Looking at Isabel Evans, naked, was enough to make his palms sweat. She lay down on the bed, passive and waiting, which struck him as strange (in his experience, which granted, wasn't vast, girls liked to be convinced) and he stood there, staring and wondering if he should take his clothes off too. He ended up just taking off his shirt-the thought of standing in front of her, naked, was enough to actually make him not think about having sex, which was a place he didn't want to be. So he took off his shirt, prayed that he'd remembered to put on deodorant in the morning, and walked over to her, sat on the bed. He realized he still had his shoes on when he bent to kiss her, but hoped she wouldn't notice.

Kissing her was nothing special. He was sort of disappointed in that, but she kissed like most girls-mouth open a little, tentative forays of tongue. He dared to put a hand on her waist, and forgot to care about the kissing part.

He ran his hands over her chest-better than he'd thought, and he'd thought about her more than once in a while, and opened his eyes to find him watching her, her eyes open.

He drew back a little. Her gaze, direct, there but not interested-it was startling, made him remember that bubble that always surrounded her. "I have to keep my eyes open" she whispered, "I have to see that this is real, I need something to remember when I dream" and the Isabel he'd always known was gone for a second, replaced with someone he'd never seen before. He bent to kiss her again, eager for sex and not wanting to think about the possibility that all the things he'd thought about Max Evans and his sister were right, that they did indeed have a very big secret to hide.

A few more touches; he dared to let his fingertips skate up, around her shoulders, under her neck, then down, to chest, stomach; and then he froze, not sure and hesitant of what exactly was permitted in the universe of bed and willing, quiet girl. She put his hands on his back, and he took that as a sign to move forward. The condom wrapper slipped around in his hands and he fumbled with his jeans, with the condom. He had to look, to see what he was doing, and she watched, not saying anything, hands flat against the bedspread once he was done and moved on top of her.

It must have hurt, when he pushed inside her, because she made noises. Little ones, sort of whispers that sounded like surprise and maybe pain too. The classy thing, the Whitman thing, would have been to ask if she was ok, if he was hurting her. But the noises made every nerve in his body hum, and although it was selfish to love the sounds she made as he pressed into her, he did. He relished them; they made him want more-faster, sooner.

All the way inside, and his eyes flew open, looked down at her face. Eyes open, mouth open, those little sounds still. He moved back a little, so he could press forward again, and her eyelids fluttered down, then up. She whispered "Thank you" and the sound of her voice, reedy and thin, full of surprise and pain, made everything in him draw up tight and then he closed his eyes, quickly, and pushed, pushed...pushed.

And then it was over. He felt sleepy, rested against her for a second, and then remember who he was resting against and moved back, rolled away. He stood up, not sure of anything, and decided to get rid of the condom.

It went in the trash can and he looked around for a box of tissues, something, anything-and saw towels, wash cloth, regular towels, and the small towels that every house with a mom seemed to have which were used for who knows what and he grabbed the small towel, turned away, and hoped his face wasn't as red as he figured it was.

He didn't know what to do with the towel when he was done, so he dropped it on the floor and kicked it into the space under the dresser with his foot, and fixed his jeans, bent down and grabbed his shirt off the floor, pulling it over his head.

He looked back at her. She was standing up, had put most of her clothes back on. He got to watch her button her shirt up again, and all the buttons were correct this time. The bed looked smooth, untouched, like no one had just been on it. She looked at him, and the bubble was back. Her eyes were as serene as they always were, he even thought that her hair looked perfect again, and he wondered if anything had actually happened or if he'd slipped into another world-he looked at the clock, which showed 12:12-and then back again.

She looked at him for a few seconds more, and he realized he was supposed to say something. "Ok, see you around" he finally managed to mutter and she nodded, satisfied. He walked to the door, turned it, heard the lock click as it opened, and walked out into the hallway, very happy that he wasn't going to have to drive her home after all, that he wouldn't be forced to make small talk when he wasn't sure he could think in complete sentences.

The laundry room door and the outside waited for him and he went. He got to his car and stood there for a moment, wondering.

He went back into the house, through the kitchen, onto the basement stairs. She was back in the crowd, people swarming around her, smiling. He shook his head and went back outside again, stopping only to see if the towel was still there or if he'd dreamed it. It was there and he picked it up gingerly and threw it in the washing machine before he left and drove home.

****

He went to school with a feeling of dread. He trusts his instincts more, now that he's older-knows that when he wakes up with a feeling that bad things will happen, it means they almost certainly will. It's helped with his work on more than one occasion.

But when he was sixteen, he didn't know himself as well as he thought he did. Sometimes he thinks about marrying and settling down, having children, of how he'd help them see that growing up is something that takes a long, long time-he likes the idea of children till he realizes that he's picturing them with blond hair and big eyes, and then he finds he enjoys being a bachelor, that he's not ready to saddle another person with all the baggage he lugs around with him.

He'd walked into school, talked to his friends. A couple of them mentioned Isabel, and what could be the reason for her fifteen minute (he winced inwardly when he thought of the clock from that night, 12:03 to 12:08) disappearance with him, and he laughed off the remarks, mentioned his father's latest plan to extend Roswell's curfew to all of 10:30 PM. Roswell's curfew and the lax way it was enforced was always good as a subject changer.

First period began and all his friends dispersed to their classes. He walked down the hallway, trying to decide if he wanted to go to class, or if he wanted to go shoot baskets in the gym. He was always able to get out of first period-it was geometry, but his teacher was always willing to believe that he'd been home sick and that he'd come to school late.

He went into the gym and headed towards the coaches' offices. Coach Orens always left his door unlocked, and Kyle had spent more than one class period sitting in his office sleeping or staring out the window.

He heard the voices when he got to the hallway.

"They're just dreams."

"But what about what we found out? What about that? And what about Max and Tess?"

Tess. He hadn't thought about her at all, he didn't miss her, wasn't wondering why she didn't want him. It startled him.

"It's not the same thing. Isabel, it's me and you we're talking about here. And since when have you ever let anyone or anything tell you what to do? We don't have to do what we're dreaming about, you know."

Isabel.

"It's not that simple Michael, and you know it. I mean-what if-what if everything that happens there carries over to here? Everything is different now. I look at you, and...."

Michael.

Kyle leaned against the wall and listened.

"It's hard for me too. I don't know what to say to you anymore, I don't know what to think. But they're just dreams. Right?"

Kyle had never heard Michael Guerin plead before. Ever. Even when he'd first come to school, and endured the teasing that all new kids get, he'd always sounded confident, sure. The hesitant sound of his "Right?" made Kyle's stomach clench.

Isabel sighed. "I think so. I mean...uh, in the dreams, it was my uh...first time--and well, you know..."

He'd never heard Isabel stammer before. It was even scarier than Michael's hesitancy.

"Oh. Right. So the dreams aren't even uh, accurate."

"Yes." Isabel sounded much surer now. "You're right. I can't believe I'm saying that, but you are. This isn't destiny, Michael. And I don't care what anyone or anything says. The book is wrong, and she is too."

"I thought Tess was your friend. You're the one who..."

"Don't. I didn't know, and you know that. Go find Maria or something."

Michael laughed. "Yeah. More complications. Just what I need right now, Isabel. I'll see ya."

There were footsteps and Kyle thought he heard Isabel start to sob. He went into Coach Orens' office and closed the door. He thought about his father and all his theories. He thought about his grandfather, and all his stories. He sat in the office and thought about Isabel, and her question to him. Do you ever have bad dreams?

He thought about aliens, and Tess, and Liz and everything that had happened since the night he saw the handprint on her stomach. And he thought about Isabel-how she'd always seemed untouched by life, of how close she was to her brother and to Michael-and things all fell into place. He just couldn't figure out why she'd picked him.

The rest of his day was as normal as could be. His classes. Lunch. He watched Isabel eat lunch with Max and Tess and Michael, the four of them huddled together; watched Liz, Maria, and Alex as they sat nearby and pretended not to look over at the table where Isabel and the others sat. He saw Isabel pass by the table where the three of them sat, saw her speak briefly to Alex, saw the way he smiled at her.

Then he knew why Isabel had picked him and not Alex. She liked Alex. Alex would have brought even more complications to whatever it was that was going on in her life, and she'd picked him because things could slide right back to the way they'd always been. He wasn't in her life, and he wasn't going to be. It was fine with him-at least when she'd used him he'd gotten something out of it.

**

Now that he thinks back on that time-the beginning of it all, he realizes that things happened pretty quickly, in the space of a week; less even. But at the time, it seemed like it was a slowly unfolding series of events that didn't really connect to each other. He supposes that it was because at sixteen, he had a chronic inability to see the big picture. He just went from day to day-thoughts of the future, of his father's expectations, of his own dreams... he wasn't ready for any of that yet-so living one day at a time was enough for him. If he'd been able to see that he would indeed have a lot of time and a lot of years after he turned eighteen, after school was over, maybe he would have done things differently. Maybe.

The next two days were fine, ordinary. He saw Isabel once or twice outside of school, at the Crashdown, and at the supermarket of all places, but she seemed ok. At the Crashdown she did what she always did, sat with Michael and Max and had a whispered conversation, and at the supermarket she was with her mother, who stopped to say hello to his father. He looked in the Evans' shopping cart-lots of things, most of them not in boxes and cans; he guessed Mrs. Evans liked to cook-and then in the cart his father was pushing. Cans of Spaghetti Os and soup. While his dad talked to her mom, he said "Hey" and she said "Hey" and that was it.

But on the third day, in school, something happened. He was in history class and he was bored, as usual. He looked around the room. Liz, scribbling furiously on a piece of paper which she folded and handed to Maria. Max, who looked sad and tired, but Kyle didn't have any pity for him-his father had come home with some sort of rock and locked himself in his room, then left later, no hint of what he was doing or where he was going, but Kyle was sure Max was involved somehow. Lately, he always was. And Isabel, who was asleep. Some people slept through classes regularly, but he'd never seen Isabel do that. But she was asleep, her head was on her desk, her mouth was open a little, and her closed eyelids were fluttering like he'd seen people do in illustrations of deep sleep, of dreaming sleep.

She woke up with a start towards the end of class. Everyone heard her. She woke up with a start, a sudden inhalation of breath, and he turned back to see her sitting up, face flushed and eyes worried. She looked around the room and he saw Maria looking at her, saw Maria's face fall.

The bell rang and he gathered his books slowly, like everyone else did, watching as Max said something to her, as she shook her head at him and said something to Maria. Maria left the room in a hurry and Kyle was pretty sure that Michael Guerin had just woken up from a dream, wherever he was, and that Maria knew about the dreams too, was worried about them, was worried about whatever it was she had with Michael. He saw Liz look at Max before she left the room, and the look on her face told him she knew too. Maybe it explained the Tess thing, maybe it didn't. He didn't have more time to think about it because Isabel passed by him on her way out of the room, Max by her side. She mouthed "I need to talk to you" and he followed because he was curious, because he wanted to.

She said something to Max in the hallway and he stormed away from her, intent on finding Liz. Alex passed by, and Isabel turned her face away from him. He watched as Alex's face fell and he felt a quick rush of dread and guilt which he ignored because she looked at him and said "Can you meet me in the eraser room?"

No. He almost said it. No, because it was where he'd kissed Liz when they were going out and he liked the memories he held of it, the idea that she'd liked him once, that she'd let him touch her once. He hadn't gone in there since with another girl, and he'd had a few opportunities. Liz and his feelings for her were special and he didn't want to mess with one of the few really happy memories he had.

But looking at Isabel, in the hallway, he could tell he was going to get to have sex again. So he nodded at her and went to his locker, opened it, and threw his books inside. When he turned back, she was gone, and he realized that she really didn't want to be seen with him. "Story of my life" he muttered, and went to the eraser room anyway, passing people waiting in the hallway for the bell to ring to signal the start of the last period of the day.

She didn't show up till after the bell rang, and then she slipped inside furtively, as if the entire school might show up to surprise her. "I think you're overestimating your appeal" he told her.

She smiled at him and he hated the way she always ignored the things he said, or worse, acted as if they were funny in a way that meant she thought he was an idiot. But then she leaned into him, pressed herself against him, her lips on his neck for just a second and he destroyed his memories of being with Liz there once, of being with a girl who wanted to be with him, who liked him, for another five minutes with Isabel.

Afterwards, she straightened her clothes and told him "Don't forget. This is sex, and that's all." He was zipping up his jeans and her words made him feel hot and fuzzy and prickly, like someone had rubbed sandpaper on his already frayed nerves. He started to snap at her, started to tell her that she could take her attitude and admittedly great body and go throw herself off a cliff and then he noticed that her hands were shaking. "Promise me" she said to him, and he felt sorry for her.

And he liked having sex. So he told her "I promise" and watched as she opened the door and disappeared out into the hallway. He skipped the rest of his last class and went home to think. He got bored with that after ten minutes and ended up watching Jerry Springer, and told himself that he wasn't going to worry or even think about whatever had happened.

**

Things got complicated towards the end of the school year. He was still having sex with her once or twice a week-she'd come by his house before his father got home, or pass him in the hallway and whisper "Eraser room. Ten minutes."

He was pretty happy with himself. He was having sex, and said sex was with Max Evans' sister, which in his mind, was not only great for the sex part, but for the fact that if Max found out he probably wouldn't be too happy. His father was still spending a god-awful amount of time with Evans, and he still wouldn't tell Kyle what was going on. He'd given up asking-his father was never going to tell him anything, and he'd already decided that if Isabel Evans was indeed an alien, so what? He was still having sex on a regular basis.

It was June, and it was hot as hell, but Coach Orens still held baseball practice outside. Kyle was always tired and hot and exhausted when he got home. That particular day- it was June 10th -his knee had popped again at practice and it hurt. Bad.

He'd gone home, taken a shower, and fallen asleep right away, before he'd even had any water. He woke up with a start because he'd heard his window slide open. Isabel climbed inside and looked at him.

He looked over at his clock. 12:03. He felt like shit. He was dehydrated-he could tell; he was beyond thirsty, and he felt light-headed. And his knee was killing him.

"Hey" she'd said, and he'd grunted at her and rolled over, then he'd gotten up and hobbled to the bathroom, got a glass of water. And then another one. And another one. And then one more.

When he came back, she was still there, sitting on his bed. He couldn't believe it-but he had no interest in having sex. He felt terrible and he just wanted to sleep.

But she was looking at him, and she looked so worried. He noticed that the circles under her eyes were worse than ever. He wondered if she even slept at all anymore, wondered why she didn't just go to Michael and do what all those dreams were pushing her to do. If she could detach herself while she was with him, why not with Michael?

Because she cared about Michael.

That hurt, and his realization of that hurt made him feel strange. Alarmed. He looked at her, and he wanted to see the Isabel he'd always seen before everything had started. The perfect, scary girl who was so remote that he could never even dream of reaching her. But she looked tired and frightened-the Isabel he saw more and more of the time recently.

She shouldn't have looked beautiful. Isabel had that sort of beauty that radiated serenity and perfection and those circles under her eyes should have marred it, should have made her look haggard and tired. But she didn't. She looked...he wasn't sure what she looked like.

Later, when he was in college, suffering through Art History 101, his professor had shown them endless slides of Renaissance paintings. One of them was of the Virgin Mary, and she didn't look all blue and white and pink and pleased with being holy like she usually did. She looked tired and crabby and approachable. Human. Touchable. He'd had to leave class after he saw that slide, because he'd finally realized what Isabel had looked like all those years ago. Accessible. Knowable. Like someone he could care about, like someone he did care about.

That night, June 10th -all he knew was that she looked different, that his thinking about her was different. It made him a little nervous, but he was too tired and felt too bad to worry about it. "Look," he'd told her. "I've really got to get some sleep."

She bit her lip and he sat down next to her on the bed. "You don't understand..." she started to say, and he lay down, grabbed her hand, and pulled her down next to him.

"Tell me later" he muttered, and he fell asleep again, wondering what it was he thought he should wonder and worry about.

**

He woke up, and yes, it was later. It was still dark outside, and she was still next to him. He rolled over and looked at her. Her eyes were open.

"Please" she said "I don't want to sleep, I don't want to dream."

He sighed. Being Isabel Evan's sex toy finally had its downside. But he wasn't ready to complain about it yet. He just wrapped his arms around her, rested his hands in the small of her back.

At least it was dark. If he'd had to say what he did next to her in the light of day, he was sure he wouldn't have been able to. "I'm kind of tired."

She leaned in, rested her head against his shoulder. It was the first time she'd ever done that. "Please." she said again, and her hand rested on his chest, then slid up around his neck.

She kissed him. He was used to her kisses, the steady quiet sweetness of her mouth, the surface of her tongue. But that night, she kissed differently. She pulled his tongue into her mouth; held it, he felt the quick, sharp pull of her teeth, and his body began to stir, wake. He slid his hands down onto the curve of her hips, then around, gliding up over her stomach

It was the first time he'd ever really touched her. Before, just the thought of having sex was enough to make him ready for sex, and he'd glided over her skin with his fingertips - quick surface touches. But that night, he needed more than that.

He ran his hands along her sides, down over the curve of her hips, and then up, resting his hands under her breasts. She made an impatient noise, but he ignored it. He moved his hands up again, curving his fingers, sliding them back and forth, feeling her nipples stiffen under his hands, working her shirt open, unfastening her bra and watching it slide to the floor, the light from outside illuminating it as it drifted down. She took off the rest of her clothes and he looked, just for a moment, just to really see.

Then his hands on skin--why had he never really done this before? The texture, the weight, the shape of her breasts, the warmth of her skin. She made another noise, edgy and questioning, but he ignored her, continued. He licked the skin on her neck, her shoulders, the dip where her collarbone curved into her neck, then down, the sweep of her chest, the dip between her breasts; all different, all tastes that needed to be registered, all things he realized were worth detection and identification.

He ran his hands - not fingertips but his entire hand, palm, even the bend where wrist meets skin - down her body, then up. Touched the dimple on her elbows where they bent, the supple, yielding skin on her stomach, the indent of her navel. She stopped making noise when he moved his mouth to her stomach, registering the skin under her breasts, made circles, radiating outward from her navel with his tongue, his hands traveling down her legs, measuring the curve of muscles in her thighs, the shape of her calves, lifting her legs up, fingers sliding over the bones of her ankles, the sharpness of the bones a shock after all the give of her skin.

She pulled on his hair, hard, both hands yanking as his head dipped lower, mouth tracing over hipbones. "What are you doing?"

He lifted his head up, leaned over her, bent his mouth to her ear, ran his tongue along the complex whorls of flesh that guarded it, tested his teeth, gently, on the flesh of her earlobe, whispered inside, "Playing."

A giggle; hers, startled and surprised, came up at his words, and then the clumsy way her teeth bumped his as she turned, kissed him. A bubble bursting, he thought, and her hands ran over his back and then up, down his arms, around to his chest, and back down again.

His hands went out once more, swept under her ear, around her neck, paused in the channel of her throat at the bottom, marking the slight bump, then down over the smooth expanse of skin, a straight line down her chest, two pauses; down, around her breasts and up, over, to the edge of her shoulders, then back down, past stomach, over navel, and to between her legs where her skin was hot and he imagined, flushed.

The curls between her legs captured his fingers and he paused, circled and then went on, slid into wet and giving flesh. He was ready and her legs were up, clenched beside his back and she wasn't making noise, but she was breathing and it was making everything inside him scream and he fumbled for a condom, kissed her, and put his hands everywhere again, quickly, amazed.

Then he was inside her. It was different this time. It was easier to push inside her, and it felt better. Hotter. Wetter. Tighter. Deeper.

She made a choked sound when he withdrew a little and thrust into her again. He liked the sound so much he did it again, felt his injured knee protest as he shifted, thrust, withdrew and went back. He didn't care about his knee, he felt as if everything inside him had heated and melted, reformed.

She lifted her legs up more and wrapped them around his back. She'd never done that before. Her hips rode up to meet his. He thrust, she pushed back, and he opened his eyes, stunned by how different things were this time. Better, beyond better, and he started to wonder if maybe it could always...

Then something happened-her body contracted around him-he felt her body clench up and let go into a series of little pulses around him, and she said "What?" and then "Hmmm" and the sound of that, a hum that he'd never heard anyone make ever; he came immediately, amazed by how good it felt, amazed by how good she felt.

Sleep called; he shoved the condom off, onto the floor, he'd clean up later, it could all wait till later. He gathered her into her arms, and she folded, sighing. He pressed a kiss to her lips, and she responded, he could felt the curve of her mouth; yes, she was smiling and he drifted away, tangled and surprised and happy.

He woke up when his alarm clock went off. She was still beside him, curled into the covers. He shook her and she opened her eyes slowly, stared at him blankly for a moment. He expected worry, because she hadn't gone home, because she was still with him.

"I didn't dream at all" she told him, and her smile was radiant.

He kissed her before he thought about it, and she kissed him back. Even now, years later, he remembers how he felt when they separated.

He swears that the world had tilted a little, and that everything seemed to have rearranged itself. All the pieces were still there, they just didn't all fit together anymore. It was the very beginning of him falling in love with her, of her loving him, and it all grew into something beautiful and wonderful and amazing. For a while, anyway.

**

After that, things changed between them. Slowly. So slowly. They started talking. Not much at first, just of what they were doing; the rest snuck up on them gradually. 'How are you?'s that had never meant anything before got answered honestly. They knew a lot of the same people, and they talked about them, about things that were happening in school, in the world. They never talked about her brother, his father, or anything else related to that, although she did mention the dreams once in a while. He never pushed her to talk about them-he didn't really want details-but she once told him that she thought that who she was had to be defined by what she was, and she didn't want that. All she'd ever known was the life she had, and she liked it.

And the sex changed.

It got better. A lot better. Once Isabel learned that there was pleasure to be had in non-dream world sex...they learned a lot, together. And they got more daring and more careless. They started to have sex during the day in places other than the eraser room. Once school ended, she got a job working in her mother's office. They did it there-in the copy room, in the closet that the office supplies were kept in.

He got a job painting houses, and sometimes she'd come see him while she was supposed to be at lunch. And since the houses were all empty during the day there were lots of rooms and porches and decks and basements that they explored. Once, right after he'd come back to Roswell from his stint in D.C., he got set up on a blind date. He went to pick his date up, sat in the living room while she went to get her purse. The room looked so familiar to him, and then he realized that of course it did, he'd had sex with Isabel against the wall where a picture of boats and sunny skies now rested. A surprise memory, but a pleasant one.