Summer Confessions
by Casandra
Chapter 5
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With every single syllable I read I become more and more confused. Love letters. Buffy wrote me love letters when she was in LA the summer after she killed Angel. Three of them to be exact. Each one more heartfelt and raw then the one before it. I know I probably shouldn't have snooped and read them in the first place, but it's too late now. Knowledge is a powerful thing. And I've pretty much been knocked off my feet with the words contained on the crinkled notes. I can see the smudges of ink where she must not have been able to stop her tears from falling onto the crisp white paper. Every letter scrolled in her delicate handwriting, forming words that have left me in a complete state of emotional upheaval.
I don't know what to feel. Hurt that she never told me about her feelings. Confused that she actually could feel that way about me. Scared that she might not have those same feelings anymore. I can't seem to come to a stop on any one of them.
I mean in all fairness, what's a girl to do when she finds a stack of love letters from her best friend, stuffed away for two years in an old black duffel bag? Is there some kind of standard for this sort of thing, because if there is, I wish I was aware of it. Because I honestly don't know how to broach this subject with Buffy. And I can't figure out if our kisses out in the ocean not more than 10 minutes ago make this all that much easier or even harder than it normally would be.
I decide to read back over each one, I honestly don't know why. Maybe to convince myself that I'm not imagining things, that my wishful thinking hasn't taken one step too far towards the crazy.
Dear Willow,
Ok, well I don't think I've honestly ever written a letter to anyone before. So keep that in mind when you read this. Of course that's not entirely true. You and I have passed so many notes around in class that I had to buy new shoes just to have a box to put them all in. Yeah, it gave me a good excuse to get some new boots, I can't help that, so thanks!
But I bet you didn't know I kept all of our notes did you? Yep, every single one. I have the one we scribbled back and forth in Ms. French's biology class from hell. Two full pages that we managed to sneak past her, using Xander as our aisle buddy. I have to admit, I was so tempted to ask him on more than one occasion to switch seats with me. I really wanted to be your lab partner. And not just so I would actually pass Biology. But just think of all the fun we could have had, passing notes back and forth all period long. Of course I should know better than to try and corrupt you into not paying attention in class! I've come to realize just how bad an influence on you I really am!
Do you remember the note we went back and forth with right around the time when Ford and Drusilla came to Sunnydale? Or the one during 7th period English when we had that substitute teacher that was more boring than one of Giles' musty old books? I have every last one of them. I cherish them if I want to be brutally honest. Every word you wrote to me I have safely tucked away here in my shoe box. And I brought it with me. I couldn't stand the thought of not at least being able to live our friendship vicariously through all those words we've written back and forth to each other over the last 2 years.
And that brings me to my main point of this letter. I'm so so sorry Willow. I'm sorry I left you the way I did. I'm sorry I left period. But I couldn't stay in Sunnydale after everything that happened. You're spell worked Will. In the last moments before I was about to plunge a sword into my lover's chest, it worked. I saw a flash of purple light in his eyes and suddenly he was Angel again. But it was too late, and behind his shoulder I saw the vortex open. So I'm sure you know what I had to do. I mean the world is still turning so I know you can figure it out. After all, you are the one that wears the smarty pants in our little family. And I know what you're thinking, you're blaming yourself. Whether it being for not casting the spell in time, or just doing it to begin with. It doesn't matter to me though Willow. I don't blame you. God, I could never ever blame you for trying to help me like that. So please don't blame yourself, I couldn't stand it knowing you're blaming yourself just because of my screw ups.
I honestly hadn't made up my mind to leave for certain until I saw you the morning after. Yes, I had went home and packed a bag, left my mom a letter saying goodbye. But I wasn't completely sure until I saw you. In a wheelchair. Because of me. I know you didn't see me, I was standing behind the tree over across from the courtyard out in front of the school. But I saw you and the gang, looking around, waiting for me. And seeing you like that, so hurt, it completely made up my mind. I put you in that wheelchair Willow, maybe not technically, but everything that's happened to you in the past 2 years, all the roads lead back to me. And I figured that the only way to protect you was to leave you. And as much as it killed me to do it, you're safety and happiness is the most important thing in the world to me Will.
I'll never be able to thank god enough for gracing my life with your presence, even if I've cut our time together shorter than it might have been. But I could never have asked for a better friend than what you've been to me. And as long as I live I'll never forget what you mean to me. I love you Willow. Please, if anything, remember that. Try not to be angry with me, the thought of that cuts through me like a knife. And try not to worry about me. I'm ok, really, I just miss all of you so much. Take care of yourself, and each other.
Love, your best friend,
Buffy
If she would have stopped with that one letter I probably wouldn't have thought anything of it. We've said I love you to each other plenty of times in the last 4 years. Well not so much in the last 4 years. If I really think about it, we never said it to each other until right before graduation. Almost a year after she wrote these letters. Not that it really matters, because knowing now that she felt it even back then is enough to give me all sorts of warm and tinglies. I've cherished our friendship, in fact, if I really want to be honest, it's the most important thing in my life. Her friendship is even more important to me than Xander's. And that's really saying a lot, because I've known Xander, even if we haven't always been close the way we are now, since I was a scrawling infant. Ok, well maybe not an infant, more like toddlers, but the difference is the same. But I've only known Buffy 4 years, and I feel closer to her than I have to anybody, my parents and Xander included. I couldn't imagine her not being in my life, the brief thought that she would be anything less than my best friend is the most chilling thing I can imagine.
I can live without Xander. I can live without my parents. And I've learned this year that I can live without Oz and Tara. But I honestly don't think I could live very long without Buffy. And after reading the last two letters, it's glaringly apparent that Buffy feels the exact same way about me.
Dear Willow,
It's me again. I know I haven't sent the other letter yet. I'm just not sure whether to send them all at once or not. Ok, yeah, I'm actually not all that sure whether to send them period.
Just in case you're curious, it's the fourth of July tonight. I'm sitting here in this dingy low rent apartment and listening to the streets below come alive with the sounds of bottle rockets and poppers and all sorts of other fireworks that the denizens of LA are reveling in at the moment. I just got done pulling a double shift at the diner. Yep, another shocker for you. I'm a waitress at a seedy grease trap. Aren't you just so proud. I go from saving the world to serving undercooked burgers to slimy, unwashed truck drivers. The mighty have fallen, that's for sure.
But that's not what's really bothering me. You are, Willow. God how much I miss you. I never realized just how much I took your presence for granted, but not being near you, not just being able to walk through the halls of Sunnydale High and talk about anything and nothing in particular with you, I can't stand it. I feel like I'm just completely drifting farther and farther away. And my anchor, my Willow, isn't there to pull me back in. How pathetically dependant am I? I wonder what you're doing right now. Did you and Oz take a blanket out to Weatherly Park and sit and watch the fireworks?
I was surprised last year when you told me that Sunnydale actually had a Fourth of July show. Vamp playground I figured. Who would have thought they would be too scared of errant fireworks dusting them! I really wish I hadn't gone off to LA with my father last summer. I missed out on all that time with you. We could have gone to the fireworks together. Oh, of course we would have had to share the blanket with Xander. But that would have been ok, we would have at least been together. I can only imagine what the tint of the fireworks do to your already blazing red hair. It must look beautiful. I'm so sorry I won't have a chance to find out for myself. But Oz better appreciate it, or I might just have to come back and knock some sense into him. He better realize that he's the luckiest guy in the world to have you. So many times I felt like smacking Xander upside the head for not seeing what was right in front of him all those years. I hated seeing that disappointed look in your eyes every time he decided to pay more attention to everything else in a skirt instead of you.
I mean, how can anyone ignore you? You have this way about you Will, it just draws me completely in and I never want to find my way back out. That's exactly what happened the first day I met you. I caught one look of your sharp emerald eyes and I knew, just knew with everything that I am, that I needed to be your friend, needed to be in your life, someway, somehow. So yeah, now you know, that old excuse of getting me caught up on my school work was just a ruse. It worked though didn't it? Because here I am, 2 years later, and I can't imagine what my life would be like if I never would have gone out to you in that courtyard and sat down.
And now I'm getting all weepy. I'm sure you can probably tell, if you can even read this thing with all the splotches on it. So I guess I'll say goodnight Willow. Maybe I'll dream about you, us dancing together at the Bronze like we used to, or walking through the cemetery on patrol, a mocha in one of my hands, your own warm palm in the other. I love you Will, and God, I miss you so much. Please take care of yourself.
Love,
Buffy
By the time I get done reading that one, I have a few tears sliding down my cheek. It's almost like I can feel all the emotion she put into her words, every pen stroke like she was bearing just a little bit more of her soul.
But it's the last one that has me totally reeling.
Dear Willow,
Another month has gone by, and it's just getting worse and worse. All I think about is you anymore. I dream every night of you, of us, together. I wonder almost every single moment what you're doing, who're you're with, and if you're safe. If anything other than that, please god I hope you're safe. That's always in the forefront of my mind. That you might be hurt or even worse. And I can't even begin to describe the panic and fear that grips me when I think like that
And over the last two months I've started to come to realize some things. Some scary things. About myself, about you, about our friendship. I've re-read over the other two letters I wrote you. I know, I know, I should have sent them. If anything it would have just let you know that I'm not lying dead in a ditch somewhere. For being the Slayer, I'm an awfully big coward when it comes to matters of the heart, aren't I? But in reading over the letters, I realized just how much of my heart I poured out onto the pages. And in realizing that, I've come to know just how big a piece of that heart you really do own.
Willow, over the last two years you've unknowingly, to both of us I think, become the center of my universe. Everything that's happened to me since arriving in Sunnydale, you've always been there right beside me, literally from day one. I've always come to you when I needed comfort. And you've always been there, offering it to me unconditionally. God, even when Angel turned, you were willing to do anything to help me. Even after he almost killed you.
And since I brought up that subject, I might as well get more to the point. I'm being beat around the bush Buffy, and it's not helping either of us.
A few days after I had gotten out of the hospital last spring I had a encounter with Angel that I never told you about. I still wasn't up to full strength, but I had enough in me to tire him out so that I didn't have to go running. But what he said to me, I can still hear his words echoing in my ears as I write this.
Let me ask you something Willow. Did you ever wonder why Angel sent Xander away that night in the hallway ? Why he came after you first and foremost? And even later with your fish. He went after you first again. He told me that night that he knew right where to hit me. That he didn't need to bother taking out Xander and Cordy and Giles and everyone else first, because he knew that the second he took you away from me, the moment he killed you, it would have killed me too. He said it was almost too perfect. That I let myself love someone that much that all he had to do was snap your neck and he would have killed me with you. And of course I denied it to him. Besides the fact that if I admitted anything it would have just given him all that much more pleasure, and made you even more of a walking target. So I beat his face till it was barely recognizable, until he finally managed to throw me off of him and race back into the sewers. But his words have haunted me ever since.
Because he was right. I do love you that much Willow. If something were to happen to you, it would kill me too, I have no doubt at all about that. But it's not just his words that have me writing this. It's the dreams I've been having too. Dreams of us Will. Holding hands and walking down the beach together at sunset. Dreams where we're lying in my bed, watching bad foreign soap opera's together, you curled in my arms with your head resting gently on my chest, my fingers playing through your silken auburn hair. Dreams of us walking through the middle of Sunnydale, our arms wrapped around each other's waist, goofy smiles permanently plastered onto our faces. Dreams where I scoop you up into my arms and impetuously kiss you like there's no tomorrow. Dreams where we make tender sweet love for hours, holding each other close and hearing the rhythmic beat of each other's heart.
I love you Willow.
And I'm in love with you too.
And that is the reason I've decided to come back home to Sunnydale. Back home to you. Because to me, you are home. Whether I ever give you this letter or not, whether I ever tell you how much I really do love you, you forever will be home to me Willow. And I need to come back to you.
In love forever,
Buffy
There aren't enough words to describe what reading that letter has done to me. My legs have turned to Jell-O and I find myself sitting on the floor with my back against the sofa. If the soft leather wouldn't be holding me up, I know I would be flat on my back, I'm that bowled over. Reading it the first time didn't affect me as much as this time. I think the shock factor is starting to wear off, the real meaning behind her words slowly seeping into my consciousness.
Buffy loves me. Buffy is in love with me.
Or at least she was two years ago. A lot has changed, for both of us. I can't be sure she still feels the same way. But oh Goddess I hope she does. Because with those few pieces of crinkled paper all my dreams of the past four years have suddenly come to life. And the thought that it's too late is paralyzing me with fear. Tears are working their way down my cheeks in a constant river of salty wetness.
"Willow, what's wrong?!"