Michael Guerin walks the dark streets of Roswell. It is after midnight and he is alone. He is always alone. It doesn’t matter if it’s midnight and the streets are dark and the city asleep or if it is noon on a Monday afternoon and the city is bustling along the sidewalk and the traffic is backed up, Michael Guerin is always alone. He makes it this way. He tells himself it’s for the best. One day he might have to just wake up and leave, no warning, no planning. He can’t have ties here that would make him hesitate or regret his decisions at all when it came to leaving this place. “There’s got to be something better for me out there than Roswell, New Mexico.” That was his motto. In order to keep that motto, he can’t have anyone invading his life and making him wonder and making him think that maybe life in Roswell didn’t have to be so bad. He couldn’t let it happen.

He knows where he is going. He tells himself he won’t go this time, he’ll avoid that part of town. His feet point him to that part of town. He tells himself he’ll pass that street, he won’t walk down it. His legs carry him right down the street, so familiar to him by this time, he knows the exact number of steps from where it intersects Elm Avenue to the end where it crosses Codington Way. This time, though, he won’t stop at her house, he can’t stop at her house, because every time he stops, he comes so close to forgetting about his motto, the motto that first bound him to her in the first place, their common ground, their mutual need for something more than what life has to offer them. He can’t break that motto, he won’t, and that is why this time he won’t stop in front of her house.

Without you,
The seeds root,
The flowers bloom,
The children play,

But he has to stop, he can’t help himself. He has to be able to see her in her window, he has to know she is there and that she is okay and that everything is normal. When things are good for her, things are good for him. Life seems to balance itself out when he can see that she is there. “I can’t get intense like this,” he had told her. Wasn’t this intense? Wasn’t standing outside her window, knowing that one glimpse of her in her pajamas reading a book before bed would make everything right in his world getting just a little bit intense? He was going against everything he had worked so hard to build all of these years. No one could get to Michael Guerin; Michael Guerin didn’t need anyone; Michael Guerin was a loner; Michael Guerin was a rebel; Michael Guerin was a stone wall; Michael Guerin was slowly breaking down.

It was all her fault. She had come in and with a few looks, a few words, a few soft, and sometimes not so soft, brushes against him, she had single-handedly wiped out years of work, blocking all emotion from anyone. She hadn’t pitied him, he knew that. It wasn’t sympathy that had done it. He had gotten plenty of sympathy over the years from everyone, especially Max and Isabel, and that had never done anything to shoot down his hard exterior. It hadn’t been anything concrete, she just seemed to......understand him in a way that no one else had ever seemed to before. So many people had tried to understand or pretended to understand, but they never did. No one could know what it was like to have a home where you didn’t feel you belonged or have someone who was suppose to care about you not want you or throw you away. Max and Isabel didn’t understand, because, though they, too, had been left here, they were also accepted by warm loving people who wanted them and who loved them, they just couldn’t’t grasp what he felt. She did. She had been abandoned, too. Someone she loved who was suppose to love her back just walked out on her and never looked back.

It was difficult for him to grasp. Someone could actually leave her, voluntarily. He had seen her in those flashes. That little girl with her red shoes and her little puppy, how could anyone possibly want to abandon that sweet little girl willingly? He wouldn’t. If he was given a free choice in this matter, there was no way he could ever let her go, no way he would ever turn his back on her, no way he could ever walk out that door. But he had no choice and now he had to be content with looking in her window.

The stars gleam,
The poets dream,
The eagles fly,
Without you.

He had been so close. When she had come to his apartment that morning, she had asked him not to be cold or mean to her. His defense had crumbled at that small plea. He had been so angry by her actions the previous day. She had “faked it.” The visions had not been real and he knew what that meant. He was not meant to be with her. Max and Liz, they could be happy now, they could be content knowing that they had a special connection, one that allowed them to have feelings for each other and not feel guilty, because, if for nothing else, they were helping him find his way home. Without those visions, he and Maria had no excuse and he knew that he had been right all along. It didn’t matter that it felt good. It was wrong. However, when she showed up and gave that small plea, he could do nothing, but accept her. She had admitted that she was wrong, she told him she was the one who cuts herself off from people, she had apologized. It had been what he had wanted all along, but when it came down to it, he couldn’t accept that. She shouldn’t apologize. She hadn’t done anything wrong and she wasn’t closed off, she was right all along, he was the one who closes himself off. He needed to tell her that, but he couldn’t, because he didn’t get the chance. In the middle of his proclamation, she admitted that the visions didn’t matter to her, she just wanted them to be close. He couldn’t think of a single thing to say after that. The only thing that went through his head was what this now meant. She had said the words that he never wanted to hear her say out loud, because hearing them would mean facing them and, if he had to face them, then he would also have to face the consequences for those words and he couldn’t say goodbye to her now. It would be too hard.

Without you,
The hand gropes,
The ear hears,
The pulse beats,

He did it as gently as he could, sliding closer to her on the couch where she sat. He didn’t know how on earth he was going to be able to do what he now had to do. First, he needed to tell her, one time, what he had wanted to for so long now. “Thanks.” Thanks for being there with your car when I had to find a clue. Thanks for letting me be the calm rational one at the Crashdown the night Max and Liz went to the reservation. Without you there, I would have gone crazy. Thanks for letting me hold you and kiss you and touch you like I wanted to do so many times in the eraser room. Thanks for saving my life and helping to bring me back when I came so close to dying. Thanks for not letting me be myself and take everyone around me for granted like I always do. Thanks for telling me when I’m being a jerk. Thanks for being there for me when I was hurting and hating my life, even after all I had put you through. I hope she knew how many thank you’s were in that one word. I kissed her. I wouldn’t let it be like it was before. I wouldn’t get carried away this time and let the passion get out of control like it always did. This time, I kissed he gently on the forehead and held her close. It was all I could think of to do. Now, I could only hold her for the small amount of time we had left.

I looked at her, straight into her eyes. This time, I wouldn’t hide anything, this time I would be honest, this time, no matter how much it hurt, the truth had to be spoken. “Maria......,” I began.

“Shhhhhhh........” she put her fingers to my lips to stop me, before moving them, so she could gently press her lips to mine. I allowed my hands to move up her shoulders and wrap around her back as hers came up behind my head and we held each other close. The kiss lasted only seconds, but it felt like an eternity, as I held her for the last time. When she pulled away and looked into my eyes, I knew that she knew. She smiled at me slowly and stood, turning back to hold her hand out. I took it and squeezed it into mine, not wanting to allow this to happen. I wanted to stop everything, I wanted to turn back time, to take back the words that I had desperately longed for, but had now changed the course of our relationship forever.

Her hand slipped from mine as she continued walking to the door and I let my hand fall onto the couch, lifeless, unwilling and unable to move. She continued to the door and I watched her, my eyes never wavering from her back. She moved slowly, too slowly it seemed, trying, it seemed, to stretch that moment into forever, so that we never would really be apart. Yet, it finally happened and she reached the door. I wanted to run to her, to shove myself against the door so she couldn’t open it, to bar her from ever leaving this room, to keep her here with me forever, away from the trials of everyday life that were now tearing us from each other, but I didn’t. I let her open the door, I let her walk through the frame, and I let her shut the door behind her. She never looked back.

Without you,
The eyes gaze,
The legs walk,
The lungs breathe,

It has been two months now and I still haven’t spoken a word to her since that day. I’ve rarely seen her. Neither of us spend too much time with Liz and Max at school anymore. It hurts too much to know that they share a happiness that we will never be able to know or share. Of course, there are questions. Max always wants to know what went wrong and why I don’t see him at school and why I always decline his offers of dinner at the Crashdown. He also carries messages from Liz, who wants to know what is wrong with Maria and why she won’t talk to her about what’s wrong. She blames me, Liz does, I know, and I’m okay with that, because I know that she’s right. It is my fault. I should have been stronger. I should have fought harder against the feelings that Maria forced into my life, but I didn’t, and because of that, a life other than mine has been ruined, and that life is one that I would gladly give mine for in order to bring light to it again.

I long for her smile. She could get so angry with me and so furious and so crazy, but one smile and it was all worth it. She was my light, my rainbow, and the sun in my world. Who cares about any universe or any planet when all I needed in order to survive was everything that Maria had to offer?

That is why I come here, I think. That is why I sit outside her window at night and stare at her while she reads or studies or sleeps. That is why I no longer spend any nights at my apartment. I am always here, always waiting to see her smile. She does, too. Usually when she’s reading a book. One night, she was reading "Little Women" and something in the book made her laugh. I’ve never heard such a beautiful sound in my life. She sat and stared at the book and laughed and laughed until she was holding her stomach. I checked the book out at the library the very next day and read it the next night.I still don’t know what made her laugh.

The mind churns,
The heart yearns,
The tears dry,
Without you.

She cries, too. It’s hard on those nights, but I can’t leave. Something masochistic makes me stay there and watch her as she lays her head down on her pillow and sobs for hours. I know why she is crying and that’s what hurts even more. I can’t stand to be the cause of her tears. Who really wants to be responsible for the shadow that caused the sun to be eclipsed or the thunderclouds that ruined the perfect day? But that’s what I’ve become.......

She puts down the book she has been reading tonight. "Jane Eyre." I remind myself to go to the library tomorrow. As she reaches up to turn off the light on her bedstand, she pauses and turns towards the window. I know that I should hide or duck or make sure that she doesn’t see me, but I don’t. I just look at her and she looks right back at me. We stay like this for a long time, staring, not saying a word, neither one willing to be the first to look away. She slowly looks towards the light and turns the knob. The light clicks off and I see her shadow move about, getting under the covers. She’s going to be okay, I think.

It’s time to go home now. I turn around and head back towards the sidewalk. I walk down her street, slowly, savoring it, knowing that it is the last time that I will be here. Now I am free again. When the day comes, I’ll be ready. When my parents come to bring me home, I can walk on to the ship without one backward glance to the planet that I will be leaving. I’d like to hear Max and Isabel say that. I know they can’t. They’re not as strong as I am, they don’t have the willpower that I do, they won’t be happy in the end. You watch and see. It may hurt like hell now, but in the end, I’m the one who’ll be spared the pain......

Life goes on,
But I’m gone,
Cause I die,
Without you.