I won't ramble too much this time. Here's the next part!
Part 11
The next few days were filled with more not-so-subtle hints. Maria came up with lots of little ideas, like “accidentally” bumping into Liz and pushing her into Michael. Little things like that that would get him to put his hands on her. Albeit briefly.
A few nights later, when she was thoroughly behind on her homework, Liz waited outside the house with Maria next to the car. She wasn’t really sure whose car it was. They all seemed to drive it, but something told Liz that Maria and Michael hadn’t been the ones to pay for it. They weren’t really working types from what she could tell. Kyle had probably been the moneyman. He seemed like a nice guy, and Liz was gradually coming to accept his relationship with his girlfriends. It was weird, but they all seemed happy. That was really all that mattered.
She really wanted to be happy like that with Michael.
“I swear to God,” Maria grumbled, chewing on a piece of gum loudly, “these so-called ‘men’ take longer to get ready than we women do.”
Liz laughed a little, then felt a vibration from inside her purse. She reached in and looked at her cell phone. It was her mom calling. She thought about flipping open the phone and talking to her for a few minutes—they tried to talk everyday—but she didn’t want to look un-cool. Not now. Not when she was finally starting to be a little bit popular.
She turned off her phone and slid it back into her purse.
“Who was that?” Maria asked.
“No one,” she answered flippantly. “Just my mom.”
“Yeah, I never talk to my mom, either,” Maria said.
“I usually do, but . . .” Liz shrugged. “Whatever.”
“Hmm.”
Before Liz could think about it anymore, the front door opened and one of the guys came out, a dark-haired one who she hadn’t met before. Or had she? He looked vaguely familiar.
“Max,” Maria said. “You haven’t met Liz yet, have you?”
He studied her for a moment and said, “Uh, I don’t know. I might have seen you around.”
“Yeah, I think so,” she said, starting to remember. “I came up to you one day and asked you where the library was.”
“Yeah, I knew you looked familiar.”
She smiled, surprised that she even remembered.
“Where are those other two?” Maria grumbled impatiently. “I’m getting blisters; I’ve been standing out here so long.”
“Uh, they’re coming, I think,” Max replied.
“We still have to stop and pick up Isabel and Tess. The party’s gonna be over by the time we get there.”
“Where are we going again?” Liz asked.
“Sigma Chi, where all the boys live,” Maria replied with a grin.
As she said that, Michael and Kyle walked out the front door.
“Where all the hot boys live,” she amended. “No offense, Max.”
He just shook his head.
Liz watched as Maria crossed her arms over her chest and addressed Kyle and Michael, mainly Michael. “Took you long enough.”
“What can I say?” Michael said. “Some of us aren’t into that bed-head look.”
She laughed sarcastically, then flipped her middle finger up at him.
“Oh, real mature,” he commented. “What’s up, Liz?” He gave her a nod.
“Hmm.” She didn’t know what else to say. She was so happy that he nodded at her. What was that? It was something, maybe, but was it much? Maria had promised that she’d be dating Michael by the end of the week. Here it was, almost that time, and she didn’t feel as though she were any closer.
“Can we go?” Maria whined. “Who’s driving?”
Kyle grunted. “Driving? Are you kidding?”
“No.”
Kyle shook his head. “No one’s driving. There’s no place to park up there.”
“But . . . what about the cops?”
“Cops?” Liz echoed, not aware that there might be cops showing up at this thing.
“If we hear sirens, I wanna make a getaway in an el automobile.”
“Probably faster on foot,” Michael reasoned.
“Hello, I’m wearing stilettos.”
“Well, too bad,” he said, obviously not sympathizing. “Come on, you know the cops aren’t gonna be there. They never are. Suck it up, DeLuca.” He started off down the sidewalk, Kyle beside him. Liz followed for pure want of being close to him, and Maria stayed right where she was standing, looking exasperated. Max stayed with her.
“Wait a minute!” she exclaimed. “I’m not walking all the way to Sigma Chi! It’s, like, three miles! And we still have to pick up Isabel and Tess!”
“On the way,” Kyle called back to her.
“But I don’t wanna walk!” she whined again.
“Fine, stay here,” Michael suggested, barely slowing down.
“You jerk!”
He rolled his eyes, then turned and headed back for her. Liz watched as he placed his arms around her legs and hoisted her up and over his shoulder.
“Ah! Michael!” she screamed. “Put me down!” She pounded on his back with her fists.
“If you’re not gonna walk . . .” He trailed off. “I’m too nice.”
“Too nice?” she spat. “My skirt’s blowing up in the wind! My whole ass is hanging out!”
“Nothin’ new,” he muttered, walking past Liz and rejoining Kyle at the front of the group again. “Party train’s movin’. Let’s go, people.”
“Michael!” Maria kept shrieking. “Ugh, I hate you! I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”
Liz brought up the rear with Max—not Maria’s rear, but the rear of the ‘party train’—thinking that she wouldn’t mind having Michael carry her the way he was carrying Maria.
God, she thought. Michael and Maria are always . . .
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
The party was in full-swing by the time they got there. Alcohol was flowing like a rapid river, people were dancing, couples were making out. Maria coaxed Liz out into the middle of the room to dance with a group of fraternity guys. She was tense at first, of course, but she started to loosen up, and soon guys were noticing.
Which one of these guys am I going to sleep with tonight? Maria wondered, surveying her choices. Too tall. Too fat. Too . . . yummy for words. She made eye contact with a blonde guy who was trying to act like he wasn’t watching her but obviously was. She couldn’t wait to see him naked.
“Alright, enough dancing,” Maria said, grabbing Liz’s hand and pulling her away from the fraternity guys. “Time to get serious.”
“Serious about what?” Liz asked. “I’m already serious. Maybe I should drink and get less serious.”
“No, don’t do that.”
“Why not? Everyone else is.”
“And if everyone else was jumping off a bridge, would you?” Maria shook her head and mentally scolded herself for sounding so parental. “Look, drink if you want to, but keep in mind that you’re a light-weight. If I were you, though, I wouldn’t drink tonight. You have work to do.”
“Michael work?” Liz guessed.
“Yeah.”
She shifted her weight from side to side and said, “I don’t get it, Maria. Why are we over here if he’s over there?” She pointed to the other side of the room at Michael. He was standing on the bottom of the stairs, romancing a girl who was clearly oblivious to his womanizing ways. It actually amazed Maria that he was still able to charm so many innocent girls, even with his reputation.
“Don’t worry,” Maria told Liz. “It’s a tactic.”
“It is?”
“Uh-huh. The jealousy tactic. Now contrary to what that prick keeps saying, I was not jealous. The cat-fight catastrophe was for you. You know that, right?”
“Of course.”
“And Michael, he acts all macho like, ‘Oh, I can’t get jealous.’ But he can. And he will,” Maria said confidently.
“How?”
“Well, the one thing any guy hates is seeing another man’s hands on his girl. So you’re gonna flirt it up with a hottie, make him flirt back with you, and catch Michael’s attention. Hopefully he’ll come over here and get really pissed off. Jealousy.”
Liz smiled nervously. “Okay, that all sounds great in theory, but I still don’t know how to flirt.”
“Watch and learn.” Maria sashayed over to the blonde guy who had been watching her, motioning for Liz to follow. She stopped in front of him and said, “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Steven.”
“Got a girlfriend, Steven?” she asked.
“Yeah, she’s home sick.”
“Hmm. You’re hard, I see.” She glanced down at the bulge in his pants and grinned. “For me or her?”
“Definitely for you.”
She moved in closer to him, resting one hand on his shoulder. Usually, she would be way more aggressive than this, even, but since Liz was watching and trying to learn . . .
“You know who I am, right?”
“Of course,” he said. “Maria DeLuca, former captain of the dance team.”
That word, former . . . it bothered her a little bit, and she took a step back from him. “What else do you know?” she asked, feeling as though she’d just lost a little bit of her edge somehow.
“That you’re a whore,” he said, “fuck everyone. So I guess it’s my turn.”
He reached behind her and grabbed her ass, trying to pull her towards him.
“Okay, I’m not in the mood anymore,” she said, trying to get away.
“Oh, no, you don’t.” He grabbed onto her arm roughly, yanking her back again.
“Stop it, I’m serious.”
“Little tease, huh?”
“Let go of me,” she warned.
“No, fuck me, bitch.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“I’m totally drunk,” the cute little freshman Michael was flirting with slurred. “Can you take me back to your place?”
“Can I?” He grinned. This was almost too easy.
For some reason, though, he glanced up, and it was a stupid thing to do; because when he did, he saw Maria across the room. Some blonde guy was holding onto her, and she seemed to be trying to get away. Liz was standing nearby, but there wasn’t really anything she could do.
“I’ll be right back,” he told his companion, sidestepping her and pushing his way through the crowd of party-goers. He heard the blonde guy seething things to Maria when he approached. “I’m gonna fuck your ass.”
“Just let go of me, you son of a--”
Michael curled his hand into a fist and swung at the guy before Maria could finish. The impact knocked him off his feet, and he sprawled on the floor, obviously not as tough as he pretended to be.
Michael to the rescue, he thought to himself, smiling.
He thought that maybe, just maybe, Maria might show some gratitude for once. But instead, she gave him an exasperated look and demanded, “What the hell did you do that for? Now I look weak!” She placed her hands on his chest and shoved him backwards before stomping off, not one hint of gratitude anywhere.
“Or,” he suggested, “thanks?” He cast a glance at Liz and shook his head. “She’s crazy.”
Even though she couldn’t possibly have heard him, Maria must have somehow known what he said, because she raised her voice to shout over the music, “You’re crazier!”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Max was happy when Maria invited him into her bedroom late that night, even though it was just to talk. Just being around her any time was euphoric to him.
“I mean, can you believe that?” she said so animatedly. “Where does he think he lives, the O.C.?”
“Yeah, they do a lot of hitting on that show,” Max agreed quietly.
“Which he secretly watches, and will never admit to!” She huffed, clearly exasperated. “You know, his ego is really out of control. What makes him think he can just go ahead and defend my honor without even discussing it with me first?”
“Um . . .” Max didn’t really know what to say. Michael hadn’t done anything wrong. Maria had just said it herself. He had ‘defended her honor.’ Lucky him.
“Am I right, or am I right?”
“Uh . . .” He didn’t want to disagree and upset her anymore, so he just said, “Yeah?” and left it at that.
She breathed a sigh of relief. “See, this is why I like you so much, Max. You’re like a girl, or a loveable brother.”
He really didn’t want to be either of those things.
“I can tell you anything, and I know you’ll agree with me,” she added. “You’re so much better than Michael. Ugh, I can’t stand him!”
“That’s . . . obvious.”
“This eight years of knowing him is really starting to grate.”
“Well, you know, for what it’s worth,” he said cautiously, “I would’ve done the same thing.”
“What, you would’ve hit that guy, too?”
“Yeah,” Max replied, “in an instant. Because, even though I know you’re strong and you can handle yourself, I could never stand back and watch something bad happen to you. I care about you, too much.”
Maria smiled. “Aw, Max.” She hugged him briefly, and he wondered if she could tell how it affected him, having her arms around him and his arms around her in return, being close, contacting.
She pulled away from the hug all too soon and reverted back to her ever-present subject: Michael Guerin. “See, that’s the difference between you Michael. You care. He doesn’t. At all!” She seemed to realize what she was saying then and added, “I mean, not that I want him to.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“I care about you,” Michael murmured in his best impassioned, dramatic voice. “So much. Too much. I can’t breathe without you; I can’t live without you. Let me take you, my darling lover girl!”
“What’re you doing?” Alex asked, spinning around in his chair to give him a look of utter confusion.
“Just adding some dialogue to your cheesy soap-opera movie,” he replied, gesturing to the soundless footage playing across the computer screen. Lots of random teenage couples in the midst of seemingly random conversations.
“It’s not a soap-opera,” Alex insisted. “It’s a work of art.”
The footage switched, and Michael raised an eyebrow at what he saw next. “Yeah, I can see that.” He sat down beside Alex, surprised that his friend had done some filming of Isabel Evans.
Alex wet his lips and tried to explain. “She was just . . . in the area.”
“Sure. Whatever, man.”
“Well . . . can you blame me? I mean, look at her.” Alex gazed at the footage of Isabel walking to class wistfully. “She’s so . . .”
“Kyle’s,” Michael filled in.
“Oh, don’t remind me.”
Michael chuckled. “I wouldn’t waste your time, man.”
“What do you mean? You don’t think it can be done?”
“Nope.”
“Thanks, that’s a . . . great boost of confidence there.”
“Sorry.”
Alex paused the film and leaned forward, burrowing one hand in his hair. “Soap-opera movie,” he grumbled. “You’re one to talk.”
“What do you mean?”
“You ever notice how there’s one girl in just about everything you’ve ever filmed?”
Michael thought about it, and unfortunately . . . Alex was right. Holy crap. For some reason, it’d never occurred to him before, but Maria was a constant in his videos. Every time. “That’s different,” he reasoned. “She gets pissed, and it’s funny. I like comedies.”
“No, maybe it’s an epic romance,” Alex suggested. “Like Titanic, without the boat.”
Michael chuckled at the insane thought of that and shook his head. “What the fuck, man?”
Alex laughed, too. “I don’t know.”
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
After the complete un-fun that had been Sigma Chi the night before, everyone decided to stay in the next night. Even though it was a perfectly party-able Friday night.
Feeling a bit cold, Maria slipped on a bright, colorful bathrobe over the top of her pajamas and went out into the living room to join Michael on the couch. She sat down beside him grudgingly and ignored the sounds of the television as she started in. “I’m sorry I yelled at you last night, but what else is new?”
“Was that an apology?” Michael asked incredulously. “‘Cause . . . it sucks.”
She immediately reverted into combat mode. “Well, what do you want me to say?”
“How ‘bout thank you?” he suggested.
“Ew, no.”
“You are so . . .”
“Gorgeous? I know.” She smirked. “You know what, Michael, you should be the one apologizing to me.”
“Are you . . . fucking kidding me? I saved your life!”
“Saved my life?” she resounded emphatically. “Wow, that is . . . really overstated.”
“Well, I took a swing for you and that’s the point. Hence the two simple words thank and you.”
“Oh, please,” she scoffed. “You’ve never said that to me.”
“Because you’ve never done anything worth my gratitude.”
“You could still say it.”
“What, thanks for driving me insane?”
“Or . . . for being so gorgeous.”
He chuckled. “Oh, you are insane.”
“I may be insane, but I’m not sorry,” she decided.
“Neither am I.”
“Good.”
“Great.”
Just then, Kyle strode into the living room and glanced down at the two of them. “You guys are . . . really bad apologizers. You know that, right?”
“I’m not apologizing,” Michael pointed out.
“And I did, but I didn’t mean it,” Maria added. “He’s an ass.”
“She can kiss mine.”
“In his dreams.”
Kyle gave them both a wide-eyed, slightly confused look and just said, “Okay. I’m gonna go . . . masturbate.” He headed off downstairs.
“Where’s your women?” Maria called after him.
“That time of the month for both of them,” he replied. “I’m not into it, I’m afraid.”
Michael made a sound of disgust. “Ugh, just thinkin’ about that gives me the creeps.”
“Wimp,” she commented.
He cast a glance at her and speculated, “Is that why you’re always such a bitch to be around? Constant PMS?”
She rolled her eyes. “Whatever, I’m going to bed.” She made a move to stand up, but he grabbed her arm and pulled her back down.
“Hey, wait a minute. The night’s young,” he said. “We could still annoy each other some more. I was gonna go hit the campus rec center. Wanna come?”
Instinctively, her self-conscious female mind turned wanna come? into you need to come. “Are you saying I’m fat?”
“What?”
“I’m fat and I need to work out?”
“See, I don’t get you. Why do you do that?’
“What, get offended when someone calls me fat?”
“I didn’t say that!”
“You were thinking it!” she shouted, stomping off into her bedroom to change into some workout clothes.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria sat next to Michael on one of the stationary bicycles that even at the campus recreational center, trying to pedal as fast as he did. But she couldn’t. Either he was just showing off or he was in decent physical shape.
“You know, you’re burning, like, one calorie a minute,” Michael commented, motioning toward the tiny computer screen on the bike that indicated her heart rate, miles traveled, revolutions per minute, and calories burned. All of his numbers were much higher than hers.
“There you go, calling me fat again,” she mumbled under her breath.
“Oh, screw it. I’m gonna go lift weights in a minute.”
Maria laughed a little to herself and smiled.
“What?” he asked.
“Nothing. I just had this beautiful fantasy of you attempting to bench press and then, like, accidentally dropping the whole bar on your face.” She sighed wistfully. “Oh, that’d be funny.”
“You think I’m not strong, huh?” he said, still pedaling on the bike. “Strong enough to knock that guy to the ground in a single punch. Strong enough to lift you over my shoulder the other night.”
“Oh, and that must have been so difficult because I’m so fat.”
He chuckled. “You said it; I didn’t.”
She rolled her eyes and then spotted a particularly gorgeous male over in the corner doing pull-ups. She gazed at him for a minute, wishing that she was here alone instead of with Michael. It was really hard to pick up guys with him around because everyone always grossly assumed they were together.
“I’m not stupid, you know,” Michael blurted suddenly. “I know you’re trying to hook me up with Liz.”
She turned to face him again and decided there was no use in denying it. “You’re right. I am trying to set you up with her. But you’re wrong about the stupid part. You’re very, very stupid.”
“Smarter than you.”
“Oh, really? If you’re so smart, why don’t you tutor me in calculus, huh? Mr. Smarty-Pants.”
“‘Cause . . . no, I’m not that smart. But I’m not stupid, either,” he replied. “The Liz thing’s pretty obvious. ‘Michael, help her stretch. Michael, dance with her. Michael, isn’t she hot?” he mimicked in an over-exaggeratedly Maria-esque voice.
“Well, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, she’s a pretty girl, but she’s not gonna be my girlfriend. So just give it up.”
Maria sighed. Liz’s forward progress had just came to a screeching halt. “So there’s, like, no chance. No chance whatsoever?”
“No chance,” Michael said. He stopped pedaling and stood up. “Screw this bike. I’m gonna go lift.”
Maria stopped pedaling once he was gone, not really caring about all this exercise stuff, and worried about what she was going to tell Liz. Her friend had a total first-love crush on him, and if she found out there was no chance, it was going to break her heart.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
“So, usually nerds cave easily, you know? But this one, I swear to God, he must be bi, because I showed him my boobs, and he still wouldn’t write the paper for me. I let him touch my boobs; still nothing. Finally I just fucked him and he was finally convinced.” Maria sighed heavily. “Worst five minutes of my life.”
“Five minutes?” Liz echoed. “I thought it was supposed to take longer than that.”
“It is.” Maria turned on the sidewalk and headed up towards the house, Liz right beside her. “I can’t wait ‘til you have sex, Liz. You’ll be so happy.”
“As long as I’m with the right person,” Liz added. “Which, speaking of . . . how close am I to dating Michael?”
Maria slowed down her steps and tried to think of a way to answer. “Uh . . .”
“’Cause I mean, you said I’d be dating him by now, but I’m not.”
“Well, I’m not a mathematician, Liz. My calculations could be off.”
“How off?”
Maria sighed again, not having the heart to tell her friend that pursuing Michael was a lost cause. “Look, I gotta talk to you about all this. Let’s get inside first.”
“Is something wrong?”
Maria opened the door and stepped inside, purposefully not answering. Michael was sitting at kitchen counter eating a hamburger. “I knew I smelled something,” he muttered when she shut the door.
“Oh, very funny.” She walked over to him, grabbed his burger out of his hands, much to his protest, and took a bite. She immediately cringed when she tasted something disgusting. “Ew, did you put . . . mayo on that?”
“Yeah, it’s good.”
She shook her head and handed it back to him, spitting the bite she’d just taken into the trash. “Sick.”
Kyle came out of the bathroom then, belched, and headed into the kitchen. “Hey, gang’s all here. Except Max. You think he’s gettin’ laid?”
Michael and Maria both laughed at the thought. “Yeah, right,” Michael said, setting his burger down on his plate. “He’s probably just studying.”
“Poor guy,” Maria added, thinking that he must be so sexually frustrated. A twenty-two year-old virgin. That had to be painful.
“So.” Michael turned to face Maria and smirked, asking, “Who’d you do today? I gotta keep up.”
“Oh, just some geek,” she answered flippantly, “and no, I don’t wanna talk about it.”
“That bad, huh?”
“I said I don’t wanna talk about it.”
He chuckled and reached out to pinch her side.
“Hey!” she yelped.
“You’re such a slut,” he said, smiling.
“Yeah, so?”
He just chuckled.
She couldn’t resist smiling as he teased her. “Shut up,” she teased back. “You’re a slut, too.”
“Michael the man-whore!” Kyle exclaimed. “Ah, I love it!”
Michael shrugged. “It is what it is.”
Suddenly, Liz cleared her throat quietly and said, “Maria?”
“What?” Maria spun around, once again almost forgetting that her friend was there and that they were supposed to talk. “Oh, right. Liz and I are gonna go have a little girl time.” She grabbed Liz’s arm and pulled her out of the kitchen and down the hallway. She didn’t even have to be looking at him to know that Michael was raising an intrigued eyebrow at the prospect of ‘girl time.’ “It’s nothing sexy,” she informed him, “so don’t even ask.” And with that, she opened the door to her bedroom and dragged Liz inside. “Okay,” she said as she shut it into place. “We’ve been making some progress, right? Things have been going good?”
“I guess,” Liz said, not sounding as enthusiastic as Maria wanted her to.
“Wait a minute, where’s the girl who would do anything to be with this guy? Where’s the girl who got dreamy every time she thought of him?”
“Oh, I still do,” Liz assured her.
“You’re still that girl?”
“Yeah, I just . . . it seems to be taking awhile, and it’s frustrating.”
“I know, and now, you’re really gonna have to bring it,” Maria told her, seeing no other options.
“What do you mean?”
“Go out there and talk to him. Flirt with him. Make-out with him. Have sex with him if you want to. Just do something to get his attention, to make him ask you out on a date, or, worse case scenario, ask him out. You got it?”
“But . . . no, you have to come with me.”
“I can’t, Liz. It’s pretty much now or never for real this time. If you screw up, there’s not gonna be a next time.” She saw the terrified look on her friend’s face and added, “But no pressure.”
Liz whimpered as Maria told her exactly what to say to Michael.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Five minutes later, Liz walked out of the room. She was happy to find that Kyle wasn’t around anymore and that it was just Michael sitting alone on the living room couch. He was watching TV, some kind of cartoon, and laughing out loud.
Liz took a deep breath and tried to remember what she was supposed to say. She’d just rehearsed it with Maria. Why couldn’t she remember? Why was she such a spaz?
She looked back towards Maria’s bedroom, a safe haven, in a sense, but the door was closed. Now or never, she reminded herself, her heart pounding in nervous anticipation. Oh my god.
“Hey, Michael,” she squeaked out, hating that her voice sounded so high-pitched.
“Hey,” he said, never taking his eyes off the TV screen.
She stood there a good fifteen feet away, looking around, feeling like an idiot with nothing to say. Just say anything, she told herself. Anything’s better than nothing.
“What are you watching?” she asked, sitting down beside him.
“Oh, who knows. Just somethin’ funny,” he replied.
“I love funny TV shows.”
He nodded. “That’s nice.”
That’s nice? Was that an attempted brush-off? Did he want her to go away? She had to admit, in that awkward moment, she actually wanted to go away, be anywhere else, but she knew she couldn’t. Now or never.
“So, um . . . do you know if there are gonna be any good parties tonight?” she asked.
“Huh?”
“Parties. Any good ones?”
“Oh. Uh . . .” He still stared at the TV. “I don’t know. I’ll probably just go to The Lightning Strike.”
“Sounds cool,” she said. “I wish I had something fun to do tonight.” Not bad, she thought, proud of herself for being as subtle as she was.
He laughed again at the television show. “This is so funny.”
She sighed impatiently and decided to scoot a little closer to him. How did Maria make this look so easy, talking to him, being near him?
Michael laughed a few more times as the show came to an end, then said, “Ah, dammit. It’s over. Now what am I gonna do?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “I’m kinda bored myself.”
“I’m not studying,” he said decidedly. “I gotta do something fun.” He finally turned his head to look at her then and asked, “Hey, where’s Maria?”
Something inside of her died a little then, lost all hope completely, and she realized something that had somehow never completely occurred to her before: Maria. It was all about Maria.
“Oh,” she said. “I don’t know. I think she’s still in her room.” She pushed herself up off the couch cushions then, saying, “I’ll go get her.” Michael didn’t say one more word to her as she walked away from him. He was probably too busy thinking about someone else.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
Maria honestly wasn’t surprised when Liz slipped back into the bedroom a few minutes after she’d left it with a sad look on her face. She hadn’t expected Michael to be responsive to Liz’s advances. Liz didn’t really know how to make advances.
“No luck?” Maria asked, even though she already knew.
“None.”
Liz looks really devastated, Maria thought. What did he say to her? “Do you wanna talk about it, or--”
“Not really,” Liz said. “Actually, there isn’t much to talk about. Except for the obvious.”
“The obvious,” Maria echoed. “Right. I’m glad you see it, too, Liz. Michael’s just not boyfriend material. And he’s never gonna get a girlfriend; he’s made that perfectly clear. I mean, if he ever does, God help that girl, because . . . well, obviously, she’s gonna be driven insane. Just be happy it’s not you, Liz. Just be happy it’s not you.”
“Yeah, it’s definitely not me,” Liz agreed. “I should have noticed it sooner.”
“Noticed what?” Maria asked, slightly confused by that remark.
“Don’t you see it, Maria?” Liz said, right before saying something that was completely psychotic and made no sense. “Michael’s totally in love with you.”
Maria just stood there for a minute, staring at her friend in shocked silence. Then she made a face and managed the only response she could. “Huh?”
TBC . . .
-April
Welcome to the fic! Glad you like it!
I'm ashamed of myself!
