Everyone- I want to make it hereby known that I will NOT respond on this thread unless I have an update posted as well, so any time you see my name, there will be a new chapter.
sadie- They'll work it out... and thank YOU for reading!
diamondforever- I'm almost as big a fan of happy endings as I am a fan of angst. It'll be happy... I promise.
mag- Thank you for reading! Tara has plenty of life, I'm just not going to go TOO far into what's going on with her, at least right now. You'll have to keep reading to find out where Tara's been spending all those nights, because I WILL get there.
Shai- This is definetely a fun exploration for me, I'm still working through the very slow stages of Willow realizing how important Tara is. She hasn't quite gotten there yet, obviously, but she will. I hope that's some hope for those of the readers that don't like angst. I'm sure Willow would have an easier time of it if they were strangers, definetely. But that would be WAY more boring.
Thank you!
Amberslover- Define soon...
BK- It's funny, I usually dislike first person stories also. Yet, I've found, that's the way my writing comes out best. I'm not sure why that is, maybe it's easier for me to find a narrative in one person's head and expand from there. Whatever the reason, yay that it's working!
And the smut WILL be considered. I've written smut before, but never in first person, and a perspective change as late in the story as where the smut would be would just be awkward. I'll work on it. Expect some short smut stories written as practice posted some time soon.
sacinema- I chose Willow's point of view for this because people often forget how much the betrayer and the bad friend hurts also. All the pity does go with Tara, but I think it's important that Wills is seen as a person with faults and not as the bad guy. Hence it's told from her POV. And the next update is here!
Thank you for reading and responding. It really means a lot.
Title: Longing For The Moment
Author: M&M (cause it makes me sound tasty!), Monkey, Sara, MMy, whatever you want to call me.
Feedback: IS MY LIFEBLOOD!... Erm... please?
Distribution: Whoever wants it, ask me first though.
Rating: PG for now, it'll get higher.
Summary: Ten years ago, a mistake was made. Mistakes, misunderstandings, and confusion leave two girls longing for the moment when two will stand against the world.
Disclaimer: Part of the summary, and the title, are taken from the song "First Light" by Bella Morte. I don't own it. I don't own Willow and Tara smoochies, even though I would LOVE to. This is for fun, not profit, yada yada yada. You get the point.
Without further ado, I bring you...
Longing for the Moment- Chapter Three
******
I didn’t see Tara again that semester, since the day with the coffee incident was the second to last day of it. After that day of finals, I was completely finished with all my exams, so I began packing my things up and left that evening, in the car my parents had bought me for a high school graduation gift. Even though it was my first car, the joy in owning it never existed because I didn’t have Tara to ride around with me in my very own first car.
After all this time, I can’t even remember exactly what classes I had taken that semester, or any of the teachers’ or fellow students’ faces, but I always will remember my grades, because they would be impossible to forget. I had maintained a 4.0 since the fourth grade, simply because that was when letter grades began. Before the letter grades it was a series of Os, Ss, and Ns. O for outstanding, S for satisfactory, and N for Non-satisfactory. The only time I received anything less than an O was once in second grade when I got an S in the subject of citizenship. All that meant was I was a bit shy that quarter so I didn’t talk to my classmates much.
The only person I had been concerned about, even that early in my life, was my Tara.
Only she wasn’t mine at the end of that freshman year of college. The academic achievement that I was usually so proud of seemed hollow and as if all the work I had put in had been a waste of my time. I had sat down on my bed at home after having just received my transcript in the mail, and I studied it.
I hadn’t realized how little I cared about my grades after the first semester, it was just something about being home, in that room that had seen countless sleepovers, secrets shared, memories of Tara, that made me feel empty and lost.
I lay back on my bed, my head hitting the pillow without any need for adjustment because the move was so familiar to me by this time, and stared at the ceiling. I smiled sadly, seeing the glow in the dark stars and moons Tara and I had put up after we bought the decorations at the beginning of my fifth grade year. Some of them had fallen down over time, sometimes- usually- at sleepovers. Each time that happened, Tara and I would joke about shooting stars and make a wish on each piece of plastic that hit the floor.
“The last wish I made was…” I sniffled as I cried silently, and spoke out loud to myself. “The last wish I made was for Tara to be happy.” I remembered the wish vividly. A star had fallen two nights after I had foolishly ended our lifelong friendship, and that was the only thing I could think to wish.
I hadn’t realized until that moment exactly how many of our little traditions had carried over into my life without her, how many of my idiosyncrasies she had shared over the years.
Even my organizational pattern, usually something unique to each individual and highly personalized, was due in part to her. When I first started organizing my notes and papers for school, I had a number and alphabetic system that I laid out. It worked, but it was far too complicated. There were three pages of notes explaining how to use the system at the front of all of my notebooks in case I forgot something. Tara had come up with the idea of using colors instead of numbers and letters, since I could underline, highlight and outline information with different colors so I wouldn’t have to remember which number corresponded to which pattern.
I still used the color system that Tara had helped me develop, and I’m sure that it’s what got me through my first year of college relatively sane.
I could practically feel Tara next to me in the bed. I had subconsciously taken the side of the bed I had always used during our sleepovers, and I lay in such a way that, were she there, our arms would just barely be touching, just like it had always been. There was even a Tara-shaped indent in the mattress from all the times she had slept in that spot.
I turned over, burying my face into the pillow as my body wracked with sobs for the friendship and familiarity I had forfeited because I was too stupid to realize she needed me. I clung to the pillow that she usually used and allowed my tears to soak into the yielding softness. This pillow had been relatively new, so hadn’t had much time, only three months or so, to absorb Tara’s shape.
As my sobs died down, I kept clinging to the pillow and, pretending it was her, laid with my head on it, where her heart would be, and imagined that I could feel the soft, rhythmic beating underneath the fabric that, in my mind, was her pajama top.
Though the bed didn’t actually carry her scent, since it had been over a year since she had last been in my room, I could still smell her as if she had never left. She had become a part of that space, and it seemed doubtful at best that this room would ever belong to just me, since it had never before. It was our space, our sanctuary from the outside world. Without it, I wondered, where had Tara retreated when things were hard?
I figured then that I would never know, but I found out that she had found a small patch of woods and began going there when things were too much for her at home, which was often, from everything I understand.
I didn’t hear from, or try to contact Tara until mid-July before our sophomore year in college. Even then, I didn’t hear from her directly. I had gotten home from my summer job doing secretarial work at a computer firm later than usual that day, so the mail had already arrived. Usually I had to wait about a half hour for it to get there, since my neighborhood was close to the last on our mail carrier’s route and I got home relatively early compared to other jobs, around 4.
There were the usual bills, catalogs and advertisements, my parents received a large amount of mail on a daily basis, especially with never being there. I idly wondered for the millionth time how they sorted through it all and kept their home desks so neat and tidy, even though I went through the mail and put it on their respective desks in a neat pile every evening.
When I reached the bottom of the pile, I found one letter addressed to me from my college. It was from the department of student affairs, so I figured it was about my dorm assignment. I took it to my room, set it on my desk, and forgot it for a few days, since I still had some take-home work I needed to finish up.
I had always been an overachiever, so any time one of the higher ups in the firm I was working for needed some last minute editing that one of the secretaries-by-trade didn’t have time to do, I offered my unprofessional but still quite discerning eye and took home the documents to edit for the next morning. That left me with quite a good reputation with the firm, but much less free time than I had had the previous summer. I didn’t care, since I had no one important to spend my time with, and just threw myself into the work.
Four days later, on Saturday when I finally had a day off, I got around to opening that week’s mail. When I got to the letter on the bottom of the pile, the one from school which had been covered with two credit card applications, a chain letter, and a bank statement, I opened it and read it carefully.
It turns out I had been right in my original thought of it being about dorm assignments. What I hadn’t expected was my assigned dorm mate, or the reason for the assignment. At the end of the year, I had gone to the office and put in my official request as “whoever wants me,” which was apparently a perfectly acceptable choice. I had expected a random assignment, but instead, I had gotten Tara. And what’s more, Tara had requested to be my roommate.
I remember that I dropped the paper upon seeing her name, and that I had picked it back up, read that she had requested me, and dropped it again. Once I had it firmly in my grasp, I set it down on the table, and checked the box on the bottom of the paper that said I had read and agreed to my assignment. I shakily tore the bottom off, put the slightly frayed paper in the envelope they had kindly included with the notice, and set it back down on my desk.
I fell back onto my bed moments later and took a deep breath. I would be rooming with Tara again. Maybe that meant that she wanted to see me, or talk to me. Maybe she wanted to patch things up, maybe she had gotten my note and forgiven me for everything I had done. I felt hope well up inside me, until it all burst with another, far more depressing thought.
Maybe she just wanted a roommate that she knew would leave her alone.
*****
AN: No note at this time. Thank you.