I stare at Cordelia for a moment, at the sleek bell of hair cut to frame her face, the eyes that have stared into Angel's, the hands that have cupped his face, the finger that wore his wedding ring. Shifting my weight from one foot to the other, I lick suddenly dry lips and regard the woman that I know I should hate. But all I can see is the girl I knew in High School, who kissed Xander and drove in her Queen C car and mocked me- never letting me become high on myself just because I was the Slayer and had Angel.

The last time I saw her was on my wedding day, when I was a blushing bride and didn't care. Didn't care that she had Angel by her side. Didn't care that she wore mint green and was fresh and young and beautiful. Didn't care that he so obviously loved her, and that I was simply- and finally… his ex. Nothing more, nothing less. Because I had someone – I had Danny and my friends, and I was putting it all behind me like everyone had always wanted. Angelus and Faith and the sword and the blood and Acathla's open, gasping mouth—shushing it all into a whispery past that didn't deserve recognition. Didn't deserve remembrance.

But now she stands in front of me and I realize the line between us has been blurred.

Angel was supposed to be mine.

But he became hers… and how can we get past that?

"Cordelia," I greet her calmly, a little blankly, and release my hair from it's tight ponytail. "How are you?"

She opens her mouth and reveals straight white teeth, smiling slightly. "You're so polite, Buffy."

"I'm sorry, are we being rude now?"

"Isn't that the proper etiquette between the ex and the new girlfriend?"

I pause for a moment, and blink. "Well I was never rude to you, was I?"

"Touché," she says, acknowledging the truth of that statement. "Can I come in?"

Stepping aside, I breathe in and smell flowers and expensive perfume. Sunshine spills through the open windows as she walks through to the kitchen, not bothering to take off her heels, which leave tiny black marks against the shiny floor. Sitting down at the table, she arches one carefully manicured brow. "Coffee?"

"That depends," I say and she looks startled.

"On what?"

"On why you're here."

"Blunt till the end," she observes, tapping her fingernails against the surface of the table, the tiny clacking sounds like hammers to my brain. I have a headache and she isn't helping. For a moment I consider asking her what in the hell she's even *doing* here, why she thinks she can disrupt my life just as I'm getting it back again…? But of course, I remain silent, thinking of what to say.

"That's me." Filling the filter with rich, ground coffee, I switch on the power light and turn back to lover's ex-wife, raising my eyebrows. "So what do you have to show me?"

Her eyes glance down and she fidgets nervously, saying simply, "You deserve to see this. No matter how I might feel about you… I think you should see this."

+ + +

The cup of coffee shakes precariously between my trembling fingers, and I remember with a sickening flash when Angel re-entered my life and I was burned. In more ways than one. My arm still aches a little sometimes, and I wonder if I should have gone to a doctor. Setting down the china, I gaze at Cordelia mutely, as she clicks off the television set, placing the remote control beside her with fluid movements. She's graceful. Something I'll never be.

I hate her suddenly. For showing me this and making me realize that I'm living a lie.

"I…" trailing off, I press my hands to my flushed cheeks. "I can't believe it. Why… why didn't he tell me?"

"He has a white knight complex, Buffy, you know that," she responds quietly. "He wanted to save you… I guess because you saved him so many times. Who can understand the ballad of Buffy and Angel?"

My head snaps up and I glare at her. "Can you *please* save the cattiness for another time?"

"Fine. If you save the wounded puppy act."

Breathing out, I swallow and still taste traces of the succulent peach I ate earlier today. It feels like eons have passed since I spoke to Natalie on the phone and went to answer the door. Innocently, expecting nothing. There is no warning, of course. There never is. "I understand you're hurt over what happened—"

"I'm not hurt," she replies coolly. "Being hurt implies that I care. I don't."

"How can't you? He was your *husband*… you married him. When you lose that…"

"We weren't like you and Danny, Buffy," she cuts me off, sipping the coffee brittly. "We didn't even get a tragic ending. Just a quiet, angry one… where no one walked away with their dignity intact."

For a moment I'm speechless, and when I finally respond, my voice is low and cold. "You think I *like* what ending Danny and I got?"

She sighs. "No, I didn't mean that."

"My husband's dead, Cordelia. From this tape, I know that Angel has been lying to me all along… about his reasons for being here. Do you think that this is fun for me? That any of it has been a picnic? You haven't been here for so long. You don't know—"

"I know that sometimes I'd come home and see him looking at your picture—" breaking off, she bites her lip. "Look, you *weren't* with us for a long time. And I don't mean when we were married. I mean back when we worked in LA, and we were best friends. I watched him go through your death, and your return, and I saw him finally… start to notice me. I didn't know I wanted it, but I fell in love with him too. I didn't want things to end badly." Pausing, she looks at me with razor sharp eyes, her lashes heavily coated with mascara. "And then of course he went running back to you. To his precious Buffy."

Her words curdle my stomach, and I pick up the tape. "And now we know why. So I don't think I'll count that as a victory, if that's all right by you, Cordy."

"I didn't know we were competing."

"We shouldn't be," I bite off. "We're adults, after all."

Taking another drink of her coffee, she looks at me. "He found that card I wrote you, didn't he?"

"What?" I ask, taken aback.

"That card I wrote you… congratulating you on your baby. Telling you about mine. Angel found it, didn't he? That's how he knew?"

The aromatic brew is hot on my tongue, and I taste the bitterness of it, the slight sweetness of the cream and sugar as I remember the basket of cards and the swinging screen door from his departure. The stickiness of the night and how we danced in the darkness, to a song from long ago. I hate her for hurting him that way. "Yes, that's how he knew."

Her eyes are probing as she gazes at me. "You want to ask me why, don't you?"

"To be honest, Cordy, I really don't want to know."

"It was everything," she responds, as if I haven't spoken. "Career, of course. Angel wasn't always 'all there'—he just couldn't stand being in New York without his powers. Couldn't save anyone, and that drove him crazy." She laughs shortly, without humour, her throat working as she takes another sip from the cup. "I guess… maybe I thought because were best friends, and we worked together, and we were *so* close—that that was supposed to be it? That was supposed to be love? I don't know. Maybe we fooled ourselves into thinking something was there that just wasn't…"

As she trails off, her eyes glazed with memories, I look away, out the window, feeling the warm wash of the breeze across my face. Two children are playing in the yard next door, and the bright green grass shines in the sun. They're wearing shrunken bathing suits, dousing each other with jets of water at every opportunity. I think they're sisters, or else they might as well be—I see them together all the time. The little one with brown hair reminds me of Dawnie as a child.

I miss my sister sometimes.

She's the only one left who's known me since *I* was a child.

"You don't have to tell me this," I finally murmur, my palms sweating slightly. I itch to get out of my suit, pull on cut-offs and lie outside in the brilliant afternoon. I yearn to go back to when I didn't know these things, to when Cordelia and Angel were just another couple I knew. To when it didn't hurt to think of them together. To when I could force out thoughts of my little baby who never even breathed.

To when the only other person who knew the pain of that loss, of that stolen life, was alive. Was with me. Tears sting the back of my throat, and I stand, walking over to the window, wondering if Angel will be home soon, and what I'm going to say to him. What he would say if he walked in and saw his ex-wife sitting on the living room couch drinking coffee with a damning tape by her side.

"I think you should leave, Cordy," I say softly, without malice.

She sighs and I hear her stand. "Have a nice life, Buffy."

"You too," I respond, and she leaves, the front door banging slightly as it shuts behind her.

I stand, for a long time, staring into space.

+ + +

That how he finds me when he comes home from work. I feel the hot brush of his lips against the side of my neck, and his large hands slide around to press against the slight swell of my belly. Is he imagining me pregnant, I wonder? Does he want me to have a little baby that will talk like him and look like me and grow up to make the same mistakes her parents did? I try to breathe and almost choke. I'm suffocating. Everything is wrong, distorted.

"Cordelia came to see me today," I say baldly, and he flinches.

Not responding, he draws away from me and cups my shoulders, twisting me around. When he sees the dullness to my eyes, he swears under his breath. "What did she say to you?"

"Nothing much," I lie. "Why didn't you tell me why you really came here?"

"What do you mean?" he asks, and I close my heart to how sweaty and wonderful he looks in worn jeans and a black t-shirt which clings to his chest. He looks like Angel. He looks like everything that I've tried to shush away. Everything they always wanted me to forget.

"You came out of guilt."

Shaking his head, he looks deep into my eyes. "No I didn't."

"Yes you did. You gave your ticket to Danny. That's why he was on that plane. Because of you. Because you wanted to fix things for us, so you said, 'take my ticket', and he did—and he died. And then you showed up here, like Mr. Fucking White Knight, trying to save me… trying to help me—"

"Buffy—"

"Well I don't need your fucking *pity*, Angel! I'm not Faith. I'm not a soul that needs saving—"

Gripping my arms, he yanks me towards him and shakes me a little, as he growls, "*How* can you think that's why I would come here? You know why I came here."

"Why is that?" I jeer breathlessly, our eyes locking. "Needed to get laid? Missing Cordy? What was it, Angel—"

"I love you," he cuts me off, his voice husky, roughened with emotion. "That's why. That's always why."

"Is that *why* you married Cordy?"

Letting go of me, he shakes his head, running one hand through his hair. His muscles ripple slightly underneath tanned flesh, and I suppress the completely unwelcome stab of desire that pools in my stomach, wishing I could be immune to him. Just once.

"Well, is it?" I ask, but quietly this time. Wanting to know. Wanting to know everything.

"In part, yes," he answers and it's like a punch to the solar plexus. I hadn't really believed it until he said it.

"But… why…? When we met you told me—you told me to move on. You told me to fucking *grow up* and let the dream die… was that all lies? Did you mean any of it?" Taking a step forward, I grasp his arm and wrench him towards me. "Did you break my heart for *nothing*?"

His eyes are tortured, anguished, and he shakes me off, turning away.

"If you think that broke your heart…" he pauses, and I hear him swallow, fighting back the tears. "Imagine… imagine Willow coming to see you, imagine seeing her white, white skin. Knowing. Knowing something was wrong. Imagine her telling you that I had committed suicide. Jumped from a 20 foot tower to save my sister, to save the whole fucking world… and imagine wishing—that the world *had* ended. Just so you could have one last moment…"

My lower lip trembles as I watch him and I whisper, "Are you forgetting? I do know what it's like to see you die."

He nods, spinning back around and my heart twists as I see the tears on his face.

"I went away for three months, and I convinced myself… that everything would be fine. I made myself believe that forever didn't mean anything. That a promise the Powers had made to me wasn't important. That I had to move on. That I had to—stop wishing for the impossible."

"What was the impossible?" I inquire softly, and he looks at me.

"You know."

I do. Us. Together, in the end, till the end. A stupid fucking fairytale that we fooled ourselves into believing would come true.

"When we met that time, after Heaven… Angel, did you still want me? Still love me?"

He draws in a ragged breath, his voice low. "More than anything."

"Oh." I can say nothing more than that.

"I did give him my ticket," he informs me quietly. "I wanted you to be happy… wanted you to have him home for your barbecue. I wanted to picture you as you looked in the picture he showed me—happy, in the sunlight. I guess it just wasn't how I remembered you and I needed to think that---"

"That leaving me was a good thing?"

He looks so lost that I open my arms. "Come here."

"What?"

"Angel… please—"

Taking a step forward, he lets himself be enveloped in my arms and I tug off his T-shirt, unbuttoning my suit jacket and unzipping my pants, stepping out of them as I watch him struggle to understand what's happening. "Buffy?"

"I need you…" I whisper without shame and unbuckle his jeans, pushing him down on the couch, the warmth of his skin rising in the stillness, heating my palms to burning. I can't feel the breeze from outside anymore. All I can feel is him inside my mouth, the faint saltiness on my tongue more satisfying than any peach could ever be. His hands grip my hair, as he groans, my fingers tickling the silky line of hair on his stomach. Rising up, I envelop him, my breasts crushed to his chest, my sticky skin melding with his as he sits up, moving against me with all the strength that I used to see when we fought side by side in the night.

"Buffy…" the word is slightly slurred in the drugging force of our kisses, and I gasp with the mixed pleasure and pain as he drives into me as if there is something to prove. As he floods my womb with heat, I scream, throwing my head back, the sun shining in my eyes with a blinding flash.

+ + +

It's early morning when I awaken.

Faintly, I hear birds chirping outside and have vague thoughts of the thorn birds, singing in their death throes as I sit up in the warm bedroom, glancing to the side where my lover should be. Instead there's a piece of paper. Shaking slightly, I pick it up.

Buffy,

I'm going away for a while. So you can have time to heal. I came too soon, and I had no right to expect anything from you so soon after Danny's death. If you need me, just call my work number. I left it by the phone.

I never wanted to make you think I came back because of guilt, or because I wanted to rush you into something you weren't ready for. I've had long years to regret things I've done, but one thing I will never regret is loving you, Buffy. I have always loved you, and I will always love you. Some things don't change.

That's why I showed up at your door, that day.

And that's why if you need me, I'll always be there.

A

Letting Angel's letter, his goodbye, fall to the bed, I get up and stare out the window. The birds still sing in the sunshine morning, and I think, in my belly, I can feel our baby's first fluttering kick.



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