LairaBehr4 wrote:Hey Caelan, don't you think it's time you came back with an update?
Since, you asked so nicely I guess I will
As always thank you for your patience. I know it seems like I'm moving at a slug's pace, but I've always been a bit of a turtle.
Thank you for bearing with me and hopefully Liz will be counting ceiling tiles before the year is out
Enjoy!!
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Chapter Twenty Eight--- Resistance is Futile
My hands are shaking.
I can’t make them stop.
There is husk skin underneath my nails and in between my fingers.
I don’t know how it got there.
Red sparks of light zigzag from my palms. They are the only visible signs of the energy growing inside of me, threatening to split me open.
I hurt so much, but it does nothing to stop what has already been set in motion. For I am only the instrument not the musician, once started the song must be played out. It is how it has always been and will forever be.
I glare at the man on his knees in front of me. He doesn’t struggle, because I have taken the struggle from him.
I know nothing of his identity.
Yet, I despise him with a hatred I never knew existed in me.
I meet Seth’s glowing eyes, and it all becomes so clear. I hate him, because Seth hates him.
This man liked to have conversations with Max. Only he brought nice little devices to instigate his chats, devices that Seth can recall with a startling clarity.
I bend down getting on his eye level intending to have a conversation with him of my own, but the debate in front of me interrupts my attempted nicety.
“You need to stop her right now.” Talen tells him.
“You need to mind your own business.” Seth answers.
I frown finding something wrong with the tone of his voice.
“Stop her, she doesn’t know any better. It’s your job to stop her.” Talen insists. “Do you want the little girl to be bad? Is that what you want?”
“You don’t know anything about the little girl.” Seth hisses.
“Yes, I do. She talks to me sometimes. I know she’s beautiful, sweet and kind and that I would do anything for her even try and like you, because that’s what she wants.”
“You’re in love with someone that doesn’t even exist. And I thought I topped the cake in romantic stupidity.” I cackle.
“I never said I was in love with her.” Talen huffs, “only humans and Antarians do that.”
“If you’re not capable of loving someone then you can stay away from my daughter.” I answer.
“You’re not going to be around to make that decision.” He tells me.
“You’re a liar.” Seth says pushing Talen hard. “Liz is going to be around. Take it back.” He demands.
Talen ducks his fist. “Why do you think the little girl is so sad all the time? She misses Liz.”
“You don’t know anything.” Seth counters as the two of them begin to wrestle with each other.
To my dismay, I realize that Talen is gaining the upper hand. “The two of you need to cut it out this moment.” I say doing my best impression of my mother after she and Kyle caught Sean and me making out in his VW. “We’re all on the same team here.” I roll my eyes as the two of them keep on as if I haven’t said a word. “Right, you two have fun with that. I am so happy I’m having a daughter, because I don’t understand boys at all.”
“Amateur,” my forgotten conversation buddy spits as he knocks me to the ground. “I’m actually quite disappointed. Here, you’re supposed to have the eyes, which you obviously don’t, or you would have put two and two together.”
I don’t even get a scream out, before a clear plastic bag is shoved over my head.
“Come on Liz, figure it out. Half the kings in the galaxy have a jones for you, because you’re supposed to be so valuable, and yet you can’t solve a simple riddle. Maybe, you’re not all they say you are.”
My lungs burn.
I fight to keep from passing out.
“We don’t have the ocean, but I’ve brought it with me. Suffocation and drowning are really quite the same when you think about it. An exiting of one world for the next.”
Water cascades down the outside of the bag.
A slight bulge begins to form in my palm. I try and speed up the process.
“Stop fighting it Liz. We just want you to be all that you can be. If you two boys know what’s good for you, you will stay back. Scrunch your head all you like Seth, your mother has taught me to look beyond mindwarps. Next time you want to set your weapon on somebody, it might be best to tell said weapon who they’re dealing with.”
I grab his shoulder.
The color drains from his face as he starts to sway.
For the first time, I see the essence underneath the husk.
I see Nicholas.
There are flashes, ghastly images as he perversely goes about doing what he does best, taking away people’s control to fill the lack of it in his own life.
“You would be amazed at the freedoms that bodied people take for granted on Earth.” He says looking out into the crowd that have gathered to welcome him back. “As a skin one must be prepared for anything. Husks can become defective for a variety of reasons.”
He winces as the memory of Khivar ripping his man husk away surfaces.
“But in the end, it’s all about facing adversity. Husk, human, idiot king hybrids, they are all the same.”
He had imagined that it would be bad but never had he been prepared for waking up in the body of a mere child.
“You must narrow them down and never let your eyes stray from them.” He thanks the audience knowing they have not heard a word that he said for theirs is a society that pays little attention to children.
He tries not to inflict the same discourtesy on the youthful boy that wants to know all about his role in bringing the false king back to Antar. Yet, his responses are brief for she distracts him.
Like some dark specter, she waits for him in the hall with the veils of mourning still covering her face from his view.
He is rude in dismissing the boy, but cannot help it. He wants to be anywhere, but in her presence. Yet by some trick of fate, she blocks the only exit.
“Get out of my way little girl.” He sneers.
“It appears that I am no longer the littlest one.”
“Look, I’m in this thing because of you. It’s been forty years, let it go.”
“You’ve ever heard of a little thing called The Code of Hamurabi during your time on Earth.”
“No.”
“I’ll spare you the effort of looking it up. You killed my husband, my heart, and according to the code I get to kill you now.”
“I like to see you try.”
“What makes you think that I’m not trying? Welcome back to Antar, Nicholas.”
How is she trying?
He becomes obsessed with the idea.
And finally sees some possible implication, in a prisoner that does not fall into line even after he been sure to take away his most prized possession.
It is an abnormality that nags him at its least and terrifies him at its worst.
For the weak always rally around the strong.
Little occurrences alarm him but nothing compares to the day that he notices each and every prisoner meeting his gaze as he passes their cells.
He takes his concerns directly to Khivar.
“So they look at you, what of it?”
“It’s him. He’s giving them hope. It could be dangerous. They’re listening to him. Take him out of the general population.”
“And what would be the fun of that?”
“This is not Earth.”
“No, this Antar where the inmates are ten times more kinkier.’
“But they respect him.”
“Max is here in my prison, because he got tricked by a woman. There is nothing respectful about that.” Khivar waves him off. “No one has ever escaped from Tantalus. Plus, we have his whelp. He won’t go anywhere without the boy. We hold everything of value for him.”
“And Liz?”
Khivar advances on him angrily. “Who told you of her?”
“He speaks to her all the time. It’s almost like she’s in the room with him.”
“He’s obviously insane. You’re wasting my time.”
But he couldn’t disagree more when he finds a pool cue being pressed down over his throat.
“Where is it?” Max demands.
“Max come on, we don’t have time for this.” Michael says over his shoulder.
“I am not leaving without it.”
“Christ, will you prioritize? You want a picture. I’ll draw you one.”
“She gave it to me. I gave the knife back. It’s the only thing left that I have that was hers.” He turns his eyes back to his endeavor, “and you are going to tell me what you’ve done with it.”
He flinches as he sees her enter.
A pale hand emerges out from beneath the many black veils that cover her form. “You know what I like about Earth?” She turns the drill on. “Power tools, with exceptionally powerful heads. This one can even drill through husks..”
“We are never going to get out of here.”
“So leave Michael no one is stopping you.” She leans down next to Nicholas. “Where is Liz Parker’s picture?”
“I destroyed it.”
“Wrong answer.”
He blacks out only to be revived by Khivar much later.
“You just let them walk right out of the door?”
“I was not in a position to stop them between the many holes your daughter drilled into me.”
“She did this?”
The look of pride in Khivar’s eyes disgusts him. He clinches his fist only to find his hands are much bigger.
“It became necessary to plant you into another husk.” Khivar hands him a mirror. “Say hello to the new you.”
Even though he finds it perverse, he misses his old face.
The flashes end.
Air’s cool touch hits my face as the bag is ripped from my face.
I sit motionless. My brain is on overload.
“I knew you were nothing.” He waves his hand in front of my face. “You’re as much a fraud as he is.” He turns to Seth. “You’re good. You know that kid? You’ve got the entire universe convinced that she’s the genuine article. You want to be powerful Seth. You want to have a name that will live forever. Then stop trying to hitch your wagons to a mule and try the filly that you were born to. You belong with Tess.”
I add my two cents to the conversations by tackling him from behind and clamping my hands down against his spinal cord. “Let’s get one thing straight. Seth is mine, not Tess’s.”
His eyes widen. “You’re right. I didn’t mean to insult you. I’m sure that something can be worked out between the two of us.”
“I’m not interesting in working things out.”
He squirms as his left arm turns to dust.. I’m starting to set to work on the second when I’m thrown some distance by a presence made up of thousands of little orange lights.
Enraged, I watch as Nicholas slink off with another light entity hard on his heels.
The orange light presses me down.
I see Seth running toward me. He’s screaming something.
I can’t make it out.
My arms flail hitting nothing but air.
The back of my head hit the earth hard again.
It is only then I make out a shape beneath the light.
I knee the form hard in what would be the balls of any human man and am swiftly rewarded when I feel the presence jerk back from me.
I don’t know how I get him on the ground, but get him on the ground I do. “How does it feel now? Why can’t all of you just leave me the hell alone?”
It makes a sound of pain.
“Liz.” Its voice is low and guttural.
“Liz,” Seth huffs. “There’s been a mistake.”
“What do you mean there’s been a mistake?” I curse myself silently when I realize I’ve taken my eyes off whomever I have below me. I put them back on the creature only to find that I’m on top of Michael Guerin.
“Liz,” Seth says sternly. “Michael is our friend.”
I study Michael carefully. “And you know this how?”
“I suggest you get off me, before I make you get off me.”
“Are you threatening me Michael?”
“Are your hormones on the fritz or something?” Michael asks.
“Let me handle this. Liz, please get off Michael.” Seth begs. “He isn’t going to hurt you.”
“They’re all out to hurt me. It’s what they do. They wind me up and see how far I’ll go.”
“I’m really sorry about that. Nicholas grabbed me and hurt me and that made me mad. He used to hurt daddy all the time and that just made me madder. I thought you knew it was Nicholas. I forgot you’re not really like us, but you act like us. You smell like Mercedes’, and Deva’s mom. And it’s really hard. I’m really confused when I’m around you.” “Liz,” he snaps frustrated. “You are going to listen to me.”
“No, I’m not. I am tired of being ordered around by everyone. He had a plastic bag over my face. A plastic bag.” I breathe out as I’m grabbed from behind.
“Don’t you hurt her.” Seth warns.
I look down to find that Michael has conveniently disappeared from beneath and is no doubt holding me. My eyes fall back to Seth. “This is not a good way to get my trust. Maybe, you think my trust isn’t warranted, because I’m not alien enough to be in the club.”
“Seth go back and get Talen and the woman.” Michael says gently.
Seth advances on me in a panic. “Liz, you’re not acting like yourself. Please, you have to understand.” He pulls frantically on my shirt. “What are you doing to her? She’s making a hurt face.”
“She’s not making a hurt face.”
“But you’re hurting her.”
“I hurt her. You dad will rip me into shreds. Maria will pick up where he leaves off followed by Serena and Larek, because everyone is on the Liz love boat. Go get them Seth. The sooner we get out of here, the sooner we can get your dad to do whatever he has to do to make her better.”
“How is dad going to make her better?”
“I don’t know give her a giant Midol pill or bang her brains out.” Michael says under his breath.
“Seth, don’t you leave me with Michael.” I yell at his retreating figure.
“You need to calm the hell down.” Michael says. “He has enough problems as is with wonky women making him feel like shit.”
“Don’t you dare put that on me. You and Isabel let Tess in. You let her in and kept me out when she did nothing to prove herself, and I did everything.”
“Do the words get over it mean anything to you.”
I slump in arms as if I’ve been physically slapped. “Just let me go. I’ll sit right here. I’m tired, and I’m scared. I had a plastic bag shoved over my head by a lunatic.”
His arms drop away from my waist.
I take a seat on a rock and wait. “Will Seth be okay by himself?”
“I wouldn’t have let him leave otherwise.”
“But Nicholas?”
“Is being chased to the ends of the Earth by a very pissed off female. If you had killed him that pissiness would have transferred over to you. She has been waiting for nearly fifty years to stick it to him. Killing him as become a sort of life’s work of hers, one that I worry that she won’t be able to function without.”
“The lady in the veils.”
“How did you know about that?”
“I’m part alien now. Surprise! Have you heard from Seth’s father? Is he okay?”
“Still not doing the first name thing, I see.”
“How did you know about that?”
“No need to get your panties in a wad over it Liz.” He kicks up a bit of dirt with the toe of his boot. “Screw it, I wasn’t going to get involved in this. Hell, Isabel gave me strict instructions to let the two of you sort this out on your own.”
“There is nothing to sort out.”
“Know this, the whole not saying his name thing bothers him. No, I don’t think bothers accurately captures it. It hurts of the ripping your heart out kind of variety, and he’s had just about everything else ripped out of him. So, I would appreciate it if…”
Without any conscious thought, I flick my wrist and watch as Michael falls hard on his ass. “You are not my friend, because you made that choice. So don’t you come over and try and give me advise.”
“You were dangerous. She was just annoying.”
“What?”
“Tess, you wanted to know why we let her in. She was like this mosquito that buzzed around our ears whining about some four square sex thing we weren’t ever going to follow.” He looks at me, “sorry. Try and understand. He broke our oath for you and then he was always out with you. He was never with us anymore. It pissed us off. The rules were changing, and you were changing them. We were nothing without him. He was our leader. Destiny kept him with us. You would have ended up taking him away from us.”
“I wasn’t trying to take him away from you. I just wanted to love him.”
“We didn’t see that then. What can I say? We were selfish. We had always had Max. I don’t think we had ever expected that there wouldn’t be a time when we wouldn’t be first on his priorities. Chalk it up to our greatest regret. Not only did our short sightedness let someone far worse come between us, we helped push away the only person he ever really loved or will love.”
I hug my knees to my chest.
“I’m talking about you by the way.”
I glare at him.
“Just wanted to be sure, and you weren’t listening with your self effacing ears. So, there you go. Do with it what you well.” He looks passed me. “You do realize that fifteen minutes to cover what you had to cover is totally unacceptable?”
I turn to see both boys looking down at their shoes.
“You were fighting again, weren’t you?”
Neither boy abandons the apparent interesting study of their footwear.
“I get there’s a personality conflict. I really do. Plus, Antarians and Creusians have been at each other throats, since time began. But you two need to drop it, right now. We’re in a war zone. We’re you fighting when Nicholas attacked Liz? Speak up boys. I can’t hear you. ”
“Yes.” They answer.
“A solider does not let personal vendettas distract him when on the field of battle.”
I open my mouth to say that they’re children not soldiers but close it just as fast when Michael shoots me a dirty look.
“When you’re out here,” Michael continues motioning around him. “You are a wall, nothing gets past you, and nothing comes leaking out. Is that clear?”
Both boys nod.
“And one more thing Seth,” his eyes land on Hannah. “Next time, you want to organize a rescue mission. You speak to the commander in charge. You don’t mindwarp said commander and go running off without telling him where you’re going.”
“I guess that was bad of me.” Seth inserts.
“You think.” Michael answers.
“But I had a good reason.”
“Lady in distress. I get it. Who is this woman?”
“Kyle’s girlfriend. They grabbed her and Kyle.” I take Hannah’s hand in the wake of the sudden emotion I feel. “I think she’s suffering from post traumatic stress.”
“No, they drugged her to the gills. Look like feanide, which is good. It won’t have any effect on the bun in the oven.”
“What?” I ask.
“There’s a baby in her tummy.” Seth clarifies.
“How do you know this?” I wonder.
“She smells bad.” Talen tells me.
“Really bad.” Seth adds.
“So pregnant women stink?”
“To other males yes, to the father of said child no.” Michael answers.
“Why?
“I’m not a Antarian Ed teacher. Let’s get a move on class.”
“But she’ll be okay, right?” I ask.
I expect Michael to make another wisecrack at my expense. I feel he’s definitely on the verge of doing so when he does the strangest thing. He holds back and pats my shoulder awkwardly. “She’ll be fine. We’ll take her to Serena. Serena will do her thing. Hannah will be knitting baby booties in no time.”
“Can Serena help me? Um, something just doesn’t feel right with me.”
“We need to go now.” He answers in a clipped tone.
“Right,” I answer reading through the lines of his rudeness.
I’m in trouble, a lot of it.
I take in stride.
I really do right through the jungle and the accompanying car ride. I’m completely at peace with it as we reach a compound high in the mountains.
I take the news that Max isn’t there well, all things considered.
I adequately brief Serena about everything I know about Hannah’s condition.
It’s only when I see Maria, Brian, and Mani waiting on the porch that it all goes to hell, and I start crackling like the fourth of July.
I try to duck out of sight, but don’t make it pass the Deluca eagle eye.
She bolts of the stairs clearly intent on giving me a hug but is stopped in her tracks by my personal light show. “Liz, you’re okay.” Her statement comes out more like a question.
“I’m fine.” I glue on a fake smile. “You’re okay?”
She nods never lifting her eyes up from my hands.
I turn to Brian. “I’m sorry that I didn’t tell you. I wanted to. I wasn’t certain how you would react.”
“You’re skin is sparking,” is all he says. “Maria told me you could do things. I would have never believed her if I hadn’t just found out that aliens exist, and I was in the middle of alien war.” He turns to science to combat his disbelief. “Are you blood cells still even normal?”
“Yes, my cells are normal.” My shoulders sag.
“Do you think it could be your brain waves then?”
“I don’t know.”
“Parker, you’re telling me you haven’t even thought to cataloguing your biological anomalies?”
“I’ve never really been into seeing myself as a scientific experiment worth cataloguing.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“Okay,” I nod. “Will you three excuse me? I need to go and wash up a little.”
I walk away from them feeling somewhere in between dejected and disgusting.
“ISABELLA,” Mani calls behind me.
I stop dreading this exchange knowing that Mani has never been the most sensitive of people.
He reaches me red faced from the exertion. Large sweat stains hang from his armpits. “My wife’s right. Soy gordo. I just wanted to say that you shouldn’t worry. You have a good soul, and God will still let you into heaven.”
“I could have told you that.”
This time my smile isn’t an act as I look over my shoulder to see Max. “Hey.”
“I would have gotten here sooner if I knew you were going to smile at me like that.”
“And who are you for Isabella to be smiling at?” Mani asks pointedly.
“Mani,” I admonish. “This is a good friend of mine M---.” I clear my throat.
“Max Evans,” Max says quickly rescuing me from, well, myself.
Mani stares suspiciously at Max’s outstretched hand. “Has he been behaving himself Isabella?”
“Yes, very much.”
“Bueno,” he takes Max’s hand. “Emanuel Sanchez,” he says warmly. “I’m glad you’re here Max. Now you can get Isabella out of the field and make a real woman out of her.”
“Mani,” I snap.
“What?” He pulls out a cigarette and lights it. “People just think that I’m big, dumb and fat, but I have eyes. I didn’t have eyes about the aliens. You know about the aliens Max?”
“Yeah, I’m well acquainted with them.”
He takes a drag of his cigarette. “One of them had me cornered in the lab. It was not looking good and then Lena came crashing down from the ceiling and killed him with these two giant knives. She got me out and found a driver to take me here. Is she an alien Max?”
“Does it really matter?” Max asks.
“No, I guess not. Well, I will leave you two to smile at each other.” He grins.
“He has some nerve.” I scoff when Mani is safely out of earshot.
“I’ve always really liked him.”
“You have?”
“He kind of reminds me of Michael, if Michael was twenty years older, fifty pounds heavier, and Mexican. He isn’t the most pc of people, but he has heart, and he isn’t false.”
“I guess you’re right.” I throw my arms around him.
He stiffens momentarily before relaxing.
“Is it against the law to hug royalty?”
“No,” his arms slide around my waist. “You’re upset,” he mummers into my hair.
“Yes,” I say closing my eyes enjoying the feeling of Max around me.
“Did something happen in the jungle?”
“Yes, but everyone’s safe. I’ll talk about it with you. I promise, but not now. I just want to stay like this.” My little peace of heaven is shattered by a small body inserting itself into the middle.
“Seth,” Max says sternly.
“What?” Seth asks innocently. “We’re hugging again, right? I like being in the middle. It’s like it’s a Seth sandwich then, and there’s never been a full Seth sandwich. It’s always been a half of a Seth sandwich.”
Max blinks clearly pained. For a man who prides himself on being normal, I can only imagine the idea that his son would not be having a ‘normal’ family life was a bitter pill to swallow.
I lay my head on his shoulder. “I know what you’re thinking and don’t.” I tell him. “He has all he needs in you.”
“Do you know what I’m thinking to Liz?” Seth asks.
“That you would like me to stop talking, so you can be the meat in the Seth sandwich again.”
He beams. “How did you do that?”
“Because Liz is special Seth, very special,” Max answers solemnly.
Seth frowns. “I did something bad today daddy.”
Max’s eyes narrow.
“Don’t look at me like that daddy, it makes it hard to tell you.”
“You need to tell me.”
“Okay,” Seth covers his eyes with his hand and starts talking in a rapid fire of Antarian.
With every second that passes, I feel Max’s arm grow tighter around my waist.
“So that’s what happened.” Seth says finally finishing while I struggle not to suffocate in Max’s grasp.
“I don’t know…what to say.” Max stumbles over his words. “I just don’t--- kn kn kn--” he stutters.
“Daddy.”
I stand up on my tiptoes and cup his ice-cold cheeks in my hands. “Look at me, we’re fine.”
“Nnn,” he stutters.
“Daddy, what’s wrong?”
“Seth, go get Michael.” I say with a calmness I do not feel.
“No, I’m just going to stay here and help you instead.”
I get him moving with the force of one look. It’s only when he’s long gone that I begin to rethink the logic of sending him and whatever information he might possess away. I bite down on my bottom lip hard pissed beyond belief at my knee jerk response.
I turn my attention back to what matters. “You’re hyperventilating. Mirror my breaths. In and Out. Just keep your breaths even for me. Good.
Good takes a detour when Max’s legs give out. My attempts to hold him up end with both of us falling to the ground.
I move quickly out from underneath him.
His hand shakily closes over mine. “Don…don…don’t go.” He grits out.
“I’m not going anywhere. Look at me. You have to look at me. Don’t you dare close your eyes.”
And to his credit, he never does.
And to mine, I try and understand the albatross around his neck or more precisely the crown on his head. “What is with Seth mind warping people not to see us, and why can’t we get him a doctor?” I ask as Michael helps Max to lie down.
“Because, it’s a secret,” Seth answers snuggling up to Max’s side.
“A secret,” I repeat.
“Any information regarding Max’s condition in the wrong hands could compromise everything.” Michael explains turning Max’s bag over and spilling the contents everywhere.
“Is this really what you want?” I ask Max.
He nods his head slowly.
“I want to go on record and say I don’t agree with this at all. You can’t just sit back and do nothing, because you want to protect your throne. You never even wanted it to begin with. You could come back to Earth. The Antarian doctors could treat you then, and you wouldn’t have to hide it, because it wouldn’t matter anymore. You could go to college and be somebody.”
“But daddy is a somebody,” Seth answers. “And why would we want to come to live here?” He asks scrunching up his face in obvious disgust.
I wince feeling like I’ve traveled back in time to the moment after Max’s mother’s infamous breeding decree. I try hard to handle it better this time around. “I’m sorry.” I say to Max. “I wasn’t thinking. You are somebody. Who am I to give advise or meddle in what you’ve got going?” I drop my head to cover my burning cheeks. “I’m not really needed here, so I think I’m going to go before I really offend you all.”
I’m shocked when Michael ushers me to a chair and whispers, “We’re just window dressing here, you’re the window.”
Right, I’m the window.
A window that was about to flake out again.
It’s truly lovely how try as I might, I’m right back where I’ve started feeling useless and completely out of my element in the great alien abyss.
I grunt in the wake of a small body jumping onto my lap. “A little warning as to when you’re going to do that would be nice.”
“Then I wouldn’t get to see you make a surprise face.” Seth tugs my arms around his waist while giving me the explicit command that I am to hug him this instant.
“You have to be the bossiest little boy I’ve ever met.”
“What is bossiest?”
With the newly acquired knowledge of the definition, he takes great pleasure in telling me that if he is the bossiest little boy than I’m the bossiest lady he’s ever met. “You’re even worse than the lady who talks too fast.”
Michael cracks a smile in the midst of unwrapping a bundle from Max’s bag that reveals several leaves. He rips a piece of one of the leaves off and feeds it to Max. He explains without me even having to ask that the leaves come from a tree native to both Antar and Earth. “It helps to calm him down among other things.”
After sometime, Max begins to speak again and asks both Michael and Seth to leave him for a while.
“I don’t want to go. I want to stay here with you and Liz.” Seth whines stubbornly.
“Please, do this for daddy.”
“Okay, fine.” He grumbles, “but if anything happens. You come get me Liz. You come get me before you even go and get Michael.”
“I will.” I tell him.
Michael lingers in the doorway.
“It’s all right Michael. I’m fine now.” Max says.
He nods once and closes the door.
“You should know that Seth only likes Antar, because it’s what he knows. This is only his second time on Earth. Don’t take his opinion of Earth as his opinion of you as well.” Max tells me.
“It’s what I’ve said. I’m just a novelty to him. I’m cool with it.”
“And it’s what I’ve always told you back, that no you aren’t. I know my son. He’s nothing if not constant.”
Leaning over him, I brush his hair away from his forehead.
He flinches in the wake of my touch.
“I’m sorry.”
“Not your fault,” he whispers. “I’m getting a headache.” He waves his hands, and the curtains magically draw close on their own.
“You need to sleep. I’ll just be right here when you wake up.”
“I don’t sleep.”
“Do you want me to go?”
“No.”
“You’re freezing. You need a blanket. I’ll get you one.” ”
“No, I need what I’ve always needed, just
you.”
“You have me. I’m your friend. You know that.”
His eyes move to the popcorn ceiling.
“Anything you need, you just have to ask.”
His eyes come down quickly to me. “Anything?”
I swallow hard at the suggestiveness in his voice. “Yes, anything,” I find myself saying despite my better judgment.
“Let me hold you.”
“While you’re in the bed?”
“No, while I’m standing on my head.”
“I don’t want to crowd you. It’s a small bed.”
“It’s a king sized bed, Liz.”
“Oh really, it looks a lot smaller. It must be an optical illusion. The chair and mirror are in the wrong place if they --”
“Why is it that you can hug me, but I can’t hold you? What’s the difference?”
I sit there stunned for a moment by his directness. “We would be in a bed together.”
“I’m not going to make a move on you, unless you want me to.”
I fold my arms around my waist.
“Is that what you’re afraid of? That you might want me to?”
“My how you let your arrogance run wild.”
“No wilder than you let your fear run.”
“You’re not doing a very good job of getting me into bed with you.”
“Don’t have much to work with really. We’re miles away from civilization so that takes wine and dine off the list. I have the motor functions of a slug right now, so I can’t yank you in here and convince you to stay with the many lurid things I want to do to and with your body.”
“Stop that.”
“Stop what?”
“Talking like that.”
“I’m speaking the truth.”
“That is not the truth.”
“I can’t help if it you’re taking my truth and filing it away as an untruth until you’re ready to deal with it as being true. Liz, please,” he turns those magnificent eyes of his on me at full watt. “Having you in my arms is like no other feeling in the world.”
“Don’t say that.” I beg.
“Why?” He challenges. “Why should I have to pretend that I don’t want you, don’t crave you, don’t need you?”
“We can get our friendship back. You said you wanted to be friends?”
“I do more than anything.”
“Then you can’t say these things to me.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s exactly what messed us up before. It always messes everything up.”
“Or makes it a hundred times better.”
“I like not being angry with you.” I say quietly. “I’d rather not go back to that.”
“I like not being angry with you to, and I don’t want to go back to that either.”
“And that’s why we need to be just friends. We didn’t work as more. You have to see that.”
“Look me in the eye and tell me, you’re satisfied with your life, and there’s nothing missing from it.”
“My parents are missing from it.”
He swallows. “You’re right. I’m sorry. ”
“I shouldn’t have said that. That was a low blow.”
“It was a truthful blow.” He answers his features already beginning to form into his pod person mask.
“No---no---please don’t start acting aloof with me again.”
“You don’t want me to be aloof, but you don’t want me to be me. Please help me out here, because I’m not following exactly who you want me to be.”
“My friend, I just want you to be my friend and not to ditch me when something more alluring comes up.”
“You’re not talking about us, are you?”
“No.”
“What did Sean do to you?” Max’s voice turns lethal.
“I never dated Sean. We made out a couple times after you left, but that was it.”
“Then who was he?”
“A friend, he met her while he was with me, nothing happened till after he broke things off. That’s what he said, and I believe him. It was never the same afterwards. He keeps his distance for the most part now. I don’t know why. I’m over it really.”
“I believe you’re over him, but I don’t believe you’re over the hurt he inflicted upon your self esteem or your trust. Come here,” he says patting the mattress beneath him. “I’ll be a perfect gentleman. Scout’s honor.”
“You were never a boy scout.”
“Then trust me.”
“I do.”
“You don’t with your heart, but you will. I can be patient.”
The conviction in his voice gives me goose bumps.
“Now come here,” he says softly, “and let me hold you.”
I try to resist but find that much like the Borg, resistance to Max is futile.
And that in itself is terrifying.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
It does exist for a purpose. I can promise you that the next love scene is a) going to feature everyone's favorite dark haired mystery man from an exotic location and ain't going to be so pg rated either.