Snapshot · (Roswell Fanfiction) · √

39. Where I Stood

Kyle Valenti's Residence
(2007) Max is 22, Liz is 21
One week before "Betrayed"

Liz sighed deeply as she put tired arms around Sean's neck and leaned her cheek against his chest.

"You okay?" Sean's voice drifted across her ear.

"So tired," she mumbled, but her feet kept moving to the music. The throbbing, tinnitus-inducing music that served to mentally numb her rather than make her want to party.

She'd had three exams over the past week and two major assignments due. She was horribly sleep-deprived, having barely gotten more than a total of seven hours of sleep the last four nights.

But instead of crawling into bed when she had come home after her last exam earlier that day, she had been assaulted by the strongest urge to get out of the house. She'd looked at her room and she'd felt nauseous. She'd had the desperate need to get out of the place that had served as her prison the last couple of weeks.

And Kyle Valenti had conveniently thrown a party on the night of her last exam.

Now she was dangerously close to falling asleep on the living room floor that was serving as dance floor. Sean's arms were probably the only thing preventing her body from crashing to the floor.

Sean kissed her temple. "You wanna go home?"

Liz shook her head. From the way his wandering hands were groping her, she had a fair idea of what Sean wanted to do if they went home.

And she really wasn't up to that in her current comatose state of mind.

Even if that hadn't been the case, she wasn't prepared to go home yet. Max had been spending too much time at their apartment recently and she needed to get away from his penetrating glances that had guilt building in her throat, threatening to suffocate her.

More than once had she wondered why he kept coming by; was he really that intent on making her feel horrible?

Which only served to anger her even more. He had no right to make her feel guilty about the situation. That night was a mistake and they both knew it. He had no right to act like an injured puppy and try and fool her into thinking that the night had meant more to him than it should have done to the typical Max Evans.

"Are you still with me?" Sean asked, his fingers trailing under the lining of her low-riding jeans.

She nodded against his chest and opened her mouth to answer him but her words got stuck in her throat as she saw Max walk in through the door, his hand connected to the hand of a petite blonde.

Liz felt a shiver of jealousy run through her and could practically feel her face harden. As numbing sensations that could only be described as scolding pins and needles exploded in her breast, possibly as a result of her heart being grinded into miniscule pieces, her eyes tracked his arrival into the house. She watched what his hands did and didn't touch on that blonde, her cheeks getting hotter with each whisper of his hand across the small of her back, against her bare arm or his fingers brushing through the hair that was so different from hers.

But even as the dark emotions clouded her vision, she didn't fail to detect the invisible border between Max and the girl clearly indicating that they were still getting to know each other. Which wasn't such a big surprise. With the amount of time Max had been spending at the apartment recently, he couldn't have been involved in a relationship at the same time.

Then their eyes met and she watched him freeze. He was still as stone for about five seconds, before he cocked his head to the side and smirked at her.