Snapshot · (Roswell Fanfiction) · √

35. A Spoonful of Sugar

A/N: Hi everyone! This chapter incidentally follows directly after ch. 34 in the order of events :-) Thank you for reading!

Max's Apartment
Late Monday night - Early Tuesday morning
(2008) Max is 23, Liz is 22

"Did you have feelings for me when you kissed me in that closet?"

"Ryan Anderson's party?"

"Yeah."

He pondered this for a second before he answered. "I don't know." He cast a glance in her direction before continuing, "I think you kinda snuck up on me then."

She frowned. "What do you mean?"

"When it started, when they put us in that closet together, I saw it as a game-"

"Yeah, I could tell," she murmured, remembering the incident very well. How he taunted and smirked in between puffing out his chest to proudly signal how much experience he had and how little she had.

"But it was different-"

She looked over at him, the word 'different' not sounding too good to her ears at that moment. "Different?"

"Kissing you..." he halted, feeling almost stupid to voice it because it sounded ridiculous even in his own head, "Kissing you was different-"

"Yeah, you told me so," Liz interrupted, a dark nuance to her voice.

He looked over at her in confusion. "What do you mean?"

"You told me that it felt like kissing a fish."

Before he could stop himself, laughter exploded across his lips.

"Hey!" she cried out in mild protest.

"Sorry," he said, struggling to get his laughter under control. "I can't believe I actually said that."

"Yeah, you and me both."

He shook his head. "I'm sorry. God, I was such an idiot back then."

"Thank you," Liz said with emphasis.

"It's amazing that I still managed to get all those girls to have sex with me-"

He laughed as a pillow came flying through the air, hitting him straight in the face. "Shut up!"

He held his hands up in peace offering gesture. "Kidding!"

"How many girls were there really?" Liz asked, not sure she wanted to know the answer, but her mind had already spoken for her before her bruised heart had anything to say about it.

He grimaced and looked over at her face partly hidden in the shadows. "You really want to know?"

"No," she answered without hesitation. "But yes."

"Ookay..." How could he put this the right way? "There weren't as many as I let you believe-"

"God, I hope not," Liz whispered and he smiled.

"I've kissed a lot of girls-"

Liz swallowed. Why had she asked about this again? "Right."

"But I haven't gone the whole way with that many."

"How about before we...you know," Liz said softly and something felt warm in his chest at the shyness with which she treated their night together. "Since you said you hadn't really had sex with anyone after that. You must've been a playboy before then. It couldn't all be an act. I heard girls talking about you-"

Max's eyebrows rose in interest. "Really? What did they say about me?"

"Shut up," Liz said simply and Max grinned in the semi-darkness of the room. "Some conversations had details that I really didn't want to know about."