Chapter 18
“Hi.”
“Hi.”
“You sound hoarse,” Buffy observed.
Spike sighed, “Do I?”
“Mmm…and rather annoyed.”
“Where are you?”
“In a hotel. Why is your cell not working?”
“I threw it. What hotel?”
“Sheraton, right in the heart of the city. What’d you throw it for?”
“You pissed me off with your refusal to come home.”
“Oh.”
“Have you seen him?”
“Not yet. I figure I need a full night’s rest to do that. My body is all out of whack now; I don’t even know what the hell time it’s on anymore.”
“Buffy, I’m worried about you.” He sounded so very weary.
“Do I exhaust you?”
“At times you most definitely try me. Why do you ask?”
“Because you sound tried.”
“What do you want me to say? You traipse off to Boston after opting to not come home and you don’t even want me to be there with you when you face your father. Have you learned nothing Buffy? You are not alone. Not anymore.”
“I know,” she said softly. “I’m sorry.”
“What are you thinking?”
“Right now I’m thinking damn you for making me cry.”
“Let me come out there. Let me be there with you.”
“So I can introduce you as the man that my mother married over him? I don’t think so.”
“You could just introduce me as Spike. Even William if you prefer.”
“And you’re what to me?”
“Your boyfriend.”
Buffy laughed–a sort of hysterical kind of laugh that stopped just as abruptly as it started. “I don’t think so.”
“Your friend then. It’s not like you have to define it! Are you …ashamed of me?”
“What? No! Spike, God, why are you making this about you? It has nothing to do with you! This is about me and my Dad and my head.”
“Your head?”
“Yes. I need to think and get my head on straight and I can’t do that when you’re with me.”
“I make you lose your head?” he sounded almost hopeful by the thought.
“Yes. You do.”
“You make me lose mine, too,” Spike said quietly.
“Like my mom did?”
“Buffy–”
“I have to go. I’ll call you tomorrow,” she said, choking back a sob and feeling incredibly guilty and ridiculous for even asking that question. How stupid was she? She truly was a glutton for punishment!
Shutting her phone off as soon as she hung up, Buffy sobbed for all the things she could never have, but so desperately wanted—her mom, her father’s love, Spike, and a life full of things she could simply be content with having without always feeling like she had her nose pressed to a glass window, always wanting what was just out of reach.
*********
January 7, 2006
The girl is thickheaded, that’s all there is to it. Why won’t she listen to me? Why does she always insist on doing things her way? She leaves no room for other options. It’s bad for her to be there alone to face her father and no, she doesn’t have to do it alone. Hank is a bastard, he’s going to hurt her and I’m not going to be there to pick her up when she falls.
Or am I just thinking she’ll need to be picked up, but maybe she really doesn’t need to be picked up. She is a strong girl. She was right in having been through a lot, and I have a feeling she’s about to go through a lot more.
I’m recognizing in me the need to be needed. I want to help her. I want to …I want to do something that I can’t do. I want her to need me as I need her. If she needs me, then she won’t leave me. How sad is that?
Christ, I feel like I’m losing my fucking head! Maybe she’s right. Maybe this is what we both need. Time and distance from each other, so then why the fucking hell do I feel nuttier the longer she’s gone?
I know why. I know. Like I said if she decides she doesn’t need me…or not even that. If she doesn’t want to come back, if she’s grown tired of me, or if she thinks she doesn’t want or need to be around the guy that married her mother anymore…what if she meets someone else? What if she meets them and they convince her to stay with them …then what? She promises to call, to write, to email and promises to visit except years go by and she doesn’t…she fades from my life and I’m left here, pining.
And I never felt this way with Joyce. Never. Never felt this all consuming passion and need where she was concerned. I felt safe and secure and loved, but not the same. Not with the intensity added onto it like I do with Buffy. Joyce never challenged me. Buffy challenges me. She forces me to see things in different ways. She makes me become the nurturer instead of the nuturee – Christ, is that a word? And she’s gotten me back into literature too. Well, I mean, I did get the books and all, but she reads like a demon too. She asks me questions, she makes me think, and she pushes me. With her I’m someone. I’m a man. I’m learning who I am everyday, for everyday she forces me to learn a different facet of myself.
Like right now, I’m learning I have no patience.
I’m also learning what it means to have guilt in spades. Here I am with all these feelings that I never had for my wife. Aren’t you supposed to marry the person you have these feelings for?
********
“You’re not here with me.”
Spike looked up from the dinner he wasn’t eating, but poking at. He smiled apologetically. “I’m sorry, Fred.”
“You miss Buffy,” she said simply and sat back in the black vinyl booth, pushing her plate aside. They’d gone out to dinner to a little Italian Bistro that Fred had wanted to try, and considering all he was going to do was mope home alone, he figured what the hell?
Spike said nothing for a long time, contemplating how to tell the girl he was with that she was right, he was thinking of another. “I’m sorry, Fred,” he said finally. Smooth Spike, real smooth, he thought.
“Why are you sorry?”
“Because we’re…and you’re…” he sat back. “Now I’m not sure anymore.”
Fred smiled. “Look, I’ll be honest with you. I like you. I think you’re a good man, but I’m not looking for a relationship right now and I kind of knew already that you weren’t ‘available’.”
“Oh?” he asked curiously, wondering if his heart had been on his sleeve the whole time.
“Well, with your wife and all…” she looked away, blushing, “I’m sorry, that was rude of me.”
He shrugged, “Not really. Most wouldn’t bother even hanging around someone like me.”
“Buffy does.”
“Buffy is my wife’s—ex-wife’s—daughter. Buffy had nowhere else to go.”
“And she realized she needed you, and that you needed her.”
Spike stared at Fred, bewildered.
Fred laughed, “Relax, Spike. I’m a psychologist, its part of my job to read people. It’s hard to not have my professional training spill into my personal life.”
“Should have known better than to befriend a shrink,” Spike grinned. “So, what’s your prognosis of me?”
“I think you’re human.”
“So, pretty bad huh?”
“Why don’t you tell me a little about your relationship before Buffy came home?”
“You sure you want that? I’m not going to pay you for this appraisal of me,” he joked nervously.
“This one is on the house,” Fred smiled. “I’m just your friend that happens to be a professional ‘shrink’.”
“Sorry about that,” Spike said sheepishly.
“Eh, don’t worry about it. Look, I think you need someone to talk to that isn’t Buffy. Am I right?”
“Yeah, you’re right.”
“So, why don’t you start from the beginning? Start with Joyce.”
“Well…when I met Joyce, I had just lost my parents and I was a directionless sod…”