Disclaimer: I don't own anything, blah blah blah.

Author's note: Special thanks to xmag for inspiring the story and helping with an amazing outline.

Part 1:

BANG!

Doug Sohn slammed the door hard on Maria Deluca's Jetta in frustration. Who was she kidding? Did she really believe that he wanted only to hold her hand and kiss her on the cheek? As far as he was concerned, Maria was only good enough for a cheap roll around in the hay. After all, she dressed weird, didn't have a dad and her mother, Amy Deluca was a hippy with a loose reputation.

Maria watched as he stomped away down the street and sighed, biting her top lip in a vain attempt to hold herself together. I will not cry, I will not cry. Never in her whole life had she felt so worthless and stupid. Actually, scratch that. It was in fact the second time Maria had been made to feel that way, the first occasion coming when her father left both her and her mom behind at the ripe old age of just seven.

This is it. She pledged firmly to herself. This is the last time I'll be humiliated by some dumb guy. No more dating until I find 'the one'. If there is a one, that is.

But how?

Maria mulled it over for a while, her mind initially drawing a blank. Then suddenly, she had a burst of inspiration, remembering how Amy rambled on enthusiastically about the wonders of tarot reading and clairvoyance. In particular, the talents of one Madame Vivian, the psychic medium that Amy always consulted whenever she was facing business problems or a relationship crisis.

Yes, that's it. I need to consult a psychic! Maria realised, with a grin slowly spreading from ear to ear. She couldn't go wrong with someone who could tell the future. Unless her future was an unhappy one, in which she was destined to fall in and out of unfulfilling half-assed relationships like her mother. Oh well, better to be prepared one way or the other.

Madame Vivian, here I come!

-----

The very next day, Maria decided to pay a visit to Madame Vivian. It had taken well over an hour to drive there but she was finally sitting inside a darkened room with the psychic, waiting for her to uncover what fate had in store. The room where Madame Vivian gave her readings was dingy and dark, but colorfully decorated with purple and red drapes on the walls and Native American artifacts sitting on bookshelves along with assorted paranormal reading material.

"Hmmm…very interesting…" Madame Vivian commented while examining Maria's hands. The older woman had an almost disturbed expression on her face as she held Maria's hands in hers, concentrating with her eyes closed.

"Interesting as in?" Maria prompted.

"Interesting as in I see a young man." Madame Vivian answered, peering even more closely at Maria's upturned palm. "He is the one, the one who will be the love of your life. You already know him and have always been near."

Alex? No it couldn't be, surely? I mean, I love the guy to death platonically but he is so not 'love of my life' material. Maria mused internally.

"I have visions, you see." The medium continued, pulling Maria away from her thoughts. "The man, he is tall, and bad tempered with wild hair. There's something mysterious about him, something so strange that I can't quite put my finger on."

Madame Vivian stopped speaking and looked Maria squarely in the eyes.

"Be careful, my dear. There may be danger later on but for you there is no other, you and this man are linked for all eternity. You will never be left wanting for passion and love."

Maria gulped but held the woman's intense gaze. For all eternity? This guy had better be damn close to perfect if she was going to be stuck with him forever! But as she fully absorbed Madame Vivian's words, she knew deep inside she wasn't really complaining. In fact, she was actually feeling much closer to ecstatic.

"Well Madame, I'll be careful but if he is the one for me I won't be staying away. If we're meant to be in love for all time then he'll never become a threat to me. I know it." Maria responded firmly.

And she did. She had no idea who this mysterious soulmate of hers could be but something inside her, something deep and powerful, recognized the truth of her own words.

Standing up and gathering her bag and jacket, Maria thanked Madame Vivian and left to make the trip back to Roswell to start her shift at the Crashdown.

-----

The Crashdown Café was packed with hungry lunch time tourists and regulars by the time Maria arrived twenty minutes late to take her shift. Assessing the scene in front of her, she could see a flustered Liz Parker taking orders from customers at a furious rate. Agnes, the other waitress scheduled to be working that day, was nowhere to be seen. Typical. Maria fled to the staff only area of the café, her mood still sky high but now feeling a little guilty for her friend's sake. Changing quickly into her uniform, she left the bathroom and headed towards the main area of the restaurant, only to run into a charging Liz.

"Maria, where the hell have you been? This place has turned into a zoo!" she cried out breathlessly.

"I am so sorry, babe. But you wouldn't believe what just happened to me. I went to see my mom's favourite psychic and…"

Liz put her hand over Maria's mouth, she loved her best friend dearly but goddamn it, they had a crisis here!

"Maria. As much as I would love to sit down and gossip with you, the masses want their greasy fat food like, yesterday. So please, please, please help me out here and serve them, and I swear that I'll be all ears on our break, ok?" Liz promised.

Maria rolled her eyes at the thought of the slobbering, low-tipping customers and sighed. She was so excited by Madame Vivian's predictions but work responsibilities came first, and she wasn't about to let Liz down when she had been late for work anyway.

"Fine."

"Come on, sulky." Liz laughed and pushed Maria out towards the ravenously starving public of Roswell, New Mexico.

-----

Sometime, about 45 cranky customers later, the girls finally got to have their break. The café was almost deserted, save for their other best friend Alex Whitman, who had just come in for an orange soda.

"So can I finally tell you guys what happened to me this morning?" Maria asked impatiently.

Alex mumbled a yes in between sipping his soda while Liz grinned. "Go right ahead."

Satisfied that she now had both their undivided attention, Maria proceeded to explain where she had been to that morning and why.

"So basically, after one disastrous date after another, I needed to take some drastic action to be certain that I never have to suffer through any more humiliation in my quest for true love." Maria finished her summary of the events of that morning and previous night.

She looked at Liz first to gauge her reaction, figuring that ever the skeptic, Liz would shoot her down gently as the voice of reason. It was how their friendship worked – Liz was the voice of reason that calmed Maria down when she got overdramatic and panicked, and Maria always made sure that Liz remembered how to have fun and let her hair down. Alex on the other hand, tended to veer in between the extremes and provided the balance between the two girls.

Sure enough, almost immediately Liz tried to reason with Maria as to why Madame Vivian's claims about a great love couldn't possibly be true.

"Maria, how can you believe in this stuff? It's completely fake, these so-called 'psychics' are just out to make money by emotionally manipulating people into thinking that they can predict their future. There's no such thing as psychic phenomena."

Alex nodded in agreement. "No offense Maria, but your mom has pretty much based her whole life on Madame Vivian's advice, and you know what her love life is like. One failed romance after another."

"You guys weren't there." Maria insisted. "I'm telling you, this was so different from all the others times I've visited her with Mom. She really did see something when she did my reading."

She stopped briefly to sigh at her friends' unconvinced expressions before continuing.

"The way Madame Vivian was describing this guy's strangeness; she really did seem genuinely concerned about me. That was the clincher in convincing me that this was real."

"With your luck, the only strange thing about this mysterious man is that he'll turn out to be a cross dresser." Alex snorted.

Liz did her best to smother a laugh at Alex before turning back to Maria.

"Look, if you really think that what this woman told you was the truth, why don't you make list a list of the guys that you know of that fit the description she gave you?" she suggested.

Maria's face brightened up. Trust Liz to go into immediate organizational mode, even if she thought that psychics were frauds. At least she believed that Maria believed.

"Thank you Liz, I might just do that when I go home this afternoon." Maria replied with a smile.

-----

Later on that evening, Maria returned home to begin working on her list. Amy was out on a date so she had the house to herself and nothing to distract her from the task at hand – figuring out the identity of her supposed great love.

There were five clues; tall, crazy hair, bad temper, some kind of strangeness and reasonably close proximity to Maria for most of her life. Presumably the most likely place she would know him from would be school. Ugh, now that's a frightening thought. She took out her high school yearbook and flicked through it for possible candidates.

John Burroughs?

He was tall, wasn't particularly friendly but his hair was cut short and looked normal.

Neil Clovey?

Not tall enough.

Nicky Eden?

Now he was tall, and had long hippyish hair but had always been cool whenever Maria had spoken to him.

Michael Guerin?

He was tall, with one hell of an attitude problem and very wild spiky hair and….

Oh crud!

Michael was definitely weird, way off the charts in the strangeness stakes. He seemed like the typical guy from the wrong side of the tracks, going nowhere in life. When he bothered to turn up to school, the only people he was ever seen with were Max and Isabel Evans, siblings who lived in one of the more well-to-do areas of Roswell.

No, no, no, it can't be! Damn!

There was just no way. Aside from the temper and weirdo status, the guy wore the same clothes every day, didn't even seem to believe in basic hygiene and always looked covered in paint stains.

And he scared her.

Michael Guerin fit the profile of 'the one' snugly like a glove, and Maria Deluca was doomed.