She opened the first box. When she and Spike had had their first successful show at the gallery, he'd bought this for her to commemorate it. She touched the pendant with a fingertip. It was a round diamond set in platinum on a fragile chain. Twining around the diamond was a delicate platinum vine bearing tiny flowers. She'd never seen anything like it. It was her favorite thing. She freed it from its resting place and fastened it around her neck. She missed the kiss he'd plant on her neck when he was finished clasping it for her. 'It's just a thing,' she thought again firmly, 'just a thing that I like and am going to wear because it looks good on me.'
God, did everything have to be a reminder? She opened the other boxes and removed the matching earrings and slender bracelet and put them on too. Those had been birthday and Christmas gifts, respectively. She peered at her reflection critically. Yes, they looked good. The small amount of sparkle they added was just right and they went with the tiny crystal buckles in her shoes.
'Shoes, right.' She sat on the bed and bent down to slip the heels on. Carefully fastening the straps around her ankles so she didn't mar her nails, she turned them this way and that and the crystals winked up at her.
She was ready. She grabbed her shawl and purse and went downstairs to await Jake's arrival.
The trip to L.A. had been uneventful and pleasant. Buffy had learned quite a bit more about Jake along the way. The mystery masters degree was in Computer Science. He was working in construction while he was in school even though he could've gotten a job in his field because he said he feared it would be the last time he wasn't trapped at a desk in a cubicle. He wanted to savor the sunshine while he could and he enjoyed the manual labor, he said it cleared the mind.
She enjoyed the results of the manual labor, that's for sure. She eyed him appraisingly. The man looked damn good in a suit. 'Well, maybe a little bulky,' she thought truthfully. Cordelia flitted across her mind and she wondered how she was doing in New York. 'I should give her a call,' she thought, 'I haven't talked to her in ages.'
Cordelia could appreciate this salty goodness. Willow was slightly less satisfactory for all things ogling men and Anya tended to be more blunt than Buffy liked, always speculating about other areas of their anatomy and asking whether or not performance could be guessed at by evaluating various features . Anya spoke loudly, too. When people were around, Buffy usually ended up bright red and mortified, peeking through her fingers to see if there were any children around whose young minds had just been warped. Dawn was completely out of the running for discussing the good points of anyone not Spike.
She sighed inwardly. She didn't know what she was going to do about that. She knew it would break Dawn's heart when she realized they weren't ever going to get back together, but she didn't know what to do to ease the blow. Dawn was under the misguided, but well-intentioned delusion that everything would work itself out and her little family would be magically restored. Buffy wanted to dwell in denial land a little longer on the problem of her sister, so she pushed that aside and refocused on the man driving.
She thought it was both clever and somewhat daring of him to take a first date to somewhere hours away, trapping them in the car and forcing them to make conversation for that amount of uninterrupted time. Personally, she'd always thought a movie was a safe bet. A little time to talk before the movie and the certainty of being saved by said movie should the conversation be stilted or run off the rails.
He'd won his bet, though. They spent the hours mostly filling in the blanks for each other and sitting in comfortable silence the rest of the time. She liked a man who didn't mind the natural breaks in conversation and could sit at ease, humming along with the radio. Not like some people who tended to talk too much and keep her on edge with snarky comments that begged responses. No, her brain didn't have to race to keep up with Jake and rapidly form attempts at witty comebacks, conversation just flowed along smoothly and unhurried.
She didn't miss that.
She didn't.
His taste in music was inoffensive too. No jarring punk played at eardrum bursting decibels here. No one was shouting along tunelessly to the lyrics and punching a fist in the air all while simultaneously slamming the musical preferences of the other passengers in the car.
She sat, in the nice car, with the nice man and the nice music and told herself how nice it all was. 'Yeah, nice is good.' She thought. 'Nice and normal and…good.' She tapped her heel idly and looked out the window at the scenery.
Spike paced the length of the gallery restlessly. He was alone. Dawn had her class. They'd gotten the paper written and he thought she'd do reasonably well. He'd had customers in the morning to distract him, but now there wasn't anything going on and his excess energy was driving him mad. Everything was taken care of for the moment. He'd already processed the few web inquiries he'd gotten during the day.
He threw himself behind the desk. Maybe there were more. He needed something to do. Oh good, new mail.
He clicked it and saw that it wasn't an inquiry or order at all. Melanie had written asking him if he wanted to go for coffee or see a movie. Her roommate was out of town and she was left at loose ends for the night. He sat back in the chair. He did feel rotten about how he'd run out on her yesterday. Buffy was out on her date, at this he winced, and Dawn had one with Steve, all he had to look forward to was hours of ignoring the obvious.
He tapped his fingers on the desk. 'Yeah, ok, maybe go out for pizza or something,' he thought. That wasn't romantic in the least and he could apologize for his behavior. No alcohol at the pizza place either. He could explain that he wasn't over his ex and he wasn't looking for any repeat attempts to forget her. Make everything very clear. He could do that. The gallery was closing at 6pm anyway because foot traffic in their part of town wasn't high after that hour on Fridays. Anything was better than lying at home staring at the ceiling for the remainder of the night.
He dialed her cell.
He was right. The pizza place was agreeably noisy and not intimate at all. Melanie had accepted his apology with a wave of her hand. She told him he'd been perfectly honest with her from the beginning and she wasn't ready to start anything new either. So they ate and talked and it was surprisingly comfortable.
"I could kick your ass at that," she laughed. "My brother got that game a month ago and I beat him constantly."
"You could not! I've had that game a week and I can already beat all the computer opponents. It's not even a challenge anymore. Your brother could be really bad at it, you don't know, could mean nothing that you win." Spike protested. "Dawn's pretty good and she can't stay in a game with me longer than a minute."
"Wanna bet? Put your money where your mouth is. Betcha fifty bucks I can pummel you into the ground. Best out of ten, say?" She laughed.
"You're on. Your money's mine, Missy. We'll just pay up and get out of here so I can collect my winnings."
"You are so dead." She grabbed her purse and stood to go.
Buffy had enjoyed the opera more than she thought she would. The music was beautiful. Jake had told her his love for it came from his mother. She'd taken him from the time he was a boy and he'd grown to appreciate it.
Buffy was relieved to see the English translation projected above the stage allowing her to follow the story. 'Figures that it'd be about a philandering jerk,' she thought. 'That theme seems to be haunting me lately.' She perked up, 'Oh well, at least he ends up in hell. That's something.'
The audience filed out and they moved along with the crowd. Jake went to collect their coats.
"Sunshine!" A voice trilled sweetly, coming from nearby. "So…interesting to see you and at a cultural event, too."
She recognized that voice. She turned towards it, dreading what she already knew she'd see.
Drusilla smirked at her. She looked incredible, in a red dress with a dramatic neckline, leaning on the arm of some handsome boy toy. 'She must be off the drugs,' Buffy thought, 'and back in Daddy's good graces.' She was still thin and pale, but she’d lost the emaciated, frail look she’d had at her worst and she was speaking coherently. Dru had at one point pawned or sold all of the jewelry she'd received from her parents to buy drugs, yet now huge rubies glinted from her neck, ears, wrists and fingers.
“Dru,” she said softly but with a hint of steel in her voice, “you know I don’t want to talk to you. We can just turn politely and forget we ever saw each other.” She started to do just that.
Dru patted the arm of the man she was with. “Be a good boy and get the coats.” As he went off obediently, she moved into Buffy’s path. “Now, now, Sunshine, no need to be so rude and run off, didn’t your mother ever teach you it’s impolite to turn your back on someone?” She cooed, “After all, we’ve known each other practically forever, can’t we spend a few minutes catching up?”
‘Ok, she may not be on drugs, but she’s still a lunatic.’ Buffy stared at her in disbelief. “Dru, you slept with my boyfriend. That doesn’t bode well for peaceful reunion chatter.”
"Well, he was my boyfriend first, you know, technically." Dru pointed out logically.
"Ok, I am so not doing this. This is insane. YOU are insane. What do you want, Dru? You want to crow over the fact that he cheated on me with you? Fine, consider it done. Is there anything else that you could possibly want?" Buffy snapped. "You want to chat about Spike, now? Little comparing notes?"
"Such a stupid girl you've always been. You let my Spike go, as was right," she pouted, "but he wouldn't stay. He wrecked everything."
"Yes, Dru, he did wreck everything. Unlike you, I don't like to share my men. Usually I'm a happily generous sharer of stuff, but not my boyfriend." She glared at her. "You can have him now, though. I'm really done with him. Wait—" She grabbed Dru's bony arm then forced herself to let it go and change tack to a sympathetic confiding tone, as best she could manage. "Why don't you have him, anyway? I mean, two scorned women, same rotten man, talking amongst ourselves, we can relate, right? I mean all grrr, men are pigs and bonding over badness stuff..." She held her breath and gritted her teeth and hoped her false camaraderie held.
Dru laughed outright at her. "Silly Sunshine, you let him go for nothing. I knew you would." She frowned prettily. "But nothing went right after that." With those ominous words, she floated off to her escort and right out the door before Buffy could chase her down and shake her and make her tell her what she meant. 'Damn Dru and her drug-addled brain.' But she had a sinking feeling she knew the gist of what Dru was saying. 'Oh God.'