Made Tess sick. Witnessing the googley eyes, the whispered 'I love you's', it literally made her want to puke. That or punch the precious Lizzy Parker that would no doubt always be queen in Max's eyes. He didn't care about destiny, he cared about her. And always would; Tess was certain of it.

So what did that leave for the fair-haired hybrid? Nothing, nothing... Just the cursed stars that didn't mean anything if the destiny she'd always known to be true was disregarded.

Tess was having a grand time moping about and perhaps would have continued to do so for hours had she not stumbled upon the very person she least wanted to see. On a random sidewalk somewhere in the small town of Roswell sat Liz Parker, tear stains on her olive cheeks and a beer can that looked out of place in her hand. A pitiful sniffle reached Tess's ears as she rolled her eyes and took a seat next to the crying girl.

Her tear-fest disrupted, Liz turned her head to peer over at who'd joined her. Upon realizing it was Tess, she scooted away and clicked her tongue in disgust. Her voice sounded defeated as she said, "Don't you EVER go away?"

Tess hid well the fact that she was stung by the question. Instead of answering, she eyed the can in her companion's grasp suspiciously. "Liz Parker drinking? That could make it into the Tabloids."

"I wasn't DRINKING it," Liz snapped.

"Then what are you doing with it?"

"None of your business!" came the angry reply in a very un-Liz-like tone.

"God! You don't have to be so cruel, I was just asking." Lowering her voice, Tess scooted slightly to her left, putting a substantial amount of space between the two.

There was an uncomfortable pause before Liz looked down at the spot Tess had recently vacated. It was easier than actually looking at the girl. "I don't know what I'm doing with it... people drink when they're sad. I thought it might help."

Another pause followed, and then: "Is it open?"

Liz shook her head.

Lacing her fingers together, Tess circled her arms around her legs, hugging them to her chest. "Are you going to open it?"

Liz looked apprehensive. "No... I don't know."

Tired of this, Tess refrained from muttering "wimp" as she snatched the beer can from Liz's hands. Liz looked on, widening her eyes in her innocent way as Tess tapped the top of the can with her fingernails, and then opened it. The fizzy sound erupted to send Liz's heart pitter-pattering. Shrugging in a bored way, Tess brought the can to her lips and chugged down a swallowful.

Turning to hand the can back to Liz, Tess contorted her face into a grimace to show how good it tasted. "I can't believe you actually did that," Liz marveled, gingerly wrapping the fingers of her right hand around the chilled aluminum.

Although the taste left in her mouth was making her regret it, Tess managed a, "Yeah, well..." It was beginning to grate on her nerves the way Liz was staring intensely at the can as if deciding whether or not to take a sip was the biggest decision she'd ever have to make. "I dare you to drink some."

Blinking her eyes rapidly as if being drawn out of a trance, Liz turned toward Tess. "What?"

"You'll never do it."

Looking a bit insulted, Liz glared at the girl beside her as if trying to stare her down, and with a roll of her chocolate brown eyes she brought the can up to her slightly parted lips. Tess watched with a slight smile on her face, just waiting for Liz to chicken out and then preach about the dangers of alcohol as if in an afterschool special. Sensing the other girl's thoughts, Liz was determined to do this just to prove her wrong. Tipping the can, she swallowed almost immediately after the golden liquid entered her mouth.

Slamming the can down on the sidewalk in triumph, Liz flashed Tess what would've been a smug grin if she had been able to manage it right. Tess erupted in laughter, pointing an accusatory finger and declaring, "You hated it!"

A frown came to occupy Liz's face. "Well it tasted awful," she finally offered in defense. When Tess continued with her fit of laughter, Liz determinedly seized the can up once more. Tilting it way back, she gulped down large swigs of the bitter beer that flowed continuously into her small mouth.

Calming down, Tess nudged the brunette at her side, causing Liz to stop drinking and turn to her in question. "Don't drink it all!" Tess said, and without further prodding Liz handed her the now half-empty can. Surreptitiously licking her lips, Liz remarked with a bit of a slur, "You know, that stuff actually isn't half bad."

Swallowing the final gulp, Tess crushed the can in her hand, cocking an eyebrow curiously at the slightly intoxicated young girl beside her. "Yeah, I guess it's pretty good once you stop actually tasting it," she agreed.

Liz giggled. Reaching over to flick Tess's arm, she said, "Your eyes look all weird."

Tess added her own laughter, feeling the unusual rush of alcohol flooding her bloodstream. "MY eyes look weird? Need me to get you a mirror?"

Quite suddenly Liz stifled her laughter and pouted her lower lip. "Shut up."

Sighing, Tess stood up, wobbling unsteadily on her feet. Lazily surveying her surroundings, she announced to the air, "I'm gonna go."

"Gonna go where?" inquired a rather disinterested Liz from the ground.

"I don't know... Max's house."

"You cannot go to MAX'S HOUSE!" Liz erupted loudly, rising to a stand. "Oh God," she muttered, bringing a hand to her creased forehead as she swayed off balance. After teetering for a few seconds, her body decided it wanted to fall onto Tess.

Grunting in complaint, Tess immediately forced Liz's body upright once more. "Geeze, you're heavier than you look," she shot, and then after reconsidering, "Maybe I should've just let you fall."

Curling her upper lip, Liz shot the blonde at her side a look of disgust. And in a split-second moment of real anger that might have shocked both girls if they weren't so tipsy, she uttered, "Sometimes you're such a bitch."

"Yeah, I know," Tess admitted after only a slight pause. Tossing a stray ringlet away from her face, she continued, "So are you."

Standing what both would normally consider too close for comfort, Tess and Liz began trudging forward at a snail's pace, heading out into the center of the street and then toward the stop sign in a strange contented silence. It wasn't until they reached the end of the street and turned to the right that Liz opened her mouth to speak again. "You can't have him." Meaning Max, Tess knew. "I changed my mind. The other day when I told him to follow destiny... I was being weird." She stopped to send a glare to Tess that might've been threatening if it hadn't been coming from such a face as hers. "He's still mine, and I can keep him if I want to."

Tess spoke with certainty. "You're just saying that 'cause you're drunk."

"Am not."

"Whatever." The end of another street came, and this time they kept going forward. "Anyway if you keep distracting him I'll just beat you up," Tess half-joked.

"I could take you," came from Liz, her small voice laced with alcohol. Tess laughed. Liz reached up a hand to ding the next stop sign the two passed, clicking her tongue as her finger tapped the surface. "How about this, we'll share him."

"Right, that'll work," Tess agreed sarcastically. "I get the bottom half."

"Fine, be dirty."

"That's not dirty. I can be dirtier," Tess assured her companion. "It's so easy to push your goodie-goodie buttons. What if I told Max we'd have a threesome?"

A hysterical giggle erupted from the bottom of Liz's throat as she swatted Tess's arm. "Shut up! That's a terrible image to put in his head!"

"Not really. All guys go for that stuff."

"Not Max. Besides, it's gross."

Enjoying this, Tess smiled. "You think Max is this same innocent person as you, you've got it all wrong. He may be an exceptional guy, but he's still a guy. They're all dogs."

"How would YOU know?" Liz countered pointedly, nearly tripping over her own feet as she stumbled over a rock in the street. "This is making me clumbsy, I hate that."

"You're always clumbsy."

"No I'm not!" Laughing, Liz flicked a lock of Tess's hair out of place. "I'm not that clumbsy, you just watch me too closely. Like a hawk."

"Did you just compare me to a bird?"

"Yes." The giggles overcame Tess after awhile; Liz's musical laughter was contagious. The drunken state both were in was lowering their defenses enough to allow them to be in the same vicinity of one another.

A few more blocks passed by as Tess fired mild insults, and Liz answered them in a way which she would normally keep to herself. It felt freeing to finally be able to speak her mind without feeling so incredibly guilty afterwards. Before long, the Evans house loomed just ahead. "Wait, what are you doing?" asked Tess anxiously, coming to a halt and throwing an arm out to block Liz's pathway.

"Going to Max's," Liz answered matter-of-factly. "It was your idea."

"He'll throw me out," said Tess knowingly, her voice taking on a melancholy tone she had abandoned back with the beer can.

Knocking the arm in front of her down, Liz shrugged. "Yeah, I know. What's your point?" When Tess looked down, she rolled her eyes. "Oh my gosh, I was just kidding. Lighten up." Grabbing ahold of Tess's hand, Liz yanked her forward, marching up to Max's front door and ringing the doorbell without a second thought.

Footsteps could be heard from inside, and as they subsided the front door was flung open to reveal an annoyed-looking Isabel. She eyed the two girls momentarily. "What are you two doing together?"

"We're looking for Max," Tess stated, and Liz nodded enthusiastically, adding:

"Is he here?"

With a raise of her eyebrows, Isabel turned around, leaving the door wide open. Max came around the corner of the hallway from the kitchen, and she stopped him. "Your girlfriends are here," she informed dryly.

Max looked confused, but he peered over his sister's shoulder and saw what she was talking about. Shrugging at Isabel to imply he didn't invite them, Max continued on to the open doorway, sticking his hands in his pockets. He stopped short when Liz's face broke into a wide grin and Tess laughed lightly. "...What are you doing here?" he questioned simply, looking first to Tess, then to Liz. There was no immediate answer, and nervously he began to rock back and forth on his heels. His eyes kept finding their way to Liz.

"Oh, so now we have to have a REASON for visiting you?" piped up Liz, widening her eyes to accent 'reason.'

"No... I don't know... Are the two of you okay?"

Laughter sprung up from Tess. "Yeah, Max, we're fine. Livin' the life. Chasin' the boys. You know how it goes." Liz looked to her and joined in on the laughter as Max stood staring at such a ridiculous spectacle. Had they both gone insane?

"Why are you acting like that?" Max asked in a concerned way, looking more to Liz than to Tess. The laughter only rose to a higher pitch, and Tess slouched against the doorframe as her body shook with the effort. "You're drunk, aren't you?" Max concluded.

Stifling her laughter, Liz elbowed Tess, very much resembling a first grader who had been caught awake after bedtime. "Shh, stop laughing, you're giving us away," she said, failing to keep the humor out of her own voice.

To say Max was astonished would be an understatement. Reaching for the right words that might bring about an explanation, his mind seemed to go blank. "Am I missing something here? Did something happen?"

Clicking her tongue, Liz flicked Tess's arm. "Of course something happened, Max. This Barbie doll buzzed into Roswell and messed everything up between us." Her words rang true, but the way she said them made them seem a joke.

Tess clicked her tongue back good-naturedly. "Excuse me, it is not MY fault that destiny hates you," she retorted to the brunette.

"Hahaha, destiny, is that like your favorite word or something?" Liz stopped talking, realizing that Max was still staring at the two of them acting so silly. "So, can we come in?"

Max's eyes flicked to the nearby stairway, up which his parents slept in the master bedroom, and as he looked back over his shoulder, he could see the shadow of Isabel moving around in the kitchen. "I don't think that's such a good idea..."

Liz's mouth opened to protest, but Tess covered it with her hand, suggesting an alternative. "Come on, he doesn't want us. We'll just have to go find another boy to bother." Liz pouted her lower lip, looking beseechingly to the boy that stood in the doorway, absolutely appalled at the behavior these two girls were displaying. Flinging an arm around Liz's shoulders, Tess steered her away from the house, calling back, "See ya when we see ya, Max."

The girls had nearly reached the street when Max yelled out a hasty, "No, wait, I..." Tess flung out a hand as if to shush his words, continuing on with Liz in tow. He was considering running after them when his sister came up from behind to look out the door.

"What did they want?"

"Me, apparantly," Max said without thought.

Isabel scrunched up her face in distaste. "God, Max, don't gross me out this late at night."

His mind was a mess of insecurities, of unsure thoughts as Max closed the door and headed up the stairs to his room. He needed to think. About a lot of things. No sooner had he closed his bedroom door and flipped on the light when he heard a light rapping on his window. His suspicions that it was Liz proved true as he opened the glass to allow her to climb in. "Liz? Where's Tess?"

"I don't know," Liz said, struggling to crawl in gracefully in her drunken state. Ever the gentleman, Max reached his arms out and easily pulled her in, too confused to enjoy the feeling of holding her body close. Safely inside the room now, Liz's feet found the carpeted floor and a smile lit up her facial features as Max's face was now parallel to hers. "Tess wanted to leave, but I didn't want to leave, so... I have no idea where she went."

Max could smell the beer on her breath, could see in her eyes that she wasn't all there. A drunken Liz was one of the few things in life he'd been certain he'd never see. But yet here she was, in-the-flesh, ready and waiting at his disposal. One question begged to be answered: "Why'd you get drunk, Liz?"

Her shoulders rose into a semi-shrug and her eyes revealed nothing more. "I just wanted my brain to stop, I wanted it all to go away."

"You wanted what to go away?"

"It hurts, Max. It's like my heart's crying an ocean into me all the time, and I just wanted it to stop."

Max's face softened and his grip on her body tightened. "I'm sorry, Liz... It hurts me too."

That ever-present giggle came about again, and Liz slinked out of Max's arms, heading over to his nightstand to look at a picture of he and Isabel that lie in a black-edged frame beside his phone. "Oh please, Max, you don't have to lie, it's okay. You've got Tess now. Tess, Tess."

"Liz - -"

"Tessss," she emphasized, accenting the s's like a snake. "I guess blondes really do have more fun." Laughing at her own joke, she turned to see why Max wasn't laughing too. His eyes held torture within their depths as he watched her speak, having nothing to say.

There was lust in Liz's eyes as she walked up to Max again, pulling on the collar of his shirt until he followed her to his double-bed. Once there, she pushed him back onto the pillowy softness of the mattress, and crawled on top of him.

Curiosity kept Max in place, and as he raised his upper body up on the weight of his elbows, Liz giggled, locking eyes with his. "Maaax..." she cooed. "My heart is beating with yours, listen." She pressed herself to him, and he did listen. "Can you feel it?" she whispered. He could. Their hearts thumped in time, one matching the other down to the very last beat. "I bet Tess's heart can't do that," Liz said haughtily.

Max was unable to move, held speechless just by being in the same vicinity of this girl that could no longer be his. He saw nothing but her face, could hear nothing but the beat of their hearts, sounding in unison, like the steady beats of a drum.

The liquor was present on her breath as Liz straddled Max's hips. "Do you want me to leave, Max?" she asked in that voice that somehow managed to retain its innocence even as she bucked her hips directly into Max's groin. His face twisted in the torture of trying desperately not to give in to the pleasure surging through his veins at warp speed.

"Liz..." he tried, but it came out as a mere husky whisper that only served to urge her on.

A blazing fire was kindled to replace the usual shy quality in Liz's eyes as her hands found their way to the bottom of Max's cotton shirt. Smirking, she slid it upward, bunching up the fabric until it reached Max's neck. Entranced, and held blinded by the red fibers of material that were now in his way, Max sat up and raised his arms to allow Liz to rip the shirt over his head. He knew he should stop this before it went too far... but it felt too good, too right to have her close to him again. That realization forced down the mumblings of protest easily enough.

Liz licked her lips seductively as she ran her hungry gaze over the sculpted abs that lay exposed. She laughed. "I'm being rude. It's not polite to stare." Tearing her eyes from the beautifully bronzed flesh, she brought her lips to a pucker and planted them on Max's left shoulder. The taste of his skin opened the dams of memories, and desperately wanting to block them out before she sobered herself, Liz created a trail of wet kisses along Max's left shoulder, all the way to his collarbone.

Small hands gripped the waistband of Max's blue jeans, begging for what lay inside. Pulling her lips from the skin that tasted so satisfying, Liz's eyes found their way to where her hands resided, mischieviously tugging at the top button.

"Liz... don't. You don't... know what you're doing - -"

Max gasped as a dainty hand slithered into his boxers. His heartbeat quickened and his breath came out in harsh, irregular spasms. His conscience invaded his overwhelmed mind, and he could see Michael with a glare on his face, saying, "Look at you, Maxwell! Look what you're doing! We can't have a horndog for our leader; we have more important things to deal with, like the future of our planet. You had the right idea before, when you let her go. You have to stay strong, fight this. Liz needs you to lay down the law - - you're only going to confuse her! So shove her away, right now; make her stay to her own species. I've given up Maria for this, and you're sure as hell not going to screw up our destiny because a little human girl's figured out how to set your loins on fire."

Max closed his eyes, shut them tight, willing the image of an angry Michael out of his head. But it wouldn't go away. Max knew the right thing to do was to insist to Liz that the two of them can never be again, and that nothing she would do tonight could change that. As if sensing that his resistance was on the rise, Liz caressed the length of his maleness with a slender finger, very nearly sending him over the edge. Max rasped out an astonished gasp, opening his eyes to see Liz gazing at him in an amused way. Little black spots came to polka-dot everything before him as Max's body gave in to her touch. The jeans he wore constricted too much, and the swell of him ached to be set free.

Subduing the urge to scream out the brunette's name at the top of his lungs for fear it would bring one of his family members running, Max reached for the button at the front of his waist, undoing it and promptly working on the other ones as well, all the while wondering how Liz's hand could still fit within the confines of his boxers. The buttons finally undone, he was barely able to tear his hands away before the semen was spilled, staining the navy blue of his silky-soft underwear.

With a swiftness beyond her experience, Liz yanked her hand out in time to pull Max's upper body into her arms before it could collapse onto the mattress. Hugging his limp chest to hers, Liz planted a loving kiss on the back of his neck. Turning her head, she rested her cheek on his shoulder, trying in vain to focus her blurred vision on the flashing red numbers of the alarm clock on Max's dresser.

All sense of right and wrong drained out of Max as he circled his arms gently around Liz's waist, pulling her tiny body into a more comfortable position on his lap. Sleepily, he rested his chin on her narrow shoulder, tracing a hand over the creamy flesh of her lower back, taking his time in recovering from what had just taken place, and trying to ignore the nagging voice whispering the question from the back of his mind, "What are you going to do NOW? If you had only left things alone and refused her at the window... You'll never be able to stay away from her now."

Such things could be answered tomorrow, he decided. Tomorrow was a haze of as-of-yet unfired questions, of painful decisions, of uncertainty. Tomorrow was hell. But tonight, oh, tonight, he and Liz sat tangled in each other's embrace, a single mass of human blood cells and those not of this earth. Tonight was a curtain call, the final goodbye. The last glimpse of blissful summer, to be remembered when the bitter cold of winter set in, as it inevitably would. Tomorrow.

The alcohol provided a doorway to slip through and give love its last stand. Not without a mixture of hope and despair, Max wondered to himself what of this Liz would remember in the morning. Perhaps she'd remember none of it. Max sighed out loud, thinking despite the pain of admitting it that if this night were forgotten by Liz, maybe it would be for the best. Still, there was a wistful part of him that wanted her to remember it all. "Thank you," he said to her, his words sincere.

There was no answer from Liz, and as Max quieted his breathing, he could hear hers: slow and steady. She had fallen asleep. Taking special care not to wake her, Max maneuvered the two of their bodies so that he could lie them both down comfortably on the double bed. His soiled boxers felt sticky as the shape of Liz's body pressed them firmly to him. But he didn't mind. He was content to sleep at her side, wet boxers and all. Her face appeared childlike in slumber, and Max found himself staring at it for long moments before closing his eyes to join her in the world of dreams.

The scene that would unfold in the morning would be an interesting one, he knew. One of his parents would stride in through the bedroom door and pull back, shocked to see their seventeen year-old conscientious child in bed next to Liz Parker, the dark-haired beauty that had made out with him in the eraser room, that had kept him out all night once. Yes, they'd be concerned, not prepared to handle a situation where their well-behaved, innocent son lay fast asleep, cradling a sleeping Liz in his arms.

There would be yelling, both would be grounded. Then the furious accusations of being a hypocrite would be thrown into his face by both Isabel and Michael. There'd be Tess to deal with, and there was no telling what she'd have to say.