Chapter 15:
Leaving the Driver’s License Center wasn’t as joyous as it was the first time Buffy left a few weeks ago. As she looked at the new photograph on her card, she noted her perfect smile was replaced with a fake forced one. The dreary state on her face made her think she looked ten years older.
Buffy shook her head as she sat inside her car, looking at the new license with a frown. She glanced down and over to the passenger seat where her old (and soon to be destroyed) card sat. Picking it up and reading the old name ‘Buffy Anne O’Connor’ seemed like a joke—it was a name she had for one month only before going back to her original one. Her real name, the one she now made a vow to forever keep.
‘Reality sucks…husbands suck…’ she thought as she placed her new card in her wallet and shoved the old one in the glove compartment. She made a mental note to go back and get the dirty month old one and burn it as soon as possible—Buffy didn’t want any reminder of the gift she was going to give her husband.
After throwing the car into reverse, then putting it into to drive, and exiting the parking lot of the tiny strip mall, Buffy decided to not go straight home to her sleeping husband this Saturday morning. No, if she could get out of seeing that jerk for the rest of the day then she would be happy just driving nonstop.
However, her plans of driving up the California Coast were changed when she saw the exit to UCLA. With a quick flick of her wrist to turn on her right turn signal, she drove toward the University.
*~*~*~*~*~*
After much needed help from the library staff, Buffy finally found William in the stacks near the U.S and British History section putting away books on a step ladder. She smiled when she noticed he wasn’t completing his job at a quick pace. As William stood on the ladder, on the third shelf, he had a book open in hand and was reading away about WWI.
“I was never a fan of history…” Buffy spoke up quietly, hoping not to startle him and make him fall.
William’s head snapped down to look at her in surprise. After the shock wore off that Buffy was actually visiting him again, he smiled and shut his book, dropping it onto the cart with the rest of returned books he had to put away.
“Buffy…you came back…”
“Yeah…hope you don’t mind me dropping by…”
‘Mind?’ William wanted to laugh, ‘Was she kidding?’
“No…no…I don’t mind” he said as he continued to smile at her, “Is there something I can….”
When he noted her distress state he frowned and started to absorb her gloaming state, feeling her pain as well.
“What’s the matter?”
Buffy’s eyes skimmed over the books on the shelves, she knew if she met his eyes she would cry and make a scene. “Just tired…”
William didn’t response to her pathetic excuse; it didn’t take brains to see that being tired was just one thing on her list of problems. He glanced down at her clothes and saw she made little effort to looking neat and presentable.
“Just tired?”
Buffy eyed a book on the shelf and pulled it out to glance at the cover. When William didn’t get a response from her he looked down at what she extracted; it read ‘Dungeons and Torture’.
“Seems …intriguing…” Buffy muttered as she glanced at a guy bleeding from the mouth on the cover. “Think there is a ‘How to…?’ section?”
William knew exactly what she was thinking about. “Not sure…but we can stroll over to the medieval section if you like?”
Buffy smiled, put back the book, and looked back at William’s smirking face, “You want to get in on me disassembling my husband?”
“Could be fun…”
Buffy shrugged and peeked down at her and William’s shoes, “Ah who am I kidding, blood and me don’t mix…couldn’t even give him a paper cut.”
“I take it something happened?”
“Something is always happening…and lately it’s nothing good.”
William frowned and started to lift his hand up to place it on her shoulder to send her some comfort, he only got half way when he stopped. Buffy looked out of the corner of her eye at his hand paused in mid air; she looked up at him to see if he would follow through and touch her.
His blue eyes stared at his hand for a brief moment before drawing it back and running it threw his messy curls on the top of his head.
Buffy bit her lip and looked back down to the ground, it probably wasn’t a good idea to have him touching her anyway—she was vulnerable and they were alone in this part of the library. She didn’t want to take advantage of him and their friendship.
“Is…is there anything I could do?” he whispered as his hand came down from his head and into his pocket.
“Well…can I just shadow you around here for a while?”
William took a deep breath, a piece of his heart that was broken by Drusilla a long time ago was starting to come back to him. However, before he got too excited he warned her, “I’m just putting books back love…nothing glamorous or entertaining.”
“I don’t care…I just like your company.”
*~*~*~*~*~*~
Buffy giggled as she glanced at the library card inside the front flap of one the books on William’s cart.
“Something funny?” William asked as he looked up at her from his aching knees; it was never a good time to put books back on the bottom shelf while kneeling on the hard floor.
She nodded and laughed out, “This guy Harold Eddy checked out this book a lot in 2005.”
“So?”
Buffy flipped the cover over to show him the title was ‘The Complete Kama Sutra’. William stared at the book for a second, looked at Buffy’s smirking face, and then back at the book. He started to feel his cheeks heat up and his palms start to sweat.
“You’d think he would just buy the book after he checked it out 7 times.” Buffy shook her head as she started to poke through the book.
“Uh…ya…” William said as he directed his eyes downward at the less interesting book, a biography on William Henry Harrison, which he was putting away. He shoved the book in the shelf, got to his feet, and stacked a few more books into his arms from the cart. When he glanced at Buffy he noted that her tiny pink tongue was sticking out and gliding across her lips.
The spell that Buffy’s tongue casted on him was interrupted when she laughed, “Oh man…this is great…you got to read this.”
Buffy looked up at William and turned the book around so he could look too.
“Umm that’s okay…I’m good.” William insisted as he took a few steps back.
“Come on, it’s funny.” Buffy smiled.
William had no doubt that it was probably funny, but he also knew it was erotic. He reminded himself for the fiftieth time that he and Buffy were alone in the middle of the stacks.
“Why don’t you take that book back to where it belongs, the code is on the binding there.” William pointed out before retreating down to the opposite side of the stacks.
Buffy watched him leave her with a frown, ‘What did I do?’ she thought to herself.
TBC…