‘Oh God, this is wonderful…’ she thought, giving up on any pretense of trying to control herself…of trying to deny what she knew she wanted. A lifetime of denial was put aside in an instant. She pushed him back slowly, regretting even the few seconds she was separated from him as she peeled her tank top and bra off in one fluid motion. She brought him to her breast for long seconds, savoring his closeness..before again pushing him away…pulling his T-shirt over his head in the close confines of the small cabin. Beside her the mirror started to haze over as the humidity rose with their passion.
Alex had never known such beauty…such wonder. She belonged to him…he could tell. Somehow in those hundreds of dances, their bodies had claimed the other as their own. They’d touched thousands of times, and this beauty was the natural extension of that process. It seemed so right…but yet..as he felt her hand slide down his sides…grapple for the buckle of his belt…the awe of what was about to happen was starting to overwhelm him.
She got the belt unfastened finally…and it was clear Alex was willing…as he lifted himself off the seat enough for her to slide the shorts down to his ankles. And as his hands found her shorts…as he slid them down as well…it was clear that he too was in the throes of the same passion.
As she straddled him and he entered her…Isabel bit her lower lip….savoring the sensation of his fullness within her.
She’d never believed it would happen..not to her. But she’d heard other girls telling about tearing…pain…discomfort with their first time. It was nothing like that for her. Thousands of dances had made his touching her seem natural…for all it’s pleasure…those thousands of acts of foreplay in her mind..and the wetness they evoked.. assuring that she was ready for his entrance.
His first thrust seemed almost involuntary..but they quickly moved into an easy rhythm…her following as readily and comfortably as she had followed his lead in all of those dances…this one the most pleasurable they had ever had…
The Vice-Principal was widely believed by the students of the senior class to have a prostate problem..but that really wasn’t the case. He had an addiction to coffee, and a bladder that approached the lower limit of normal for a 62 year old man. He’d had a long busy morning, and he’d been drinking a lot of coffee. He needed to do something about that..and rather soon. He got up from his seat and walked slowly back past the excited students…looking forward to their long awaited senior Spring Break. The first restroom he came to was unlocked, so he opened the door.
She had never had one…an orgasm...never expected to…but she could feel it growing within her…seeking its release. She slowed her pace…timing it…she loved him…there was no denying it any longer…she wanted her first to occur with his…not before..not after…she worked the rhythm…increasing it…cupping her hands around his buttocks to pull him more tightly to her. She could feel it in his mind as it approached..almost like she were connected with him mentally…she was having difficulty controlling herself though…making herself wait…because the feeling of him inside her was so good…so ...wonderful...
The world had ceased to exist for Alex. He didn’t know where he was…scarcely knew who he was…all he knew was the passion that he was riding…the passion that was sending ripple after ripple through his body as he felt it prepare for what would come…
Isabel could tell as the rhythm changed…six years of being together had tuned her body to his…as she hovered with him on the pinnacle she arched her back…her head pushing against the door as she struggled to bring him with her….and as the door opened suddenly, that was precisely what happened.
As she pulled him forward abruptly Alex tried to catch himself…and so did Isabel. But she was hobbled by the shorts around her ankles, and he was hobbled by both her shorts and his own. They fell, nearly naked at the feet of the Vice Principal, in flagrante delicto.
Isabel felt the carpet of the aircraft on her naked back and buttocks, Alex’s feet tangled with hers, him on top of her......and the eyes of the Vice Principal and a hundred classmates looking at both of them.
Horror filled Alex…even as the voice broke through to him…even as he felt her tap him on the arm… “Senor,” the flight attendant said. “We are almost at Cabos…the Captain has turned on the seatbelt sign, and you must have your seatback in the full upright position.”
The flight attendant turned to the girl sleeping across the aisle.
“You too, Senorita. You must put your seat back up and stow your tray table…we are almost to Cabos.”
Alex’s eyes were wide…the dream had been so real…he’d come so close to totally embarrassing himself before her…before Liz and Maria…before…everybody. He tried to slow down his breathing, feeling his erection fading. But he had been sweating under the blanket…drenching his t-shirt and shorts. He threw off the blanket, place his paper strategically in his lap, and tried to pretend nothing at all had happened.
When she finally realized it had only been a dreamwalk, she relaxed slightly. She secured the traytable and raised her seat, folding the blanket.
“Isabel…., you’re sweating like crazy,” said Max. “I told you it was too warm for the blanket.”
“Ice Princesses don’t sweat, Max,” she replied, “..they glisten.”
It had been a bad day…going on a trip she hadn’t really wanted to go on…fighting with her mom, and now this.
‘He really does love me…or at least the human he dreams I am..’
And if she’d really been some alien monster looking after itself, or even the Ice Princess the other students believed her to be, she could have kept dreamwalking him…even enjoyed their newfound sexual closeness in an eternity of dreams. But she wasn’t an Ice Princess, she really did love him…so she’d have to give him up.
He’d obsessed about her for the same six years she’d obsessed about him, apparently. He’d given her so much….she had to let him go. It was like Max and Liz…Max might have loved her since the third grade, but he couldn’t really expect to ever be accepted by her once she found out what he was. And the same held true for Alex.
Every dreamwalk fed his obsession … and every day he dreamed about a life with her kept him from finding a real life…a normal life. Isabel knew Alex…knew him from two thousand dreams…knew him better than anyone else knew him. He was a wonderful person..talented…caring…loving.
Maybe the Earth girls of West Roswell High thought he was a geek now, but eventually one would come along who would have the insight to see through that façade..to realize what a gem he was.
‘I can’t keep him from that…from a chance to be..normal,’ she thought to herself. ‘That will be the last time I’ll ever dreamwalk Alex. He deserves a life…even if I can’t have one.”
For six years he had been the delight of her world...but she had to let him go...for his sake.
As they gathered their carry-ons and left the aircraft, Isabel thought that there was nothing that could make the day worse…but she was wrong. At the bottom of the stair as they stepped off the aircraft were the Sandstroms, giving out room assignments.
“Evans, Guerin, Whitman…you have room 116
Parker, DeLuca, Evans…you have room 242”
‘No, no, no….this isn’t happening,' she thought. 'If I room with Liz and Maria, …Alex will be showing up all the time to be with them. And if Michael and Max room with with Alex, I'll be bumping in to him there as well.’
“Mr. Sandstrom…I don’t want to room with either of these two,” she said, drawing instant glares from both Liz and Maria.”
“Well I’m sorry Miss Evans. You were given the opportunity to list people that you did or did not wish to room with when you signed up for the trip…these two weren’t on your list.”
“Well what does that matter? It should be simple to just swap me out for someone else…”
“It’s not all that simple. The list of people who did not want to room with YOU…well, that’s pretty extensive. I’m afraid at this point, you are going to have to room with them.”
‘Does my life suck, or what?’ Isabel asked herself. She glared at the Sandstroms as she walked by enroute to baggage claim.
“Whatever…,” she said….
Senior Trip (AU CC Mature) (Complete)
Moderators: Itzstacie, Forum Moderators
Maria’s cheeks were burning as they entered the hotel. She couldn’t actually believe this was happening. She’d seen the form…almost had blackballed Isabel. But to do that, she’d have had to have Liz do it too, since they had requested rooming together. And she really hadn’t wanted to bring up the subject of the wicked witch of West Roswell High…not to Liz…and certainly not to Alex.
The three had been best friends…inseparable…practically forever … and that would soon come to an end. Not the friendship of course…that would be eternal…but the togetherness. Alex and Liz were going off to Albuquerque in the Fall, to UNM.
While she could have gotten in to UNM with her grades…the finances were a problem. She and her mom were doing alright now…but for years after her father had run off, there really hadn’t been any money to spare…certainly not enough to build much of a college fund. And her grades, while adequate, weren’t spectacular. She wasn’t getting any academic scholarships certainly.
So while her two best buddies went off to Albuquerque she’d be staying in Roswell for the next two years…going to community college, hoping to transfer up to UNM at the start of her junior year. So for the next two years they’d be in Albuquerque while she, the girl who had always believed there must be something better for her than Roswell would still be…in Roswell.
And that’s what made it particularly galling. Not just that someone else was now intruding on what was to have been her last real chance in two years to have her two best friends together with her as a threesome, but because the frosty bitch threatened to ruin the whole five days, since Alex would be unable to keep her eyes off the girl…and by even having her around she’d also attract Max, so Liz would scarcely be any better.
Five glorious days and nights in beautiful Cabo San Lucas threatened now to come down to her and Liz having to endure Isabel's icy presence at night and Maria having to endure her two best friends beind distracted and…well, depressed, all during the day.
Why couldn’t the two of them have fallen for people that were normal, anyway? I mean, Maria hadn’t fallen for that lame Michael Guerin. I mean, sure, she’d laughed herself sick over his antics with that egg. Eventually she’d started numbering them in crayon on the bottom,…she was sure he’d gone through at least four of the brown ones, not to mention the original one. And what was with that hair? Someone was eventually going to have to do a complete makeover of that boy…not Maria, of course, but someone.
'What is it with all three of those people?' she wondered. 'Do they all belong to the same club, socially-inept-r-us?'
Except for their different personalities, that is. She could almost forgive Michael, she’d heard that his foster father was an abusive drunk…it had become public knowledge after Philip Evans had filed the emancipated minor paperwork. Michael had been screwed by the foster care system…he at least had a reason to be a little bit wacko. Max had every opportunity…far more than Maria had. There was no excuse for the boy to break her best friend’s heart. And Isabel? While Maria did have to admit that her friend had fallen hard for the wrong girl, despite his great character, Alex did NOT move in the same high school social strata as Isabel, she could at least look at him rather than regally looking by him…like he didn’t even exist.
‘This just sucks,’ thought Maria. ‘I really looked forward to these five days…I just know she’s going to ruin it for us.’
The three had been best friends…inseparable…practically forever … and that would soon come to an end. Not the friendship of course…that would be eternal…but the togetherness. Alex and Liz were going off to Albuquerque in the Fall, to UNM.
While she could have gotten in to UNM with her grades…the finances were a problem. She and her mom were doing alright now…but for years after her father had run off, there really hadn’t been any money to spare…certainly not enough to build much of a college fund. And her grades, while adequate, weren’t spectacular. She wasn’t getting any academic scholarships certainly.
So while her two best buddies went off to Albuquerque she’d be staying in Roswell for the next two years…going to community college, hoping to transfer up to UNM at the start of her junior year. So for the next two years they’d be in Albuquerque while she, the girl who had always believed there must be something better for her than Roswell would still be…in Roswell.
And that’s what made it particularly galling. Not just that someone else was now intruding on what was to have been her last real chance in two years to have her two best friends together with her as a threesome, but because the frosty bitch threatened to ruin the whole five days, since Alex would be unable to keep her eyes off the girl…and by even having her around she’d also attract Max, so Liz would scarcely be any better.
Five glorious days and nights in beautiful Cabo San Lucas threatened now to come down to her and Liz having to endure Isabel's icy presence at night and Maria having to endure her two best friends beind distracted and…well, depressed, all during the day.
Why couldn’t the two of them have fallen for people that were normal, anyway? I mean, Maria hadn’t fallen for that lame Michael Guerin. I mean, sure, she’d laughed herself sick over his antics with that egg. Eventually she’d started numbering them in crayon on the bottom,…she was sure he’d gone through at least four of the brown ones, not to mention the original one. And what was with that hair? Someone was eventually going to have to do a complete makeover of that boy…not Maria, of course, but someone.
'What is it with all three of those people?' she wondered. 'Do they all belong to the same club, socially-inept-r-us?'
Except for their different personalities, that is. She could almost forgive Michael, she’d heard that his foster father was an abusive drunk…it had become public knowledge after Philip Evans had filed the emancipated minor paperwork. Michael had been screwed by the foster care system…he at least had a reason to be a little bit wacko. Max had every opportunity…far more than Maria had. There was no excuse for the boy to break her best friend’s heart. And Isabel? While Maria did have to admit that her friend had fallen hard for the wrong girl, despite his great character, Alex did NOT move in the same high school social strata as Isabel, she could at least look at him rather than regally looking by him…like he didn’t even exist.
‘This just sucks,’ thought Maria. ‘I really looked forward to these five days…I just know she’s going to ruin it for us.’
Riding up in the elevator Liz sneaked glances at Maria. They'd been friends since second grade...it wasn't like she couldn't read the girl. Maria was really pissed about Isabel's comment, and to be perfectly truthful, Liz wasn't any too happy herself. Nobody could throw a wet blanket on a party like Isabel.
It actually seemed like any time she'd ever tried to get together with Max outside of class,...well, it was almost like his sister had it in for Liz Parker personally. Still, having her around might have an upside. It wasn't like Max could completely ignore Liz now...not if his sister was staying in her rooom.
Max Evans was an enigma, even after all these years as her lab partner. Every hypothesis she'd ever come up with as to why he acted the way he did, just never fit logically together. She had to admit it to herself. Max Evans didn't just bug the woman in her...the woman trying to emerge from the teenager who had had a puppy love going in her own mind with him since seventh grade... and had yet to make it to first base. He bugged the scientist in her as well.
She'd actually gotten out her journal and written down hypotheses about his behavior...how dumb was that. Then she'd tried to scientifically explore them...one at a time, trying to figure out what made Max Evans like he was. Last quarter, her hypothesis was that the boy was gay.
Liz normally was quite shy...not as demonstrative as Maria, and certainly not like that brazen hussy Pamela Troy. Still, she was a scientist...and sometimes you had to do things a little out of character...for the good of science.
It had started when she'd read an article in Psychology Today about tells in gambling. Max Evans, she knew, had a 'tell.' Whenever he was really interested in something, he'd chew on his pencil. It was more than just a nervous habit...it was practically a direct indicator of the intensity of his interest...and that had given her the idea.
She'd gotten the silk Lycra sweater in seventh grade and almost instantly outgrown it. Of course, you couldn't REALLY outgrow a Lycra sweater, it was just that she started to...develop...in seventh grade, and the sweater had become really....tight. She should have thrown the sweater out of course, but somehow it had just gravitated to the bottom of her sweater drawer where she'd ignored it for almost five years, until the experiment.
They were lab partners in advanced chemistry, preparing a project together for the Science Fair, and the Chem teacher had let them use the lab after hours to reflux a chemical reaction, which was about as boring as watching a coffeepot perk, even to a scientist. So she'd decided to try an experiment of her own.
She'd brought along the old sweater..kept it in her PE locker during class. After school, when the refluxing had started and it was just the two of them, she'd excused herself to use the little girl's room, and gone to the PE locker room.
To say that the sweater was tight didn't begin to do justice to the situation...she'd had to leave her bra off to even get the thing on. It fit like a coat of paint...a thin one at that.
She'd put her lab coat back on, and gone back to the chem lab, then picked up the stopwatch. The floor was old 12 inch vinyl tile in a checkerboard pattern, which made it easy to calculate distances.
She had gotten precisely ten feet away when she'd taken off the lab jacket, and the chewing on the pencil had begun immediately. She had counted the chews as she got closer to him, ...the chewing had gone up rather dramatically.
She'd graphed it out on semi-log paper...it had turned out to be an exponential function. As she'd gotten closer he'd chewed like crazy on the pencil. It looked like two feet was the asymptote...at least..that's where he'd finally bitten through the pencil.
No, Max wasn't gay, she was sure of that. She told herself that she really wasn't interested in him anyway...that the reason she'd been unable to breathe when he'd bit the pencil in two was just that the damn sweater was too tight to let her chest expand..but she knew she was kidding herself, otherwise she wouldn't be so damn morose about high school ending. But she was giving up on him as a potential boyfriend if nothing happened on this trip...time to move on. She wasn't going to let her college days at UNM be spoiled by lusting after Max Evans...her last three years at West Roswell was enough of that.
Besides, she'd run out of hypotheses..or almost so. She was down to really wierd stuff, like he was superman and keeping his identity a secret or an extraterrestrial off the 47 saucer trying to hide out...crazy stuff that were totally irrational and not amenable to the scientific method.
So she was almost glad that after this trip, she'd be giving him up. He was a conundrum, and scientists despise conundrums. Even so...she'd give him one last chance on this trip....maybe Isabel being in the same room with her would be a help. She hadn't brought the sweater...it would have been too warm. But she'd brought her new bikini..it was Lycra too...smaller..and even more revealing.
She looked at the three guys as the elevator stopped at the first floor above the lobby level. As she watched them get out...to go find room 116, her eyes lingered on Max until the door closed. 'OK, Mr. Evans,' she thought, 'this is your last chance...five days to convince me there's some reason I shouldn't forget about you and just move on...'
One day ago
Miguel watched the man get back in the MU-2, ...watched as the engines started...as it taxied out...as it accelerated down the dusty desert runway and took off, banking toward the south...toward Columbia. Roberto Velez...el Jefe himself, the man who controlled syndicate drug distribution for the west while his brother controlled it for the east. Miguel had been in charge of the little refueling base for three years..a small but necessary part of the western syndicate, and he'd been waiting for just such a chance. Normally he would have never gotten the attention of such an important man...fortune had favored him today.
Usually Miguel's life was routine...operating a refueling station for the AN-2 Colt aircraft that the syndicate had picked up from Cubana airlines after the breakup of the USSR. The aircraft were not fast, but they had a massive capacity for drugs, and could land anywhere...even in open fields across the border, and be gone long before the US Border Patrol aircraft could get to the spot and aprehend them. He and his six men would manage the refueling tanks..stand guard...make sure the aircraft could meet their nightime schedules. Never before had they been given a job like this....an opportunity like this.
Miguel wasn't worried. His men could do it...and even if they couldn't, the local federales would help. He paid the federal police enough...in money...drugs...even the overnight use of the occasional girl that would be shuttled by the fleet of AN-2s to the brothels along the border...no, the federales were the least of his fears...hell, he was one.
It actually seemed like any time she'd ever tried to get together with Max outside of class,...well, it was almost like his sister had it in for Liz Parker personally. Still, having her around might have an upside. It wasn't like Max could completely ignore Liz now...not if his sister was staying in her rooom.
Max Evans was an enigma, even after all these years as her lab partner. Every hypothesis she'd ever come up with as to why he acted the way he did, just never fit logically together. She had to admit it to herself. Max Evans didn't just bug the woman in her...the woman trying to emerge from the teenager who had had a puppy love going in her own mind with him since seventh grade... and had yet to make it to first base. He bugged the scientist in her as well.
She'd actually gotten out her journal and written down hypotheses about his behavior...how dumb was that. Then she'd tried to scientifically explore them...one at a time, trying to figure out what made Max Evans like he was. Last quarter, her hypothesis was that the boy was gay.
Liz normally was quite shy...not as demonstrative as Maria, and certainly not like that brazen hussy Pamela Troy. Still, she was a scientist...and sometimes you had to do things a little out of character...for the good of science.
It had started when she'd read an article in Psychology Today about tells in gambling. Max Evans, she knew, had a 'tell.' Whenever he was really interested in something, he'd chew on his pencil. It was more than just a nervous habit...it was practically a direct indicator of the intensity of his interest...and that had given her the idea.
She'd gotten the silk Lycra sweater in seventh grade and almost instantly outgrown it. Of course, you couldn't REALLY outgrow a Lycra sweater, it was just that she started to...develop...in seventh grade, and the sweater had become really....tight. She should have thrown the sweater out of course, but somehow it had just gravitated to the bottom of her sweater drawer where she'd ignored it for almost five years, until the experiment.
They were lab partners in advanced chemistry, preparing a project together for the Science Fair, and the Chem teacher had let them use the lab after hours to reflux a chemical reaction, which was about as boring as watching a coffeepot perk, even to a scientist. So she'd decided to try an experiment of her own.
She'd brought along the old sweater..kept it in her PE locker during class. After school, when the refluxing had started and it was just the two of them, she'd excused herself to use the little girl's room, and gone to the PE locker room.
To say that the sweater was tight didn't begin to do justice to the situation...she'd had to leave her bra off to even get the thing on. It fit like a coat of paint...a thin one at that.
She'd put her lab coat back on, and gone back to the chem lab, then picked up the stopwatch. The floor was old 12 inch vinyl tile in a checkerboard pattern, which made it easy to calculate distances.
She had gotten precisely ten feet away when she'd taken off the lab jacket, and the chewing on the pencil had begun immediately. She had counted the chews as she got closer to him, ...the chewing had gone up rather dramatically.
She'd graphed it out on semi-log paper...it had turned out to be an exponential function. As she'd gotten closer he'd chewed like crazy on the pencil. It looked like two feet was the asymptote...at least..that's where he'd finally bitten through the pencil.
No, Max wasn't gay, she was sure of that. She told herself that she really wasn't interested in him anyway...that the reason she'd been unable to breathe when he'd bit the pencil in two was just that the damn sweater was too tight to let her chest expand..but she knew she was kidding herself, otherwise she wouldn't be so damn morose about high school ending. But she was giving up on him as a potential boyfriend if nothing happened on this trip...time to move on. She wasn't going to let her college days at UNM be spoiled by lusting after Max Evans...her last three years at West Roswell was enough of that.
Besides, she'd run out of hypotheses..or almost so. She was down to really wierd stuff, like he was superman and keeping his identity a secret or an extraterrestrial off the 47 saucer trying to hide out...crazy stuff that were totally irrational and not amenable to the scientific method.
So she was almost glad that after this trip, she'd be giving him up. He was a conundrum, and scientists despise conundrums. Even so...she'd give him one last chance on this trip....maybe Isabel being in the same room with her would be a help. She hadn't brought the sweater...it would have been too warm. But she'd brought her new bikini..it was Lycra too...smaller..and even more revealing.
She looked at the three guys as the elevator stopped at the first floor above the lobby level. As she watched them get out...to go find room 116, her eyes lingered on Max until the door closed. 'OK, Mr. Evans,' she thought, 'this is your last chance...five days to convince me there's some reason I shouldn't forget about you and just move on...'
One day ago
Miguel watched the man get back in the MU-2, ...watched as the engines started...as it taxied out...as it accelerated down the dusty desert runway and took off, banking toward the south...toward Columbia. Roberto Velez...el Jefe himself, the man who controlled syndicate drug distribution for the west while his brother controlled it for the east. Miguel had been in charge of the little refueling base for three years..a small but necessary part of the western syndicate, and he'd been waiting for just such a chance. Normally he would have never gotten the attention of such an important man...fortune had favored him today.
Usually Miguel's life was routine...operating a refueling station for the AN-2 Colt aircraft that the syndicate had picked up from Cubana airlines after the breakup of the USSR. The aircraft were not fast, but they had a massive capacity for drugs, and could land anywhere...even in open fields across the border, and be gone long before the US Border Patrol aircraft could get to the spot and aprehend them. He and his six men would manage the refueling tanks..stand guard...make sure the aircraft could meet their nightime schedules. Never before had they been given a job like this....an opportunity like this.
Miguel wasn't worried. His men could do it...and even if they couldn't, the local federales would help. He paid the federal police enough...in money...drugs...even the overnight use of the occasional girl that would be shuttled by the fleet of AN-2s to the brothels along the border...no, the federales were the least of his fears...hell, he was one.
As they got to room 242 the proverbial second shoe dropped…in the form of a flashing message light. The view from the balcony was breathtaking and it had distracted Isabel long enough for Maria to notice the blinking light.
“We’ve got a message already,” she said as she hit the play button.
“Hi guys,' said the recorded voice of Michael Guerin, “…look out your balcony if you haven’t…the view is outstanding.”
Max’s voice was next, saying, “We talked it over…decided that we should all take a half hour to get unpacked…freshen up.., then the three of us will take the three of you out to shop for an hour, before going to lunch.”
Alex chimed in at the last, “Yes..and since I had to endure Mrs. Sanchez for Spanish class for the last THREE and two-thirds years, we can go anyplace we want…I’ll translate the menu for you.”
‘Damn!’ thought Isabel, ‘….damn ....damn double-damn triple-damn…crap!’ The last thing in the world she wanted to do was to socialize with Alex. Well, that really wasn’t true, she’d give anything to socialize with Alex, but it couldn’t be and she knew it. She’d just made the difficult decision to give him up…to stop feeding his obsession…their joint obsession, and to let him have a normal life…and a normal life could never include Isabel Evans.
But she was trapped. Not by the invitation, hell she could just say no…feign illness…say she was meeting with someone…but she didn’t dare. That would leave Michael and Max alone with Maria and Liz…and she was afraid to do that.
“That would be fun,” said Liz.
Maria responded, “It might be OK at that…”
Both of the girls looked at Isabel who scowled…”Whatever.”
Isabel loved her brother..and Michael too, who was like a brother to her. But she didn’t EXACTLY trust either of them, and she sure didn’t trust these two girls.
She hadn’t tried to dreamwalk Max or Michael since junior high…they’d gotten too good at detecting her, and would give her no end of grief if they caught her entering their dream-orbs. But she would still hover around the outside of their dream-orbs sometimes..and she could tell by just being close that Max’s dream thoughts continued to be of Liz. For the last year or so, whenever she’d hover aroung Michael’s orb, she got the distinct impression of…sandalwood oil, like Maria was wearing today.
Isabel knew they had both made a Sacred Vow…but they were guys….and you didn’t have to be an Ice Princess to know that guys sometimes thought with their…well….something other than with their sacred vows, anyway.
Isabel looked at Liz Parker. She was a pretty girl..and with a little bit of a makeover she would be certifiably drop-dead gorgeous. If Isabel hadn’t dreamwalked her frequently, she too might have been fooled by the Miss Scientist routine..it worked well for her.
Most of the Plastic People guys ignored her…despite her looks, because they regarded her as a sexless science geek. Those who didn’t care…who merely lusted after her body..., would attempt to ask her for a date,..and she’d somehow turn the conversation to the Theory of Relativity or quadratic equations, or chemical reactions or with some, just story problems was enough to send them running. Guys didn’t care much for gals that were smarter than they were, and the girl was clearly brighter than the best of the Plastic People guys.
But Isabel HAD dreamwalked the girl…and in Liz's dreams, she was anything but sexless.
Max played a supporting role in many of Liz’s dreams…
Liz had played a supporting role to him in many of her other dreams….and in fully a third, Isabel had been totally amazed at the three-D geometry the girl had imagined them in…it was difficult to tell who was supporting whom…
The girl had most of the guys at West Roswell High convinced she was spending her time memorizing the current edition of the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, when apparently it was the Kama Sutra that the girl read in her spare time. She had good ability to visualize in three dimensions though, Isabel would have to give her that.
Just the amazement at some of the positions that Liz dreamed about contorting her and Max into had kept Isabel watching in the dream long after embarrassment would have otherwise driven her out of the dream-orb. No, Liz Parker was anything but the sexless science geek she pretended to be.
If Liz ever really did get a hold of Max, Isabel wasn’t at all sure that the Sacred Vow would stop him...or even slow him down.
Maria, on the other hand, was even more confusing. Isabel would swear the girl had taken sophomore biology in the same class that she had, but Maria kept dreaming about giving birth to...chicken eggs.
She and Michael would argue in the dreams over the damn things...how to dress them up...what schools to send them to..they'd have some big row ending in them both being really upset with each other.
Eventually they'd kiss and make UP....then kiss and make OUT....then things would proceed even further...and nine months later...another egg.
The dream would then replay...perhaps with a different color egg...perhaps striped or polka-dotted like Easter eggs...it didn't really seem to matter. They were weird dreams...but they invariably involved Michael.
Of course, Isabel realized that just because you dreamed it..didn't mean you'd actually do it. She'd dreamed about dancing with Alex thousands of times...and had never danced with him even once...and never would.
No, as Isabel got ready to go to shopping and lunch with the guys, she wasn't looking forward to it. Being around Alex...so near but yet...unattainable, that would be no fun.
But she couldn't exactly trust Max and Michael alone with Liz and Maria either....so she'd do it.
“We’ve got a message already,” she said as she hit the play button.
“Hi guys,' said the recorded voice of Michael Guerin, “…look out your balcony if you haven’t…the view is outstanding.”
Max’s voice was next, saying, “We talked it over…decided that we should all take a half hour to get unpacked…freshen up.., then the three of us will take the three of you out to shop for an hour, before going to lunch.”
Alex chimed in at the last, “Yes..and since I had to endure Mrs. Sanchez for Spanish class for the last THREE and two-thirds years, we can go anyplace we want…I’ll translate the menu for you.”
‘Damn!’ thought Isabel, ‘….damn ....damn double-damn triple-damn…crap!’ The last thing in the world she wanted to do was to socialize with Alex. Well, that really wasn’t true, she’d give anything to socialize with Alex, but it couldn’t be and she knew it. She’d just made the difficult decision to give him up…to stop feeding his obsession…their joint obsession, and to let him have a normal life…and a normal life could never include Isabel Evans.
But she was trapped. Not by the invitation, hell she could just say no…feign illness…say she was meeting with someone…but she didn’t dare. That would leave Michael and Max alone with Maria and Liz…and she was afraid to do that.
“That would be fun,” said Liz.
Maria responded, “It might be OK at that…”
Both of the girls looked at Isabel who scowled…”Whatever.”
Isabel loved her brother..and Michael too, who was like a brother to her. But she didn’t EXACTLY trust either of them, and she sure didn’t trust these two girls.
She hadn’t tried to dreamwalk Max or Michael since junior high…they’d gotten too good at detecting her, and would give her no end of grief if they caught her entering their dream-orbs. But she would still hover around the outside of their dream-orbs sometimes..and she could tell by just being close that Max’s dream thoughts continued to be of Liz. For the last year or so, whenever she’d hover aroung Michael’s orb, she got the distinct impression of…sandalwood oil, like Maria was wearing today.
Isabel knew they had both made a Sacred Vow…but they were guys….and you didn’t have to be an Ice Princess to know that guys sometimes thought with their…well….something other than with their sacred vows, anyway.
Isabel looked at Liz Parker. She was a pretty girl..and with a little bit of a makeover she would be certifiably drop-dead gorgeous. If Isabel hadn’t dreamwalked her frequently, she too might have been fooled by the Miss Scientist routine..it worked well for her.
Most of the Plastic People guys ignored her…despite her looks, because they regarded her as a sexless science geek. Those who didn’t care…who merely lusted after her body..., would attempt to ask her for a date,..and she’d somehow turn the conversation to the Theory of Relativity or quadratic equations, or chemical reactions or with some, just story problems was enough to send them running. Guys didn’t care much for gals that were smarter than they were, and the girl was clearly brighter than the best of the Plastic People guys.
But Isabel HAD dreamwalked the girl…and in Liz's dreams, she was anything but sexless.
Max played a supporting role in many of Liz’s dreams…
Liz had played a supporting role to him in many of her other dreams….and in fully a third, Isabel had been totally amazed at the three-D geometry the girl had imagined them in…it was difficult to tell who was supporting whom…
The girl had most of the guys at West Roswell High convinced she was spending her time memorizing the current edition of the Handbook of Chemistry and Physics, when apparently it was the Kama Sutra that the girl read in her spare time. She had good ability to visualize in three dimensions though, Isabel would have to give her that.
Just the amazement at some of the positions that Liz dreamed about contorting her and Max into had kept Isabel watching in the dream long after embarrassment would have otherwise driven her out of the dream-orb. No, Liz Parker was anything but the sexless science geek she pretended to be.
If Liz ever really did get a hold of Max, Isabel wasn’t at all sure that the Sacred Vow would stop him...or even slow him down.
Maria, on the other hand, was even more confusing. Isabel would swear the girl had taken sophomore biology in the same class that she had, but Maria kept dreaming about giving birth to...chicken eggs.
She and Michael would argue in the dreams over the damn things...how to dress them up...what schools to send them to..they'd have some big row ending in them both being really upset with each other.
Eventually they'd kiss and make UP....then kiss and make OUT....then things would proceed even further...and nine months later...another egg.
The dream would then replay...perhaps with a different color egg...perhaps striped or polka-dotted like Easter eggs...it didn't really seem to matter. They were weird dreams...but they invariably involved Michael.
Of course, Isabel realized that just because you dreamed it..didn't mean you'd actually do it. She'd dreamed about dancing with Alex thousands of times...and had never danced with him even once...and never would.
No, as Isabel got ready to go to shopping and lunch with the guys, she wasn't looking forward to it. Being around Alex...so near but yet...unattainable, that would be no fun.
But she couldn't exactly trust Max and Michael alone with Liz and Maria either....so she'd do it.
Last edited by greywolf on Thu Apr 05, 2007 1:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.
If there had been any gracious way at all that he could have avoided going shopping and to lunch with Isabel Evans, Alex would have done it. He had nearly embarrassed himself...and likely Isabel as well, on the aircraft. If the flight had been going to Rio rather than Cabo, he'd be the laughingstock of the whole senior class by now. And while his mind told him that it was a dream, could only be a dream, and a totally impossible dream at that, certain other parts of his anatomy apparently weren't so sure, and Alex desperately did not want anyone to notice that. He was trying to divert his own attention from his proximity to one beautiful Ice Princess by translating every sign in sight since his Spanish appeared to be his one uniuely valuable skill here. They wers shopping in an art gallery and poster shop.
"Good Lord, what's that?" asked Maria
"According to the sign, it's the Aztec goddess, Itzpapalotl, the Obsidian Butterfly. It says she was the Aztec goddess who ruled over a dream world. She fell from the sky originally, and she had a tongue that was a dagger."
Michael looked at Max, suppressing a smile. 'Who does THAT remind you of,' he thought. Isabel caught him looking and could almost read his mind....she wasn't amused.
Alex moved on.....
"This is a contemporary artist's version of the same goddess..."
"Oh....that's much better," said Maria. "That freaks me out entirely. I don't think I'll buy that poster either...what say we just go have lunch?"
As they entered the restaurant, Isabel looked at the menu. "That's great, guys...a Mexican restaurant. We hardly ever get Mexican food in Roswell New Mexico...what with it only being 100 miles from the Mexican border and all...."
Liz and Maria just looked at each other...'A dagger for a tongue,' they both thought. 'That's Isabel.' It was going to be a long five days.
"Good Lord, what's that?" asked Maria
"According to the sign, it's the Aztec goddess, Itzpapalotl, the Obsidian Butterfly. It says she was the Aztec goddess who ruled over a dream world. She fell from the sky originally, and she had a tongue that was a dagger."
Michael looked at Max, suppressing a smile. 'Who does THAT remind you of,' he thought. Isabel caught him looking and could almost read his mind....she wasn't amused.
Alex moved on.....
"This is a contemporary artist's version of the same goddess..."
"Oh....that's much better," said Maria. "That freaks me out entirely. I don't think I'll buy that poster either...what say we just go have lunch?"
As they entered the restaurant, Isabel looked at the menu. "That's great, guys...a Mexican restaurant. We hardly ever get Mexican food in Roswell New Mexico...what with it only being 100 miles from the Mexican border and all...."
Liz and Maria just looked at each other...'A dagger for a tongue,' they both thought. 'That's Isabel.' It was going to be a long five days.
In the final analysis, what happened in the little Cantina where they went for lunch was no one’s fault.
As the famous British Philosopher, Academic, and transvestite, Eddie Izzard once said, "shit happens…and it makes no excuses for it". Sometimes it just pops up and says, “I am shit…here I am,” with neither rhyme nor reason for it.
That’s not to downplay or excuse Isabel’s part in what happened. Clearly, after it happened, she’d have chosen other words or a different course of action, but there was never any malicious intent. She really did care for Alex, and was only trying to distance herself from him…to keep all the humans at arms length from the aliens, because she wanted Alex to be happy, and Michael, Max, and herself to be safe. But nonetheless….shit happened.
It started out innocently enough..as they were led to the booth by the waiter. The booth was a little small for six people, but worse still..it was a little small. As they took their places on each side of the table..it seemed normal enough. Max, Isabel, and Michael went boy-girl-boy, Liz, Alex and Maria went girl-boy-girl. It was only when it was too late..when both were sitting in the middle of the booth, unable to move because of people on either side that both Alex and Isabel realized what that meant…they were sitting directly across from each other, separated by a narrow table in the small booth.
I mentioned, did I not, that the booth was small? Alex really wasn’t. He tended to be on the tall and lanky side. Women, on the other hand, are never called tall or lanky. Isabel was therefore, statuesque.
Of the three couples, they were the only ones whose knees touched. A day previously, that might not have made a difference, but it was scarcely over two hours since their dreamwalk on the airplane, and the memory of that was still vivid in the minds of both of them.
As her knee bumped his..Isabel’s eyes widened. The touch brought back the searing image of her passion in that dreamwalk…the smooth feel of his legs between hers, his legs sliding sensually down her inner thighs as he had entered her. She felt her body flush…her nipples engorge…her breasts seemed to cry out for his touch. As she felt the warmth start to grow at her center..as she felt her body prepare herself yet again for his entrance…she started to panic. Isabel fought herself…determined not to look at him…determined to ignore him…to look anywhere else….to think or talk about anything else.
As his knee bumped hers, Alex remembered the creamy smoothness of her thighs as she had straddled him in the dream. He remembered the warmth of her as she’d surrounded his face with her breasts…the taste of her nipple…he felt the warmth rise within him…as his body quickly sought to prepare itself for her. He flushed….blushing crimson, grabbing his hat to cover his lap as he crowded urgently against Maria…
“Maria…you need to move. I need to use the men’s room…”
“Yeah, good idea,” said Maria. “I need to freshen up too…how about you, Liz?”
In minutes, Liz and Maria were in the restroom.
“Do you believe that heartless bitch?” asked Maria. “She must know he likes her. She’s taunting him….ignoring him completely, like he doesn’t even exist.”
“And poor Alex,” said Liz. “Did you see how embarrassed he was when she looked right past him like that. It just isn’t fair, Alex is really the sweetest guy. OK, so maybe he isn’t in her league but the least she can do is be sociable.”
“Wrong, Liz. The least she can do is precisely what she IS doing….ignore him totally.”
“Maria, nobody should treat any guy like that…especially Alex. I have half a mind to give her a piece of my mind.”
“Hey, she acts like that to him again, Liz, …you are going to have to get in line to chew on her. Maria will be right up front.”
In the meantime, next door in the men’s restroom, Alex was just sitting on the commode trying to get the picture of coupling with Isabel out of his mind…but since that too had happened in a lavatory, he wasn’t having much luck…..
As the famous British Philosopher, Academic, and transvestite, Eddie Izzard once said, "shit happens…and it makes no excuses for it". Sometimes it just pops up and says, “I am shit…here I am,” with neither rhyme nor reason for it.
That’s not to downplay or excuse Isabel’s part in what happened. Clearly, after it happened, she’d have chosen other words or a different course of action, but there was never any malicious intent. She really did care for Alex, and was only trying to distance herself from him…to keep all the humans at arms length from the aliens, because she wanted Alex to be happy, and Michael, Max, and herself to be safe. But nonetheless….shit happened.
It started out innocently enough..as they were led to the booth by the waiter. The booth was a little small for six people, but worse still..it was a little small. As they took their places on each side of the table..it seemed normal enough. Max, Isabel, and Michael went boy-girl-boy, Liz, Alex and Maria went girl-boy-girl. It was only when it was too late..when both were sitting in the middle of the booth, unable to move because of people on either side that both Alex and Isabel realized what that meant…they were sitting directly across from each other, separated by a narrow table in the small booth.
I mentioned, did I not, that the booth was small? Alex really wasn’t. He tended to be on the tall and lanky side. Women, on the other hand, are never called tall or lanky. Isabel was therefore, statuesque.
Of the three couples, they were the only ones whose knees touched. A day previously, that might not have made a difference, but it was scarcely over two hours since their dreamwalk on the airplane, and the memory of that was still vivid in the minds of both of them.
As her knee bumped his..Isabel’s eyes widened. The touch brought back the searing image of her passion in that dreamwalk…the smooth feel of his legs between hers, his legs sliding sensually down her inner thighs as he had entered her. She felt her body flush…her nipples engorge…her breasts seemed to cry out for his touch. As she felt the warmth start to grow at her center..as she felt her body prepare herself yet again for his entrance…she started to panic. Isabel fought herself…determined not to look at him…determined to ignore him…to look anywhere else….to think or talk about anything else.
As his knee bumped hers, Alex remembered the creamy smoothness of her thighs as she had straddled him in the dream. He remembered the warmth of her as she’d surrounded his face with her breasts…the taste of her nipple…he felt the warmth rise within him…as his body quickly sought to prepare itself for her. He flushed….blushing crimson, grabbing his hat to cover his lap as he crowded urgently against Maria…
“Maria…you need to move. I need to use the men’s room…”
“Yeah, good idea,” said Maria. “I need to freshen up too…how about you, Liz?”
In minutes, Liz and Maria were in the restroom.
“Do you believe that heartless bitch?” asked Maria. “She must know he likes her. She’s taunting him….ignoring him completely, like he doesn’t even exist.”
“And poor Alex,” said Liz. “Did you see how embarrassed he was when she looked right past him like that. It just isn’t fair, Alex is really the sweetest guy. OK, so maybe he isn’t in her league but the least she can do is be sociable.”
“Wrong, Liz. The least she can do is precisely what she IS doing….ignore him totally.”
“Maria, nobody should treat any guy like that…especially Alex. I have half a mind to give her a piece of my mind.”
“Hey, she acts like that to him again, Liz, …you are going to have to get in line to chew on her. Maria will be right up front.”
In the meantime, next door in the men’s restroom, Alex was just sitting on the commode trying to get the picture of coupling with Isabel out of his mind…but since that too had happened in a lavatory, he wasn’t having much luck…..
As soon as the girls and Alex left, what she was afraid WOULD happen, DID happen.
Michael and Max started arguing with her about socializing with the girls…AGAIN.
They’d had this discussion on a number of occasions, and with the memory of that aircraft flight still causing her to flush, Isabel desperately did not want to argue about this right now.
“I don’t think it would do any harm at all, if we hung out with Liz and Maria and Alex this week, Isabel,” said Michael.
“Do any harm? We can’t get close to them, ..you know that. If we get close…they’ll someday find out.”
“Isabel,” said Max, “..we’ve known these people for nine years…I’ve been lab partners with Liz for four. They aren’t our enemies…even if they found out about us, I don’t think they’d want us to be hurt.”
“Max…you made a Sacred Vow….we all did.”
“Yeah, because you made us, Isabel. Because you hollered and screamed until we agreed to do it.”
“Michael, that’s entirely unfair. I did it because it was best for us…best for all of us. Have you forgotten the article in the magazine?”
“Hell no I haven’t forgotten,” said Michael. “I went to the library and looked up the same issue a year ago. It was a National Enquirer, Izzy. The other lead stories were about someone finding the Ark on Mount Erarat, and some women who delivered a kid that looked like a bat…he allegedly slept upside down hanging from a clothes rack in his closet. It was all bullshit, Isabel. The damn intestines looked like link sausages.”
“We made a Sacred Vow, Michael. Maybe that one story was a little bit bogus…but that doesn’t mean the concept isn’t accurate. “
“Yeah well that was the same issue that Demi Moore announced she would never leave her new husband…Bruce Willis. How accurate was that concept?”
“Michael…that doesn’t change a Sacred Vow..just because those two broke up. You just want to get together with that…Maria.”
“And what would be wrong with that if I did, Izzy? Can you tell me that? You are going away to UNM, Max is going away to UNM, I’m staying here and going to community college, and so is Maria. What would be the harm if I saw Maria from time to time?”
“Michael, my parents said they’d help. Max and I would share our college funds with you….”
“You’re trying to change the subject again, Izzy. I don’t want your folk’s money, they’ve done more than enough for me, and I’m not asking for your money. I’m asking you to explain to me just what in hell is wrong with me taking Maria DeLuca out on one date?”
Isabel knew she was changing the subject..and usually it worked, but Michael apparently was getting wise to her. She didn’t have a real answer…she was just scared to death…first of the magazine and later…later when she’d understood how bogus the article was…scared of rejection. It was one thing to be the Ice Princess, rejecting everyone else….you had a little security there. But it was something else altogether to be the rejectee.
She’d dreamed of telling Alex once…not dreamwalked…just dreamed. And in that dream, Alex HAD rejected her. He’d run screaming from the dance floor…frightened of the alien. She hadn’t been able to sleep for a week, and hadn’t felt normal until she’d been able to dreamwalk him again…to see the love sparkling in his eyes. But that love was, of course, for the HUMAN Isabel Evans he dreamed of dancing with. If he ever found out…if he ever knew..if he ever REALLY rejected her, she was sure it would crush her.
Except, she was realizing, it really was never going to happen anyway…since she would never dreamwalk him again. But that was also a reason she wanted Max and Michael to have nothing to do with the girls. Alex and the two girls…they’d been friends forever. If one of the girls found out…eventually Alex would know…and the thought of Alex recoiling in horror from the Isabel he had danced with for all those years…Isabel was sure her heart couldn’t bear that…not even to just think of it.
“You made a Sacred Vow, Michael. That should be enough. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Isabel…enough with the Sacred Vow,” said Max. “I love you, Izzy…we both do, you know that….but don’t you just wish sometimes that you had someone else for company too…would that be so wrong?”
Isabel didn’t like the way this was going…normally she could keep arguing with them, but every time she thought of telling them just what WOULD be wrong with getting close to humans…an image of Alex’s head jammed between her breasts would intrude…then on the heels of the image would be the remembrance of the feel of his lips…his tongue on her areola…his mouth against hers…her sliding down onto him…….”Stop! Stop it, Max. This is all about her…you’ve obsessed about her since the Third grade…”
“And what WOULD be wrong with me going out with Liz? Huh, Sis? We’ve been friends for nine years…why would she be afraid of me.”
“Because, Max….you’re an a-l-i-e-n, that’s why.”
“I don’t think it would bother her.”
“You don’t think it would bother her….?? You got that partly right, Max. You don’t think……! What happens when she asks you for some sort of proof you aren’t some monster out to conquer the world? What do you do when she asks for some guarantee that she’s safe around you. How can she feel 100% safe when she’s with an alien monster?”
“Nobody’s 100% safe, Izzy, no matter who they are. Liz knows that...she almost died that day at the Crashdown..there are no guarantees in life...and besides,... she knows me…knows I’d never hurt her.”
“No, she probably knows that you are lusting after her bod….not much else.”
“Izzy, I’m not asking to tell them the whole thing…or even part of it. All I’m asking is that we socialize with them a little bit….see how it goes. If it goes poorly, we can back off. If it goes well, maybe we can share more. What’s wrong with that?”
And that scared Isabel even more, because she wasn’t sure after that last dreamwalk that she’d be able to go slow with Alex…even though Max was starting to convince her. But she couldn’t allow herself to be convinced, she decided…she couldn’t take the risk.
“Come on, Izzy,” said Michael. “Let’s just take it a little step at a time., OK? Look, this Cantina has a little dance floor. How about before lunch, we just ask the girls for a dance. You can ask Alex…no more commitment than that. It’ll be fun.”
‘Oh God,’ thought Isabel. ‘If I actually touched him…danced with him for real….'
Isabel knew that would be it. After all those years of dreaming, if she actually did dance with him…actually felt him against her… No she couldn’t allow that…if she did, there’d be no holding back. She’d never told Max or Michael about her dreamwalks with Alex…never would. If they knew, they’d use it against her…she wouldn’t be able to say no then…not for long, anyway. No, they must never see her with Alex, never know anything about Alex.
“Alex Whitman?” she asked dubiously.. “..the computer geek and music freak? Ice Princesses do not dance with the Alex Whitman’s of the world…”
When Max heard Isabel say that…saw the scared look in her eyes, he looked at Michael…only to find Michael’s eyes looking back at him, Michael’s face sharing Max’s grin. They had her. They started to grin and nod their heads together, sharing the same thought, “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’ Isabel was finding it hard to resist Alex Whitman.
Under the table Michael held out his hand for Max to high-five it.
And as the man says, ‘shit happens,’ and it had just happened.
Because as Alex returned from the men’s restroom and Liz and Maria returned from the lady’s restroom, they had just gotten to the wall around the corner in time to hear Isabel’s last sentence, and before any of them had really had time to recover from their shock at her words, they came around the corner and witnessed a grinning Max Evans high-five a laughing Michael Guerin.
As Isabel heard the noise and looked up, she instantly saw three people..her eyes dwelled only briefly on the two furious girls…..but she went speechless as she gazed in horrified regret into the eyes of a crushed Alex Whitman.
Michael and Max started arguing with her about socializing with the girls…AGAIN.
They’d had this discussion on a number of occasions, and with the memory of that aircraft flight still causing her to flush, Isabel desperately did not want to argue about this right now.
“I don’t think it would do any harm at all, if we hung out with Liz and Maria and Alex this week, Isabel,” said Michael.
“Do any harm? We can’t get close to them, ..you know that. If we get close…they’ll someday find out.”
“Isabel,” said Max, “..we’ve known these people for nine years…I’ve been lab partners with Liz for four. They aren’t our enemies…even if they found out about us, I don’t think they’d want us to be hurt.”
“Max…you made a Sacred Vow….we all did.”
“Yeah, because you made us, Isabel. Because you hollered and screamed until we agreed to do it.”
“Michael, that’s entirely unfair. I did it because it was best for us…best for all of us. Have you forgotten the article in the magazine?”
“Hell no I haven’t forgotten,” said Michael. “I went to the library and looked up the same issue a year ago. It was a National Enquirer, Izzy. The other lead stories were about someone finding the Ark on Mount Erarat, and some women who delivered a kid that looked like a bat…he allegedly slept upside down hanging from a clothes rack in his closet. It was all bullshit, Isabel. The damn intestines looked like link sausages.”
“We made a Sacred Vow, Michael. Maybe that one story was a little bit bogus…but that doesn’t mean the concept isn’t accurate. “
“Yeah well that was the same issue that Demi Moore announced she would never leave her new husband…Bruce Willis. How accurate was that concept?”
“Michael…that doesn’t change a Sacred Vow..just because those two broke up. You just want to get together with that…Maria.”
“And what would be wrong with that if I did, Izzy? Can you tell me that? You are going away to UNM, Max is going away to UNM, I’m staying here and going to community college, and so is Maria. What would be the harm if I saw Maria from time to time?”
“Michael, my parents said they’d help. Max and I would share our college funds with you….”
“You’re trying to change the subject again, Izzy. I don’t want your folk’s money, they’ve done more than enough for me, and I’m not asking for your money. I’m asking you to explain to me just what in hell is wrong with me taking Maria DeLuca out on one date?”
Isabel knew she was changing the subject..and usually it worked, but Michael apparently was getting wise to her. She didn’t have a real answer…she was just scared to death…first of the magazine and later…later when she’d understood how bogus the article was…scared of rejection. It was one thing to be the Ice Princess, rejecting everyone else….you had a little security there. But it was something else altogether to be the rejectee.
She’d dreamed of telling Alex once…not dreamwalked…just dreamed. And in that dream, Alex HAD rejected her. He’d run screaming from the dance floor…frightened of the alien. She hadn’t been able to sleep for a week, and hadn’t felt normal until she’d been able to dreamwalk him again…to see the love sparkling in his eyes. But that love was, of course, for the HUMAN Isabel Evans he dreamed of dancing with. If he ever found out…if he ever knew..if he ever REALLY rejected her, she was sure it would crush her.
Except, she was realizing, it really was never going to happen anyway…since she would never dreamwalk him again. But that was also a reason she wanted Max and Michael to have nothing to do with the girls. Alex and the two girls…they’d been friends forever. If one of the girls found out…eventually Alex would know…and the thought of Alex recoiling in horror from the Isabel he had danced with for all those years…Isabel was sure her heart couldn’t bear that…not even to just think of it.
“You made a Sacred Vow, Michael. That should be enough. How many times do I have to tell you that?”
“Isabel…enough with the Sacred Vow,” said Max. “I love you, Izzy…we both do, you know that….but don’t you just wish sometimes that you had someone else for company too…would that be so wrong?”
Isabel didn’t like the way this was going…normally she could keep arguing with them, but every time she thought of telling them just what WOULD be wrong with getting close to humans…an image of Alex’s head jammed between her breasts would intrude…then on the heels of the image would be the remembrance of the feel of his lips…his tongue on her areola…his mouth against hers…her sliding down onto him…….”Stop! Stop it, Max. This is all about her…you’ve obsessed about her since the Third grade…”
“And what WOULD be wrong with me going out with Liz? Huh, Sis? We’ve been friends for nine years…why would she be afraid of me.”
“Because, Max….you’re an a-l-i-e-n, that’s why.”
“I don’t think it would bother her.”
“You don’t think it would bother her….?? You got that partly right, Max. You don’t think……! What happens when she asks you for some sort of proof you aren’t some monster out to conquer the world? What do you do when she asks for some guarantee that she’s safe around you. How can she feel 100% safe when she’s with an alien monster?”
“Nobody’s 100% safe, Izzy, no matter who they are. Liz knows that...she almost died that day at the Crashdown..there are no guarantees in life...and besides,... she knows me…knows I’d never hurt her.”
“No, she probably knows that you are lusting after her bod….not much else.”
“Izzy, I’m not asking to tell them the whole thing…or even part of it. All I’m asking is that we socialize with them a little bit….see how it goes. If it goes poorly, we can back off. If it goes well, maybe we can share more. What’s wrong with that?”
And that scared Isabel even more, because she wasn’t sure after that last dreamwalk that she’d be able to go slow with Alex…even though Max was starting to convince her. But she couldn’t allow herself to be convinced, she decided…she couldn’t take the risk.
“Come on, Izzy,” said Michael. “Let’s just take it a little step at a time., OK? Look, this Cantina has a little dance floor. How about before lunch, we just ask the girls for a dance. You can ask Alex…no more commitment than that. It’ll be fun.”
‘Oh God,’ thought Isabel. ‘If I actually touched him…danced with him for real….'
Isabel knew that would be it. After all those years of dreaming, if she actually did dance with him…actually felt him against her… No she couldn’t allow that…if she did, there’d be no holding back. She’d never told Max or Michael about her dreamwalks with Alex…never would. If they knew, they’d use it against her…she wouldn’t be able to say no then…not for long, anyway. No, they must never see her with Alex, never know anything about Alex.
“Alex Whitman?” she asked dubiously.. “..the computer geek and music freak? Ice Princesses do not dance with the Alex Whitman’s of the world…”
When Max heard Isabel say that…saw the scared look in her eyes, he looked at Michael…only to find Michael’s eyes looking back at him, Michael’s face sharing Max’s grin. They had her. They started to grin and nod their heads together, sharing the same thought, “Methinks the lady doth protest too much.’ Isabel was finding it hard to resist Alex Whitman.
Under the table Michael held out his hand for Max to high-five it.
And as the man says, ‘shit happens,’ and it had just happened.
Because as Alex returned from the men’s restroom and Liz and Maria returned from the lady’s restroom, they had just gotten to the wall around the corner in time to hear Isabel’s last sentence, and before any of them had really had time to recover from their shock at her words, they came around the corner and witnessed a grinning Max Evans high-five a laughing Michael Guerin.
As Isabel heard the noise and looked up, she instantly saw three people..her eyes dwelled only briefly on the two furious girls…..but she went speechless as she gazed in horrified regret into the eyes of a crushed Alex Whitman.
Maria couldn’t remember when she had ever been as angry. There were few males in her life that she had ever trusted. Even her father had left her when she was six.
In fact, of all the males in the world, Alex was the one she most trusted. Liz and Alex and Maria had been a trio since second grade…just friends..no romantic involvement, but perhaps every girl needs one guy in her life that she can be comfortable with…no sex involved, just friendship and caring. For most girls, it was their father. Maria’s father was a jerk, so that affection had somehow wound up being transferred to Alex.
Alex was the one guy who’d always been there for her…a confidant who could listen to her problems and give her wisdom…or at least a sympathetic ear. Above all else, Alex was kind…and being cruel to Alex..or making fun of him, to Maria’s way of thinking, was about the most reprehensible thing a person could do….or in this case, the most reprehensible thing that three people could do.
Normally, Maria would have unloaded on all three of these people, Isabel for making the comment, Max and Michael for going along with it, but Max…at least until now…had been special to Liz. Liz would have to be the one to deal with him. Isabel she’d handle, and Michael…how could she have misjudged him so badly? He was no better than that haughty bitch Isabel was…..since he thought her demeaning talk about Alex was so damn funny. Max..?? Maria knew that Liz once loved the guy…had loved him for years, although she expected this moment to change that. Even so, Maria decided she’d just chew on Isabel and Michael …leave Max for Liz.
“Ice Princesses? Icy BITCHES, you mean, don’t you? You’ve got a lot of nerve, you and Karla Huntziger and all the Queen bees and High School royalty with your stupid little cliques and superior attitudes. Why should anyone like Alex even WANT to dance with the likes of you? I mean he’s talented in his own ways, but mostly he’s just kind-hearted and caring and true….certainly not personality traits that you three value. What makes you think he’d even WANT to dance with you, Isabel? He might get frostbite.”
Isabel’s eyes never left those of Alex, but the words nonetheless did percolate into her brain. Even Maria didn’t know how talented Alex was…his dancing, as well as his intellect and music skills, but she was right about his personality…even in their dreamwalks it had shone through…no one was ever more kind-hearted and caring and true than Alex Whitman…and she’d just hurt him badly. And she would have apologized right there…she would have run to him and groveled at his feet begging for an apology just to make things right, had not the next sentence out of Liz’s mouth frozen her in her tracks…
“I can’t believe you said that, Isabel…..or that the two of you laughed at it,” Liz said, her eyes burning furiously, first at Isabel…then at Max,”…you can’t even act like human beings, because human beings don’t return friendship with contempt and derision.” Derision was a word Liz had studied for the SATs, she had never really expected to use it, but today she was pissed and holding nothing back. She looked at Max, her eyes narrowed with contempt.
“You know, Max,…once upon a time I really thought that the two of us might have someday meant something to each other but you know, …I’m glad it never happened. You are just as phony and plastic as she is… Come on,.Alex, I don’t want to associate with these…..people…any more.”
And as Liz and Maria each grabbed an arm of a stunned Alex and strode off, Maria looked back at Michael over her shoulder, the anger still clearly visible in her face,” Yeah, and that goes for me too, Michael, whatever chance I thought there was we’d ever have a relationship…well, it just got….scrambled.”
The three aliens watched as the trio left the Cantina. Michael stood up and wadded up his napkin and threw it on the table next to the chips and salsa in front of Isabel.
“Well that was just great, Isabel…that was certainly one of the finer moments of my life.”
Isabel was fighting back tears….she’d needed to break it off…and that had happened…but she’d never meant to hurt him like that.
“Maybe it’s for the best…,” she said softly, hoping to convince herself of that, but not really believing it. “…I mean, we made a Sacred Vow to not get too close to them…”
Max’s ears were still burning, and his heart was near breaking from the tongue-lashing Liz had given them. Liz was right, the three of them didn’t even know how to ACT like human beings, despite twelve years of trying.
“Give the Sacred Vow shit a break, Izzy. I’m going to go outside and get some air. Want to join me, Michael?”
“Yeah Max, you’re right..it’s awfully …stuffy…in here. Let’s go.”
As Max and Michael left the Cantina Isabel found herself alone at the little table. She heard the music start and in her mind saw a tall lanky Alex and a statuesque Isabel dancing happily out on the dance floor. When you have nothing else, you at least have your dreams…or at least that’s the way it was with most people. But she’d never have them again…not with him…just the memories of what had been so wonderful…the memories that grew more painful by the second as she realized how much they had meant to her. As the tears slowly trickled down her cheeks, her eyes couldn’t leave that small dance floor…imagining how it might have been.
Perhaps her mind took some small comfort in the fact that she’d successfully resisted temptation, but her heart knew even if her head didn’t that the problem with resisting temptation is that there is no guarantee you will ever get the chance to resist that temptation again.
In fact, of all the males in the world, Alex was the one she most trusted. Liz and Alex and Maria had been a trio since second grade…just friends..no romantic involvement, but perhaps every girl needs one guy in her life that she can be comfortable with…no sex involved, just friendship and caring. For most girls, it was their father. Maria’s father was a jerk, so that affection had somehow wound up being transferred to Alex.
Alex was the one guy who’d always been there for her…a confidant who could listen to her problems and give her wisdom…or at least a sympathetic ear. Above all else, Alex was kind…and being cruel to Alex..or making fun of him, to Maria’s way of thinking, was about the most reprehensible thing a person could do….or in this case, the most reprehensible thing that three people could do.
Normally, Maria would have unloaded on all three of these people, Isabel for making the comment, Max and Michael for going along with it, but Max…at least until now…had been special to Liz. Liz would have to be the one to deal with him. Isabel she’d handle, and Michael…how could she have misjudged him so badly? He was no better than that haughty bitch Isabel was…..since he thought her demeaning talk about Alex was so damn funny. Max..?? Maria knew that Liz once loved the guy…had loved him for years, although she expected this moment to change that. Even so, Maria decided she’d just chew on Isabel and Michael …leave Max for Liz.
“Ice Princesses? Icy BITCHES, you mean, don’t you? You’ve got a lot of nerve, you and Karla Huntziger and all the Queen bees and High School royalty with your stupid little cliques and superior attitudes. Why should anyone like Alex even WANT to dance with the likes of you? I mean he’s talented in his own ways, but mostly he’s just kind-hearted and caring and true….certainly not personality traits that you three value. What makes you think he’d even WANT to dance with you, Isabel? He might get frostbite.”
Isabel’s eyes never left those of Alex, but the words nonetheless did percolate into her brain. Even Maria didn’t know how talented Alex was…his dancing, as well as his intellect and music skills, but she was right about his personality…even in their dreamwalks it had shone through…no one was ever more kind-hearted and caring and true than Alex Whitman…and she’d just hurt him badly. And she would have apologized right there…she would have run to him and groveled at his feet begging for an apology just to make things right, had not the next sentence out of Liz’s mouth frozen her in her tracks…
“I can’t believe you said that, Isabel…..or that the two of you laughed at it,” Liz said, her eyes burning furiously, first at Isabel…then at Max,”…you can’t even act like human beings, because human beings don’t return friendship with contempt and derision.” Derision was a word Liz had studied for the SATs, she had never really expected to use it, but today she was pissed and holding nothing back. She looked at Max, her eyes narrowed with contempt.
“You know, Max,…once upon a time I really thought that the two of us might have someday meant something to each other but you know, …I’m glad it never happened. You are just as phony and plastic as she is… Come on,.Alex, I don’t want to associate with these…..people…any more.”
And as Liz and Maria each grabbed an arm of a stunned Alex and strode off, Maria looked back at Michael over her shoulder, the anger still clearly visible in her face,” Yeah, and that goes for me too, Michael, whatever chance I thought there was we’d ever have a relationship…well, it just got….scrambled.”
The three aliens watched as the trio left the Cantina. Michael stood up and wadded up his napkin and threw it on the table next to the chips and salsa in front of Isabel.
“Well that was just great, Isabel…that was certainly one of the finer moments of my life.”
Isabel was fighting back tears….she’d needed to break it off…and that had happened…but she’d never meant to hurt him like that.
“Maybe it’s for the best…,” she said softly, hoping to convince herself of that, but not really believing it. “…I mean, we made a Sacred Vow to not get too close to them…”
Max’s ears were still burning, and his heart was near breaking from the tongue-lashing Liz had given them. Liz was right, the three of them didn’t even know how to ACT like human beings, despite twelve years of trying.
“Give the Sacred Vow shit a break, Izzy. I’m going to go outside and get some air. Want to join me, Michael?”
“Yeah Max, you’re right..it’s awfully …stuffy…in here. Let’s go.”
As Max and Michael left the Cantina Isabel found herself alone at the little table. She heard the music start and in her mind saw a tall lanky Alex and a statuesque Isabel dancing happily out on the dance floor. When you have nothing else, you at least have your dreams…or at least that’s the way it was with most people. But she’d never have them again…not with him…just the memories of what had been so wonderful…the memories that grew more painful by the second as she realized how much they had meant to her. As the tears slowly trickled down her cheeks, her eyes couldn’t leave that small dance floor…imagining how it might have been.
Perhaps her mind took some small comfort in the fact that she’d successfully resisted temptation, but her heart knew even if her head didn’t that the problem with resisting temptation is that there is no guarantee you will ever get the chance to resist that temptation again.
Last edited by greywolf on Sun Apr 08, 2007 11:49 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Alex felt uncomfortable with the way Liz and Maria were acting as he sat with them at the table of the little taqueria having lunch.
They were being way too solicitous of him while totally avoiding talking about the incident back at the cantina. Sure, it had hurt to hear her put him down like that, but she hadn’t intended for him to hear…none of the three had.
Alex had once heard a guy in the locker room…one of the plastic people, call Isabel Evens a ‘castrating bitch.’ He’d almost gotten in a fight with the guy…he’d have gotten his butt kicked, the guy was a star on the West Roswell High football team. But he’d realized that Isabel Evans…the real Isabel Evans, really wasn’t anything like his dream girl. From what little he knew of her, she was…if not a castrating bitch, at least cold, aloof,….maybe even cruel.
Alex had wondered for years why his dream girl had Isabel’s face, figure, and voice. It was probably just that he’d been attracted to her in middle school…hell, ALL the boys had been, and so he’d made her the mental embodiment of the girl he wanted to someday have…not that THAT would ever happen.
Unlike his dream girl, real girls didn’t seem to be much impressed by guys who weren’t rich, or jocks, or ultra-buff. Knowing about computers and musical instruments, knowing how to tango, and…being double-jointed,…these just weren’t things that impressed high school girls.
No, Alex had been stung a little by Isabel Evans’ rejection, but it wasn’t really the same as…HER rejecting him, the dream Isabel that is. The real Isabel had always had an aloofness, a lack of humanity, …almost an alieness, that HIS Isabel had never had.
So Alex was handling it alright. No, he wasn’t exactly happy about the scene earlier, but it was hardly like Isabel Evans was the first girl to ever diss him either, nor was that the most publicly it had ever been done. And the superficial resemblance to his dream girl was only that. The dream girl was kind…loving…caring…so much more human than anyone he’d ever really met.
In fact, Alex was really more worried about Liz and Maria.
You didn’t have to be the most perceptive guy to notice, over the last nine years, that the little brown eyed boy she’d seen step off the bus with his sister in third grade had always been kind of special to Liz. They’d done four science fair projects together…winning the blue ribbon each time, and they’d been lab partners in every lab class offered at West Roswell High. Alex would have never believed that Liz would have unloaded on Max like that, but apparently she’d finally given up on him.
Alex still smiled when he remembered Liz telling him about her hypothesis that Max was gay…and the experiment she had done. The girl could have saved a perfectly good pencil if she’d just asked him or Maria…Max’s eyes were always on her…not undressing her with them like some of the guys did with girls, but on her face…and that was even before such things as hormones had entered the picture … all the way back to third grade. Max had been getting less shy the last year or two, Alex had actually hoped he and Liz might strike the sparks that would let the romance that he and Maria had long anticipated start to burn on this trip to Cabo…but the chances of that happening had probably just evaporated, and Alex felt bad about that. There really weren’t many guys Liz hit it off with, most were intimidated by her brain…or oblivious to her brain and merely lusting after her body. Max would have been a good match for her…Alex and Maria had long talked about it and Maria had even tried to set it up once, but it just never happened.
Maria was another worry for Alex. He could tell that her class last year with Michael Guerin had affected her…all she talked about any more was eggs. Not only had Easter become her favorite holiday, but she’d been talking for the last two weeks about going to see some museum display of exotic bird eggs of Baja.
Maria’s love-life had always been a little bit….strange, he expected that was because her father had been such a turd and left her and Amy when Maria was small. She was a pretty enough girl, and despite her tendency to sarcasm, should have had guys fighting each other to get near her. But Michael seemed to be the only one that had the same sort of acerbic wit that she had. The two really belonged together, and Alex feared that he’d spoiled that…feared that he’d spoiled everything.
More than anything else, the thought that he’d spoiled the week for his two friends was what was bothering him. After all, he’d still have his dreams, whatever the REAL Isabel Evans might think of him.
Maria and Liz saw Alex looking pensive, almost depressed, and looked toward one another. Their minds had the same thought, ‘that Evans bitch is still bothering him.’
“He likes dancing…,” Maria said. “Maybe if we took him dancing it would cheer him up?”
“You think so?” asked Liz. “I suppose it’s worth a try..”
They were being way too solicitous of him while totally avoiding talking about the incident back at the cantina. Sure, it had hurt to hear her put him down like that, but she hadn’t intended for him to hear…none of the three had.
Alex had once heard a guy in the locker room…one of the plastic people, call Isabel Evens a ‘castrating bitch.’ He’d almost gotten in a fight with the guy…he’d have gotten his butt kicked, the guy was a star on the West Roswell High football team. But he’d realized that Isabel Evans…the real Isabel Evans, really wasn’t anything like his dream girl. From what little he knew of her, she was…if not a castrating bitch, at least cold, aloof,….maybe even cruel.
Alex had wondered for years why his dream girl had Isabel’s face, figure, and voice. It was probably just that he’d been attracted to her in middle school…hell, ALL the boys had been, and so he’d made her the mental embodiment of the girl he wanted to someday have…not that THAT would ever happen.
Unlike his dream girl, real girls didn’t seem to be much impressed by guys who weren’t rich, or jocks, or ultra-buff. Knowing about computers and musical instruments, knowing how to tango, and…being double-jointed,…these just weren’t things that impressed high school girls.
No, Alex had been stung a little by Isabel Evans’ rejection, but it wasn’t really the same as…HER rejecting him, the dream Isabel that is. The real Isabel had always had an aloofness, a lack of humanity, …almost an alieness, that HIS Isabel had never had.
So Alex was handling it alright. No, he wasn’t exactly happy about the scene earlier, but it was hardly like Isabel Evans was the first girl to ever diss him either, nor was that the most publicly it had ever been done. And the superficial resemblance to his dream girl was only that. The dream girl was kind…loving…caring…so much more human than anyone he’d ever really met.
In fact, Alex was really more worried about Liz and Maria.
You didn’t have to be the most perceptive guy to notice, over the last nine years, that the little brown eyed boy she’d seen step off the bus with his sister in third grade had always been kind of special to Liz. They’d done four science fair projects together…winning the blue ribbon each time, and they’d been lab partners in every lab class offered at West Roswell High. Alex would have never believed that Liz would have unloaded on Max like that, but apparently she’d finally given up on him.
Alex still smiled when he remembered Liz telling him about her hypothesis that Max was gay…and the experiment she had done. The girl could have saved a perfectly good pencil if she’d just asked him or Maria…Max’s eyes were always on her…not undressing her with them like some of the guys did with girls, but on her face…and that was even before such things as hormones had entered the picture … all the way back to third grade. Max had been getting less shy the last year or two, Alex had actually hoped he and Liz might strike the sparks that would let the romance that he and Maria had long anticipated start to burn on this trip to Cabo…but the chances of that happening had probably just evaporated, and Alex felt bad about that. There really weren’t many guys Liz hit it off with, most were intimidated by her brain…or oblivious to her brain and merely lusting after her body. Max would have been a good match for her…Alex and Maria had long talked about it and Maria had even tried to set it up once, but it just never happened.
Maria was another worry for Alex. He could tell that her class last year with Michael Guerin had affected her…all she talked about any more was eggs. Not only had Easter become her favorite holiday, but she’d been talking for the last two weeks about going to see some museum display of exotic bird eggs of Baja.
Maria’s love-life had always been a little bit….strange, he expected that was because her father had been such a turd and left her and Amy when Maria was small. She was a pretty enough girl, and despite her tendency to sarcasm, should have had guys fighting each other to get near her. But Michael seemed to be the only one that had the same sort of acerbic wit that she had. The two really belonged together, and Alex feared that he’d spoiled that…feared that he’d spoiled everything.
More than anything else, the thought that he’d spoiled the week for his two friends was what was bothering him. After all, he’d still have his dreams, whatever the REAL Isabel Evans might think of him.
Maria and Liz saw Alex looking pensive, almost depressed, and looked toward one another. Their minds had the same thought, ‘that Evans bitch is still bothering him.’
“He likes dancing…,” Maria said. “Maybe if we took him dancing it would cheer him up?”
“You think so?” asked Liz. “I suppose it’s worth a try..”
Max and Michael waited almost two hours in their room for Alex to return, calling Isabel’s room every fifteen minutes after the first hour or so, without answer. Eventually they went back to the first cabaret, and she was still sitting there, watching a few people dance out on the floor. They pulled her away from the table and left a tip for the waiter…Izzy never had ordered.
Twenty minutes later they were back in the small restaurant off the lobby of their own hotel, plying Isabel with ice tea laced with sugar and Tabasco, but it really didn’t seem to help much.
“I didn’t mean for them to hear…you know that. I was upset with you two, not him…not them.”
“But they did hear, Izzy, and you need to apologize to them…especially to Alex.”
Isabel wasn’t honestly sure if she could apologize to Alex…and not lose it altogether. The thought of being that close to him…of actually saying something to him in real life that was…genuine, ..it was a scary notion.
But when you’ve made a Sacred Vow that puts most of the people in the world off-limits to you, you also don’t want to keep the two people that you can be yourself with mad at you, so she agreed to go with Max and Michael, hang out in their room, and apologize to Alex when he returned.
And that’s pretty much what she did. They’d come all the way to Cabos, and all three spent the next seven hours in room 116, watching Braveheart, being the tie-breaking vote in a dispute between Michael and Max as to how many Scots and English were killed in the movie. Of course what she was really waiting for was for Alex to come back, but when 1 AM came and went with no Alex Whitman, she eventually gave up and went back to room 242 to face the music from Liz and Maria.
But they weren’t there either. Eventually she cried herself to sleep, determined not to dreamwalk Alex and wondering what Liz and Maria would say to her when they got back to the room. She needn’t have worried. Eventually 7AM came and she awoke to find herself still alone in room 242.
They started out in El Squid Roe, …..the sign said it all. It looked like they checked IDs there…if you were under 12….and didn’t tip particularly well. But it was the dancing, not the beer and tequila they were looking for. And there was PLENTY of dancing.
But as one girl would go out on the floor, the other would sit at the table.
As Maria danced with Alex, Liz contemplated what she really had wanted to do tonight…and it wasn’t sitting in a chair fending off drunks that were trying to hit on her. It was trying to solve the enigma that was Max Evans. Sure, she was pissed at him…what those three had done to hurt Alex had really been low. Still, she’d known Max for nine years…ever since third grade…and he’d never been like that before.
She could believe it of Isabel,..it seemed like that girl was always underfoot, anytime Max was around her out of class, but Max really wasn’t like that…or at least she’d never seen him be like that before.
Liz had really wanted to try out that new bikini on a moonlit beach all alone…except for Max Evans. The guy frustrated her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t sent him the appropriate signals that she was interested….although clearly she wasn’t very experienced at that sort of stuff. She had her fantasies as well…when she was thirteen her parents had bought her a box of old science books at an estate sale….she’d read them one summer…and found at the bottom of the box the well worn kama sutra…..that had stimulated some vivid dreams of Max Evans, that was for sure.
And she’d had the usual sorts of daydreams…like the one she was having now. But so far, after sending what she thought were all of the right signals, she still hadn’t even gotten to first base with the boy. Maybe when they all went back to their hotel rooms, they could still patch this up in time to not lose their senior break altogether. Clearly Isabel was never going to be any great friend of Alex, that much was certain, but maybe the other five of them could do something together…and just leave the Ice Princess to herself.
As the night got later, it was Maria sitting at the table, and the dancing got even rowdier. It wasn’t really Maria’s kind of music though…she was more the torchy rock sort. And as one rowdy drunk after another hit on her, she realized that the odor of beer and tequila on a guys breath really did nothing for her. Again and again she thought herself thinking of Michael...to the point where she actually went so far as to ask the waiter for a peach Snapple, earning her only a “Que?” in response.
She had actually hoped to breakthrough whatever it was that he used to keep people at arm’s length on this trip….that sure hadn’t gone well so far. Of course what Isabel had said about Alex DID present an opportunity. When she got him alone, she’d really unload on him about that.
They’d had their fights since he’d gotten the job as a cook at the Crashdown, usually because he’d foul up an order. There was something so…sensual…about those times. First he’d get his alpha-male back up…all huffy…then he’d start doing little things, trying to get back on her good side, because he’d know he had over-reacted. Then…if that frosty bitch was nowhere around, he could get quite…pleasant.
Maria really hadn’t unloaded on him yet about his part in the saga in the cantina, but she’d already started rehearsing her lines. Eventually she’d have her egg-boy groveling at her feet…or at least she hoped she would. The question she still hadn’t answered, was whether or not she’d let him get closer if he did.
The boy wasn’t very good at coming up with excuses or explanations'….a tan', indeed. He’d better have a hell of a good explanation for this one…or be ready to do some truly world class groveling. As she shooed yet another tequila filled guy away from the table, she was already anticipating the latter with a smug little smile.
An hour later, El Squid Roe having become too rowdy for dancing, the three headed to CacoWabo.
By the time they got to CaboWabo it was getting pretty late...and pretty dark. But the place had a real band and was real friendly. Before long, Maria was up on stage singing her kind of music with Alex on a borrowed guitar in accompaniment. They even got Miss Scientist accompanying them...on a set of bongos. For an evening that had started out so poorly, it actually turned out to be pretty nice for the three of them.
It was too bad it wouldn't end that way.
Twenty minutes later they were back in the small restaurant off the lobby of their own hotel, plying Isabel with ice tea laced with sugar and Tabasco, but it really didn’t seem to help much.
“I didn’t mean for them to hear…you know that. I was upset with you two, not him…not them.”
“But they did hear, Izzy, and you need to apologize to them…especially to Alex.”
Isabel wasn’t honestly sure if she could apologize to Alex…and not lose it altogether. The thought of being that close to him…of actually saying something to him in real life that was…genuine, ..it was a scary notion.
But when you’ve made a Sacred Vow that puts most of the people in the world off-limits to you, you also don’t want to keep the two people that you can be yourself with mad at you, so she agreed to go with Max and Michael, hang out in their room, and apologize to Alex when he returned.
And that’s pretty much what she did. They’d come all the way to Cabos, and all three spent the next seven hours in room 116, watching Braveheart, being the tie-breaking vote in a dispute between Michael and Max as to how many Scots and English were killed in the movie. Of course what she was really waiting for was for Alex to come back, but when 1 AM came and went with no Alex Whitman, she eventually gave up and went back to room 242 to face the music from Liz and Maria.
But they weren’t there either. Eventually she cried herself to sleep, determined not to dreamwalk Alex and wondering what Liz and Maria would say to her when they got back to the room. She needn’t have worried. Eventually 7AM came and she awoke to find herself still alone in room 242.
They started out in El Squid Roe, …..the sign said it all. It looked like they checked IDs there…if you were under 12….and didn’t tip particularly well. But it was the dancing, not the beer and tequila they were looking for. And there was PLENTY of dancing.
But as one girl would go out on the floor, the other would sit at the table.
As Maria danced with Alex, Liz contemplated what she really had wanted to do tonight…and it wasn’t sitting in a chair fending off drunks that were trying to hit on her. It was trying to solve the enigma that was Max Evans. Sure, she was pissed at him…what those three had done to hurt Alex had really been low. Still, she’d known Max for nine years…ever since third grade…and he’d never been like that before.
She could believe it of Isabel,..it seemed like that girl was always underfoot, anytime Max was around her out of class, but Max really wasn’t like that…or at least she’d never seen him be like that before.
Liz had really wanted to try out that new bikini on a moonlit beach all alone…except for Max Evans. The guy frustrated her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t sent him the appropriate signals that she was interested….although clearly she wasn’t very experienced at that sort of stuff. She had her fantasies as well…when she was thirteen her parents had bought her a box of old science books at an estate sale….she’d read them one summer…and found at the bottom of the box the well worn kama sutra…..that had stimulated some vivid dreams of Max Evans, that was for sure.
And she’d had the usual sorts of daydreams…like the one she was having now. But so far, after sending what she thought were all of the right signals, she still hadn’t even gotten to first base with the boy. Maybe when they all went back to their hotel rooms, they could still patch this up in time to not lose their senior break altogether. Clearly Isabel was never going to be any great friend of Alex, that much was certain, but maybe the other five of them could do something together…and just leave the Ice Princess to herself.
As the night got later, it was Maria sitting at the table, and the dancing got even rowdier. It wasn’t really Maria’s kind of music though…she was more the torchy rock sort. And as one rowdy drunk after another hit on her, she realized that the odor of beer and tequila on a guys breath really did nothing for her. Again and again she thought herself thinking of Michael...to the point where she actually went so far as to ask the waiter for a peach Snapple, earning her only a “Que?” in response.
She had actually hoped to breakthrough whatever it was that he used to keep people at arm’s length on this trip….that sure hadn’t gone well so far. Of course what Isabel had said about Alex DID present an opportunity. When she got him alone, she’d really unload on him about that.
They’d had their fights since he’d gotten the job as a cook at the Crashdown, usually because he’d foul up an order. There was something so…sensual…about those times. First he’d get his alpha-male back up…all huffy…then he’d start doing little things, trying to get back on her good side, because he’d know he had over-reacted. Then…if that frosty bitch was nowhere around, he could get quite…pleasant.
Maria really hadn’t unloaded on him yet about his part in the saga in the cantina, but she’d already started rehearsing her lines. Eventually she’d have her egg-boy groveling at her feet…or at least she hoped she would. The question she still hadn’t answered, was whether or not she’d let him get closer if he did.
The boy wasn’t very good at coming up with excuses or explanations'….a tan', indeed. He’d better have a hell of a good explanation for this one…or be ready to do some truly world class groveling. As she shooed yet another tequila filled guy away from the table, she was already anticipating the latter with a smug little smile.
An hour later, El Squid Roe having become too rowdy for dancing, the three headed to CacoWabo.
By the time they got to CaboWabo it was getting pretty late...and pretty dark. But the place had a real band and was real friendly. Before long, Maria was up on stage singing her kind of music with Alex on a borrowed guitar in accompaniment. They even got Miss Scientist accompanying them...on a set of bongos. For an evening that had started out so poorly, it actually turned out to be pretty nice for the three of them.
It was too bad it wouldn't end that way.