“Hey honey, good date?”

“Yeah,” Maria replied in a dreamy voice.

“He’s finally coming around? I told you he would,” Maria’s mother said. Maria nodded, still smiling. She turned to go upstairs. “By the way,” her mother called, “Max called. I told him you’d call him back. I was surprised, he hasn’t called here for a while, I’m glad you guys are still friends.”

“Yeah, thanks Mom. I’ll call him,” she said. Maria sauntered up to her room and flopped down on her bed. She reached for the phone and dialed Max’s number.

“Hello?” an anxious Max answered.

“Hey Max,” Maria said cheerfully.

“Hey Maria,” Max said, in his usual down voice. Ever since the Liz and Kyle thing Max had been pretty down and depressed.

“Come on Max, I just had the greatest date, please tell me this is a happy call,” Maria pleaded.

“Well, I want to talk about Liz—”

Maria cut him off, “As usual.”

“Yeah,” he sighed. “I talked to Kyle Valenti today. He was being his old jerk-self. He was saying how he thought Liz and I would have gotten back together by now. Not that that is even possible now. But anyway, as he was leaving he said I should talk to Liz about the whole thing and everything would probably fixed. He said something about being “a vessel”. It was lame, but anyway, just the way he said it, it was so cryptic. I almost want to talk to Liz about it, but we’re friends and I think bringing this up again would make that weird. I just wanted to know what you thought,” Max finished.

“Michael told me you talked to him. I mean, just leave it to Kyle to...be a jerk like that,” she said, pausing. She was going to say, “spill the beans” but then she would have been doing just that.

“I know, but what do you think?” Max asked again.

Maria was very conflicted. She thought to herself *Ok, on one hand, Max is my friend, and he deserves to know the truth, but then on the other hand Liz is my friend and she told me this in confidence, and on the other hand they are totally in love and should be together, but then on the other hand if they were together Tess would leave and the world would end. Oh man, that’s to many hands, I’m almost an octopus. *

“Maria, you there?” Max questioned.

“Yeah. Max, you and Liz are both my friends. She and I have talked about this whole situation, but it was in confidence and if I tell you every detail Liz would probably never speak to me again. However, you are my friend too. Liz does love you Max, she really does. And she loves you so much she’ll do whatever she thinks is best for you. Right now, she’s convinced the best thing for you is to be with Tess, and that’s why she did what she did,” Maria explained.

"But why does she think I should be with Tess. I love her and she knows that,” Max pleaded.

“Yes, she knows. But your—” she barely cut herself off in time, this was hard for her. She was not a good secret-keeper. “Your destiny is with Tess,” she said. Which was better than saying, “Your future self told her that it had to be that way.”

“No!” Max said passionately. “We make our own destiny. I love Liz, and I want to be with her, not Tess. But now I don’t know if that’s even possible. Sometimes I just can’t stop picturing her with Kyle,” Max cried, near tears.

“Max, I’m sorry. I know this is hurting both of you, but maybe you guys can’t be together,” Maria said as gently as possible.

“I don’t know,” Max admitted. “I’ll think about it.”

“Ok, that’s good. Thanks for calling me,” Maria said. “I’m glad that we’re friends, and that we can talk about stuff like this.”

“Yeah,” Max said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

“Yup, bye,” Maria said, still pretty cheerful.