her side, she needed me, and I had to stop kidding myself—I needed her too.
They called for us as they walked into the kitchen; they were good. It was like we never saw them fucking at all, if we hadn’t seen it, you wouldn’t know. When Max walked in he walked to Liz and tried to kiss her as Maria did me. But I jerked away before she had a chance, and Liz…I got to give her credit, she bitch slapped Max good. He didn’t even see it coming, he leaned in for a kiss and POW she just reached up and cracked him across the cheek.
Max was stunned and Maria immediately started in on her.
“Liz! What is wrong with you, why did you do that?”
Liz stood up, her face flushed and I started to see a side of her I had never seen, I guess the old a woman scorned cliché is true because suddenly Liz seemed to tower over everyone as she started in the coldest calmest voice I’d ever heard. “Why did I do that you ask? Well, Maria, let me tell you why. It might be because my husband is a liar and a cheating asshole, or maybe it is because I saw him fuck my so called best friend today. Hey I got it, it’s both.”
Max stood there, his mouth open, gaping like a fish, his face pasty and pale. Maria went white and then red as Liz started yelling, the look on her face turning indignant and totally unremorseful. Liz looked like a goddess to me in that moment. I had never seen anything more beautiful as she raged. Maria never looked that way when she yelled, which she was starting to do now.
“Oh, so you know now and it’s all our fault. Is that what you’re saying? Max and I fell in love and you two just wouldn’t listen. Since when you have been so blind, Liz? It has been staring you in the face for months!”
Maria was moving toward Max and she reached up and caressed his red cheek.
This enraged me.
“So, you thought you would just start fucking, huh? You couldn’t sit down and have a reasonable conversation, you went behind my back!” I accused. “I loved you and the minute I saw that, the minute I saw your betrayal you were dead to me, both of you.”
I turned toward Liz and put my hand on her shoulder to lead her away but she wasn’t finished. Not at all, she still had Max to go.
“So”, she said in that voice that could cut glass as she walked to him and shouldered Maria out of the way, “You don’t love me anymore? You don’t want me anymore? Then why did you fuck me last night, and scream my name as you came? Then why tell me you love me? Answer me that Max. How much of our marriage has been a lie. I gave up everything, everything to be with YOU and you do this to me, you don’t know the meaning of the word love and that whore is welcome to you.”
Liz pulled of her wedding ring and threw it in Max’s face.
Max just stood there and never said a word, not that I expected him too. How he got enough balls to cheat on Liz I’ll never know. Maria was going to start screaming again but I threw her a look, a you-had-better-quit-right-now-if-you-want-to-live look, and she backed down.
Liz and I left that very minute. We had no destination in mind, anywhere but there was good as far as we were both concerned.
Once in the van, I watched Liz fall apart again, the anger had left her, her rage had drained; all that was left was the emptiness and the pain. I could feel it rolling off of her, when suddenly she gasped in pain; her already pale face went paler.
“Liz!” I looked at her and saw blood pooling by her feet. “Liz… you’re bleeding.”
“Michael,” she gasped in pain, clutching at her stomach, “I was going to tell Max today, I’m pregnant, but - but there is… something is wrong.”
She was curling into a little ball. So I did the only thing I could do. I took her to the hospital, I was so scared it was the only thing to do, I couldn’t heal.
As I carried her in to the emergency room, I was terrified. I didn’t want to lose the only person I had left. A nurse wheeled Liz away as I was grabbed for admittance information.
I gave them Liz’s alias and had the bill sent to Max so he could see what he had done and what he lost. Yeah, I’m a bastard, but so is he.
“Mr. Lawson, your wife is this way.”
They just assumed that she was my wife and I wasn’t going to correct them. I needed to get back there. They led me to Liz’s room where she was laying on a bed with an IV and wearing one of those lovely hospital gowns.
“Liz, I’m here and I promise I won’t leave. Whatever happens, I won’t leave.”
“It’s okay Michael. The baby is gone.”
She was numb. There were no more tears left and her tone was hollow. “It is probably better this way, after all that happened today.”
She had turned her head away from me for which I was glad, because I couldn’t stop the tears that were building behind my eyes.
“Liz, this is never better. I would have helped, it was an innocent baby, and not Max, not Maria… nothing would have stopped you from loving it or me from being there for you every step of the way.”
She turned back to me and gave me a broken smile. “When did you learn to read me so well? I’m glad that you are here with me Michael… I couldn’t do this alone.”
I sat next to her on the bed, leaned down and hugged her. I knew that I would never leave her alone; she should never have to be alone.
Later that day after making sure Liz was properly hydrated, they let her go. They had said it was a spontaneous abortion and she wasn’t far enough along for a D&C so we could go.
~*~
We left.
We just drove and drove for months until we came to this small back water town in Virginia. Liz liked it right away and I have to say so did I. The smile on her face, which I rarely saw, was beautiful. It was so lush and green the trees were tall and old, it was just wonderful. So we set about finding jobs and a place to live, Everyone thought we were married—it was easier that way, and we had become close, but not that way.
I got a job as a mechanic and Liz went to work in a book store. I was glad she found that job it was better than being a waitress. We found a house for rent in the middle of nowhere and it had a small pond in the back yard, it was a small piece of heaven. So we settled down and tried to be invisible.
To be honest that was the easy part. Living together was harder. We were very different and she wasn’t what she used to be. She was a hollow shell still, a zombie. It bothered me that four months after all this, she wasn’t starting to heal. I didn’t know how to help her, I needed to make her better, I couldn’t stand to see her this way. And I missed the vibrant woman I used to know.
One night after work I came home to a dark house. It was late so this worried me. I ran in to see Liz sitting in the dark on the floor, rocking back and forth crying, with her arms wrapped around her legs. She looked so small, so very broken.
I realized then in that sad moment that I was coming to love her and would do anything to make her smile again, to make her live again. I walked slowly over to her and sat down behind her wrapping her in my arms to pull her close.
She turned to me as she cried. “It happened again, Iz tried to break through to me, I wouldn’t let her in. Why won’t they let us be? We weren’t in the wrong; we were the ones who were betrayed. I want this pain to stop, I want it to end. Right now I would be almost six months pregnant; I would have felt her move and connected with her. Oh Michael, it still hurts so much.”
Her whole body shook with despair, all I could do was make soothing sounds and rub her back. She was still hurting from the loss of the baby and I didn’t know what to say, even after all this time.
“Liz it’ll get better, I promise. But you have to stop this. You’re making yourself sick, and you have lost so much weight, you are all bone. I can’t lose you, you are all I have left and I care too much to watch you waste away over Max Evans.”
She gave me a weak smile, the only kind I ever saw lately. “I care about you too, Michael, you’re my rock, I would be lost without you.”
Her eyes were tender and caring, they held so much emotion.
I smiled back at her, yes I can smile, and hugged her. I got up, pulling her with me and led her to the kitchen turning lights on as we went. I was going to make her eat and told her so.
“Okay, you win. I’ll eat, what are we having?”
“Some pasta, with my red sauce that you love so much,” I told her as I kissed her forehead and pushed her gently into a chair. “Keep me company while I make it, please?”
“Alright.”
I won’t say that things magically got better or that she never looked back again, she would still have crying jags about the baby once in awhile, but I read that it was normal. What I will say is that our relationship changed that night. We drifted in a direction that we never would have seen ourselves a year ago, but it was a place I found myself more than willing to go.
~*~
Now, there are a few things that puzzled me. A few questions I had to ask myself, like what happened to Stonewall Guerin? And when did I become Mr. Sensitive? And I just couldn’t tell. I had no answers. Liz just brings out things in me I never knew were there, she makes me want to be a better man.
Go figure, a thing like being betrayed the way we were brings me to the one I truly love. I see it now more and more with each passing day. It has been almost a year now since we left, since it all happened. They try to contact us still, but less now, and we have lived in this tiny town since we found it with no incidents or problem. So we are staying, and we were able to make a rent to own deal with the landlord. I was glad—this house has really become a home.
Liz is getting better every day. She smiles more and even yells at me sometimes, like if I forget to clean up my mess in the bathroom. We are getting closer everyday, the tension is tangible. Something needs to break soon.
I decided to ask Liz out on a real date, something we hadn’t done, as a couple. Waiting for her to get home from work was killing me, as I paced back and forth I rolled around in my head what I would say. When the door suddenly opens I had been so caught up in my thoughts I didn’t hear her arrive.
“Michael, what are you doing?”
I handed her the wild flowers I had picked for her earlier, and bit the bullet.
“Liz, would you like to go out on a date with me?” my tone was hurried and nervous.
Liz’s face was awash with pleasure. “Yes. I’d love to.”
I smiled and pulled her into a hug, relived that she said yes. “Tonight. Be ready by 7:30. I have a surprise for you.”
I could tell Liz was curious and pleased; she nodded. “Yes.”
I then took off to get things ready.
~*~
Michael blindfolded Liz and led her out to the pond; he had set up a beautiful romantic picnic there. Liz stepped carefully.
She was excited, she didn’t know what Michael had in store for her and she couldn’t wait to find out.
“Liz we’re here, you can sit down now.”
He gently removes her blindfold, to reveal a blanket surrounded by roses and scented candles floating in the pond. Michael was opening a small picnic basket and taking out cheese, grapes, sliced apples, all finger foods.
“Michael this is so romantic, it’s beautiful. Thank you,” Liz whispered as she hugged him. He wrapped her close and inhaled her sent, coconut and vanilla. God he loved that smell. Michael sat down next to her and poured her a glass of sparkling grape juice. He was nervous, and now that he had her there he didn’t know what to say or do, she overwhelmed him.
“Michael, I’m glad you asked me here, and I have something I need to say,” she announced, her voice serious and emotion filled.
That statement worried Michael. He wondered briefly if he was wrong and she didn’t care, that she wanted to remain just friends; she cut off his thoughts as she started to speak.
“I was so broken after Max and the baby… I was falling apart, it hurt so much I couldn’t breathe.” She reached out for his hand and shifted closer to him as she spoke. “You were there through it all, you lent me the strength to put myself back together after I fell apart, and you gave me so many things I can’t even put into words. I want to thank you for all those things, I would have never made it without you.”
Tears filled her eyes and her voice got rougher as she tried not to cry.
“Liz, you don’t have to thank me, I just—” and she cut him off again.
“I had to tell you because what I say next is important and I don’t want you to think that I feel like I owe you, or am indebted to you.”
Now she had Michael’s total interest, her gaze held his as her eyes were shinning and beautiful, but still Michael was unable to read them.
“I know that we are very close friends, and that’s great, I love having you for a friend.”
Michael’s heart fell as she spoke those words, feeling crushed. Yet he continued to listen, because she asked him to.
“Michael, listen to me please. What I’m trying to say is that my feelings for you have changed and they are no longer friendly… I want more.”
And suddenly Michael felt like god. She wanted more too, yes and she asked him. Life was good.
“Liz, that’s exactly why I brought you out here tonight, to say that, of course you said it better,” Michael laughed a little and so did Liz. She had a relived look on her face as he spoke, “I want more too, I want all of you.”
Liz lunged at him, hugging him so hard he almost couldn’t breathe. She let out a ragged sigh as he kissed her forehead, and nose.
Looking deep in to each other’s eyes, Michael finally saw all that she had been hiding, there was so much love there, enough to last several lifetimes.
“I love you Michael and I’m so happy you were there when I fell, and that you let me learn to be strong enough to get back to myself.”
“I love you too; there isn’t much else for me to say, except that.”
He then leaned into her for their fist kiss.
by burningchaos
Set after graduation, everything in the show happened.
R
I own nothing
As Maria and Max walked in the door laughing, I felt the rage building inside me, rolling and seething like a hurricane-tossed ocean. I wanted to beat them down to make them feel just one iota of the pain they were making Liz and I feel. I was rooted to my kitchen chair though, and Liz had gone so white I thought she would faint. I would not leave her side, she needed me, and I had to stop kidding myself—I needed her too.
They called for us as they walked into the kitchen; they were good. It was like we never saw them fucking at all, if we hadn’t seen it, you wouldn’t know. When Max walked in he walked to Liz and tried to kiss her as Maria did me. But I jerked away before she had a chance, and Liz…I got to give her credit, she bitch slapped Max good. He didn’t even see it coming, he leaned in for a kiss and POW she just reached up and cracked him across the cheek.
Max was stunned and Maria immediately started in on her.
“Liz! What is wrong with you, why did you do that?”
Liz stood up, her face flushed and I started to see a side of her I had never seen, I guess the old a woman scorned cliché is true because suddenly Liz seemed to tower over everyone as she started in the coldest calmest voice I’d ever heard. “Why did I do that you ask? Well, Maria, let me tell you why. It might be because my husband is a liar and a cheating asshole, or maybe it is because I saw him fuck my so called best friend today. Hey I got it, it’s both.”
Max stood there, his mouth open, gaping like a fish, his face pasty and pale. Maria went white and then red as Liz started yelling, the look on her face turning indignant and totally unremorseful. Liz looked like a goddess to me in that moment. I had never seen anything more beautiful as she raged. Maria never looked that way when she yelled, which she was starting to do now.
“Oh, so you know now and it’s all our fault. Is that what you’re saying? Max and I fell in love and you two just wouldn’t listen. Since when you have been so blind, Liz? It has been staring you in the face for months!”
Maria was moving toward Max and she reached up and caressed his red cheek.
This enraged me.
“So, you thought you would just start fucking, huh? You couldn’t sit down and have a reasonable conversation, you went behind my back!” I accused. “I loved you and the minute I saw that, the minute I saw your betrayal you were dead to me, both of you.”
I turned toward Liz and put my hand on her shoulder to lead her away but she wasn’t finished. Not at all, she still had Max to go.
“So”, she said in that voice that could cut glass as she walked to him and shouldered Maria out of the way, “You don’t love me anymore? You don’t want me anymore? Then why did you fuck me last night, and scream my name as you came? Then why tell me you love me? Answer me that Max. How much of our marriage has been a lie. I gave up everything, everything to be with YOU and you do this to me, you don’t know the meaning of the word love and that whore is welcome to you.”
Liz pulled of her wedding ring and threw it in Max’s face.
Max just stood there and never said a word, not that I expected him too. How he got enough balls to cheat on Liz I’ll never know. Maria was going to start screaming again but I threw her a look, a you-had-better-quit-right-now-if-you-want-to-live look, and she backed down.
Liz and I left that very minute. We had no destination in mind, anywhere but there was good as far as we were both concerned.
Once in the van, I watched Liz fall apart again, the anger had left her, her rage had drained; all that was left was the emptiness and the pain. I could feel it rolling off of her, when suddenly she gasped in pain; her already pale face went paler.
“Liz!” I looked at her and saw blood pooling by her feet. “Liz… you’re bleeding.”
“Michael,” she gasped in pain, clutching at her stomach, “I was going to tell Max today, I’m pregnant, but - but there is… something is wrong.”
She was curling into a little ball. So I did the only thing I could do. I took her to the hospital, I was so scared it was the only thing to do, I couldn’t heal.
As I carried her in to the emergency room, I was terrified. I didn’t want to lose the only person I had left. A nurse wheeled Liz away as I was grabbed for admittance information.
I gave them Liz’s alias and had the bill sent to Max so he could see what he had done and what he lost. Yeah, I’m a bastard, but so is he.
“Mr. Lawson, your wife is this way.”
They just assumed that she was my wife and I wasn’t going to correct them. I needed to get back there. They led me to Liz’s room where she was laying on a bed with an IV and wearing one of those lovely hospital gowns.
“Liz, I’m here and I promise I won’t leave. Whatever happens, I won’t leave.”
“It’s okay Michael. The baby is gone.”
She was numb. There were no more tears left and her tone was hollow. “It is probably better this way, after all that happened today.”
She had turned her head away from me for which I was glad, because I couldn’t stop the tears that were building behind my eyes.
“Liz, this is never better. I would have helped, it was an innocent baby, and not Max, not Maria… nothing would have stopped you from loving it or me from being there for you every step of the way.”
She turned back to me and gave me a broken smile. “When did you learn to read me so well? I’m glad that you are here with me Michael… I couldn’t do this alone.”
I sat next to her on the bed, leaned down and hugged her. I knew that I would never leave her alone; she should never have to be alone.
Later that day after making sure Liz was properly hydrated, they let her go. They had said it was a spontaneous abortion and she wasn’t far enough along for a D&C so we could go.
~*~
We left.
We just drove and drove for months until we came to this small back water town in Virginia. Liz liked it right away and I have to say so did I. The smile on her face, which I rarely saw, was beautiful. It was so lush and green the trees were tall and old, it was just wonderful. So we set about finding jobs and a place to live, Everyone thought we were married—it was easier that way, and we had become close, but not that way.
I got a job as a mechanic and Liz went to work in a book store. I was glad she found that job it was better than being a waitress. We found a house for rent in the middle of nowhere and it had a small pond in the back yard, it was a small piece of heaven. So we settled down and tried to be invisible.
To be honest that was the easy part. Living together was harder. We were very different and she wasn’t what she used to be. She was a hollow shell still, a zombie. It bothered me that four months after all this, she wasn’t starting to heal. I didn’t know how to help her, I needed to make her better, I couldn’t stand to see her this way. And I missed the vibrant woman I used to know.
One night after work I came home to a dark house. It was late so this worried me. I ran in to see Liz sitting in the dark on the floor, rocking back and forth crying, with her arms wrapped around her legs. She looked so small, so very broken.
I realized then in that sad moment that I was coming to love her and would do anything to make her smile again, to make her live again. I walked slowly over to her and sat down behind her wrapping her in my arms to pull her close.
She turned to me as she cried. “It happened again, Iz tried to break through to me, I wouldn’t let her in. Why won’t they let us be? We weren’t in the wrong; we were the ones who were betrayed. I want this pain to stop, I want it to end. Right now I would be almost six months pregnant; I would have felt her move and connected with her. Oh Michael, it still hurts so much.”
Her whole body shook with despair, all I could do was make soothing sounds and rub her back. She was still hurting from the loss of the baby and I didn’t know what to say, even after all this time.
“Liz it’ll get better, I promise. But you have to stop this. You’re making yourself sick, and you have lost so much weight, you are all bone. I can’t lose you, you are all I have left and I care too much to watch you waste away over Max Evans.”
She gave me a weak smile, the only kind I ever saw lately. “I care about you too, Michael, you’re my rock, I would be lost without you.”
Her eyes were tender and caring, they held so much emotion.
I smiled back at her, yes I can smile, and hugged her. I got up, pulling her with me and led her to the kitchen turning lights on as we went. I was going to make her eat and told her so.
“Okay, you win. I’ll eat, what are we having?”
“Some pasta, with my red sauce that you love so much,” I told her as I kissed her forehead and pushed her gently into a chair. “Keep me company while I make it, please?”
“Alright.”
I won’t say that things magically got better or that she never looked back again, she would still have crying jags about the baby once in awhile, but I read that it was normal. What I will say is that our relationship changed that night. We drifted in a direction that we never would have seen ourselves a year ago, but it was a place I found myself more than willing to go.
~*~
Now, there are a few things that puzzled me. A few questions I had to ask myself, like what happened to Stonewall Guerin? And when did I become Mr. Sensitive? And I just couldn’t tell. I had no answers. Liz just brings out things in me I never knew were there, she makes me want to be a better man.
Go figure, a thing like being betrayed the way we were brings me to the one I truly love. I see it now more and more with each passing day. It has been almost a year now since we left, since it all happened. They try to contact us still, but less now, and we have lived in this tiny town since we found it with no incidents or problem. So we are staying, and we were able to make a rent to own deal with the landlord. I was glad—this house has really become a home.
Liz is getting better every day. She smiles more and even yells at me sometimes, like if I forget to clean up my mess in the bathroom. We are getting closer everyday, the tension is tangible. Something needs to break soon.
I decided to ask Liz out on a real date, something we hadn’t done, as a couple. Waiting for her to get home from work was killing me, as I paced back and forth I rolled around in my head what I would say. When the door suddenly opens I had been so caught up in my thoughts I didn’t hear her arrive.
“Michael, what are you doing?”
I handed her the wild flowers I had picked for her earlier, and bit the bullet.
“Liz, would you like to go out on a date with me?” my tone was hurried and nervous.
Liz’s face was awash with pleasure. “Yes. I’d love to.”
I smiled and pulled her into a hug, relived that she said yes. “Tonight. Be ready by 7:30. I have a surprise for you.”
I could tell Liz was curious and pleased; she nodded. “Yes.”
I then took off to get things ready.
~*~
Michael blindfolded Liz and led her out to the pond; he had set up a beautiful romantic picnic there. Liz stepped carefully.
She was excited, she didn’t know what Michael had in store for her and she couldn’t wait to find out.
“Liz we’re here, you can sit down now.”
He gently removes her blindfold, to reveal a blanket surrounded by roses and scented candles floating in the pond. Michael was opening a small picnic basket and taking out cheese, grapes, sliced apples, all finger foods.
“Michael this is so romantic, it’s beautiful. Thank you,” Liz whispered as she hugged him. He wrapped her close and inhaled her sent, coconut and vanilla. God he loved that smell. Michael sat down next to her and poured her a glass of sparkling grape juice. He was nervous, and now that he had her there he didn’t know what to say or do, she overwhelmed him.
“Michael, I’m glad you asked me here, and I have something I need to say,” she announced, her voice serious and emotion filled.
That statement worried Michael. He wondered briefly if he was wrong and she didn’t care, that she wanted to remain just friends; she cut off his thoughts as she started to speak.
“I was so broken after Max and the baby… I was falling apart, it hurt so much I couldn’t breathe.” She reached out for his hand and shifted closer to him as she spoke. “You were there through it all, you lent me the strength to put myself back together after I fell apart, and you gave me so many things I can’t even put into words. I want to thank you for all those things, I would have never made it without you.”
Tears filled her eyes and her voice got rougher as she tried not to cry.
“Liz, you don’t have to thank me, I just—” and she cut him off again.
“I had to tell you because what I say next is important and I don’t want you to think that I feel like I owe you, or am indebted to you.”
Now she had Michael’s total interest, her gaze held his as her eyes were shinning and beautiful, but still Michael was unable to read them.
“I know that we are very close friends, and that’s great, I love having you for a friend.”
Michael’s heart fell as she spoke those words, feeling crushed. Yet he continued to listen, because she asked him to.
“Michael, listen to me please. What I’m trying to say is that my feelings for you have changed and they are no longer friendly… I want more.”
And suddenly Michael felt like god. She wanted more too, yes and she asked him. Life was good.
“Liz, that’s exactly why I brought you out here tonight, to say that, of course you said it better,” Michael laughed a little and so did Liz. She had a relived look on her face as he spoke, “I want more too, I want all of you.”
Liz lunged at him, hugging him so hard he almost couldn’t breathe. She let out a ragged sigh as he kissed her forehead, and nose.
Looking deep in to each other’s eyes, Michael finally saw all that she had been hiding, there was so much love there, enough to last several lifetimes.
“I love you Michael and I’m so happy you were there when I fell, and that you let me learn to be strong enough to get back to myself.”
“I love you too; there isn’t much else for me to say, except that.”
He then leaned into her for their fist kiss.