When Max Evans healed me, something inside me awakened. Brought forth feelings inside me that I didn’t know existed. How could I love someone so much? Why did I feel everything he was feeling? In one brief instant, I had ruined everything I built my life upon for the past year. The look on his face was so painful.

“Earth to Liz, your order is up.”

“Huh?” I looked up to see Maria standing over me.

“Your father is coming, just thought I’d give you a heads up.” She turned and went off to take an order.

I have to stop this. I can’t keep asking myself “what if.” I did what I had to do. End of story. Period. Fin. So why did I feel like my heart had been ripped out? Literally.

“Lizzy, are you daydreaming again? What have I told you about doing that on the clock?” My father pulled me from my thoughts.

“Uh, no. I wasn’t. I was trying to add a check total in my head,” I sputtered out.

God, how pathetic was I?

“Okay. Well, someone just sat at table 4, so get a move on.”

Table 4. The table. The place where Max had sat so many times. He didn’t sit there anymore. In fact, he rarely ever came here. None of them did. Why bring up painful memories?

“Can I take your order?” I asked sweetly.

“One Will Smith with a Blood of Alien smoothie,” The man replied.

I wrote it down and walked away. That’s how I had become. Mechanical. A machine. Nothing more than a shell. How could I have let my life be reduced to this? I used to have goals, I used to plan the future and imagine my life. Now I couldn’t stop thinking about what I could have had. The future, that’s irrelevant. I needed to concentrate on now.

“Maria, what are you doing tonight?” I asked her, hoping I could find something to take my mind off of Max.

“Ice cream. Steel Magnolias. Me.”

“Could I interest you in a night out at the movies, dinner included?” I said, as casually as I could.

“Finally! I was wondering what has been up with you lately. You’ve been so distant. Lizzy, you never talk to me anymore,” she put her arm around my waist. “I’ll take you up on that offer.”

“Since our shift ends at 8 p.m. and the Cinema has its last showing at 9 p.m. we’ll just change, go to eat, then head to the movie.” I turned around to get an order off the heating table.

“Sounds like a plan.” She patted me on the head then walked away.