Water was dripping down the sides of the Coke bottles. He didn't know why he had set out two. Maybe because two of them were more aesthetically pleasing? More interesting to stare at? More like a freaking "Young Americans" commercial?

"Damn!"

He was truly losing his mind.

Wasn't that a symptom of heatstroke?

Kyle sighed, dragging both hands through his damp hair. His t-shirt stuck to his body. His jeans felt like wet sandpaper. And the cold colas on the edge of the coffee table were taunting him. Saying 'drink me' like the little bottles in 'Alice in Wonderland.'

He lurched up from the couch, swiping one glass bottle as he stood. He pressed the curved surface to his throat, letting the condensation drip down his neck. The cool drops were like tiny ice cubes dancing on his skin. A momentary relief from this ridiculous heat wave. Hadn't they had a freak heat wave all ready this year? What had Roswell done to deserve another one? He really didn't want to know.

The ancient A/C vents were chugging at full blast. The fans, too. But the Valenti house still felt like a furnace. Darkness was starting to fall outside...but it was still a fucking furnace. It was enough to make him wonder if his hometown had really turned into the Hell he'd always imagined it was.

Suddenly, the front door banged. Footsteps denoted that his dad had finally decided to punch his time card and do the domestic thing. Kyle pressed the sweating Coke to his forehead, debating skipping out the sliding door, jumping the potted cacti, and making a break for it.

"Kyle??????"

Too late.

"Kyle?" The worried hail. "Kyle, are you all right, Son?"

"Yeah, Dad, I'm fine," he tossed towards the hallway, shaking his head.

Every day for the last three weeks--since he'd come home from his aunt's house in Albuquerque--things had gone the same way. If he left the house, Jim pressed a cellphone into his hands and demanded he call every two hours. If he stayed home, his dad called him to make sure everything was hunky-dory. But they never talked about what had happened before school let out.

They never talked about the fact that Kyle vaguely remembered being shot. And remembered seeing his father sob for the first time in his life. And remembered six pale faces staring down at him.

It was like it hadn't happened.

Except that Jim treated him like a china doll who was about to shatter if he stepped one foot outside.

Kyle growled.

As he patted the weight of his keys in his pocket, he thundered past the sounds of Jim turning on the shower. He didn't take the cellphone. He did drop the Coke bottle and watch it split apart noisily and spill foamy, caramel-colored liquid onto the cracked cement sidewalk. "How's that for 'shattering', Dad?"

He was in his Mustang and speeding away into the rapidly cooling night air by the time Jim stumbled, half-dressed, to the doorway to shout after him. The wind rushing past his ears made the yell sound like nothing.

Like it hadn't happened.

When he finally hit the brakes, the wide open expanse of the desert was all that was left in front of him. A shrub-peppered hillside...a craggy cliff or two...and nothing else but rocks and sand and sky.

And...music...?

He cocked his head as he let the engine die and pulled the keys from the ignition. It was still unbearably warm...but the blue-black night was peppered with stars and every so often a cool breeze was blowing past.

It was on one of these breezes that he caught snatches of lyrics, of a rock guitar, and a woman's voice.

Come to my window
crawl inside...
wait by the light of the moon...
Come to my window...
I'll be home soon...

He followed Melissa Etheridge's urgings...couldn't help it. The moonlight guided his feet to a large, flat, rock at the base of one of the cliffs. And he could make out a sheet spread across it. And an old transistor radio perched on the edge? Something else, too. And a person. Her back was to him...her blond hair was bright...looked like spun silver. The straps of her skimpy top had slipped down her arms and half of her slender golden back was mocking him. Look, but don't touch.

As he walked up, he could hear her singing along to the end of the second verse. "I need you in my blood I have forsaken all the rest...just to reach you...just to reach youuuuuu, ohhhhh..." Her voice was low. Perfectly on-key. Perfectly haunting. It was like listening to a broken soul that had never learned how to be happy.

"You sing like someone's dying," he said loudly, kicking a stone in her general direction.

Maria DeLuca whipped around, her green eyes huge with surprise. "Kyle!" she shrieked, nearly tumbling from her perch. She clutched fistfuls of sheet to keep her position. The fallen straps of her light pink tank top made the front sink, too. "Wh-what are you doing here?" she demanded, giving him a view of two shadowy curves...no doubt also tanned...definitely also mocking.

He swallowed. Looked away. "Cooling off." He shrugged, sliding his hands into his pockets and kicking another stone and giving her his best obnoxious grin. "What're you doing here? Auditioning for 'Say What, Karaoke'?"

"Fuck you." Her full lips quivered for a moment. "And I do not sing like someone's dying!" she defended, eyes sparkling with insult.

"No, it's a compliment, really!" He threw his hands up as she drew her knees up to her chest and rested her chin on them. He'd hurt her. She was trying not to let him show it, but her perfect, doll's face was tight. He swallowed again, trying to recover with more tact: "After all...somebody did almost die. At least I think I did...since no one will confirm it or deny it."

He failed miserably in the tact department.

She shook her head, severely, shutting off the radio. "Don't go there, Kyle. You know we can't."

"I don't know anything!" he shot back.

"Well, consider yourself lucky, mi hombre." Maria chuckled, huskily. It was another broken soul sound. Full of bitterness that he couldn't remember her having when she'd just been his girlfriend's zany friend. Of course, that had been ages ago. Eons. "Ignorance is bliss," she added, as if she knew from personal experience.

He sighed, pulling his t-shirt away from his skin to let the air circulate through. "I don't feel any bliss," he assured. "Just frickin' hot." Was he purposely listening to her? Purposely not 'going there'? Since when had he ever done what someone wanted him to?

Maria looked both relieved and amused. Her teasing smile made him glad he'd actually listened to her. It was a weird sensation. More than weird. "Strip naked and dance around...who's stopping you?" she challenged, lifting one shoulder and looking oh-so Continental.

"What? You don't think I would?" He arched an eyebrow, grasping the hem of his West Roswell High Athletics shirt and inching it up. "Go ahead...I've seen it all before." She waved her hand at him dismissively.

"Okay." He shrugged and began to pull his t-shirt over his head. "So what are you really doing up here?" he wondered as he whipped off the blue and orange garment and tossed it up at her. The desert air felt good on his bare skin. Hot but cold. Hard but gentle.

"I'm stargazing, okay???" She managed to get out before the shirt hit her in the face. As she caught it, and put it beside her, she mumbled something about Venus being in alignment with the Pleiades. And then she looked at him.

"Dios mio."

His hands were on the button at the waistband of his jeans, ready to go the full Monty, when he heard her gasp. When her eyes widened just a little. When she whistled and her voice got just a bit less brash and just a bit more admiring. "Damn, Kyle. You're built."

He felt himself blush. Him. Kyle Valenti. Jock Extraordinaire. Blushing. "Thanks!" he stammered, suddenly off-kilter. "You've got a nice pair yourself, DeLuca."

She just stared. "What?!?!?!?"

He stared back, waggling his eyebrows suggestively.

In a matter of minutes, they were both laughing.

He laughed until he was hoarse and wheezing. He laughed like he hadn't laughed in months. Which he hadn't, to be honest.

"Get your loser ass up here, Valenti," she gasped out, grinning. "You're all right."

He scrambled up the side of her perch with relative ease. When he finally dropped down next to her on the rock, it was to see her small hands smoothing along the contours of a narrow, black, telescope. The other thing he'd noticed as he'd walked up. It sat on a small tripod and tilted up to a precise angle. She fiddled with knobs, lying flat on her stomach so she could look into the lens and adjust. Her tank top rode up. Her jeans were slung low on her hips and he noted, in fascination, that there was a small tattoo at the base of her spine. A whimsical magic mushroom in swirls of blue and violet.

"You really were stargazing," he murmured, gazing at a heavenly body himself.

"Toldja." She shrugged, either unconscious of how she looked or uncaring.

"Why?" He drew his knees up, clasping his arms around them.

"I don't know." Pushing the telescope away, she rolled onto her back and folded her arms behind her head. "It's silly, really..." she admitted, eyes turning as dark as emeralds. "I guess I was looking for answers."

He nodded. He understood that. More than she could guess. Or maybe she could guess? "Did you find any?"

Maria shook her head, grinning again. "Not a one."

"Well, what use are you, then?" he demanded, feigning harshness.

"Hey! I have plenty of uses, Kyle." She stretched, absently scratching her bared belly.

"I'll just bet." He mimicked her whistle of a few minutes earlier as his eyes followed her fingers.

It was her turn to blush. And her porcelain skin turned as pink as her shirt. "You are a raunchy whore, Kyle Valenti," she muttered, deliciously appalled.

"What can I say? It pays well." He smiled and stretched out next to her...toeing the beat-up radio further on the flat table to make room. The sheet she'd spread out bunched up...but it was light and cool and his naked back appreciated the cushioning. "Niiiice," he added. "My pimp will approve."

"Egyptian cotton," she informed, deadpan. "What's his cut of your profits?"

He stared up at the stars, noting an especially bright one that didn't blink. Venus, perhaps? Not that he could tell what it was aligned with or what it's house was or anything like that. That was DeLuca's department. "15%."

"That's highway robbery!" She sounded so offended, it was easy to believe the joke was a serious career discussion.

He half turned, turning his attention from the sky to her profile. "Nah. The money isn't the object for me. I do it for pleasure."

"Is it really?" She turned, too, propping herself up on her elbow and copying his position. Her dark eyebrows were drawn together...so cute and so curious.

"Is it really what?" he managed to force out. Her face was suddenly so close. He couldn't quite breathe. His chest felt constricted. His lungs felt too small.

Her lips were shiny. "A pleasure." Slightly parted.

He shrugged, helplessly. "I-I don't know. It could be."

"Why don't we find out?" A breath against his cheek. A glimmer in her eyes.

When she closed the mere inch between their lips, he felt himself go up in smoke. Heat was nothing. Sweat was nothing. This was nuclear. White light. And from the fallout, he felt his fingers tangling in her hair. He felt her tongue dueling with his as he drew her legs in between his. Her hands were everywhere...smoothing down his chest...teasing under the waistband of his jeans...stroking his face.

"Maria..." he gasped as she tugged at his zipper...as he pulled her scrap of a tank top over her head. "Maria?" A question. "Maria?"

"Just do it, Kyle," she answered, eyes brighter than any planet or any star. "Don't think. Just do," she whispered into his mouth.

It was just him, the sky, and Maria DeLuca.

He was going to discover if she was, indeed, golden all over.

He was going to burn a thousand times before he ever truly cooled off.

He was going to shatter like a china doll.

A million pieces of flesh and bone and memory all sinking inside her.

He couldn't explain it.

There was no reason. There was no sense.

There was just the never-ending heat of her body against his.

"Kyle....oh, God...Kyle..."

"Maria...oh, fuck, Maria..."

He shattered.

And it was most certainly a pleasure.

He knew this was one thing he couldn't forget.

No one could send him to Albuquerque and shut off the feel of her skin and her hair and her glossy, glossy, lips.

No one could convince him it hadn't happened.

As she lay there, long-limbed and naked, in his arms, he felt her lips form words against his collarbone. "Do you want me to confirm or deny?" she wondered, quietly. "'Cause I will."

Almost dead. Almost alive. Did it really matter now? Did he want to know? Would it change anything?

He shook his head. "No," he whispered. "I just want you to shatter."

And so she did.

September, 2000.