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I nearly break the door off its hinges as I storm through the thresh hold like Hurricane Willy. Normally I would mull over my mail, see if I’ve got the new issue of whatever underground music magazine I’ve applied to this month, saunter over to the larder to grab a beer and sulk like a hermit for the rest of the afternoon, but today, I avoid such habits. I’m a man with a mission and I won’t rest till there’s blood on m’hands.

Riley. Riley. I know this name; it’s a name that haunted the halls of Sunnydale High during my tutelage there. You couldn’t go anywhere without hearing that name cried by the dull, adoring masses. You’d always hear it be uttered with a spark of worship, as if this Riley was a Grecian god with golden-painted skin and a gentle, ebullient halo encircling his head.

God, I hated that fucker.

I don’t even remember what the pissant looked like, except that he was well-built and attractive in a pedestrian, generic way. I do remember him being the star quarterback for our football team, the hailed "Redeemer of the Razorbacks", the sole reason our slumping team pulled out of our notorious five-year loosing streak to blaze to fields of undefeated glory.

He transferred to Sunnydale our sophomore year from some white bread farm town in Iowa and immediately caught on with everyone. Well by everyone, I mean the girls. No girl with sight could resist Riley. He was like a bloody disease; he’d walk by, flash a grin, and girls were left wheezing helplessly along the corridors.

And now my Buffy has succumbed to his Captain Cardboard charms as well. He indirectly made my life in high school a living hell by denying me access to most of the girls’ hearts in Sunnydale, and now he’s obviously decided to screw me on a more personal level by screwing my girlfriend.

Alright. Ex-girlfriend. But from Willow’s tone, and according to my mental time chart, it’s obvious that fishy business has been going on for a while. It’s only now that I’m unlucky enough to smell the stench.

I stalk over to the bookshelf and ravage it, searching for an item I repeatedly vowed never to gaze upon again. My hands grapple and wrestle with dust bunnies until I feel something flat and hard. Grunting in triumph, I pull it out.

A book, titled "Sunnydale High School, Class of 1999: The Future is Yours! Today!"

The inane optimism makes me grit my teeth. If I’d know that this would be my future all those years ago, I 'd 'ave winged it right back at The Powers That Be and told them to eat it.

I scurry through the pages in a mad torrent. Riley, Riley, Riley . . . his name is smugly hiding from me, I know it. I go straight to the Rs since I know that, in proper high school etiquette, Riley is probably his last name, adopted as his first by the always creative and half-witted apes of the football team. Quickly, I scan down the list. Rafferson, Radney, Richardson, Rilke, Rosenburg--I pause and smile somewhat sentimentally over pig-tailed and rainbow-sweatered Willow, smiling like the eternally cheery sprite she is until I realize that I’ve skipped over Riley. Shit.

I throw the yearbook at my helpless wall, leaving the book to clunk to the floor. Holding my head in my hands, I shake my head miserably. This isn’t fair, this isn’t fair, why the fuck is life fair for everyone except me?

This tireless tirade on mankind isn’t getting me anywhere. There’s still a bloke out there putting his wood to my Buffy, who, regardless of whether she currently likes me or lives with me is still mine. Yes, I’m a possessive jerk. But Buffy knew this, and should have counted on me giving her and her new beefstick some trouble.

But it’s all a fantasy. I’ll never find them and I’ll never win her back and as usual, I’ll be left alone, the victim of another heartless rejection.

I sigh and go to pick up the yearbook when I am drawn to a picture of a rather frail-looking blonde boy, giving the camera his best impersonation of Johnny Rotton. This façade of indifference and anti-establishment anger is sad somehow. It is too soft, too unshaped by years of bitter experience. I long to tell eighteen-year-old William Brian Giles to give up the rebellious scowl of adolescence; you’ll have more reason to legitimately scowl some day, so smile while you can.

As I ruminate grievously over the circumstances the Younger Me has yet to scowl through, my eye tilts up and I see him. Riley Finn, a couple rows above me. There he is, shining his pearly whites and cocking his beefy head on his thick neck like an innocent choirboy. I know better, though. I can see into his poisonous, stinking soul.

I spring up, waving the yearbook wildly. "I’m ON to you, motherfucker!" I scream, and I think Mrs. Carlisle from next door has dropped her teacup to the floor due to my boisterous profanity. Grabbing the telephone book, I nearly rip it in half looking for Riley Finn. My heart races when I find it and start dialing the phone. This is all mindless. What am I going to do, call this poof, tell him to piss off, release my girlfriend from his malicious clutches and let her come joyfully home to me? And if he doesn’t, I’ll take the sharpest chainsaw I can find and make nice, bloody crudités of him?

As a matter of fact, this sounds like an excellent idea.

But then Buffy answers the phone, and all my fantasies of revenge are shattered, giving way to blind, angry devastation.

"Hello?" She sounds so damned innocent, so cheerful and so happy to be rid of me. So this was what the whole "I don’t want to talk about it" shite was about.

"Hello?" she repeats as my mouth goes dry. "Hello, hello?" Her tone becomes more frustrated, and to spare us both, I hang up on her as I feel tears and hot, blinding rage rise in my throat.

Collapsing in my chair and starting to tear at its leather, I feel reality sinking in. This is it. This situation with Buffy has rapidly degraded from a salvageable project to an on-the-worst-breakup-list memory. My life will not be defined by what I’m doing, but what I’ve done, the mistakes that will only be accumulated into lists I keep to morbidly amuse myself.

The phone rings again quickly and I freeze. Could it be . . . no. Riley couldn’t have caller id. Buffy wouldn’t have picked up the phone if she saw my number. And she certainly doesn’t know of star-69. Her technological capabilities are limited to computer solitaire. Hesitantly, I pick up the phone and pause fearfully. " . . . Hullo?"

"Spike." Fucking fuck shit-shit. It’s Buffy. Not only is Riley out to ruin my life, but he taught her how to use the phone. Maybe I can fake this.

"Buffy!" I feign breezily. "Hullo, it’s nice to hear from you. I was just thinking about calling Willow to get the number of where you are, you left some of your bags here --"

"Cut the bull, Spike. You just called Riley’s."

I still try at ignorance. "I don’t know what you’re talking about --"

"Unless there’s a magical elf in your apartment who likes using your number to harass me, I’d say you’re lying."

I explode. "Harass you?! I was merely catching you in the act of squalid infidelity --" I stop when I realize I’ve just been caught. "Okay. So I might have called. But I certainly didn’t expect you to pick up. Not like you made the effort to tell me of your whereabouts . . . or who you’ve been whereing-about with." I rejoice when I hear something catch in Buffy’s throat and I’m pretty sure it’s guilt.

"Who told you?" she asks in a small voice.

"Doesn’t matter, does it? What matters is that you didn’t, when we had a relationship or otherwise." I nearly choke on my own words, because it’s the first time I’ve admitted to our union in the past tense to her.

"I’m sorry," she whispers. "I’m sorry – I never meant for this to happen."

"So this was it, wasn’t it? You tried to put the guilt on me, say this ended because I’m unhappy and I’m hard to live with and it’s all my soddin’ fault, when the reality of it is, you’ve just been shagging some fuckwit behind my back!"

"Spike! It’s not like that!"

"So tell me what it’s like!"

Her voice gets all the hushed and quiet. "Spike, I have to go – this isn’t a good time -- " I hear a low, hearty, masculine voice in the background, and I almost break the phone with my bare hands.

"Is that him? Is that Riley Fuckwit?"

"Spike, please, we’ll talk about this later, I just have to -- "

A question stumbles out of my mouth, and I know it’s not the kind that can be answered at the end of a conversation, but maybe that’s why I ask it, just so I can hear her voice for a little longer. "Is it better?"

She stops. "Is what better?"

"What, what. Playing Chinese Checkers with him, darning socks with him, you know what I’m talking about."

Buffy almost laughs harshly. "Spike, I can’t believe you. Is that all you care about?"

"It’s a simple question. Just give me a simple answer."

"So why? So you can either have your ego massaged or destroyed when I tell you? I’m not falling for it. And what makes you think we’ve done anything anyway?""

I snort a bitter noise of contempt. "Please. If I know anything about you, it’s how easy it is to pry your dimpled knees apart. Lest you forget our how we met and shagged the same day." These words are untrue and hurtful and cruel, but I don’t care. Buffy has hurt me and acts as if she owes me nothing, not even a simple answer. I hear the palpable sudden anger emanating from her silently across the phone, and I recognize how flushed and upset she is by her thick voice.

"Well if you must know, it’s been better, Spike. So much better than it’s ever been with you. Riley is the man you never could be, in the bedroom and otherwise --"

She’s lying, I know it. I can tell by how theatrical and catty she sounds. She’s doing it to hurt me and I know better than to fall victim to it.

I hang up the phone anyway.





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