“Memory is the treasure house of the mind wherein the monuments thereof are kept and preserved”
Thomas Fuller
Buffy watched the hands of the clock on the nightstand slowly tick by. Over an hour had passed since her initial trip to the bathroom. She tried to go back to sleep, yet her bladder made it impossible. She lost the battle with this baser urge, threw off the covers, and headed for the bathroom. Buffy opened the door and tentatively headed down the hallway.
Once she reached the bathroom, she called his name softly into the darkness before pushing the door open. Not hearing a response, she swallowed past the lump in her throat and entered the room. Gratefully, it was empty. Buffy turned on the light and locked the door behind her before hurrying to the toilet. After she found the relief she’d so desperately craved for well over an hour, she then stood before the mirror.
She didn’t recognize the exhausted woman reflected in the glass. It felt like forever since she’d slept and even longer since she felt any type of peace. Tonight by the fire she’d felt at ease, but not fully serene. That feeling had eluded her for too long. She’d hoped the decision to move on would’ve started her down the path toward serenity, but she still was uncertain if she’d made the right choice. Since she’d arrived here, her decision that had remained unwavering for six months was now teetering between being the right or wrong choice.
Pushing past her doubt, Buffy began getting ready for bed. After brushing her teeth and washing her face, she looked at the clothes he’d left for her. A small smile grew when she spied a worn black cotton tee and a pair of warm socks. Buffy wasn’t upset that he didn’t bother leaving her some pants, since he knew she hated wearing them to bed. Grabbing the proffered items, she headed back to her room.
Once back in her room, Buffy pulled off her black sweater and bra and slipped the tee over her head. She was instantly inundated with Will’s unique scent. She walked to the bed, but before she slid under the sheets, she pulled up the collar of his shirt and buried her nose in the fabric.
Buffy breathed deeply through her nose and closed her eyes, briefly feeling a wave of familiarity roll through her. She could never explain why, but Will’s scent always had a way of exciting and comforting her at the same time.
With her nose still tucked in his shirt, she turned off the light before sliding deeper into the linens. As she nestled in, Buffy’s lids began fluttering as she began to surrender to the sleep she’d previously fought against. As she drifted off, the combination of the day’s events and Will’s scent caused memories of the past began to come forward.
Seven Years ago
“Great, will this night ever end?”
The small brass bell hanging above the diner’s door triggered a groan from Buffy and an eye roll to her equally weary counterpart, who was sitting on an adjacent stool. Each woman rubbed matching aching spots radiating from their lower backs. It was four a.m., and the women yearned for the lagging minutes on the clock to pass quickly to five a.m., the time their shift finally ended.
The past fifteen minutes was the first lull in the steady stream of customers in the diner since they’d started their shift at nine p.m. Despite the fact that every Saturday night was just as busy as this one, it didn’t make it any easier on their bodies. Neither woman wanted to move from her seat, especially not to help more most likely obnoxious, drunken partiers, who had a hankering for runny eggs and stale coffee. Each lady eyed the other, waging a silent war to force the other to stand and help the new customers. After several moments, Buffy relented, having worked there less time. With a loud huff, she stood and turned to face the incoming patrons.
She saw two men of equal height out of the corner of her eye, while fishing through her pocket of her apron. Both men wore black leather coats and slid into the furthest booth. Getting ready to take yet another order, Buffy pulled out her pad of paper and a stubby pencil. She arrived to their table and stood off to the side, donning her customary plastic grin. She greeted them with a “Good morning. I’m Anne.” After her brief introduction, she’d followed it up with a stereotypical greasy-spoon-diner-style question, “Whatya havin’?”
She’d been using the alias of Anne in order to not have to deal with guys trying to engage her in tedious conversations about her given name, Buffy. When she first started to waitress, the male customers would go on and on about her name. Everything from, “That’s a fake name. Now tell me what’s your real name?” to “I had a dog named that once.” After a week of listening to their comments, she decided to use her middle name instead. Gratefully, since she really needed the job, from that point on, she hadn’t heard another comment about her name.
The man to her left spoke first. Buffy was taken off guard when his thick accent filled her ears. Even as she scribbled his order, she found her mind wandering, trying to determine where he was from. It was a toss up between England and Ireland. The issue was Buffy had a thing for accents. She loved them all, but above all others one was her particular favorite—British.
Her love for accents all started at the tender age of twelve with her neighbor’s son, David. David, who was from a town just outside London, was in LA to visit his father during summer break. Buffy remembered being introduced to him, and it was the first time in her short life she was utterly speechless. At first it was his looks. He was handsome with bronzed skin, a full head of thick black hair, and large brown eyes. Then he spoke. From the moment she heard his accent, she was completely hooked.
During his visit, her days were filled with constant giggling and whispering between her and her best friend, Willow, as they fawned over him. Despite all the time she spent around him, they were never alone. They were always in a group of kids from the neighborhood that hung out together.
Buffy only spoke with him directly a handful of times, and when she responded to his questions, her answers were only two to three word sentences that were usually stuttered as her eyes darted, looking everywhere else, but never directly at him. Now looking back, she realized this was her first crush. After two weeks, he left and never visited his dad or LA again. However, even to this very day, every time she heard a British accent, she reverted back to her twelve-year-old self.
A loud sound of a throat being cleared broke Buffy from her thousand-yard stare. Realizing she was blatantly gawking at this man, she blinked quickly in order to clear her mind. With embarrassment tinting her cheeks a bright pink, she tried to make light of the situation with a joke.
“Um, so, would you like a spot of tea, guv’nor?”
Following this failed attempt at humor since neither of them laughed, she turned to face the man to her right. The instant she did, she was completely lost. This man was a stark contradiction to his friend. He sported a crown of shocking white hair that was harshly slicked back, compared to the other man’s tussled dark locks. The man to her right was adorned in all black. Each piece of clothing seemed to be carefully picked out to add to his dangerous persona. His friend, on the other hand, looked like he had a field day rummaging through the racks of a local thrift store for his outfit of cheaply made polyester, complete with loud patterns and colors. Mystery man in black held an air of menace and danger, whereas his friend seemed to be the sidekick, the one who provided the jokes and laughs. The only similarity they had was the pair of blue eyes each possessed. Even then, the man on the left eyes sparkled with humor, whereas the other man’s, despite his hardened exterior, appeared soulful, and she felt strangely at ease with him. These pools of blue had her mesmerized, ensnared in his stare.
When Mr. Mystery Man-in-black’s rumbling, velvety voice filled her ears, Buffy’s eyes broke from his gaze and moved to his full, kissable lips. While she gawked, she noticed his lips moving, but she missed his order completely. After a few quick blinks that dragged her mind from la-la land, she remembered where she was and more importantly what she was supposed to be doing.
“You have to excuse me, long night. Can you give me your order again?”
With a raise of his scarred brow, he eyed her before he repeated himself. This time when he spoke she didn’t miss what he was saying, especially not the tone. It was if he was talking to a simpleton.
“Coffee. Black. Strong. Got it?”
When Buffy heard the edge to his voice, even with the accent, the spell she was under evaporated instantly. Without another word, she turned on her heels and headed back to the counter, grumbling under her breath the entire way about a “Rude Billy Idol wanna-be” and “Punk rock reject.”
She quickly rounded the counter and stuck the ticket on the order wheel. The cook grunted as he placed his sausage-sized fingers on the metal and spun the wheel around so he could reach the slip. With another grunt, he snatched it from the clip before heading over to the grill.
Once the order was placed, with a mischievous glint in her eyes she turned toward the line of coffee makers. Eyeing the pots, she smirked when spying what she was looking for—the pot holding the oldest coffee. Removing it from the heater, she noticed the black liquid sluggishly swishing against the heated glass. Buffy could smell the pungent bitterness of the coffee before she even began pouring. Perfect. Grabbing a chipped, white cup and saucer from under the counter, she tipped the pot and watched the coffee travel down the side of the glass, to the spout, and then filling the cup.
Grinning with pure satisfaction from her choice and her not so hidden way to get back at him for his rudeness, Buffy headed over to table. Once she arrived, she flashed another synthetic smile before placing the cup of vile caffeinated nastiness in front of the disrespectful blond before giving him a perky, “Enjoy!”
His nod was his only response before Buffy headed back over to the counter in order to secretly watch the show that was about to unfold. Trying to appear casual, she grabbed a rag and began wiping down the counters while humming a song softly under her breath. At random times, her eyes darted over to the table, as all the while she bit her lower lip, trying to stifle the laughter bubbling within as she anticipated his reaction to her impish deed.
Several moments passed and nothing. She began to wonder if he had just ordered the coffee so he could be rude because of her staring, or maybe he was a masochist, and he enjoyed the assault on his taste buds. The swill left at the bottom of the pot was certainly good for that. Hearing the cook grumbling, “Order’s up,” brought her attention from payback to serving. Slightly disappointed, she grabbed the plate and headed over to the table.
Before reaching her destination, Buffy clearly heard what the blond jerk thought about the coffee. Stifling her laughter, she approached with plate in hand, as his loud sputtering and something resembling cursing began to subside. Fixing another beaming smile to her lips and still trying to cover up her laughter, she placed the plate before his friend. After asking, “Is there anything else?” to Mr. Polyester, she turned to Mr. I’m-stuck-in-the-80’s and with her sweetest and most sarcastic voice asked how he liked the coffee.
She waited for him to verbally blast her, maybe even throw the coffee in her face and ask her how she liked it. He did neither. She watched as his Adam’s apple bobbed with a forced swallow before he told her, “It’s fine.” This took her aback, and her brow furrowed faintly in confusion. Buffy knew the coffee was far from fine, but he told her it was. Normally, customers didn’t have a problem telling her what they thought of the food, the service, and especially her. This guy looked no different. Hell, he looked like he never had a problem telling people what he thought, whether a comment was due or not.
Knowing he was staring at her, she coughed in an attempt to cover up her staring yet again. With a soft smile, Buffy placed the bill upside down on the table, turned, and headed back to the counter to help the other woman with prep work for the morning rush.
Twenty minutes later, the men appeared to have finished their meal as they stood from the booth. Each of them placed money on the table and headed out without saying another word. Buffy looked up from her task of filling the saltshakers when she heard the bell above the door ringing. She briefly met with blonde’s gaze, which was filled with something she had never seen before that day, and then he turned and headed out into the early rays of the morning light.
Present
As Buffy drifted between state of consciousness and sleep, the last thoughts of him flickered through her mind. She hadn’t thought about that day in ages, yet she remembered everything with perfect clarity: The large grease stain on the sleeve of her uniform from a burger sliding from its bun earlier that night when she pulled the plate from the heating lamps to place it on her tray. The miles of grimy linoleum that lay under her equally grimy black sneakers. The way his eyes seemed to, even then, speak to her completely. She remembered it all, and his eyes and way he looked at her that day was the last memory she recalled before sleep finally took over.
[Reviews - 205]
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | 
Chapter or Story
Has been viewed 2878 times
- Text Size +
-
Table of Contents [Report This]
Chapter or Story |
Chapter or Story | Chapter or Story - Text Size +
Author's Chapter Notes:
Hey! Here's the next chapter to my little tale. I'm glad everyone is enjoying this as much as I am enjoying writing it! Big, big thanks to my lovely betas: Sanityfair and Diebirchen. Love you ladies!! Big Hugs!!! Look tomorrow for the final chapter of Helluva Day...yes...I did finish it!!! Finally!!!
Chapter End Notes:
I hope you liked this little flashback. This chapter had a very personal touch to it. The story about David is true. In this case, I was Buffy. I believe David was the one who made my love for accents, especially British ones, become what it is today! I absolutely love them!!!! LOL!!!