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Author's Chapter Notes:
I sent out the invites to those of you that said you were interested in my yahoo group--I think there are still a few people who haven't joined yet....
Longer a/n next chapter when I can actually think ;)
Chapter 39

It had been three hours since she'd literally sent Spike away and Buffy was still physically restraining herself from asking her mother for his telephone number.

She wanted to call him and beg him to come back. To just be there with her. She hadn't been ready to admit it before but just having him around made her feel safe.

True she was terrified of how he made her feel and what she possibly made him feel but in terms of outside influences and third parties, she felt protected by him. It was the way you were about siblings, she decided, you could make fun of them all you wanted, but let someone else try it and...She could be scared of Spike all she wanted, but when something else was threatening her, she felt that he would be the one to keep her safe.

She knew that, as harsh as she had been with him, he probably would never wish to speak with her again. And, in a way, that was beyond fair; someone that had done everything she had done was not necessarily one to be forgiven. She knew all of that; knew that in her fear and confusion she had probably ruined any chances she and Spike had, but she couldn't think of a way she could have done it differently.

The fact remained that she had not been ready to deal with him yet. And then he'd kissed her and she'd been completely lost. In more ways than one.

A part of her--a large part of her--wanted to ask him to stay. Wanted to beg him to just lay there with her and hold her; keep her safe.

But that small part of her brain that was till capable of the rational thinking knew that if she kept him there they were dangerously close to getting back to how things had been. And that wouldn't do any of them any good. As much as she wanted Spike around, she couldn't have him around until she either had a better handle on herself or knew how better to handle herself around him. Whenever that ended up being.

But she still had to stop herself from asking for her mother to call him.

She tried to turn her attention to more important--or at least resolvable--matters for the time being; like what exactly it was that had made her make that decision to take all of those pills. Or, more importantly, why and how she was going to stop it from happening again.

She knew that, as screwed up as she was, she didn't want to die. Maybe her life wasn't going to turn out the way she'd dreamed when she'd played 'house' as a little girl, but it was her life. It was what she had made it and she had to deal with it. And maybe, just maybe, she could shape it into something a little more like what she truly wanted.

Now was probably as good a time as any, too, to be thinking about his since she was going to have to meet with one of the hospitals psychologists in the morning. She might as well have something to tell them.

She thought she actually had it pretty well figured out. Her father had left her mother, according to him, because she couldn't--and this had been his word--please him. Ever since she had heard that, she'd worried about how she was going to 'please' her husband to keep him from leaving her. She hadn't been able to just look at things and see how her mother hadn't done something right so she could only assume her father had meant sexually---and he had always used a tone that implied exactly that.

So, when Angel had said to her what he did, it hurt her, she guessed, because it hit on her deepest, most secret fear: her fear of her daughter losing her father because of something she, Buffy, wasn't able to do.

It seemed only logical, in the twisted mess that was her mind, to start the job. She'd been reading a magazine at the doctor's one day--she couldn't even remember the title--when she saw the ad. She'd seen those ads millions of times probably throughout her life but never before had she paid any attention to them. This time it was close enough after the whole 'Angel debacle' as she was calling it, that she ripped the page out of the magazine and took it home with her.

That initial phone call, to inquire about the job, had been absolutely never wracking--shw was sure that they'd somehow know that this wasn't who she was and turn her down on the spot. But they hadn't.

The other woman had thought Buffy perfect for the job and, after getting her information, gave her a number to call into every night, telling her they'd direct the calls through to her that way.

It was ten days before Buffy actually started, having taken that long for all the information to be confirmed and everything to be set up. The ten most anxious days of her life. She'd picked up the phone at least twenty times to call and quit but every time she did she'd remember how she'd felt when her parents divorced; she'd remember and she'd tell herself that this was how she was going to prevent her own child from going through that.

Those first few weeks had been hell. Buffy had stumbled over her words with each call and was sure that, because she didn't, that none of the men found any pleasure in the calls. She was sure she was making a fool of herself. It took one overly enthusiastic gentlemen to teach her the lesson that had kept her at the job.

Those phone calls weren't at all about her pleasure; no, they were about how well she could act. As long as she could give a convincing performance, the men wouldn't know any differently. Which, she figured, would actually serve her better in marriage than just knowing what to say.

And that was how things had gone until Spike called, until then she'd faked all the expected moans and sighs and said everything they wanted her to say–sure she had all the right props, but she never actuallyused them. Never had she gained any pleasure from doing so; in fact she was actually becoming more and more numb as the days passed. She was slowly killing who she was.

Until Spike had come along.

He'd cared. And not just about how well she got him off. No, he'd actually seemed to care about her. He'd also been the only one to know when and if she were faking it, which she found ironic since he was the only one she didn't fake it with.

Somehow, she could pretend during their calls that he wasn't only talking to her because she was the one he happened to end up on the line with. Pretended that he really did care. And some days she didn't even have to pretend. There were days when he would just talk to her. He seemed--better than anyone else in her life--able to tell when something was wrong with her.

If only he'd known just how wrong things were, she thought. Maybe then he wouldn't have bothered.

But he loves you, she reminded herself--at least he did. That's why he bothered.

Some days Buffy really could kill the voice in the back of her mind--and now that she got down to it, that was what she had been trying to do that night.

It was so much easier to be broken when all of you was in agreement about the actual being broken. But when that small little voice in the back of your mind objected? When it tried to tell you that you could fix it, fix you? Then it was too hard.

It hurt too much if you had any doubt; had any hope.

Maybe she'd only been trying to kill that little voice or maybe she was trying to kill all of it because she knew that the damn voice wasn't ever going to go away. Try as she might, Buffy couldn't seem to give up on herself. Not completely.

So maybe she really had been trying to kill herself or maybe, in a moment of extreme emotional upheavel, she'd thought it a good way of silencing the voice in the back of her mind.

Whatever the case was, she knew she wouldn't do it again. She'd stopped herself this time--or at least helped herself, because she saw that Spike really did care about her. Even if she wouldn't admit it ot him, she could see that. And just knowing that gave her the strength to hope that maybe, someday someone else could care about her too.

And she would be around to see that day.


TBC.........please review :)





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