“Only a week to go.” Aunt Sandra said, coming into my room.

“Huh?” I gave her a, ‘what are you talking about’ look.

“Only a week till you go home.”

“Oh.” I gave her a smile.

I knew this was hard for her. She had gotten used to my presence in the house, and me being gone, only for a week, still made her sad. That made me think of mom and dad, who hadn’t seen me in 6 months. Imagine how they feel!

“Nervous?”

“A little. It’s just going to be weird, because I haven’t talked with anyone there, except mom and dad of course, in forever. Not even Maria or Alex.” I looked away, not wanted her to see the tears in my eyes.

“Listen kiddo, if you ever want to go back to Roswell, to live, do it. I’ll miss you like hell, but I only want what’s best for you. You’re my favorite niece.” She wiped a tear away from her eye.

“Aunt Sandra, I’m your only niece.” I laughed.

“Yeah, well, you get what I’m saying.” She looked over at my bulletin board, full of pictures of me and her, and me and my friends (from Ohio, of course).

“So, Madison’s parents gave the go-ahead?” She asked.

“Yeah, she’s definitely allowed to go with me. Mom and dad are cool with it too. They said that they had already set up my room with the air mattress and put clean sheets on my bed.” I sighed, realizing that this was really happening, “Well, I’m just gonna finish this assignment, then go over to Madison’s house. Is that okay?”

“Yeah, go ahead. There’s some extra brownies on the counter that you can take to her house.” She winked at me, then walked out of the room.

I kicked off my shoes, and curled up on my bed. This was going to be hard. What would everyone do when I got there? Would they still want to be my friend? I missed Maria and Alex so much that sometimes I couldn’t stand it. But I was sure that they didn’t want to talk to me, so I never called. And Isabel and Michael, we had never been that close, but before I left, we had seemed to just click, or whatever.

“What am I going to do?” I asked myself.

Yeah, those are the real reasons I’m freaked. Well, they are reasons, but not the main reasons. Max was the reason. It had been 6 months since I’d seen him, and I wasn’t sure what to think. What if I went back and him and Tess were together? I don’t think I could live with myself. But wasn’t that what I had tried to accomplish? Wasn’t that the reason why I had worked together with Future Max, and “slept” with Kyle? Had Maria told him? And if so, did he care, or was he glad that he could focus on saving his planet without me in the way? I couldn’t wait till this was all over.

“At least I’ll have Madison there to support me.” I murmured.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Was this a good thing? Sure, it’d be great to see Liz again, but what would happen? We’d all spent 6 months convincing ourselves that we were fine without her. But if she came back, I was certain that’d disappear.

“Earth to Alex.” Isabel waved her hand in front of my face.

“Huh? What? Oh sorry.” My face turned a bright red.

“You okay?” Worry lines appeared on her forehead.

“Yeah, I was just thinking of the Liz situation.” I admitted.

It was no use hiding it, I know that’s what was on all our minds.

“Ah yes, the Liz situation.” There wasn’t any surprise in her voice.

“How’s Max doing?”

“Well, he’s doing what he typically does. Covering up his feelings, and acting like nothing is wrong. I can’t even imagine what’s going to happen when he sees her. He can say that he’s over her all he wants, but he’ll never be over her. I just want to know what happened that made him turn away from her.” Isabel leaned back in the booth.

“I know. I thought that absolutely nothing could come between them. I even thought that once Liz got back from Florida, they’d get together again.” I smiled, sadly.

I couldn’t help but feel somewhat bitter toward Liz. I loved her with all my heart, but the way she’d hurt Maria, and me. How she never called us anymore, and didn’t even come to visit. She’d just dumped us for her new friends.

“I guess we’re just going to have to wait, and see how this thing works itself out.” She took my hand in hers.

I knew that me and Isabel would never have a romantic relationship again, but we sure had one hell of a friendship. I gave her hand a squeeze. It was one of those moments you never wanted to end. But of course, right on schedule Michael walked up to the booth.

“Hey. Scoot over.” He said casually.

Michael always seemed to have this amazing ability to not care what came out of his mouth. At times, though, that was a good thing. The man didn’t understand the meaning of the word, tact.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Nothing. Just popped in to see what was up. What are you guys talking about?” He waved the waitress over, then when she got to the booth, he simply said, “Coke.”

“Liz, of course.” There was no sarcasm in Isabel’s voice.

“Oh. Yeah, so?” He took the drink from the waitress’ hand

“Just how we’re all going to handle it.” I took a swig of my drink.