June 2000
 
Where do I start?
 
Where the hell is the entrance to this place I fucked up? It was there a week ago. Had a big neon sign on it then begging me to enter. Didn’t care that behind me I was dragging some big bad along. Something even the slayer couldn’t defeat. Nothing mythical about it, don’t get me wrong. No answers in a book this time Giles. No magical spell conjured by Red could counteract it. Followed me home one night that’s all. Brought on by too many JDs and a hollow feeling I get every time she leaves me alone after patrol. Couldn’t stop it, even if I’d tried. But I didn’t. Hell I’d invited it in!!! How’s that for irony? Of all people I should know you don’t invite the big bad into your house cos its hell to get rid of and the stains on the carpet are a bitch to get out.
 
And now the big bad has left me with the clean up bill. It don’t matter that I can’t afford the check cos I can’t even find the fucking door to see exactly how much mess was left behind!
 
It would be simple for someone like her. Easy to shoulder the responsibility and own up to the priceless vase she broke or the dry-cleaning she forgot to pick up cos she was on her way to party-town and it slipped her mind. She’d just say it. Two little words. She’d say it with a half-smile and that wrinkly thing she does with her nose when she has some making up to do. Army Boy gets that expression a lot cos he’s always pissed at her for missing a date when she’s been patrolling with me. Grow up farmhand! Hello saving the world here! But she gives in to him every time. Wrinkles that cute nose and says those two words that I can’t even write down in ink. Yeah it would be a breeze for her to come out and cop a whole heap of disapproving shit from Giles, her mom, even Red gets judgmental sometimes in the way only best friends do. You know, tries to sound understanding and supportive but secretly her latent Jewish sensibilities and the not so latent other sensibilities are outraged for behaviour that’s not becoming for a nice girl next-door type like B. I remember it from the last time. Everyone’s knickers twisting and scrunching real hard around the crotch just cos me and B went on for some flirty girl on girl dancing down at the Bronze. And back then I didn’t even see B. Not really. Not like I see her now.
 
Now is different. In so many ways it’s different. And this time around she hasn’t got any making up to do, it’s me that has the shit to clear up. The funny thing is in the past I would never have cared about the mess I left behind after big bad showed her slutty face at my door. I never even thought that far ahead. That there would be fall out of the nuclear variety from my actions would never have even entered my head back then. But like I said things are different now. I’m different. B is different. The whole fucking world went and got itself involved with me, and everything between me and her changed. So what I could get away with in the past sticks in me like a stake now, slowly turning me to dust instead of the instant annihilation I’m used to. And the words that will make this all go away, or at least buy me some brownie points for trying and time to prove that the bitch is really gone for good now, I can’t even utter.
She can say them and mean them when she has only done the slightest thing wrong, but I stand as mute as if The Gentleman were back and this time had only picked on my voice to rob.
 
I don’t know where to start, and I don’t know how to explain, and I don’t know how to say the words.....
 
.....I’m sorry.
 
Five by five? You have to be fucking joking.