*21*

"I told Tara Fisher you were gay."

This is what he does: Not a damn thing.

His eyes are motionless, steadied on the broken yellow line as it disappears underneath the car. The corners of his lips turn upwards slightly.

I say, "I'm serious."

I'm hoping he can handle this, there is more brutal honesty to come later, scores of it, washloads of it.

He nods in that nonchalant way people nod when they're talking about the weather. His fingers tap against the steering wheel. He says, "That's okay, I told her you were a lesbian."

"WHAT?"

"Yep, you and Tess," he laughs, "You should have seen her face, I think she has a thing for you."

I set my face in stone, "I guess I can understand, she was so heartbroken when she heard you were gay. By the way, you're wearing her favorite shirt."

He looks at me, "You're mad because I beat you at your own game."

"In no way, shape, or form could you ever beat me at lying," I say, "Your mean."

"Me? Not only did everyone think I was trying to steal Tess from Kyle, then they think I'm gay. I probably don't have to tell you that Kyle's jock friends don't hold me in high regard," He says, "I'm a hate crime magnet, if someone eggs my house, you have to clean it up."

I say, "Keep wishing."

"Can I have a M&M?"

"My chocolate."

"Share!"

"What color."

"It doesn't matter."

"Yes it does."

"Umm..okay....red."

I hand him a red M&M and pull a green one out of the bag for myself, holding it up. "You know," I say, "It's scientifically proven that green M&M's make you horny."

He says, "Eat up."

"When did you become such a guy?"

"When you started talking about your underwear and horniness out of nowhere. Your head is in the gutter too, Parker."

"Just making polite conversation, Evans"

He rolls his eyes and shakes his head.

I say, "So lets go to some hotel and hump like rabbits."

"That's not what this is about and you know it."

"Well, what are we going to do? Hold hands all night?"

"Sounds good to me, we haven't even kissed yet."

"How incredibly chaste of you."

"Fine," he says, "You wanna hump like rabbits? We'll hump like rabbits."

I say, "We've kissed."

"No Liz, we didn't kiss, I kissed, you just stood there." In his voice, I have to wonder if that's disappointment. And the way he's gazing out the window, I have to wonder if he's reliving that moment.

I am.

I wonder if he can see this from my perspective. I told him he should wait for Tess and he apologized. He apologized for kissing me, and he wonders why I didn't kiss him back.

Your not supposed to kiss people when your confused like that. It isn't fair, he's not being fair to me.

I'm not being fair to him because I'm not telling him all of this.

I say, "It didn't feel right."

He doesn't look at me, just keeps gazing out the window and nods his head.

I say, "I was kidding about the rabbits."

"I know."

Another kind of lie is when you only tell half of the story. If I were to tell him the whole story, I would say that holding hands all night sounds good to me too. Instead, I joke about sex.

Rationalization: You're about to spend the night in a hotel room, alone, with the object of your obsession. The prospect of having sexual intercourse is one that causes much anxiety. So what do you do? You joke about it, pretend you don't care. That's what.

I could tell him all this. I should. But not here, a moving vehicle is a shotty place for resolution. Plus, there's nowhere to hide. Not me, mind you, but him, there's nowhere for him to hide. He might not like what I have to say, you know. And I have an awful lot to say.

I have an awful lot to change.

I say, "We're getting further away."

"From where?"

"From Roswell."

From safety, Max. Roswell is secrets and lies. Lies are safety. Truth is exposure. Truth is standing naked on a pedestal.

He thinks that this is what I want.

He thinks I actually know what I want.

He thinks he's saving me from Roswell, but he's saving me from myself.

Max says, "We have a long way to go."

He doesn't know how right he is.

He says, "You should go to sleep, It'll seem faster."

---------------------------------

In a car, you're never really asleep. You're in limbo, the place between heaven and hell, the place between awake and asleep. You're teetering on all sorts of gaps and chasms and edges. Your eyes are closed, and you hear every song that comes on the radio, but your brain just isn't completely there. Every time you open your eyes you see the sun has gone down just a little bit more and you wonder how long your eyes have been closed. Every time you open your eyes, you see a desert, but the desert is always morphing into a different kind of desert.

You open your eyes and you see desert chaos. Rocks pointing accusingly to the sky. Canyons sinking guiltily into the ground. So many holes and corners and shadows for secrets to crawl under.

Even nature has something to hide.

On the radio, Jimmy Buffet is singing "Lets get drunk and screw."

Max says, "You awake? Do you hear this song? It's insane, they've played it three times in the past two hours."

I roll my neck to the side and try to say something. He grins at me and whispers, "Go back to sleep." He touches my hand. I wish that I wasn't half asleep so that I could feel it. He says, "Close your eyes."

Limbo. You keep opening your eyes and seeing desert confusion. You keep opening your eyes because you want to see what kind of desert you'll be in next. Deserts are like people, you know, or snowflakes, no two are the same. You open your eyes and you see fat deserts and skinny deserts, deserts with trees and deserts with mountains. Naked deserts. Deserts without buildings for miles and miles and some lined with gas stations.

Deserts with one little house in the middle of nowhere and you just know that the person that lives there is either dead or psycho. Deserts with fences that have bones hanging off of them, making you wonder what kind of sick people go looking for dead animal bones to hang on fences.

Bones, skeletons. Heaven help me, give me something beautiful to look at. You open your eyes and you see road kill. You open your eyes and you see cows that will be sent to the slaughterhouse when they're fat enough. Blood has been my best friend for the past two weeks, blood and Max Evans.

Show me a flower, Max. Show me your poppy field. I'm not a girly girl, I just want to see something alive and breathing.

You open your eyes and Johnny Cash is singing "Burning Ring of Fire." You wonder what the song is really about, anyway. Max wants to know if I have to go to the bathroom.

You open your eyes and Patsy Cline is singing "Crazy." You notice how late and dark it's getting. The desert has morphed once again, you can see this because of the moonlight. In the desert, the moon has nowhere to hide. The desert is completely flat, no cracks or crevices, no secrets or lies, completely exposed. This is the kind of fear you feel when you look at yourself in the mirror, mentally naked, emotionally naked.

Face your future, Liz Parker, save yourself from whatever. Let him help you, you helped him.

I used to have this theory: Why live in the world when you can live in your head.

I wanted to hate him so badly. I wanted to blame him for sending Roswell to hell in a hand basket. I never could, you know, because I never really hated Roswell. It was my safety, my haven, my excuse, my big fake problem.

And Max, he's not just some guy, not just some alien. I'm more of an alien than he is. There's something you can see in his eyes when he's not paying attention to anything. Something that tells you he can understand things, he might understand you. If he would just look you in the eye.

I never wanted him to know that I kept his secret, or that I almost died. I just wanted him to stop punishing himself, so much of him is wasted on punishing himself. I wanted him to be happy, with Tess if that's what it took. I would just stand one the sidelines and observe, live in my head.

But it doesn't work like that. I know that now because of stupid things like the skeleton exposed in my pocket and the exposed desert outside my window. The situation is defining itself. The exposed hotel in the middle of the exposed desert is my forum. This is where I show myself to him, stop lying to myself, fix myself.

This is where I realize that this, this - whatever this is, this is about me.

I thought that the climax of my life was a gun in my face.

And I couldn't have been more wrong.

------------------------------------

From the outside, the hotel is disgusting. Desert culture, deserts aren't places that you visit, they're places you pass through to get from one place to another. Specifically, desert culture means truck drivers. And not to put down truck drivers but they're not the cleanest people in the world. I can only imagine how lovely the room will be. It's okay though, I'm not a princess. If I can handle blood and bones then I can handle a little dirt.

Max pulls into the lot and lazily shifts the car into park. He's tired, so tired he can barely keep his eyes open. He's been driving for more hours than you can count on two hands.

I say, "I'm sorry I made you drive the whole way, I'll drive home."

He looks at me through his half closed eyes, "You don't know how to drive a stick shift."

"It's a sixteen hour drive, I'll learn."

"Sounds dangerous."

"Yea, but your danger-boy, you laugh in the face of danger."

"Good point."

The hotel room is my future, eyes on the prize, no pain, no gain. In situations like this, motivational clichés rule your mind. It's funny, you know, he thinks I 'like' him. I like him - yea right - like this is some school yard, chocolate box, puppy love type deal.

It's not. It's dirtier and darker and deeper than that.

This is the kind of thing they don't even make a word for because it's too scary to talk about.

I say, "So we should.....go get a room."

He says, "We? You're sleeping in the car, cootie girl, remember?"

If I wasn't holding all of this stuff inside I could be having fun right now.

He says, "Maybe if I'm feeling nice enough I'll bring you a blanket, knock if you need anything, I reserved room 318 at the last gas station." He crawls out of the car, "Got it?"

I smile weakly as he shuts the door. I stay here, staring at my shaking hands.

I'm crazy-psycho obsessed with you Max Evans. I don't know if guys like to hear this sort of thing.

My door opens and Max is pulling me out of the car with his arm around my waist. His palm is pressing against my stomach. How am I feeling?

He's touching my stomach, how the hell do you think I'm feeling.

He has no problem picking me up with one arm, he sets me down and puts his arm around my shoulders, we start walking to the lobby.

I say, "What about my cooties."

He says, "I got lonely. Anyway, girl cooties got nothing on alien blasting powers."

We pick up the key from the tired looking motel worker, poor guy. We make our way to the room. Two double beds.

He lays down on one of the beds. I'm still trying to get through the door.

Why? Because this is where I'm going to stop lying to him.

He says, "Come here."

I walk over and stand by the bed, the ugly room isn't registering in my head, nothing is.

I say, "We should talk."

He frowns at me, "Liz, talking sucks, we've been talking for the last fourteen hours."

"This isn't the kind of stuff you talk about in the car."

He looks at me. Me having a nervous breakdown and not hiding it very well. Me being very serious. He says, "What is it?"

I'm neurotic, that's what it is.

I say, "Do you want to know what I've been thinking about for the past couple of weeks."

"Of course."

"Do you want to know....what I think....about you."

The look on his face, he's beginning to understand what this all means. He says, "Yeah."