He mumbles an apology and she smiles wider as she asks exactly what it is he’s sorry for.

The look on his face silently curses her for making him say the words. He tells her he’s sorry for saying all the stupid stuff he said at the soap factory. He tells her he doesn’t want to break things off.

She agrees that “intense” could be fun, it certainly was the night before, but asks him why she should take him back.

He blows up at this saying that even though she’s been hanging around some dumb jock lately, he knows they still want each other. He says they were good together and asks her if she realizes this.

She says of course and asks him how long it took him to figure this out.

He mumbles something about not wanting to need anybody.

She laughs lightly and catches his eye. She never said anything about needing each other, she says.

She says she wants him, but he could leave at any time and her life would go on relatively untouched, except for a few less trips to the eraser room.

She lies when she looks at him and promises him that she’ll never need him.

She reaches for him, across the bed, but finds nothing but emptiness. It takes her only a moment to remember that he’s gone.

He’d told her he loved her before he left last week and she finds some consolation in that now. Though they were together for years, he’d never told her he loved her until that night. That was how she had known he was leaving. He’d never actually been able to say the words until that night and he really didn’t have to. She didn’t need to hear it to know it was true. She knew him well enough to see it written in his face. She misses him more than she’d like to admit. Liz cries hours on end. Alex mopes around a lot. She tries to be the strong one, the one everyone else turns to for support. But she’s not the pillar of strength she pretends to be and in truth her act isn’t very convincing. She realizes that her life has been inexorably intertwined with his for so long that she now has no idea how to function without him near her. And she’s getting tired of trying to figure out how to. She’s tired of trying to figure out how to live without yelling at him to brush his teeth before trying to kiss her. She, after all, doesn’t really like Tabasco sauce. She’s tired of coming home to find only her dog to welcome her back. She’s tired of waking up alone, in a cold sweat, after a dream about the long nights they spent painting and ending up with more paint on themselves than the canvases. She’s tired of pretending she doesn’t need him. Everyone knows it’s a lie anyhow.

She tells Liz, who is absolutely elated, that she’s happy for her and she tries so hard to sound like she means it.

Liz’s pregnancy surprised everyone and, Maria realizes, will make all of their lives infinitely more complex. After all, none of them have any idea how to raise a half-alien, especially if he has any powers.

Maria tries to be happy for her, she really does.

She wants to be the friend Liz needs, the one Liz can tell everything to and know she’ll be excited and happy for her.

It doesn’t take long for her to realize she’ll have to fake the bulk of her enthusiasm to mask her envy.

Liz, it seems, will have a piece of her lover with her forever. A child to see a part of him reflected in.

She wonders if he will look at all like his father and she bitterly hopes not for one hateful, jealous moment.

She desperately misses her Michael and wants so badly to see his face or hear his voice just one more time.

She wants to be the one who’s pregnant. That, she thinks, might at least lessen some of the hollow, empty loneliness she feels.

But she isn’t. Liz is. It’s just something she has to accept.

She’ll never see him again and, somehow, she’ll have to find a way to live a happy, full life without him.

It won’t be that hard, really. She has a good job and a nice apartment. She’ll be fine… really.

She looks over a Liz, rubbing her large stomach and she wishes she were just a little more gullible.

Lies are a funny thing, she realizes. They can hurt you, soothe you, destroy you or shelter you. You can hide them or you can hide behind them. But no matter what, it always ends the same way, she thinks as she half-heartedly attempts to cover up her hollowed cheeks with foundation. Either way the truth breaks free and ruins it all.

The make-up can’t cover how shallow her cheekbones have gotten. She’s lost a lot of weight over the past few years.

She gave up grasping at the idea that she didn’t need him quite some time ago. The lie became so evident it was pitiful.