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All William wanted was for the woman on the quad to turn around so he could see her face. His rational mind knew that it wasn't her, just like every other heart-stopping glimpse of a petite figure with long blond hair or teasingly familiar curve of a woman's neck never turned out to be her. His stubborn heart, though, needed more proof.

Her hair was long, falling halfway down her back in the same shade of gold that he had so loved. He could see just the slope of her cheek and the tip of her chin, and it frustrated him that she wouldn't turn for a better view. Even her profile would be enough to convince him that it was just another mirage, and then he could turn his attention back to the essays he was meant to be grading. For now, though, his eyes remained fixed on the woman.

She was dressed in a cheery yellow blouse and denim capris. She was playing with a toddler, a dark-haired little boy who happily chased after the ball she rolled for him. William watched the flash of her slender, tanned limbs and thought of Buffy doing cartwheels and roundhouse flips in his backyard.

William gave himself a mental slap and forced himself to return to his desk and the work that was waiting for him. You’re over her, you ponce, he reminded himself, ignoring the obvious contradiction in that thought. It had been months since he'd thought of her, at least actively, the way he was thinking of her now. His eyes slid to the window again and it was several minutes before he consciously noticed that he was watching her once more.

William had thought - hoped, wished - that Buffy might contact him after she turned eighteen. When she didn't, when the months passed and he heard nothing from her, he told himself that it was nothing more than he should have expected. He thought of how she had lied to him for months with seeming ease; thought of how from the very start she had lied about things both big and small, hidden things from him. It made him doubt everything about their relationship. He had been aware even while they were together that he was a safe haven from a desperate situation; what wouldn’t she have said to keep that safety net? He didn't want to think that her feelings had been nothing more than gratitude for what he offered, but the further he got from her, from the heat and surety of their relationship, the more he doubted.

He told himself that she had been young, very young, when they were together, and what creature is more fickle than a teenage girl? That line of reasoning did nothing to comfort him, however, and he had promptly crawled into a bottle. It was during the prodigious drinking jag brought on by the lack of Buffy that he met Harmony.

He'd picked her up at a bar, initially drawn to her by her long, golden hair that was almost the same shade as Buffy's. That was, unfortunately, where the similarities ended. Still, she was warm and willing in his bed, and he wasn't going to turn that down, even if the girl did have the IQ of a piece of lint. They lasted all of three months and, surprisingly, it was Harmony who ended the relationship after she got tired of William calling out the wrong name during sex.

Getting dumped by a girl like Harmony did nothing for his desire to jump back into dating. For a long time, he'd stuck to harmless flirting at the bar, interspersed with the occasional one-night stand. And if he thought of how he'd told Buffy that casual sex wasn't his style? Easy enough to wash that memory away with a shot or six.

William sighed heavily when he realized he was staring again. Give it up, he chided himself. The mental talking-to was fruitless, however, and his gaze remained on the woman. She glanced up suddenly, exposing a sliver more of her face to William. The breath caught in his throat as she – finally! – turned around to greet the coltish, long-limbed girl who now joined her on the lawn. There was no mistaking that smile, those eyes, that little bump at the end of her nose. Especially when coupled with the presence of a girl he immediately identified as Dawn.

William stood, fingers gripping the windowsill painfully as he watched her. It really was her. He could hardly believe that, after four years of intermittent longing, she was so close. He dithered for a moment, not sure what he wanted to do, what he should do. As he stood there, heart thumping and mind racing, Buffy rose and gathered the toddler up. She and Dawn started walking across the quad, their figures growing smaller with every step.

That decided him. He turned, ready to race through the hall and down the stairs to catch her before she disappeared from his life again. And came face to face with Norah.

His girlfriend.

She smiled at him from the doorway, then tilted her head to the side as she regarded him. "Are you okay?" she asked. "You look like you've seen a ghost."

William spared one more backwards glance through his window; Buffy was going, going, gone. He turned back to Norah, his beautiful girl with her glossy chestnut hair and sparkling brown eyes, and smiled heartily. “I’m fine,” he said. “Are you ready to grab lunch?”

But it was in that moment, with his palms sweating and hope dying in his stomach, that he finally admitted to himself how very much not over Buffy he truly was.

***

Years of practice at putting Buffy out of his mind had made William quite adept at it, so it was no surprise that she was the last thing he was thinking of when he – quite literally – bumped into her a week later. He was leaving his last class of the day, and just as he stepped out of Eliot Hall, he collided with a body. The sheaf of papers he carried went flying.

“Bollocks,” he muttered to himself, kneeling to collect his things. He glanced up when a small, warm hand brushed across his, and froze. He was staring directly into Buffy’s big, hazel eyes.

“William,” she breathed. The way she said his name, as if it meant something, pierced him to the core. The look in her eyes – like a drowning woman just thrown a rope – sent a shiver of hot desire down his spine. He watched her cheeks flush and realized he had been staring at her for far too long without moving or speaking.

“Buffy,” he said finally. His voice shook a little, but no more than his hands.

Buffy smiled uncertainly at him. “Hello,” she said. She handed him the papers she had gathered up, and they stood slowly, eyes fixed on one another.

William drank her in; she looked exactly the same as he remembered, as he'd dreamt her, but entirely different at the same time. Because she was here, in front of him, breathing and large as life. Her hair was loose around her shoulders the way he liked it, those rich, shiny, bouncing curls. He fought the urge to touch her.

“Buffy,” he repeated. “What are you doing here?”

Her cheeks reddened again and she looked away from him. “I… I’m meeting a friend for coffee,” she said quietly. Then she crossed her arms and lifted her chin. She flashed her eyes at him as she added, “I’m not stalking you or anything.”

She was so completely herself in that moment, so much the Buffy he had missed, that he couldn’t stop the laughter that bubbled out of his chest. "No, of course not," he said. "You surprised me, is all."

He was going to mention the day last week when he'd seen her; he desperately wanted to ask her about the child he'd seen her with. But just as he opened his mouth to speak, a voice called her name.

Buffy turned and waved to a redheaded woman who hurried toward them. "William, this is my friend, Willow," Buffy introduced them.

"Oh, Professor Pratt," Willow smiled. "I took your Intro to Poetry class my freshman year."

William nodded and watched Buffy as she and her friend talked. She carried herself with a womanly confidence that was new to her, and he realized for the first time just how young she had been when he knew her. She hadn't seemed it at the time - or if she had, only very rarely - but looking at her now, he could see the difference between the girl she had been and the woman she had become.

He blinked when he heard his name. Willow was asking him something. "I'm sorry, what was that?"

"I asked if you wanted to join us for coffee," she said.

William spared a quick glance at Buffy. She wasn't looking at him, and her tense shoulders betrayed her nerves. He paused for a moment before answering Willow, sure that he was going to decline the offer. Then Buffy turned to him with a small smile. He took it as an encouraging sign. "I'd love to," he said.

Willow grinned. She hooked arms with Buffy and whispered something into her ear that made Buffy smile again. The girls chatted easily as they walked, and William let their voices flow over him without really absorbing what they were saying. He followed them to one of the on-campus cafes.

He finally broke his silence when they were seated at a small outdoor table, drinks in hand. "I saw you last week, Buffy," he said. "You were with Dawn, on the quad."

"She was here for a tour," Buffy explained. "She likes the language program, especially the Russian and Chinese offerings. She's freakishly good at foreign languages."

"And the little boy you had with you? Is he..." His voice trailed off as she looked at him calmly. He really wanted to know what was going through her head.

Buffy shook her head. "That was Alistair. Jenny and Giles' little boy," she said. William let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. Buffy gave him her best Mona Lisa smile; she knew exactly what he'd been thinking. That she could still read him so easily gave him a secret thrill.

"You... did you stay with them, then? After..." William glanced at Willow, not sure how much he could say, how much Buffy had already shared with her friend.

"After the trial?" Buffy asked. William nodded. "Yeah, they were great. They are great. Dawn finally got the father she deserved, and Jenny is amazing. Their home has been the perfect place for her."

"What about for you?" William leaned towards Buffy a little. She met his eyes for a moment before dropping her gaze to her hands.

"It was... they were very good to me. Even though I tried everything I could to not deserve it." Buffy took a sip of her coffee and added, "Jenny taught me how to cook."

"Well, that's a blessing, innit?" William teased. "'Specially as you were so bloody determined to do it."

Buffy laughed. "You'd be impressed. I hardly ever put the wrong milk in the scrambled eggs anymore."

"I’ll believe it when I see it. You can cook for me sometime, kitten, show off your skills." William caught Buffy's blush. He wasn't sure if the blush was for the pet name or the implication that he wanted to see her again. Whatever it was, he was more than halfway to hooked again, craving this vibrant woman sitting across from him. He sighed inwardly and wished things could be easy.

Willow cleared her throat, and Buffy and William turned to look at her, realizing at the same moment that they had been ignoring her presence. "This has been great," she said cheerily as she stood. "But I have another class to get to, so I'll just be going. See you later, right, Buff?"

Buffy nodded silently as her friend gathered her things and walked away. Her nerves came back when she was alone with William; he saw it in the way she fidgeted with her coffee cup and tapped her nails on the table. She dumped a packet of sugar on the table and swirled it into a spiral with her fingertip.

William couldn't help it. He reached across the table and took her hand in his. She stilled instantly and looked him straight in the eye. "’S’good to see you, Buffy," he said. "I've missed you."

A soft smile lit Buffy's face as she grasped his hand tightly. "I missed you, too," she said, very softly. She placed her free hand on top of their entwined fingers and took a deep breath. "I have a confession to make."

William waited.

Buffy bit her bottom lip before speaking. "I, uh, I kinda asked Willow to find out your schedule for me. I had this whole plan, where I’d run into you on campus and ask you out for coffee…” She grinned at him. “Exhibit A. But I don’t want to play some stupid game, I don’t want to, to lie to you. About anything. I just… I needed to see you.”

"Buffy," he said with a smile. She stopped talking and looked up at him, worry evident in her eyes. He grinned at her. "Not complainin' here."

She laughed and the tension ran out of her shoulders. "Good. Okay, well, the next part of the plan was for me to invite you to the annual school's-out party Willow and I are hosting this Friday. So consider yourself officially invited."

William chuckled. "How many parts does this plan of yours have, pet?"

Before Buffy could respond, a shadow fell over William's face. He looked up and met Norah's quizzical eyes. When he didn't move, she quirked an eyebrow at his hands, still linked with Buffy's in the center of the table. "Norah," he said as he pulled his hands back to his lap, "I'd like you to meet Buffy." Buffy nodded. "Buffy, this is Norah."

Norah extended a hand in greeting. "Hi,” she said, a touch too cheerily. “I'm William's girlfriend.”

Buffy took her hand. "Nice to meet you," she said with a smile. She glanced from William to Norah. "I should go." She stood and looked at him one more time. "It was great seeing you again, Will.” She nodded again to Norah and was gone.





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