*22*

Am I broken.

He's seen me deal with blood and bruises. He's seen me next to a knife, he's seen me against the backdrop of a dying desert.

When things spin too fast - and I'm talking beyond out of control too fast - they break.

Maybe I look okay next to blood and bruises and ugliness, but after tonight, how will I look next to flowers, a field of them.

You have to be prepared for things like this. You have to be prepared for him not being able to handle the truth. Especially since you can barely handle it yourself.

And you've realized some things about yourself, like maybe a healthy life is worth living, and maybe you have a shred of worthiness. You know in your heart that you can be fixed if you just try. But this is the breaking point, you either get better or you don't.

When you clean your room, it has to get dirtier before it gets cleaner. You have to pull out all the shit that's under your bed and inside your closet. You pile dirty laundry on your bed, you find that half eaten sandwich that you meant to throw away. You purge the corners and hidden places, let it all hang out in the open. Then you decide what to work on first.

That's what this is like. What if he doesn't like what's under my bed? What if he doesn't want to see my cobwebs? What if he doesn't want to help me clean it up?

You have to be prepared for the worst case scenario, but it has to be realistic.

It's different for me. I don't have one great big secret like him or Tess. I have a pile of little white lies. Enough little white lies and you go crazy, you forget what story you told which person. I have years of not telling the entire story. Right and wrong don't even make sense anymore. I am a lie.

I am half a story.

If I don't get this out now, I'll break.

I'll lose him, I might anyway. You have to be prepared.

You can't think about how you saw the understanding in his eyes. You can't think about how maybe he will understand and hold your hand all night and help you clean yourself up. Maybe he can heal that bruise on your cheek even though the physical evidence is almost gone, it doesn't matter, the hurt is still there. Maybe if he sleeps next to you, you won't see a gun in your face when you close your eyes.

Stop thinking about this.

I'm not even here.

"Liz," he says. He sits on the bed, he looks at you in sympathy, pity, like he already knows. "Tell me anything," he says it quietly, gently. He doesn't want to push you with his voice. He knows that touching you right now isn't going to help.

I'm not even here.

This is the last defense mechanism I'll use willingly. I don't even care what it's called, I just remember someone telling me it was adaptive.

I'm not even here. Am I?

It's just a girl, that loves a boy. And she's telling him the truth, to be fair, so that he can decide if he still loves her back.

Eyes down, easier for tears to slip out that way.

Clean it all up.

"I don't know how it started....I don't know where." It's a voice of dissociation, the voice you get when you can't look someone in the eye. It sounds monotone but if you listen hard enough you can sense the shakiness. "I wanted to hate you, I never did, but I wanted to, before I even knew you."

If you blink, a tear will fall out of your left eye.

Glance up and he's confused. "Liz....why...." he doesn't finish because he knows questions won't do any good.

"I wanted to blame you for my problems but I couldn't because I knew your secret, I don't know how I knew but I did. But I couldn't hate you because I saw how much you hated yourself, and then I saw you hit her, with your car. I saw your life falling apart. I saw you.....heal...her."

The tears go drip drip dripping down your face, one lands on your shoe, one lands on your sweater. Glance up and he doesn't want you to cry.

"Maybe I wanted that too....maybe I felt dead. But maybe I saw the way you looked at her and maybe I just wanted you to be happy. You kissed her...at the party...I didn't watch. It would have ended right there but you told me your secret, you...touched me, told me I was insane, I wanted to scream at you."

Glance up and the look on his face is guilt and shock. It was not my intention to make him feel bad. He touched my face that night. His palm was pressed against my nose, his thumb was touching my temple. The first time he touched me, I'll never forget that.

"I don't know...somewhere along the line it changed, you were my friend...you understood me, we had fun. I wanted you to stop hating yourself. So I...convinced myself that you should be with Tess and I...I got a little lost in my head."

Deep breaths, eyes down.

"Everything I've done in the past two weeks I've done for you. I made the car accident disappear, I kept your secret. Not so that I could save Roswell, so that I could save you. Every action, every word I said....everything can be traced back to you."

Close your eyes, blink. Just let yourself cry. The truth is that he hurt you, whether he meant to or not. The truth is that it hurts. The truth is that you want to cry so you cry.

"And you could never....look me in the eye. What was so fucking horrible about me that you couldn't look me in the eye?"

Glance up and his eyes blink shut and linger, his jaw is clenched. I don't want him to feel bad, I'm just telling the truth.

"Something happened to me, you left your jacket in the Crashdown and I was smelling it at five in the morning. We studied at your house and you caught me smelling your goddamn arm and you didn't smell bad, you smell...really good. When we went to the book signing...I was thinking about all these horrible things, I was trying so bad to hate you. I had dreams about you...I hated every second of what was happening to me."

Glance up and he's looking at you, wide eyes with shock, guilt etched on his face like he committed some sort of horrible crime.

"The pool..." I hear the voice and it's mine, it's shaking. It's naked and helpless and weak. It's a wonder he can still understand what I'm saying. My cheeks are uncomfortable, half drying, half soaking wet, making my skin tight and confused. I want to be in the shower. I hate crying when I'm not in the shower. I want to be wet and warm and huddled into a ball crying.

"The pool is where I got hurt the most."

Glance up and he's sorry, he's so sorry. He's just breathing, he wants to say something but he doesn't know what to say.

I don't want him to be sorry. I'm the sorry one, I'm the one throwing all this at him at once.

"And all this, you have nothing to feel guilty about, you have nothing to apologize for. Because it's my fault, I let myself get hurt. Until we got to the pool, you didn't lead me on, not once. So it's my fault, because I could have left, but I didn't....because I wanted to be around you."

Think about repressed romantic feelings, take a step backward and sit down on the bed because standing isn't an option. And don't you wish your hands would stop shaking and don't you wish you could see through the tears.

"Because....Max.....you make me feel something...something weird and scary.....like I want you to know who I am....Like I don't want to lie to you."

Are you hearing this? This is raw. This is like going through a meat grinder. You have to hurt more before you feel better. And maybe someday after this I'll thank myself, sow myself back up and be okay. Maybe tomorrow, maybe next week, next month.

It depends on him now. I'm exposed, all out in the open. He can either run away or fuck with my feelings or make it better. Either way, I want this to be over.

"Do you think this is healthy Max? I'm psycho-crazy-insane obsessed with you. Is this something you want to hear?"

Someday I'll feel better. Glance up and my world isn't the only one falling apart.

My voice is hiding nothing, my face is hiding nothing. When your exposed like this, even your body language can't lie. "You like me but do you want a neurotic girlfriend. Do you want somebody who doesn't even know who she is because she's made herself up a thousand times? Do you want to know all my secrets and do you want me to know yours?"

You have to be prepared for this.

Funny how hard it is to be prepared when your completely exposed.

I'm crying like it's the end of the world. That's what it feels like. I'll feel better someday. Someday, I'll know this was healthy. But now, a life is ending.

Be prepared. If he runs, what the hell am I supposed to do.

"So that's what I wanted to say."

I stand up. Neurotic me. Naked, exposed me. I feel dirty.

"I'm taking a shower now."

Brutal honesty, get me out of here.

"If you want to leave, now would be the time."

So that I don't have to see it.

I walk, to the bathroom. Five steps.

He says, "Liz, come here."

I want to Max, I really really want to.

I say, "Shower."

He hesitates, I hear him shifting on the bed. Then, he sounds pissed. "What the hell am I supposed to do. You already made up your mind that I'm leaving. Give me credit Liz, if I'm so great then let me make up my own mind, if you really feel so strongly, why is it so easy for you to run."

"It's not....easy."

"Then get your ass over here....and tell me you want me to help you...and I will. I'll do anything....but I don't know what you want."

"I don't know what you want."

"I want you Liz. Yes, still. Your not neurotic, I have so much to say to you, but your the one running away right now."

"I'm still scared."

"I know."

"I can't move."

"Then what do you want me to do."

What do I want him to do? There's plenty I want him to do. Honesty.

Honesty.

I can do this.

Just close your mind. It's just a scared girl that doesn't know how to be happy and doesn't know what's best for herself. But in the back of her mind, in the deep, dark places that nobody has seen, she knows exactly what she wants.

"I want you to make me stay, and I want you to tell me how much you want me to stop running away. And I want you to help me. And I want you to promise to not forget about me for at least.....until I get better. I want you to tell me why it's so hard for you to look in my eyes but I'm still not sure...if I really want to hear that."

And he says, "Okay."

He gets up and he approaches me. And I don't even know what the hell is going on anymore.

He didn't run away, he wasn't scared.

I thought he would run away.

You never really prepare for the best case scenario.

You prepare for the worst, and when the best happens, you have no idea what the hell to do.

The look on his face, I don't even know what it is. Maybe he's as confused as I am.

He grabs my hand and pulls me over to the bed and he makes me sit down. He's on his knees on the floor in front of me.

He puts one of his hands on mine and the other one on my face, he says, "Look at me."

I don't.

I stare at his hand because it's touching mine and it's the warmest feeling I've ever had in my entire life.

He says, "I can sit here all night. Screw being scared Liz, aren't you sick of it?"

He says, "Look at me. I'm obsessed with you. I know you feel crazy because I've been there, I know it's hard to let go. You taught me how, don't you know that? You can't scare me, I want to know every little thought that's swimming in that head of yours. Every crazy, neurotic detail. And I will never ignore you again."

His hand is sweeping over my cheek and getting tangled in my hair. He pulls me forward so that our foreheads are touching.

He says, "Never ever."

His voice, I could listen to it forever.

He says, "Liz Parker, for all that stuff you just said you sure don't act like you like me very much."

And that's just it, you know. This is my breaking point.

I, Liz Parker, am officially a first class grade A idiot.

What in gods name am I doing sitting here like a fucking noodle.

So I breathe. And I say, "Sorry about that."

And I smile, it's kind of a weak smile but it still is a smile, and it's genuine, I figure he might like that.

He does, he smiles back.

His hand slides down to cup the back of my neck and he touches his nose to mine.

I look him in the eye. Liars know a lot of things about eyes, you know. It's the one part of the body that never lies, unless you train yourself.

In Max's eyes, it's kind of hard to look at, obsession and compulsion and rawness. All right there.

The way he's looking at me, I could burst into flames and I wouldn't be surprised. The earth could swallow me whole, aliens could invade the world. Wait a second, scratch that.

He say in a whisper, "We need to talk, but I'm gonna kiss you right now and if you don't kiss me back this time I'm gonna have a hissy fit and it's gonna get really, really ugly."

His mouth is so close to mine, were breathing the same air.

And I get the kind of chill that runs up your neck and makes your insides shudder and warm up and - holy shit.

Maxwell mother freaking Evans, is going to kiss me.