Author: DreamerLaure
Category: AU, M/L & CC ALL
Rating: Mature
Disclaimer: I don’t own Roswell or its characters, and the premise of this story isn’t mine. The plot, the characters, and this little slice of Roswell are mine on loan however for the duration of this. The title of this is from a cover song written by Gene de Paul and Sammy Cahn.
Summary: Liz Parker is in her last year of high school and she’s convinced all of her dreams are within reach. Yet in one short week, for the girl who always gets what she wants, her perfect senior year starts to unravel awfully fast. A devastating accident upsets the balance even more, but the scariest thing is it’s totally up to her whether the accident changes things for better or for worse.
(This is a challenge response to French-dreamer’s tutor story: here. I suggest waiting until after chapter four!)
Author’s Note:
I chose this challenge because I saw so much potential from the moment I read it. And all I could think was yes, yes, yes! Right away a brave, independent Liz was leaping out onto the page; she was going a mile a minute until her world fell apart and a careful, stubborn Max was right around the corner.
Many thanks to my beta dreamerfrvrp3 for everything! I owe you for this, Wise One.
Feedback? I like it a lot.
To quote Mario: Here we go!!
Teach Me Tonight
Prologue
Her lips were chapped, her eyes stung from the bite of the wintry breeze, her cheeks felt like they would turn blue if they could, and her shoulders ached like she’d just swam every inch of the 400 meters she clocked in at practice.
But in spite of all of that, she was happily sitting in the dugout with butterflies flitting at her temples.
This must be love, and it sure hurt like a toothache.
Liz leaned forward and cupped her chin in her hands. Her eyes were trained on his nicely toned body, and she sat there immobile for the few seconds that he jogged across the small curve of the track directly in her line of sight.
Despite the chill of the crisp December day and the fact that their pre-season didn’t even begin until February, the entire Varsity baseball team was out running on the tracks.
The baseball coach, Coach McCarthy, had probably not too gently hinted that he expected them to win their all-state title again. The boys had probably been decided to keep in great shape year round. She knew all of the girls on her swim team, herself included, would do just about anything to win awards, break records in the spring and bring a smile to their Coach Mullen’s face.
Here they were, running outside in the crisp wintry air, and here she was, watching one in particular with barely disguised longing in her eyes.
Roswell, New Mexico didn’t have harsh, bitter winters like other parts of the country, but it was cold enough for Liz to be bundled up in her wool sweater and shiver every couple of minutes.
Whether she was shivering because of the biting wind that swept their way every few minutes or because her hair was still damp, was debatable.
Maria DeLuca, one of her best friends, hugged her knees to her chest and moaned, “Why aren’t you freezing to death?”
“That’s a funny question,” Liz murmured under her breath. She reached into her pocket and extended a stick of Orbit gum to Maria.
“Here. Chewing gum helps,” she said pointedly when Maria didn’t pull her hand out of the warmth of her own pocket. “Moving your mouth and keeping the warm air in,” she added.
Maria rolled her eyes at the suggestion that she should just keep her mouth zipped, and said, “It’s not a ridiculous question,” as she popped the stick into her mouth.
A moment later, she scolded, “Your hair is still wet.”
“It’s not wet. I dried it with my towel and did a turn under a dryer. And now it’s damp. The only reason my hair is wet in the first place is because chlorine does a number on my hair so I always have to rinse it out. ”
Out of the corner of her eye, she could see Maria was frowning. “I don’t see why you can’t stick a blow dryer in your locker.”
“Why bother when there’s a whole row of hand dryers right by the sinks?” Liz said firmly, hoping to close the door on that topic shut.
Her eyes were still following him until the last possible second when the cluster of runners behind him blocked him from her sight completely. She really liked that he was at the head of the pack with the fastest runners, removed enough from the ones who just couldn’t keep from joking around.
Her stomach did a teensy, tiny flop as she realized he was dedicated, just like her.
“I’d keep a blow dryer with me if I had to swim twice a day,” Maria grumbled as she uncrossed her legs and stretched. “It’s a miracle that it hasn’t wrecked your hair already.”
“You already do keep a blow dryer on you at all times.”
“Well,” she murmured as she reached one hand up to touch her hair. “Sometimes a girl needs to be prepared for emergencies and unlikely situations.”
“The point is, I’m made of hardier stuff than you, and apparently,” Liz paused and teasingly poked her own bun, “my hair is Rapunzel-like, able to support the weight of chlorine and dashing storybook princes.”
With a lazy smile tossed Liz’s direction, Maria said, “Can’t argue with that.”
“Poor Alex,” they both said at the same time with huge smiles as memories from play-dates already a decade old rushed over them.
When a sharp whistle and the piercing whine of a megaphone came from a scant three feet away from their dugout, Maria swiftly covered her ears and scowled. Liz reluctantly tore her eyes away from the field and listened.
“OK, let’s practice the pyramid and the new routine for fifteen minutes and then we’ll go back inside the gym. Remember the faster you get into position, the sooner you can start finessing your delivery,” promised a sugary sweet voice.
Maria instantly made a harsh gagging sound so Liz clapped her hand over her mouth to cover her giggle and swiftly elbowed her best friend.
A group of fresh-faced cheerleaders skipped towards the benches, peeled off their sweatshirts and bounded onto the field, cutting right in front of the approaching baseball guys. Some of the girls were outgoing enough to shyly smile and flirt with their crushes, already taking their cues from the way the Varsity cheerleaders acted.
There were two girls trailing behind them, and the one carrying the megaphone was not the one in the cheerleading uniform oddly enough.
To Maria’s disgust, the two girls were making their way towards the away team’s dugout that they had commandeered for the past two weeks.
Maria lowered her voice and muttered, “Whose smart idea was it to give Missy Troy a megaphone?”
Liz gave a tiny shrug before she looked up. For a second, she thought she saw a dark shadow flash in Missy’s pale, icy blue eyes, but it disappeared just as quickly, that she wasn’t even sure it’d been there. Then Missy was standing before them, smiling warmly at both Liz and Maria.
“Hey, Parker, Maria…How’s it going?” Missy asked sweetly.
“We’re just hanging out here for a while, waiting on a friend.”
“It’s so cold out here today, right, Jenny?” she asked, spinning around to face her friend.
Jenny, a shorter redhead with unruly curls and a smattering of pimples on her chin, opened and closed her mouth like a fish out of water and no words came out aside from a choked, gasping sound that could have been the word “no” as much as it could have been “yes.”
“Poor Jenny’s got a sore throat and her voice is a little touch and go. Imagine, we were at lunch today, I was nibbling on my salad, telling her all about Brown and how perfect it is for me, and she was feasting on her big bacon sandwich and I didn’t hear a peep out of her the whole time. She’s tried cough drops, water, hot tea, cold tea, hot towels, cold showers, steam rooms…”
Missy chose that moment to toss her long mane of blonde hair behind her back before turning to Jenny for confirmation. “She’s tried just about everything aside from standing on her head,” she added with a glittering giggle.
She talked quickly, using her hands like punctuation marks whenever she chose. Every hand gesture attracted notice of her freshly manicured nails and bejeweled wrists.
Maria picked up on the snootiness in Missy’s voice and her expression soured instantly.
“And then I got to thinking after she scribbled out what the problem was on her palm. Poor Jenny’s got to run JV cheerleading practice today, deliver her oral report in Spanish tomorrow, and track down a lucky boy to ask her to formal. So I thought why don’t I do some of the talking for her and make it a little easier while she recovers!” the blonde in front of them beamed so that her teeth shined back at them.
Liz blinked twice, startled as always by the state of her teeth.
“Oh, Daddy just got this new teeth whitening machine into the office and I was his unwilling guinea pig,” she continued, managing, somehow, to keep a smile on her face with every word she spoke.
Maria, disgruntled, rubbed her eyes. Why was Glinda trying to blind them again?
“Don’t they look fantastic?” she cried.
Beside her, Jenny was nodding so hard the frames of her glasses were doing double time to keep up with the motions of the mass of curls tucked behind he ears.
“Oh, Maria, it looks like you’re turning green, too! Just let me know if you need me to help you out.”
Instantly, Jenny’s face colored bright red and she looked over her shoulder at her squad.
Maria’s eyes narrowed and she stuck up her chin. She leveled the girl across form her with an icy stare and told her, “I’m not sick, Missy. And maybe you should check out that article in Teen Vogue because that bronzer SoCal look isn’t in anymore.”
A slightly admiring grin crossed Missy’s heart shaped face before she indulgently replied, “I don’t read Teen Vogue, and if Elle magazine says it’s in, it’s in. On the other hand, it did say to toss out old makeup from childhood and Halloween. Things like aquamarine blush.”
Anger flared in Maria’s eyes and she almost, almost jumped up. Then Missy smoothly recovered by innocently adding, “Well, goodness knows my little sister is always playing with my makeup so maybe I did the right thing by keeping some of the fun stuff. Wouldn’t you agree?”
Liz gulped and looked away uncomfortably as both girls fumed at each other. She was never in her element when girls fought like this. She never knew what to say or where to look when it didn’t involve her. It would have never occurred to her that by not looking at Maria and not jumping in she was giving Missy even more power.
In spite of all of this, Liz was probably the most pleased person there when Missy broke the silence with, “Okay, well Jenny and I have to run. Practice can’t run itself you know.”
Before she left, she looked down her nose at Liz. “Hey, Liz, are you nervous about Friday?”
Liz frowned. “No, I’m actually really excited. Any of us would make up a good co-captain pair.”
Missy nodded, “Well, I’m sure you’re right.” She turned on her heel and practically dragged Jenny across the field.
“That girl is like a bucket of ice down my shirt,” Maria groaned as soon as Missy was out of earshot.
“Excuse me, I happen to think Missy is extremely hot,” Alex huffed as he entered the dugout and started unloading his camera gear.
“I take that back: ice down my shirt in the dead cold of winter in the middle of Russia at this very moment,” Maria said in a deadpan voice.
“She’s so nice, too,” which earned Alex a slap from Maria that had him rubbing his shoulder.
“What rhymes with Sissy the Witch?” she sang playfully.
“Wash your mouth out with soap!” Alex teased.
“Well what rhymes with Ferry and Fizzy the Bores?” Maria asked.
“SHAFT!” Alex cried, a little too loudly, and the three of them cracked up, the laughter of each contagiously infecting the next whenever it threatened to die out.
“Hmm, is it obvious I don’t like her?” Maria asked dryly.
Liz shrugged. “You haven’t spent any time with her. She’s not half bad.”
“She and I could be great together,” Alex said dreamily.
Liz made a loud gagging sound. “OK, that I can’t accept.” She was rewarded with a quick, strong shove from her slender best friend before he slid one arm around her neck and gave her a hug.
Maria leaned her head on Liz’s shoulder and muttered, “Why do they even need to practice?” referring to the group of junior cheerleaders who were struggling to keep up with Missy’s barked commands.
“Don’t know,” Liz said neutrally, distracted by one who was facing them and smiling broadly at her. She smiled and waved back.
“It’s not like we even need them. I’m always screaming myself hoarse at every game I go to without their rallying me to do so.”
“Some girls think it’s a big deal,” Liz offered, remembering the long list of names for auditions each year. The list was replaced two days after the end of tryouts. The crossed out names were those who hadn’t made it, the circled ones were the second string cheerleaders and the scant highlighted names were the ones who had more or less arrived at the top of the social pyramid at school.
“Whatever.” Maria said, sighing and slumping so forcefully her bangs floated away from her forehead. “I’m just glad you and I never got sucked into that abyss.”
“Yes, thank God! Who knows who I’d be forced to sit with at lunch?” Alex climbed behind the lone bench and started packing up his camera equipment.
“You know, we’d probably be shaking our pom-poms and doling out boxes of fresh baked goods at half time with huge smiles on our faces,” Liz said with a sigh.
Maria snorted, “We both know I’m allergic to ovens. I’d pity the poor guy who got me as a spirit minx. He’d break a tooth so fast.”
Alex squeezed his head between theirs and rested his chin on the cradle of their shoulders. “OK, even I know that’s definitely not what they call them.”
“Then it’s probably the sugah mamas,” Maria purred with a giggle.
A smile crossed Liz’s face and she beamed back at Maria. “Yeah, that’s it.”
The sharp buzz of a whistle sounded from the field and the baseball team started heading towards the cooler. Maria jabbed Liz with her elbow when she started beaming at him.
“What?” Liz demanded quietly.
“Stop smiling so hard,” she insisted through clenched teeth as he started crossing the distance between them. “Relax!”
Liz didn’t spare Maria an irritated glance before she returned her eyes forward and met his.
“Hey,” he said when he stopped in front of them. His eyes swept over Maria and Alex’s faces, including them, then he focused on her. “Hey, Liz, what’s up?”
“Nothing new, just got out of practice,” Liz said with an easy smile. “You?”
“I just ran about five miles, I’d rather have spent that time in the pool,” he replied with a weariness she knew was for her benefit.
His lips curved up into a smile, a wide dimple flashed in his right cheek (she’d been in love with the boy for six years, of course she knew which cheek his dimples lay in!) and utterly paralyzed her.
He leaned forward. She sat up straighter and didn’t dare blink.
To her left, Alex busied himself with changing his camera batteries. Let’s face it, by the time Liz was done drooling over Evans here, it’d be nighttime.
Oh, boy. Liz gripped the seat bench tighter.
“Think you’ll win next week?” he asked.
She shrugged and humbly said, “We have a pretty good shot.”
He shifted his weight and shielded his eyes from the sun. “Are you still working on our paper?”
“Actually, I finished my half last night. Maybe you can send me yours when you’re done so I can put them together and print it.”
“Cool, I just finished my conclusion. I could bring over my half tonight and we could finish it up together,” he suggested.
“Tonight?” Liz squeaked.
She was dimly aware of both Alex and Maria covering up their laughs with a cough and snort, but it didn’t matter at that instant.
“You want to come over tonight?” she reiterated slowly.
She could feel her cheeks heating up as he lazily knit his eyebrows together and a teasing glint flashed in his eyes. Her eyes locked onto his smooth lips as he said, “Sure, why not?”
Okay, well it wasn’t the yes, of course she’d wanted to hear but she wasn’t greedy. She’d take what she could get!
A sigh fell from her own lips, one that had Maria rolling her eyes and slyly whisking the pack of gum out of Liz’s pocket without her even noticing.
“Two birds with one stone,” he added with a low rich chuckle that spread over her like honey.
Alex’s eyes narrowed at his words, but her eyes were still riveted to his lips as she dreamily imagined what it’d be like to kiss him. When he awkwardly shifted his weight back and forth, she shook her head and stared. “Two what?” Liz whispered.
Her eyes flew back to his face to scan his light brown eyes for any clues. She kept searching but nothing changed and the only thing the lost seconds proved was that he was a very patient guy.
From her right, Maria was studying his smile too. She saw how his gaze remained cool and friendly, and she didn’t need to be facing Liz to find out if she was staring up at him adoringly. Her voice was practically oozing with it.
Maria sighed and busied herself with answering a text message. If there were two things last summer had taught her it was how to recognize smiles like that and true chemistry from a mile away. There wasn’t an ounce of that here and the truth is that smile on his face was one a popular guy like Kyle Evans bestowed upon every girl he spoke to.
Liz’s heart fluttered. “That’d be great. What time can you – er, are you coming over?”
He looked over his shoulder as the junior cheerleaders cried, “Go Comets!” at the top of their lungs.
“Umm, how about we work on it at eight?” he suggested.
Liz blurted, “Great! See you at eight!”
“Uh, yeah, great,” Kyle said, his eyebrow arching up before nodding once and leaving.
“That was so great,” Alex teased. “Isn’t it great when we do things together?”
“Just great!” Maria chipped in with a giggle.
“Shut up,” Liz hissed.
“I’m feeling great about how it’ll go tonight! Make sure you fill us in when we’re all together,” Maria chanced.
Liz elbowed her hard and when Alex added, “That sounds great, great, great!” she fixed him with a glare.
He shivered visibly and chuckled, “Easy there, cowgirl.”
Liz chewed her lower lip thoughtfully. “Kyle’s coming over tonight. What does that mean?” she asked softly.
Before she even gave them a chance to answer or guess, she offered weakly, “Do you think he’s going to ask me out?”
Over her head, Alex and Maria exchanged worried glances.
“Uh, maybe?” Maria said, her voice not hiding the doubt she felt.
“Anything’s possible!” Alex chirped, determined to one up her.
“Only time will tell,” Maria said testily, frowning at him.
“Why not?” he said as he squeezed Liz’s shoulders. “You’re attractive, and you’ve got that hard-core athlete working-out-til-I-drop mentality.”
She smiled half-heartedly. “Yeah,” she said on a whisper.
“You know, I wish Mrs. Davies would give us a history assignment like yours so I could finagle a date out of my partner,” Alex said seriously.
“Actually, it’s been a bit tricky. I only have to write the intro and half of the body while he writes the rest and the conclusion, but we had to really plan it out first.”
“Better six pages than all twelve,” Maria pointed out.
Liz murmured, “Definitely.” Kyle was starting across the field with a teammate, and they were making their way towards the cheerleaders.
Maria had definitely had more than her fill of popular guys like Kyle Evans. It seemed the only thing to do was to wait for Liz to outgrow her interest in him, which undoubtedly she would, Maria thought sadly.
She had to bite her tongue, sit on her fingers, and scrunch her toes to keep from spilling her observations. She knew Liz was not ready to hear it anytime soon.
The way she saw it, Liz would probably be ready to hear it over a cone of Ben and Jerry’s finest ten years from now so she casually asked, “Can we have standing Ben and Jerry’s dates until we’ve got arthritis?”
Liz didn’t hesitate. “Absolutely, I’ll pencil you in from now until forever.”
“Fantastic!” Maria said happily.
“Quick, smile!” Alex instructed as he crouched down before them. The two girls scooted closer and curved their mouths into huge smiles for the camera he had poised at them.
He snapped his camera lens twice, and a third time, without flash, the instant their faces relaxed. Alex was the new photographer for the Yearbook club. It felt like everyone knew his name lately because he’d been stopping by rehearsals and practices to snap candid pictures. He’d just finished up the last of the individual faculty profile shots, and by next week, he’d finish up the club and team portraits.
Maria watched with amusement as Liz began seeking Kyle out again with anxious eyes.
“Say, Alex . . . ”
“Yes, my lady . . . ”
Maria laughed and rolled her eyes. “Do you ever wonder why we wait here for you?”
He lifted his shoulders and heaved a heavy sigh. “Maybe ‘cause my car is in the shop and you offered to wait for me to finish up my Yearbook duties so you can give me and us a ride.”
“Well we could just as easily wait in the lounge or the library where there’s heat,” Maria pointed out.
When Liz looked at her, she went on. “Instead we wait out here on the cold dugout bench. Her hair is still wet,” she said as she feathered her hands over Liz’s bun. She peered at the dark wet spot at the bottom of Liz’s knapsack. “And she didn’t even squeeze out her swimsuit.”
“So?” Liz said, bouncing her leg up and down.
Maria paused one telling moment. “I was just making an observation.”
“Well, if you’re still cold, we can go home now,” Liz suggested.
Maria rolled her eyes. “That’s not the point.”
“It isn’t?” Alex asked.
“No, the point is she is so heartsick it’s making me queasy,” Maria told Alex.
Liz cleared her throat loudly, and stood so she was facing them. “Hello, I’m still here!”
Maria nodded. “Yep, and so is Kyle.”
Seeing the calm on Liz’s face she nudged her best friend with, “You could ask him out right now. Why wait for tonight?”
A playful glint was sparkling in Maria’s eyes and Liz felt herself nodding. Her words, “Yeah, sure, why not…” lingered in the air for a few seconds.
Maria’s mouth dropped open because she’d been expecting Liz to talk her way out of it. No one loved a challenge more than Liz, but she’d been sure she’d turn this one down. This was the first time Liz had shown any of her usual fire and courage when it came to Kyle Evans. She recovered quickly and gave Liz a reassuring hand squeeze.
“Liz,” Alex said gently, playing mediator. “You don’t have to do this…”
“She could though,” Maria said boldly.
“I was going to do it anyway,” she told him. “Sooner or later.”
Alex nodded and grinned suddenly, “If he says no, will you give him a black eye, too?”
Liz’s hands clapped to her mouth in shock and she giggled, fondly remembering a play-date gone awry when they were just six years old. “Alex, had I not given you that black eye, would we be friends today?”
Alex laughed along with her and he managed to reply, “Absolutely not.”
A loud burst of wolf whistles, girlish squeals, and cries of “Way to go, Evans!” came from the field and Liz, Alex and Maria all turned to assess.
Liz’s heart sank as her eyes landed on a tiny blonde cheerleader in lip-lock with Kyle.
She jealously watched the girl raise her arms and loop them around his neck while they went on kissing and smiling. As ridiculous and impossible as the thought of even kissing when you were that happy seemed, Liz could tell it was probably amazing.
Liz let out a little gasp as the girl in his arms kicked her legs up in the air. She suddenly recognized those Sketchers sneakers, that jeans jacket, that ribbon tying back her shiny golden curls, and even those knee socks with the light blue stripes. Those socks were hers!
“Oh, my God,” Maria hissed loudly enough for Liz to know that what she was seeing was not just her imagination playing a wicked trick.
Alex blithely replied, “Huh? What? Ouch! What’s the matt—Oh . . . ”
Then the only thing Liz could hear was her heart pounding while the joy on her younger sister’s face crystallized in her mind.
When Kyle and Tess snatched gulps of air and refastened their mouths, Liz angrily swiped at a tear that was sliding down her cheek.
She whirled around and snapped, “So can we leave yet? Clearly he’s already taken.”
* * * * *
I'm so sorry! I turned 20 last weekend, which was great, but I also had some writing-related projects to finish before my internship ended and I'm a slow writer so it took me a while to finish the end of this. 
It's one thing for me to love writing something, it's really something to hear y'all like it too.
Haha, yay for you and Liz!