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“And how do you feel about your decision to be friends with Spike?” Lorne asked at their session, a couple days later.

She studied him thoughtfully. “Honestly? I feel – or rather felt – really good about it.”

“Why do you now say ‘felt’?”

“Because as his friend, I’m going to have to ask him about his date, aren’t I? I’m going to have to listen about what a great time he had with her and how it wasn’t me, but it could have been me, but it wasn’t something I was ready for, but at the same time wanted – so, yeah. I felt it was a good idea. I mean, don’t get me wrong, I still do Now I’m just not looking forward to this part.”

“And he wanted you to tell him not to go.”

“Yes, he did,” she said wistfully. “Did I do a bad thing?”

“Buffy, you ever notice that part of your decision making problems is that you either go full steam ahead, or you take so much time to think about what the right thing to do is, you end up making no choice at all?”

“I can’t help it. I’m afraid to make mistakes. And then I get so caught up and tired of stressing about making one that I end up making one anyway. Now I’m put in the position to right those wrongs and I’m petrified that I’m just going to keep stumbling.”

“You can’t live your life that way, Buffy. No one can. You’re going to give yourself an ulcer. Accept the fact that you are human –gasp!—“

Buffy gave him a look.

Lorne grinned at her before continuing. “You have to learn how to accept that you are human, and that you will make mistakes. You can’t hold them against yourself constantly. Where will it get you, but an ulcer? You’re not perfect, and I know this might stun you, but neither am I.”

“Ha ha,” Buffy said, and giggled a bit.

“Oscar Wilde once said that ‘Experience is the name everyone gives to their mistakes’. Now, not only is that clever, but it’s true.”

“But I have so many regrets Lorne!” Buffy exclaimed. “I don’t want to add more to the list.”

“That’s another thought process to banish.”

“What?”

“Regrets.”

“Everyone has regrets,” Buffy muttered.

“That is true, they do, and its an antiquated way of looking at your mistakes.”

“How do you figure?”

“Having a regret is allowing yourself to become stuck in what could have been. When you regret something, you think of how if you had done one thing different, then this other thing never would have happened, right?”

“Right,” she said slowly.

“When you get stuck in what could have been, you blind yourself to what is in the present. You spend your time thinking ‘if, if, if’. It doesn’t get you anywhere; it just gets you stuck in the past, not in the present where your focus needs to be. There can be something positive is an experience you deem as a ‘regret’. Whether it’s a lesson learned or a new facet you learned about yourself or something that brought you closer to something you didn’t know you wanted or needed. Pick one positive thing about divorcing Angel.”

“Settlement money,” Buffy joked.

Lorne smiled. “And without that Settlement money, you never would have been able to afford that class – and never would have taken it if Angel were still around.”

“But if I’d never married him, I never would have stopped going.”

“Na –uh. That’s focusing on the ‘but if I’ and not on the present, and definitely not the future. Now, what is the one thing you love most in this world?”

“Lindsey.”

“If you’d never married Angel, you never would have had her, would you?”

Buffy laughed nervously, “No, probably not. Cause then Angel would never have cheated on me.”

“Right. Your beautiful daughter came out of it. Spike, despite all that’s happened, came out of it. When you spend too much time thinking about the past and the regrets you have your focus is skewed and yeah, it’s good to learn from the past, but not to dwell and think of what could have been ‘if only’. That will just mess with your head and impede progress. It just makes you feel sorry for yourself and makes you feel worthless, which is something you have done enough of Buffy Summers. You take your lessons and you move forward. You know what I’ve noticed?”

“What? Tell me.”

Lorne smiled at her enthusiasm. “I’ve noticed you’ve been a lot more positive since you started making plans for school. I’ve also noticed that you’re not wearing your ‘I Hate Men’ t-shirt. And when it comes to talking about Spike, I’ve noticed that you don’t speak of him with so much anger anymore. Have you forgiven him?”

She stared at Lorne, dumbfounded. “You know...I haven’t really thought about that. I’ve just been so consumed with being angry at myself and Angel.”

“So you’re no longer angry at Spike then?”

Buffy took a deep breath, letting it out slowly between her teeth. “I wouldn’t say angry. How can I be angry with someone that I’m trying to be friends with and make some kind of amends with?”

“Well, you could always be taking the passive-aggressive stance. You know, stay his friend, but make digs and make him feel as though he owes you.”

She shook her head, “No, I don’t want that. I think that’s the attitude I adopted before. I want . . . I want peace.”

“And do you think that Spike dating someone that is not you, by setting him free as you say, peace will be gained?”

She frowned, “Why? Does that seem like a bad idea?”

Lorne laughed, “That was a test, and you failed. Buffy, why do you want Spike to date someone else?”

“Because I want him to find out what else is out there.”

“Why?”

“Because I make him miserable. I bring him nothing but pain.”

“Buffy, when you were telling me about the time you were with him before you found Fred’s note, he did not sound unhappy to me.”

“No, but . . . he wanted more. He wanted more from me than I could give.”

“Like what?”

“My love.”

“Didn’t he have it?”

She looked at Lorne, startled. “No, he – he didn’t.”

Lorne sat back, studying her. “And were you happy?”

“I was, blessedly so. But there was always something nagging at me…”

“Like what?”

“The other shoe dropping. Kept waiting for it.”

“Buffy, you can’t spend your life thinking the world is conspiring against you. To be frank, shit happens. If you spend your life waiting for it, you’re never going to live your life. Happiness is something you have to work at, it’s not something handed out. You take your happiness where you get it, and you cultivate it. You don’t toss it up for the fates to decide. You make your own way.”

“Well, in that case there were people conspiring against me.”

“Who were you angrier at? Angel, Fred, or Spike?”

“I was . . . hurt. I was hurt. I couldn’t tell him I was hurt, so I expressed it in anger. I wanted to hurt him as much as he hurt me. Lorne, I felt lost. I felt so lost when that happened. Like ‘now what?’ The one person that I thought would never intentionally hurt me, did. And then it felt as though I were reliving Angel all over again. At that point it wasn’t about just what Spike did. Not singularly anyway. It was just another person to make a decision for me, another person to control me and keep me down. I felt as though I were the helpless person I’d been told I was for so long by my mother and then Angel. And. . . and it hurt more because it was Spike.”

“Why?”

“Because he was the last person I ever thought would do that. He’d always stood beside me, always fought for me.”

“In his own way, he was.”

Buffy started to open her mouth to protest and Lorne stopped her with his hand up. “I am not saying he was right in what he did, Buffy. I am only saying that in Spike’s mind, he believed he was fighting for you. He thought he was protecting you from something uglier, perhaps.”

“What could possibly have been uglier than that?” Buffy asked, incredulous.

“Actually having to see Angel leave with Fred. Having to watch Lindsey see him go.”

Buffy shut her eyes as tears pricked behind her eyes. The image that produced pained her. The image of the family she’d worked so hard to maintain, crumbling down around her while Angel walked out on them, breaking her heart and Lindsey’s. Lindsey would have been a mess, and she wouldn’t have understood what was happening. All she would know was that her Daddy was leaving and he wasn’t coming back, and no way in hell was he taking her with him.

“I believed in Spike when I didn’t believe in anyone, not even myself. I don’t think I ever have believed in me, and I wanted to believe in Angel so much, but I couldn’t anymore after he cheated on me. But I still believed in Spike, even though he wasn’t there. I knew that if I’d asked him to come, he would have in a heartbeat and . . . when I found that letter, my faith in him died.”

“The faith that he’d never hurt you? The faith that he’d never lie? What sort of faith, Buffy?” Lorne asked gently.

“The faith I had that I could count on him, that he’d never do anything to hurt me, to go against me, that he’d always be right by my side. That he’d be that guy, that person, I could always count on when the chips were down. The chips had fallen when Angel left and Spike was there. I was an asshole to him, and Spike was still there. I kept his daughter from him and he was still there. And in one feel swoop, I felt he wasn’t there. I think I lost my faith in not just him, but in everyone and everything. Who could I turn to? Who could I now count on?”

“Do you still feel that way?”

Buffy gave him a watery smile. “He’s still there isn’t he?”

“But do you trust him?”

“Yes and no. I want to be his friend again to learn how to. I want to be friends with him without Angel baggage getting in the way. Without misery, anger and hurt. I know there’s a lot of crap between us, and I know it’s most likely a tall order to ask that we start over fresh, but I really want to try. Our friendship could go nowhere. Or, it could grow and yet we might find that we’re not suited for each other at all. Or, it could grow and we could find that we are. He’s spent all this time pining for me – how does he know it’s me? And how do I know it’s him?”

“Do you think so little of yourself? Or do you just think Spike lacks the ability to know what’s right for him?”

Buffy blinked. “I never thought of it that way.”

“If you did, I wouldn’t be here,” Lorne grinned. “Buffy, as much as you are growing and evolving, as happier as you are now than you have been, you still don’t trust yourself. You don’t think you’re capable of making Spike happy.”

“How can I? I made him miserable! It’d be only a matter of time before I fucked it all up again!”

“Buffy, he’s not Angel. He’s a completely different man.”

“I know that!” Buffy said indignantly.

“I don’t think you know that fully. I’m not going to sit here and say that Spike’s apparent obsessiveness with you is healthy. I think he often makes rash decisions as a means to get you to stay in his life despite your telling him that you’re not going anywhere, not really anyway. I think he has abandonment issues, but again, I don’t know him so I could be wrong. And he might not very well be the man for you; however, I can see that you do care for him. If you didn’t, all of this wouldn’t have hurt you so much. But the thing to remember, if not with Spike, then with someone else down the road, one day, eventually—“

“In a galaxy, far, far away,” Buffy added.

“Right, Princess Lea, in a galaxy, far, far, away, you remember that who ever it is you’re with, is not Angel. And if they are, then listen to me: You run like a bat out of fucking hell because no one should have to live with his perfectionist standards. Being Buffy is okay. As far as you and Spike, and how you know if it’s him? Well, I think you’ve answered that question several times over in this conversation.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not time yet,” Lorne said with a smile. “This week, I want you to make a decision and not think of the consequence a hundred times over.”

“Lorne!”

“Time’s up. See you in a few days.”





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