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Part 19

Almost Paradise



"Find strength in what is left behind...sure I will. No
problem."

Buffy turned the corner on to Revello Drive.

"And what do you think Wordsworth means by this,
Miss Summers?" she asked, mimicking her teacher
in a nasty tone. "Like I care what he means, anyway."

She cut across the neighbor's front yard and into her
own, fumbling in her purse for her keys.

Her mother's car wasn't in the driveway, so she didn't
call out her customary "Hi, Mom!" when she walked
into the house.

Instead, she went into the kitchen and opened a can of
Pepsi. She grabbed a bag of chocolate chip cookies,
taking advantage of the fact that there was no one there
to scold her about the detrimental effects that her snack
was liable to have on her complexion, not to mention her
teeth.

Upstairs in her bedroom, she changed into a t-shirt and
an old pair of paint stained sweat pants. Gathering her
messy hair into a clip, she took a look at herself in her
mirror and stuck out her tongue at the reflection.

She looked awful, but she couldn't have cared any less
if she'd tried. There was no one around to look pretty
for these days.

Flopping down on her bed, she switched on the radio,
then opened the bag of cookies as she listened to
a commercial tell her that she needed to switch her long
distance carrier before another day went by.

Seven commercials and half a bag of cookies later, the
station announced it's call letters. "Yuck," she said,
scowling and wrinkling her nose. "Oldies but not neces-
sarily goodies."

Glancing around the room, she noticed that it looked a
little neater than she had left it, and deduced that "Mom"
had struck.


Every great once in a while, whenever she got tired of
nagging Buffy to clean up her room, her neat freak mother
would take a shot at it herself. Books were picked up off
the floor and returned to their home on the shelf, the bed
was made, her favorite stuffed animals were lined up in a
tidy row on another shelf, and her overflowing clothes ham-
per was empty.

Joyce must have turned on the radio as she straightened
up the room, and had changed the station from the one
Buffy preferred.

As she reached for the radio, intending to tune it back
where she wanted it, a song she didn't recognize began to
play, stopping her hand in mid-air.



"I thought that dreams belonged to other men
Cause each time I got close, they'd fall apart again
I feared my heart would beat in secrecy
I faced the nights alone
Oh, how could I have known
That all my life I only needed you..."



As she listened to the song, sadness and hurt began
to take a slow stranglehold on her throat.



"Almost paradise
We're knocking on heaven's door
Almost paradise
How could we ask for more.."



Buffy sniffled, wiping eyes that were suddenly filled
with tears on the back of her hand.



"I swear that I can see forever in yours eyes
Paradise..."




Her mother had managed to tune in the 'All love songs-
all the time' station. The twenty-four hour, makes you
want to stick your head in the oven and turn on the gas,
love song station.



"It seems like perfect love's so hard to find
I'd almost given up
You must have read my mind.."



She pressed one hand over her heart, breathing hard. This
was unbearable. Almost physically painful.



"And all those dreams I saved for a rainy day
They're finally coming true
I'll share them all with you
Now we hold the future in our hands..."




Buffy closed her eyes tightly. She tried not to see him,
not to imagine him lying here beside her, as he'd done
so many times. The ache in her heart grew steadily
worse, but she couldn't make herself do what she knew
was the sensible thing to do in these situations...turn off
the damn radio!

Her brain told her to do it, but her heart stepped in and
over ruled it.


"Almost paradise
We're knocking on heaven's door
Almost paradise
How could we ask for more..."



She wanted to scream, to cry, to throw the radio across
the room and smash it to pieces.



"I swear that I can see forever in your eyes
Paradise..."



But all she could do was sit on her bed, her arms wrap-
ped around herself, rocking slightly back and
forth as soft whimpers escaped from her tightly compres-
sed lips.



"And in your arms, salvation's not so far away
We're getting closer, closer every day..."



No. No, it wasn't true. Each day that passed did no-
thing but pull them farther apart.

She didn't even know where he was. The letter she'd
received had been post marked in Los Angeles, but that
told her nothing, except that he'd passed through long
enough to drop it in a mailbox.



"Almost paradise
We're knocking on heaven's door
Almost paradise
How could we ask for more

I swear that I can see forever in your eyes
Paradise...."



By the time the song ended, she was swallowing hard
lumps of pain, giving herself a headache from the
strain of trying to control her natural instinct to break
down and scream herself senseless.

Now she knew that the hurt wasn't really getting any
better. All she had been doing over these endless
days and nights was covering it up, burying it in a
grave packed down with nothing more substantial
than shifting sand.

This wasn't fair. She wanted to wail the words to
the skies, like a spoiled child. Not fair! Not fair! Not
fair!

Everytime she thought she could see a glimmer of
light at the end of this black, black tunnel, something
blindsided her. A poem...a song...the scent of roses...
seeing a man with a faint resemblance...all these
things could pounce on her unexpectedly, sending
her right back to where she'd started.

Sometimes, when it was particularly bad, she almost
wished that he'd never come to Sunnydale. Before
he'd walked into her life, she'd been fairly happy with
the way it was going, and her heart had been in one
unbroken piece.

She'd read about love and heartbreak, but she'd never
experienced either of those things. All she had ever
done was daydream and imagine and giggle with
her friends over what it would be like to fall in love.

Now, she had known the reality of it, and she'd dis-
covered the hard way that memory was much better
equipped to torture her than imagination had ever been.

Rolling off the bed, she grabbed a handful of tissue
from the box on her vanity table, glaring at herself
in the mirror.

She looked like living hell. Runny nose, red eyes,
black streaks of mascara staining her cheeks from
when she'd rubbed her eyes.

"Bet he wouldn't think I'm pretty now," she said,
tossing the wadded up tissue into a waste basket.

She turned off the radio before another song came
along to finish the job that the previous one had
started, then stood at the window and watched the
sun go down.

It was time to go to work.

Buffy pulled her weapons bag out from under the
bed, then took another cookie out of the package. Hold-
ing it between her teeth, she struggled into a jacket
with it's sleeves turned inside out, as she made her
way down the stairs.

With one hand on the doorknob, she glanced out of
the corner of her eye at a stack of mail on the stupid
and pretty much useless little table next to the front
door.

She froze into a solid block of ice when she saw
another one of those fancy envelopes, addressed to
her in familiar handwriting.

Her hands were shaking as she opened the envelope
and pulled out the paper inside. There was a much shorter
message written on it this time. Only two lines....

"Wait for me, love. I'm coming back."



TBC....

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