PART 12


“Poker night?!?”


“Yeah, poker night…”


Kyle couldn’t help but laugh at Tom’s plan. “That’s definitely dumber than my brilliant get her laid idea.”


“No, you don’t get it. A poker night has everything she needs.” Tom had a dead serious expression and that made Kyle laugh harder.


“Oh yeah? And what does she need?” he asked sarcastically.


Tom started listing with his fingers. “Well for one she needs to know she’s not alone, right? And she needs to have fun and realize that life’s not over even if she thinks it is. She needs to forget men and that relationship crap for a little while. It’s perfect!”


Kyle was considering Tom’s reasons seriously now. He did have a point. “Okay. I get your reasons but how are you planning on doing all those in a poker night?”


Tom’s lips curved up in a mischievous smile. “I have just the gang!”


- - -


Maria stayed in her bed next day, unable to get up and face the world in the revelations she’d had the night before. She felt like a different person. She didn’t feel like the scarred but careless young girl with fairytale dreams.


She was now a woman who knew that she had finally found what she’d been searching for all her life. It was weird to stop searching. She felt panic rise from her stomach. What now? That was it? She’d found him to just lose him like that? Silent tears trickled down her cheeks. What was she supposed to do now?


She wiped her tears away fiercely. She wasn’t giving up, that was for sure. But no matter how much she wanted him she couldn’t possibly bring herself to beg him, it wasn’t in her. She had to survive. She had to wait and deal with the pain.


And maybe, just maybe, one day she would feel the same way about another man. Someone she can have, someone she can hold and maybe someone human… She smiled and sighed, clutching Bobo to her chest she closed her eyes and drifted off to a land where dreams of what could have happened haunted her.


- - -


The gang arrived at eight sharp, just like Tom promised. Kyle had cleaned himself up a little bit, figuring he needed to be a good example for his sister.


He wasn’t sure when he had started thinking about her as his sister, but now that he did, he knew he had to decide where his loyalties lay. He was surprised how easy it was to make that decision.


The five people that entered the apartment with Tom were the loudest group Kyle had ever had contact with.


First an extremely tall and thin girl entered holding hands with an equally tall and handsome guy. They were called Nancy and Drew as Kyle found out later. And it was always Nancy and Drew, never just Nancy or just Drew. They were both models -what a surprise- and they worked together, they lived together, they were practically inseparable.


Kyle never liked models or celebrities, they had this I’m too cool for you attitude which made him uncomfortable near them. Nancy and Drew appeared just like that, the cliche model type. But Kyle sighed with relief when he saw how they reacted to Maria. Nancy had this huge smile on her face and were giggling just like a teenage girl. And Drew, well he looked shorter somehow.


Then Kyle saw a red headed girl with curly hair. She was short and had freckles which made her look like a five year old kid. But when she took off her coat, Kyle decided she definitely wasn’t a five year old girl.


She was tiny as he’d expected, but with that little piece of clothing that barely covered her upper thighs and cleavage she looked sexy as hell, there was nothing innocent there. He noticed that the dress was a light blue that complimented her eyes. “Wow!” he thought. Maria definitely had some different friends.


The next one to enter was the loudest of the group. Sam was a bright, animated, blond girl. She reminded him of Maria. Not the way she was now of course, the normal Maria, the undepressed version. Sam threw her arms around Maria and squealed in delight.


“Where have you been doll, we missed you so much!!!! And you lost weight? Didn’t they feed you there? You look so much smaller. But whatever, at least you can wear whatever the hell you want now. You know I put on weight after that horrible, terrible Nick…”


Kyle tuned her out. Yep! Definitely like Maria…


Kyle heard a deep voice coming from outside and looked in wonder. A guy with the largest shoulders he had ever seen came in and hugged Maria. Kyle was almost sure he would break her. The guy was… big!


He later learned that his name was Paul and he owned a gym. Paul had known Maria since her high school years and Kyle was relieved to see that they had an almost sibling kind of relationship. Paul wasn’t that bright, but he was protective like a big brother. It was a relief for Kyle to know that she was safe when he wasn’t around.


Kyle watched the affection and joy pouring out of the people in the room and decided that Tom was right. Maybe poker night wasn’t the worst idea after all.


- - -


As hours passed Maria realized what that was all about. So Tom was trying to cheer her up. She smiled looking at him arguing with Paul over some stupid TV show. She knew he was worried and wished that she could make him understand. She could always try but… there was no way anyone could understand this.


She was glad that Kyle blended in so well with her friends. He was family now. And family was something Maria valued. He was so cute, flirting with Lucy. Maria wanted to hold him tight and squeeze him in her arms but she doubted he would tolerate that.


Maria looked around her and thought she could be happy without Michael as long as she had them with her. Her little trip to Roswell had made her appreciate what she already had here in LA. Before that there was always the suspicion that Liz and Alex were the best friends she could ever have and that she had screwed it up. Now she knew.


Liz and Alex were good friends, good people, but they didn’t know her anymore, just like she didn’t know them. It would take time to get to know each other again. And she wasn’t sure that they would like what they would find. But her friends in LA, they knew who Maria DeLuca really was. They knew her ups and downs, they had been with her through better and worse and they loved her. That was real friendship and she felt graced for having it.


Maria felt the dark, cold place she carried above her heart diminish. God knew she had carried that long enough. Long enough to forget what being without it meant. She wanted to cry again, happy tears this time, but she didn’t want to get Tom all panicked and worked up.


For the first time in her life Maria DeLuca let herself realize that she really truly wasn’t alone…


- - -


After a night full of laughter and joy, it was finally time to leave. Tom was proud of himself since Maria had been laughing all night with them and was actually having fun. He knew that it would work!


Tom’s smile turned upside down when he saw Maria’s face after everyone had left. She was back to the sad Maria, back to the night before. He was shocked. It was all an act all night then. She’d never felt better, just pretended.


He sat next to her on the sofa and put his arm around her shoulders and gave Kyle a desperate look. Kyle shrugged and shook his head.


“Mars…” he started in a voice Maria recognized as his understanding friend voice. She held her hand and shushed him.


“No, Tom I know what you’re doing and I know you're scared for me but don’t, please.” She looked him in the eye, begging him to understand. She offered him a sad smile. “I will be okay… one day I will… But for now, let me grieve my loss, okay?”


Kyle saw the pain in her eyes as she said that and cursed Michael Guerin one more time. He was dead meat once he got his hands on him.


Tom watched her face worriedly. He hugged her tight and asked her what he needed to know. “You won't leave me again, right?” He pulled back and looked right into her eyes trying to see the truth buried down. “You won't go there again and leave me, right?”


Kyle didn’t know what the hell he was talking about but he could hear the dread in his voice. It was scary to see the two most confident people he’d ever met in his life so vulnerable. It was like seeing Isabel biting her perfect nails… Christ! What a horrible thought was that!


“No…” she whispered reassuring him with a small smile which didn’t reach her eyes. “I won't leave you. This is not like the other times, okay? I'm not suicidal or anything. I’ll be fine. I know I'm not alone now. I have Kyle and mom and you and the gang… I’ll be fine… I just… I just need time to heal. Is that okay?”


Tom kissed the top of her head and sighed with relief and weariness. “Of course it’s okay. But we’re here if you need us, don’t you forget that!”


She smiled at him and yawned. “Now, I'm off to bed!” She gave him a peck on the lips and walked to Kyle and hugged him.


“She really liked you, you know…” She said playfully. Kyle’s instant reaction made her grin.


“Really?…… I mean, who?” He tried to act cool but couldn’t stop his grin.


Maria hit his head. “Lucy, dumbass.” She kissed his cheek and walked out towards her room. “Thanks for everything guys… I love you both. Good night!”


Kyle couldn’t wait one more minute to ask after he’d heard her door close. “What was that all about?”


“What?”


“That cryptic talking? Don’t leave again crap? Why would she leave?”


“It’s nothing, really.” Tom really wasn’t in mood to have this conversation. It had been a too long night already. But one look at Kyle’s face convinced him that he wasn’t getting out of this that easily.


Kyle’s face had lost its innocent young boy look and was serious and demanding all of a sudden. “Look I respect her privacy, you know that. But Tom, I'm here for a reason. I'm here to help and protect my sister. And if there is something I need to know to do so, I think you should tell me.”


Tom studied the face of the young man in front of him. He was young and innocent, not jaded like himself or Maria. But there was something about him that made Tom want to trust him. Trust him with Maria and trust him as a friend. Kyle might be inexperienced in life but he was an honest and capable man. And there was something raw and instinctual in the way he called Maria his sister. Tom made the decision with his heart as always and decided to trust him.


“Mars had some bad times, Kyle. And I mean really bad. She had to learn to survive on her own too early. She learned to live alone and unprotected. But she somehow made it through. She looks small but she is tough. And I am really proud of what she had accomplished. But… all the things she went through didn’t just pass her by, they had left scars… Some deep, some shallow… Some healed, some still bleeding… She still carries them around, and most of them are too close to surface with just one little scratch they get infected again…”


Tom was deep in his thoughts and looking out the window to the street lights without actually seeing anything. Kyle didn’t want to interrupt him in that stance but he needed more solid things than that if he was supposed to understand.


“Tom?” Tom turned towards him and Kyle could swear that he had unshed tears in his eyes.


“Tom, I don’t understand a word you’re saying. Can you stop with the metaphors and tell me what happened to her?” Kyle was trying hard to not sound harsh. It wasn’t a good time to piss Tom off. He relaxed when he saw Tom smile.


“You jock types are all the same…” He mumbled and continued in a way he hoped Kyle’s jock brain would process.


“Well, Kyle, let me tell you exactly what happened then.” Kyle nodded enthusiastically and grabbed another beer.


“Her father, as you know, had left Maria and Amy when she was just a kid. I’d never met the guy but what I gathered from what Mars had told me is that he is an idiotic headcase.”


Kyle was listening carefully. He didn’t expect Tom to tell him her life story, but now that he’d started, Kyle decided that it wouldn’t hurt. He was going to listen and learn both sides, and then he would decide how to help Maria and kill Guerin.


“He was Maria’s childhood dream. She had waited for him to come and make everything better. And one day out of nowhere he’d come. And he had made her choose between a life with him and her current life in Roswell. She chose him. And I always believed it was the right choice, but she didn’t think so.”


“You see, Amy is a great woman but she wasn’t the perfect mother. She was too young and they weren't financially stable. That’s why I believe she made the right choice back then. Anyone would want to have the better life with the long lost father, right? She had to try it.”


“Well, whatever, she’d left Roswell and came here to live with him. He was rich, you see, so everything she had dreamt of became reality. And when he’d left again, after just like six months or so, it all came crashing down on her. But she was too strong to give up on something so soon. She regretted leaving terribly and blamed herself for everything. She couldn’t talk to Amy or her friends in Roswell because of her shame. That was when it all started. She started to build her life and did a great job at that, but the ground she was building on was kinda shaky.”


Tom stopped for a moment and went to the kitchen to search the contents of the fridge. He came back with a coke and sat on the couch.


Kyle, who listened silently till now, asked the thing that bothered him. “Why did he leave again?” He couldn’t understand how a father would do that to his own daughter, not once but twice.


“Well, Mars says I analyze people too much and he was just a jerk but I think he got scared.”


“Of Maria?” That was ridiculous. Maria was a girl who made it impossible for you to not love her. How could her own father be immune?


“He wasn’t the responsible father type. I don’t believe he didn’t love her. It’s just that he didn’t know what to do with a fifteen year old girl. He couldn’t manage. And Maria isn't an easy person. She demands attention. And she wanted him to be perfect. So he split.”


“Where? He left her alone in that damn city and went where exactly?”


“Europe. He went to Europe on vacation and never came back. She didn’t realize at first but after two months of waiting and no phone calls, she couldn’t deny it. He had left the apartment they had been living to her use, he had owned it, so she didn’t have to pay rent. And there was quite a lot of money left in the house so she wasn’t really starving. But she didn’t want to live there with all those reminders. Reminders of her failure as she put it. She found a job in a café as a waitress and moved out. Somewhere he wouldn’t be able to find her again. She even changed her school by paying a guy pretend to be her father. She made herself vanish for everyone she knew and finally she was all alone.”


Kyle couldn’t even think what he would have done on his own at that age. She really was something. He wouldn’t have lasted a day. Thinking of his little sister all alone and unprotected made him shiver. How the hell had she survived all that s-hit he wondered and by the way Tom spoke, he suspected it was just the beginning.


“That’s when I met her. I used to have my breakfast at that café. I remember thinking that she was the most alive thing I’d seen in this damn city. She was animated and colorful, seeing her every morning became my addiction. And in time we became best friends.”


“She always hated the way I criticized her boyfriends. She always chose big guys with grown-up attitudes. I knew she was trying to replace her father and it was failing miserably. But she couldn’t see that. She said they were her type. And then she found her obsession. Colin. He was the ultimate father type. And she loved it. He made her believe they were in love. I knew she didn’t love him, but did she listen? Of course not!”


“She made herself become a mouse with Colin. He was a demanding guy and he wanted her to be the way he wished. He was the authority in her life. She never objected to him. And one day they decided to move in together.”


Tom was reliving everything, his face was a mask of horror. “I tried to make her understand but she was determined. I couldn’t just fight her and risk my friendship with her. But she was only eighteen! I found her this job as a party organizer. She was just a rookie back then, but I knew she would be good. And she risked everything for that f-ucking idiot.”


“I watched her colors bleach every passing day. I knew a day would come and she wouldn’t know who the real Maria was. He was consuming her like a vampire. But she wanted a family so much it blinded her to what was happening.”


Kyle reached across the coffee table and took one of the cigarettes Sam had left there. He hadn’t smoked since graduation but he wasn’t about to care right now. This story definitely wasn’t going anywhere good.


“Then one day, nearly a year later, Maria didn’t come to work. She doesn’t do that without calling, never. I called her but there was no answer. So I panicked and went to her house.”


“She didn’t answer the door but I had a spare key. I had to go back home to find it and it took me like a couple hours or so. Later I thought I should have just barged in from the window or something, but I had never let myself think it would be something serious. So, I went in and the place was a mess. Everything breakable were broken. My first instinct was to call the cops but I searched the house first for her. And I found her alone in the bedroom.”


Tom sighed, closing his eyes he tried to picture what she looked like at that moment. It was a picture he preferred to forget. “She was sitting on the floor crying silently. The right side of her face was bruised and she was clutching her stomach. And I knew it. I just knew that she was pregnant.”


“Apparently, the jerk didn’t want the baby. He had accused her of lying to him about taking pills. He had told her that he would never marry her, that she would never be good enough for him. He had said their relationship wasn’t serious. It was a shock for her because she thought he would be happy to have a baby with her, she had always thought they would eventually get married. It was as serious as it could get for her.”


“Well, after that, I wanted to kill him and I would have if I could find him. But he vanished. His lawyer called to say he wanted a blood test and even if it was his baby he was refusing to pay for anything. I told them to go f-uck themselves. I knew she wanted the baby and we could just make it work. My priority was to bring Maria back. She was… I don’t know how to describe it. It was bad.”


“I told her that it would be great, that we would take care of the baby. We could be a family. But all she saw was failure. Every person she’d loved had left her and she had left the ones that had loved her. She was going to be a single mother at the age of nineteen. She was falling apart. I knew only the baby would make her survive this, so I started planing and keeping her busy. I didn’t let her think about anything but her baby… which turned out to be a mistake.”


“A couple weeks later she had a miscarriage. Doctors said it was the stress. But Maria later told me that the look on Colin’s face as she had told him that she was pregnant had killed the baby. It was what she dreaded seeing all her life. She said she saw her father in his eyes and felt a part of her die there at that moment. I think she kinda believed that the baby committed suicide. I know, who would believe that, right? Well, she did…”


Kyle couldn’t say anything. Tom was crying but Kyle wasn’t sure if he was aware of it. He wondered once more how a little girl like Maria had survived all this. How had she found the strength to go on?


Tom’s voice was a whisper now. “She wanted a girl. She was going to name her Apple. How weird is that?” Kyle laughed with him. Only Maria would name her daughter Apple. She was one weird chick.


Tom sighed and lit a cigarette himself. He mentally noted to not let Sam leave any cigarettes around next time. Maria hated the smell. He reluctantly started talking again, he had a story to finish.


“She stayed in hospital for a week and started to see a shrink. It didn’t help much. She didn’t leave her bed for three months. She was usually asleep or just staring at the ceiling. She attempted suicide a couple of times. At least I caught her a couple of times, I don’t know how much she really thought about it. She didn’t talk much and I didn’t want to push her. But I was scared out of my mind that I was losing her.”


“One day I forced her out of the bed. She was kicking and screaming but I didn’t let go. I put her in my car in her pajamas and we went to a friend of mine. He makes tattoos. I gave her that tattoo on her wrist. I wanted her to remember who she was in the future. She didn’t protest. She just sat there and cried. When it was over we talked about everything. And she told me where she had been all that time.”


“She had called the place The Castle. It was just a symbol her mind had created. I think it represented her loneliness and isolation. She’d said she found herself there whenever she closed her eyes. A huge black castle without any doors or windows. She was alone. It was cold and dark. She’d spent most of her three months there, trapped. And she’d said she could feel it when she was awake. It was always near, waiting for her to fall asleep. I started sleeping at her place after that day. I think I spent like half a year sleeping in her bed. She used to hold me tight in her sleep like she was cold and I was her blanket.” He stopped for a moment to take a sip from his drink.


“And one day, after six months, I realized she wasn’t holding me anymore as she slept. So I moved out.”


Kyle sighed and rubbed his forehead absentmindedly. He wasn’t expecting this. She was too young for all of this. He knew he was panicking inside. Everything seemed extra scary in the light Tom shed on them. His part in Maria’s life seemed bigger and more important now. He had to be careful. She was way too fragile and valuable to treat careless.


Tom looked at Kyle with hope, at last maybe someone would understand and care about her the way he did. Maybe Kyle could help him help her. Maybe Kyle could become what he couldn’t… Her savior…


“So, now you know why I panic so much over her distress and depression. It was really a big deal for her to go back to Roswell. She was worried that they would hate her and refuse her. I don’t think that happened. But I have no idea what did happen. She doesn’t want to talk about it and once again I'm not pushing her.”


Kyle wanted to help out a little to help Tom put pieces together. “I can tell you partially what happened. Amy never blamed her. I don’t know if they talked about it or not, but I know that Amy thinks it’s all her fault that they are so distant. My guess is she spoiled her to death.”


“Liz and Alex wouldn’t blame her either cause it wasn’t entirely her fault that they had fallen apart. Liz and Alex had some hard time themselves and they didn’t even have time for their families let alone a friend living in another city. But I don’t believe that she can easily find the friendship she had left years ago with them. They had changed… a lot. It’s a lot harder and more complicated for them now.”


Tom didn’t want to ask for specifics. It was really late in the evening and Liz and Alex didn’t exactly mean anything to him. Just two faces he had seen in Roswell. What mattered was Maria and as Kyle had put it, it was neither good nor bad for her.


“So this is all about Michael then, huh?”


Kyle nodded, trying hard to not give away his fury.


“And you don’t know what that was all about?” Tom was investigating anymore, he trusted Kyle now, he was just checking.


“Nope. But I will find out.” After a moment’s silence Kyle added. “So, are we giving up on the project let’s-get-Maria-out-of-depression?”


Tom smiled at him wickedly. “Kylie babe, don’t be silly, of course not!”


- - -


After Tom had left Kyle checked Maria’s door and trashed his suitcase to find the cell number he had scribbled on a receipt. He found it and walked over to the weird furry purple phone Maria seemed to adore.


It was time to make a much delayed and dreaded phone call to Isabel Evans.

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 | 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 | Fic