The Courtship of Buffy Summers

With the school day over the once bubbly blonde is now a ball of nerves. She’s on her way over to the mysterious Anna Mills, and she’s second guessing herself. She doesn’t if she it would be right going over there before she talks to Faith. But she isn’t sure if Faith will be honest with her or not. ‘It’s best to have both sides of the story before you pass judgment. And Faith is still out of town so getting Anna’s first is just convenient,’ she thinks as she walks down the sidewalk.


She’s going in the direction she would normally go everyday, but instead of going straight and walking towards her house she turns to the right until she sees a sign that says ‘Red Bluff Street’. She glances at all of the houses on either side of the street looking for 3458. ‘Come on, it’s a dead end road, how hard can it be to find?’ Sighing in frustration she keeps going. Then she gets to the very end of the street. She look at the house to her right, but that’s on the one. Then she looks at the house to her left and reads the numbers twice just to be sure. ‘Bingo,’ she thinks and makes her way across the street.


She stands on the sidewalk and just looks at the house for a few minutes, much like a stalker would do. She studies the red paint, the dark green trim, and the very inviting feel the house has. Making up her mind that this isn’t wrong, she makes her way up to the door and rings the doorbell. She looks down at her watch when she remembers what Xander said about Anna not being home until around four, but it’s not three fifty-seven, so hopefully the other teenager will be home. Blonde looks up quickly, startled, when she hears the door open.


“Can I help you?” ‘Is that Anna? Please, don’t let that be Anna,’ the blonde thinks and becomes very self-conscious about her looks. The girl standing before her is stunning. Tall, and leggy. Curves in all the right places. Dark, gorgeous eyes that seem to pierce your very soul when she looks into your eyes. Her dark hair is cut short, stopping at her shoulders but all the short hair does is compliment the girls very pretty face. She could easily be a model if she wanted, but this hot bombshell is one in a million, and would rather use her brain then her boobs to get a career.


“Hi, I’m Buffy. I’m looking for an Anna Mills. Xander and Willow told me I could find her here,” she says and notices that the girl tenses up at the mention of the teenagers’ names. ‘This is her, there’s no doubt about it. According to everyone at school Faith only goes after the very beautiful girls because to everyone else they’re unattainable. And here I was hoping it wouldn’t be true.’


“Well you found her. How are Xander and Willow doing?” she asks and steps aside, making room for Buffy to enter the house. “Come on in. I have a feeling this talk might take a while.” Buffy enters the house and feels a little nervous. That scene in the Lion King when Simba is almost killed by the Hyenas comes to mind. She remembers the moral of that little outing being ‘don’t go looking for trouble’ and that is definitely what Buffy has done.


“They’re doing great. Xander is falling behind in some of his classes, but Willow is helping him catch up.” The nervous small talk continues as the two walk up the stairs to the second story of the very nice home. Buffy can’t fight the very warm, homey feeling this house has. Buffy is lead to Anna’s bedroom and as soon as she steps into it she never wants to leave. It’s just so nice. The vibe is warm, and the room is so…vibrant.


Three of the four walls are a bright yellow color, while the fourth wall is a mural. It’s a large painting of a country farmhouse. There’s a barn, and the lovely home, with fields in the background and on either side. There’s horses in one pasture, cows in the other, and three children running and playing while the parents sit on the porch and watch. ‘Ok, so did she steal that picture from a real painting or did she come up with it herself? Either way it’s really nice.’


“So, what did you want to talk about?” Anna asks and sits down on the large bed. The comforter is red, along with the pillowcase. Buffy really wishes her mom would give her this kind of creative control over her room so she could turn it into something like this. “Obviously it wasn’t to tell me that Xander still hasn’t changed.” The speechless blonde takes a seat at the desk. She turns the chair around so she can face the very pretty girl across from her.


“Faith,” Buffy says and pauses for a second. “The person not the belief in higher powers.” Anna smiles a little but it goes away after a second or two. ‘Ok, so what’s with that look? Did Faith really rip out her heart and put it in a blender?’ Anna looks away from Buffy, and it irritates the blonde a lot. She wants to be able to look into those soulful eyes and see what the dark headed girl is feeling.


“I don’t know what you’ve heard about her, or why you’re asking me, but some of it might be true.” Buffy tenses up and prepares herself for the worst. “We were together, like in a relationship, as in more then just friends.” Anna looks up at the bottled blonde to gauge her reaction and she’s glad that the skinny girl isn’t freaking out. “What do you wanna know about her?” Now that Anna’s actually looking into Buffy’s hazel eyes the blonde takes back her earlier notion of wanting the brunette to look at her. The pain in those dark, almost black eyes, is so great Buffy knows she’ll probably have nightmares about them.


“Well, I already knew that you two were together. Xander and Willow told me. The other kids at school have been telling me things about Faith ever sine I moved here. I guess she’s known for breaking hearts, and using people, and Xander told me yours was the worst.” Anna’s eyebrows knit together in anger and irritation immediately after Buffy gets done talking. ‘Ok, what’s with the sudden mood swing. That happened so fast I thought I was going to get whiplash.’


“That’s not what happened at all!” Anna yells and stands up in a very threatening way. Buffy cowards back, knowing that in a physically confrontation she’d be murdered almost instantly. Her tiny structure is definitely not intended to endure physically violence. But the other girl calms down, takes in a deep breath, and returns to her spot on the bed. “I’m sorry, but that’s not what happened.” The girl takes in another deep breath and begins a tale of friendship, love, and eventually heartbreak.


“We dated back in our freshman year. She had just moved here from L.A. and she was pissed off at…the world, I guess. Cordelia kept giving her a hard time because that’s just what Cordelia does, but it didn’t help. We met when we were forced to work on a science project together. She was cold, and distant at first, but I treated her better then everyone else and she stopped being so mean after a while. One day after school she came over to work on the project and she heard me and my dad fighting. I said something way out of line, and he slapped me. She heard it, completely freaked out and dragged me out of here.” A couple of tears slowly snake their way down the girl’s pretty face. She doesn’t wipe them away, and they fall onto her jeans, making dark spots on the material.


“She took me into the woods, behind the park. There was an old travel trailer back there. She told me it used to be her uncle’s and she put it back there so she would have a place to go, but I wasn’t really paying attention at the time. We went inside and sat in silence for a while. I didn’t have anything to say, and she didn’t ask me about what happened. After a couple of hours she walked me home and make me promise to tell her if he ever hit me again. We became friends after that.” She wipes away at the drying tears on her face, and her expression changes to a lighter one as she looks back on the happy memories.


“We never hung out at school. I guess she didn’t want my reputation as the good girl ruined. But we hung out in here everyday.” She looks over to the mural on her wall and smiles a little. “She helped me paint that. Well, I helped her. She’s way better then I thought she was, and way better at it then me. Anyway, she was always there for me, and she listened to everything I had to say. She never really opened up to me, she said it hurt too much to talk about her past.” Anna blushes a little and Buffy knows that she’s about to talk about the more R rated side of her and Faith’s relationship.


“When I realized I was falling for her I didn’t hesitate to tell her. I felt like I could tell her anything and she wouldn’t push me away. I was so nervous, and babbling like an idiot. But as soon as I said I wanted to be more then friends she leaned over and kissed me.” Anna’s fingers slowly reach up and touch her lips. The girl does this without even realizing. Buffy gets a flair of jealousy within her that she controls. But hearing someone else talk about kissing Faith is a lot harder then she thought it was going to be.


“After that our friendship changed, but it was still the same. We’d still only hang out here, and we’d talk for hours, but we’d lay together on the bed and she’d hold my hand. It was very…innocent, and I was so naïve at the time. I wanted to come out to my parents and my friends, but she told me not to. I trusted her so I listened to her.” Buffy looks at her a little more intently when she pauses. She watches Anna look up at her with some hesitation. After a few seconds that feel like hours she finally continues.


“She was my first everything. My first relationship, my first kiss, the first person I ever fell in love with, the first person I ever made love with.” She turns a little so she can look behind her at the big bed with the dark red sheets. “It happened right here on this bed. Different sheet, of course, but same mattress, same room, same ceiling.” ‘Ok, I will not kill this girl, I will not kill this girl. She’s nice enough to share all of this with me, and I will not kill her.’ “It was, absolutely perfect. She was so gentle, and loving. She always took really good care of me.” Buffy watches Anna’s expression change to a darker one as looks back on the memory floating in her mind.


“We fell asleep afterwards. My parents were out of town on business and weren’t supposed to be back for another three days. But the people my dad was trying to get to sign on with his business refused, and canceled all the other meetings they had with him, so he came home early. He walked in on us when we were sleeping, naked and holding each other. He completely freaked. He started screaming at us, and he grabbed all of Faith’s clothes and threw them out the window. Then he grabbed her by the hair and dragged her downstairs and threw her outside. He told me I wasn’t allowed to see her anymore, that he wasn’t going to have a ‘fag’ for a daughter.” Buffy’s heart feels like it’s being constricted with sympathy for this girl.


“I wasn’t going to break up with her, I was in love with her, but I thought we could be sneaky about it. But she couldn’t come over here anymore, and she didn’t want to take me to her place, but we had to be together, it was getting too hard to be in the same building and act like we didn’t know each other. One day after cheerleading practice she came into the locker room after all the other girls left and we…worked off some tension. Cordelia came back because she forgot her pompoms and saw us.” Buffy’s stomach drops when Anna tells her that. ‘So Cordelia has always been a huge bitch? I’m so glad I’m not friends with her.’


“The next day everyone at school knew about it, but they all blamed Faith. I was the good girl who never did anything bad, so if I’m caught having sex with a girl then it’s obviously her fault, not mine. I tried to tell them that they were wrong, but they wouldn’t listen. They were to busy crucifying Faith.” Buffy takes in a deep breath when Anna looks into her eyes again. All of that pain, and sadness is on display and it’s almost too overwhelming to look at, but Buffy can’t look away.


“She did break up with me, she did break my heart, but she was trying to protect me. She let everyone think that she was some horrible monster because she thought it would make things easier for me. Then the principal found out what happened on his campus and he called my dad. He pulled me out of Sunnydale High and put me in private school because I told him no matter what he did I wouldn’t stop seeing Faith. I was wrong, because he threatened to send me away to some boarding school in Vermont, and I stopped seeing her. I loved her so much, but this is my home. I already lost most of my friends when I switched schools, I didn’t want to be shipped off to some other state too.” Buffy watches as Anna wipes the tears from her red, puffy eyes. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen someone look so small and wounded.’


“We see each other sometimes around town because Sunnydale is very small, but we don’t talk. Every once in a while she’ll tape a letter to my window, but that’s only like twice maybe three times a month. I can’t write back because I don’t know where she lives, and I don’t know when she’s going to show up so I can’t take one to my window without someone seeing it in the morning if she doesn’t come.” Buffy watches in stunned silence as Anna sniffles loudly, and wipes at her eyes some more. The taller girl glances over at a clock on her nightstand and then back at Buffy.


“You should go, my dad will be home any minute and I’m not supposed to have people over while he’s gone.” The blonde gets up to leave, she doesn’t say anything because she doesn’t know what to say. But a now raspy voice stopped her when she reached the bedroom door. “Buffy.” The blonde slowly turns around and doesn’t know what to expect. “You hurt her in any way, shape or form, and I’ll break your neck. You got it?” ‘Wow, she went from heartbroken teenager to scary bitch in three seconds. I should definitely take her seriously.’


“I won’t, and not just because you’re threatening me. Thank you for telling me all of that. I can’t even imagine how hard it must’ve been. I’ll tell Willow and Xander you said hi.” Before Anna could say another word Buffy rushes out of the house. Watching the girl go through so many raw emotions, and cry like that took its toll on our favorite bottled blonde, and she needs to get away from this place before she has a break down of her own. She runs into her house and thanks every god in the universe that she beat her mother home. ‘I’m never talking with any of Faith’s ex’s again. That was way too much. I can’t wait to see Faith now that I know she isn’t a sleazebag. Is it crazy that I just want her to hold me?’