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It’s only six days after graduation when Mom says: “Buffy, you really need to start taking care of yourself.”
At first, Buffy hopes this means Mom is making some sort of gesture, or encouraging her to Get Out There Again (blech, no way, no thanks, but still) but what Mom actually says is: “I’m not gonna keep giving you money willy-nilly. Your allowance stops now.”
“You’d think she’d be a bit more grateful,” Buffy complains to Willow and Xander that night at the Bronze. “It hasn’t even been a whole week since I blew up the school!”
“Yeah!” Willow says. “People should be thanking you!”
“Surely saving the town from spider-eating bureaucrats warrants a pass from the wage economy,” says Xander.
Buffy pouts. “None of my skills can be printed on a resume.”
“Don’t worry, any idiot can get a job,” Xander says, slinging his arm around her. “Cordelia did.”
-o-
“No,” Cordelia says. “Leave now.”
“What, you won’t even check?” Buffy puts her hands on her hips. It’s noon in late June and the heat is sliding towards unbearable. Cordelia has made the unwise choice to sit on a public bench only twenty feet away from the dress shop. Buffy can count the sweatdrops on the back of Cordelia’s neck.
“Buffy, this is my only time to eat today. Us working people have these things called ‘lunch breaks,’ and if you keep standing there I can’t see the Espresso Pump and imagine getting coffee.”
Buffy frowns, turning around. “Imagine? You’re not gonna buy one?”
Cordelia scoops the last of her low fat yogurt out and eats it. “Some of us pay rent.”
Buffy whips around, eyes wide. “What? You moved out?”
Cordelia rolls her eyes. “Like I would want to bear witness to my parents’ slow-motion divorce.”
“I’ll buy you a coffee if you get me an in with the dress shop.”
“There’s no openings, Buffy. My boss goes on enough about how she can barely pay me.”
“Ugh!” Buffy flops onto the bench next to Cordelia. Cordelia throws up her arm to protect her eyes.
“Hey, you’re un-blocking my light!”
“I don’t know what my Mom even expects. Obviously this is never going to work. I can’t just get a job like a normal person. I’m pretty sure if I do anything resembling normal the universe gets a ping and sends a demon to slay the good feeling.”
Cordelia is eyeing her. “Actually, you can get me a coffee.”
Buffy laughs, and they smile at each other. When they leave the Espresso Pump, Cordelia curls her hand around Buffy’s wrist and drags her over to the glass window next door. It’s that doughnut shop Xander likes. There’s a piece of taped up printer paper saying: HELP WANTED
-o-
Xander says: “Fuck yeah, employee discount!”
Willow says: “Just don’t take on too many shifts, okay? We can finally relax a bit this summer!”
Oz says: “Nice.”
Mom says: “Very good, honey.”
Giles says: “Good morning Buffy. May I have two jelly doughnuts?”
Cordelia says: “If you bring me anymore free samples my blood sugar is gonna go ballistic.”
-o-
It’s like this: Buffy doesn’t mean to sync her shifts at the doughnut shop with Cordelia’s shifts at the dress shop, but after the first week or two they keep finding each other during their lunch hours and end up sitting together on their bench, sweating and drinking overpriced coffee and sugar crusting on their lips, making them raw and pink. It’s the best part of her stupid day, not having to be bored out of her mind or annoyed out of her mind or killing things or bone-tired. It’s just her and Cordelia and Buffy doesn’t even mind that some part of her feels exposed, too exposed. It’s the kind of thrill that got her in trouble with Angel. But Buffy knows she’s never going to do something like that again.
Buffy doesn’t think anything of it when she starts lingering downtown after her shift ends, waiting for Cordelia to clock out so they can ride home together. Sometimes they see a movie, or stay for the live music nights at the Espresso Pump. Once, Cordelia drives them to her dim studio apartment and they eat toast for dinner and Cordelia kicks her out at midnight.
Buffy blinks at her, as if just waking up from the warmth of a mid-day nap. “Pest control,” Cordelia says, smirking. “Slayage. Do it.”
That night, Buffy wanders Sunnydale’s cemeteries, feeling bereft and repulsed by the thought of returning home. She arrives at Revello Drive just minutes before dawn, and sleeps through half the afternoon.
It’s Cordelia who kisses her first, leaning over her dashboard and pressing her lips to Buffy’s as if it’s something they’ve done for years. It’s fucking embarrassing how Buffy reacts: she gasps and says oh like she’s stepped on someone’s toe. But then she feels Cordelia is retreating and she has to tug her back — too hard, with Slayer strength.
Cordelia only chuckles. “Greedy,” she admonishes, her voice low like wildfire.
Time travels after that, full of warmth and hands and Cordelia’s skin, Cordelia’s lips. Maybe Buffy is greedy. Because it happens again, and again: between shifts and sips of coffee and green lights and in parking lots, bed spreads, under the trees. Cordelia pours cheap wine into a chipped mug and Buffy drinks from it. There’s never enough. It leaves her giggling. The stars are so funny, so pretty — if you look at them.
Xander hops from job to job, wrangling Buffy into his parent’s basement for the latest sci-fi tape he’s rented. Willow tries to be happy for Buffy but Buffy can see her being too quiet during the movie. Sometimes she goes days and days without seeing Giles.
Buffy knows she can’t tell any of them. It’s so sweet it makes her sick. It’s just one more thing that makes her different from them. If she’s destined to die young, better for them that their friendship dies of old age. Maybe it will be better if they can be mad at her for keeping secrets. Maybe she’ll be gone before they can find out her secrets.
When Buffy explains this to Cordelia, she laughs. “You’re not going to die.”
“But I am, though.”
They are lying in Cordelia’s bed. Cordelia’s painting Buffy’s nails peach for August. Buffy’s bare to the waist and starting to feel that ashen emptiness she felt…the last time. Cordelia’s not immortal in the scientific sense, but immortal in all the ways that count. And Buffy’s days are numbered.
Cordelia looks down her nose at Buffy. “You’re Buffy.” Cordelia says it like it ends all arguments. She kisses Buffy’s cheek, the corner of her lips. It’s sticky, and sweet. Like lip gloss. Like jelly doughnuts. “My girl,” Cordelia says. Her arms come around Buffy, smearing the nail polish and the tears and the ash, the emptiness, until it’s all together, until she’s just Buffy.
“We should tell Xander first,” Cordelia says. “I wanna see his face.”