by unionjill30 » Sun Aug 24, 2008 11:14 am
So it's been a lazy Sunday, and I found myself writing more than expected. I just finished this and gleaned over it for errors. No promises on perfection however.
JustSkipIt: Good to see you back leaving feedback, and I'm glad you were happy to see an update after such an insane amount of time. Long time indeed.
Title: Songs For A Mix Tape
Rating: PG - PG13ish?
Disclaimer: I don’t own the characters from ME.
Feedback: Yes please
Track 22: Glory of Love (From “Karate Kid 2”) by A New Found Glory
Part E
Over two thousand miles lay between the Rosenberg home and Sunnydale, leaving ample time for Tara and Willow to talk. For the first few hours, they kept the conversation fairly light and mostly to a minimum, reveling instead in the ability to simply be physically near one another while they listened to the collection of mix CDs from Kim.
At one point, after the two had been silent for some time, Willow asked, “Don’t you feel like we should be looking through tourist maps and trying to find all the great roadside wonders of America?”
“Like what? The largest ball of twine in the world?” Tara responded with a quizzical look.
“Yeah, or like some run down gas station with the world’s biggest belt buckle collection. That would be so cool.”
Tara laughed lightly at Willow’s silliness, and she gave her girlfriend’s knee a gentle squeeze and smiled. “Well, sweetie, if we come across any of those things along the way I promise we can stop and check it out.”
Willow smiled back and made a mental note to keep her eyes peeled for any such tourist spot as she continued to drive.
With almost four hundred miles of the trip under their belts, the two women pulled off to refuel both the car and their bodies. They found a deli a few minutes off the interstate and went inside to relax from the drive and eat a meal.
After receiving their food, the pair spotted a booth in one corner that wasn’t surrounded by any of the deli’s other patrons. Preferring a little seclusion, they made their way over where Willow took a seat on one side of the table and scooted in as far as she could on the bench seat. Tara moved to sit on the other side of the table, but before she could make it, Willow grabbed one of her hands and nodded toward the empty space next to herself. Tara smiled and squeezed in next to the redhead.
“I can’t steal bites of your food if you’re all the way on the other side of the table,” Willow joked, and then with a leer added, “Plus I wouldn’t be able to steal kisses any time I want.” With this she leaned over and placed a quick but smoldering kiss on Tara’s lips. Normally she wouldn’t be so bold in a public, unfamiliar place, but the high back of the booth they occupied shielded the young women from any potential onlookers.
As Willow pulled back from the kiss, Tara was able to stare directly into the other woman’s eyes. So much deep feeling passed between them during that look that Tara thought she might cry from the sheer wonderfulness of how Willow made her feel. “God, I love you,” she managed to whisper before tucking her head into the crook of Willow’s neck.
“I love you so much,” Willow responded then placed a small kiss atop Tara’s head.
The pair stayed that way, Tara leaning into Willow, for a few moments before Tara tilted her head slightly to face Willow. “You’re soup’s probably getting cold,” she said, motioning to the bowl of black bean soup in front of the redhead.
“Let it,” Willow replied. “I don’t need hot soup when I’ve got my hot lady against me.”
Tara chuckled and nuzzled further against Willow’s neck. “You always know how to make me laugh.”
“Just part of my special charm.” With the arm that wasn’t against Tara, Willow reached toward the table and broke off a small piece of the blonde’s sandwich. “You hungry?” she asked, offering the bite of food to Tara.
Tara merely nodded her head and opened her mouth to allow the bit of sandwich to be placed inside. After chewing and swallowing, and without lifting her head, she quietly asked, “You want to talk some?”
Equally quiet, Willow responded, “Only if you feel ready. I’m here to listen, or we can just sit and eat. Whatever you need.” She offered Tara another bite of food, which the blonde accepted.
After swallowing, Tara finally looked up at Willow. “I think maybe I should tell you about my family.”
“Okay.”
Tara took a small bite of her sandwich while she gathered her thoughts, and Willow had a spoonful of her soup as well.
“I mean, I know you’ve met my sisters, and you know a little about my parents and grandparents, so what else should I have to say?” Tara let out a mirthless laugh and continued picking at her food.
“You don’t have to say anything,” Willow tried to reassure.
“Nothing makes sense if I don’t start there though,” Tara said. She let out another laugh. “Wow, how clichéd is that, taking everything wrong with me back to my family?”
“Clichéd maybe,” Willow said, never breaking eye contact with her girlfriend, “but certainly not unusual. We spend so much of our lives and those young, developing years surrounded by our families, it’s only inevitable that they’re going to have some kind of an influence on us, and the likelihood that at least part of that influence is negative is through the roof.” She followed up this profound statement with a quirk of the eyebrow and slight shrug.
Tara took pause for a moment, actually letting Willow’s words sink in. They were logical. They made sense. Of course they didn’t much change Tara’s feelings about the situation, but they were helpful. “Oddly, that’s somewhat comforting,” she said.
Willow simply smiled and took another bite of her soup.
Tara pulled off a hunk of bread from her sandwich and dunked it into Willow’s soup. After a moment she continued talking. “I know this is a little hard to believe, but they way I grew up, I guess you could say I was just some snotty rich kid.”
“You? Seriously?” Willow asked with raise of the eyebrows. This description was nothing like the woman beside her.
“Completely serious,” Tara replied. “There wasn’t a single thing that I could have wanted or needed that I didn’t get, and a lot of times I took full advantage.” She paused to take a breath. “Look at my sister Elle. The way she lives and the way she acts is a perfect example of how I grew up.”
“But you’re nothing like her,” Willow retorted. “And neither is your other sister.”
“Nichole has always been the level headed one. I don’t think she ever asked for anything she didn’t absolutely need. That’s just how she is.” Tara smiled thinking about her oldest sister in admiration. She continued eating as she spoke. “I always wanted to be like her, but for a long time, it was me and Elle who were the most similar.”
Willow just sat in silence trying to wrap her mind around a Tara that was anything like the pampered woman she’d met in L.A.
“My dad’s a stockbroker, and my mom’s parents left her with this huge, never-ending trust fund,” Tara continued, trying to explain how her family could be so well off. “So everything was simple and comfortable, and I thought I was happy.” Hollowly she finished, “Then my mom died.”
By this time, Willow was done with her soup, and Tara had eaten all she wanted of her sandwich.
“Can we go?” Tara asked. “I don’t really want to talk about this here.”
Willow immediately scrambled to clear up the table. “Of course! Let’s get out of here.” She waited for Tara to scoot out of the booth before climbing out herself and quickly bussed the table. Willow knew she would give Tara anything she needed, and right now that meant getting back to the privacy of the car.
As they walked back to the car, Willow grabbed Tara’s hand and gave a reassuring squeeze. They both got in silently, and Willow started the engine. She drove back to the interstate, and a few miles ticked by without a word from either of them.
Finally, Willow broke the silence. “How did your mom die?” she asked quietly.
Staring out the window, Tara replied, “Car accident. She was coming home a day early from a book signing in Philadelphia, and about an hour from home some guy’s tire blew out. When he was trying to stop his car from swerving, he took three other cars off the road with him. One was my mom’s.” Quiet tears trickled down Tara’s face as she continued looking out the window.
Willow wasn’t sure anything she could say would be helpful and instead opted to offer a comforting hand on the blonde’s leg.
“She died on the way to the hospital.” Something broke inside Tara and she began to sob uncontrollably.
Knowing that she could do nothing behind the wheel of a moving vehicle, Willow took the first exit off the interstate, and pulled off into a vacant parking lot. She quickly shut the car off and unbuckled her seat belt as well as Tara’s so she could lean across and wrap her girlfriend in a full hug.
“I didn’t even get to say goodbye!” Tara choked out. She continued sobbing and let Willow just hold for a few minutes before she was able to calm down enough to talk again. “I was the only one home when the police called. Both my sisters were at college and my dad was out for the night. I was supposed to be at a friend’s house but decided not to go. Then the call… and I didn’t know what to do, and my dad shows up surprised I’m home and there’s some woman I’ve never seen attached to his hip and I just lost it. I called him a fucking bastard and ran. And I kept running until I thought I was going to pass out.”
Willow just rubbed gentle circles on Tara’s back and let the other woman pour everything out.
“I ended up at my high school and just collapsed behind the building. I was there for a while, then a group of kids I knew from class showed up. They had a bottle of bourbon and asked if I wanted to hang out, so I decided why the hell not and started to drink myself stupid.”
Tara then described how she ended up skipping almost her entire last two months of high school because she was usually too hung over or too high to make it to class. She then retold the incident she’d mentioned to Willow a week previously where her sister had thrown her into the shower. “I ended up in the hospital with a concussion, and when my dad came to take me home he told me to pack my things and get the hell out of his house. That was four months after my mom died.”
Willow pulled back to look Tara in the eyes. “That must have been awful!”
Tara just shrugged and said, “I survived.”
“Why are you acting like it’s no big deal?” Willow couldn’t believe how casual Tara’s last comment was.
“It’s not like there was anything I could do about it!” she snapped. Then, noting the stricken look on Willow’s face she said, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to yell at you.”
“It’s okay,” Willow replied, understanding Tara was just upset. “Where did you go?”
“Nichole’s house,” Tara answered. “For a little while. She helped with the whole detox thing. Then Chicago. You basically know the rest from there.”
“I guess I sort of understand why you don’t really care for your dad.”
“There’s certainly no love lost between us,” Tara said as she began wiping her teary face with the back of her hand. “He ended up marrying that bitch he brought home. They had their first kid six months after my mom died.” She let out a humorless laugh.
“Do you want me to turn the car around and go kick his ass for you?” Willow asked, trying to ease a little bit of Tara’s tension.
Tara allowed a small smile and cupped the redhead’s cheek. “Baby, it wouldn’t be worth your time, but thanks for offering.”
The two sat in silence for a few minutes before Willow spoke up. “I know we’ve only driven about a fourth of the way, but do you just want to stop for the day? I think I saw some hotels on the other side of the overpass.”
As much as she thought they should keep driving, Tara nodded her head and let Willow drive towards a hotel.
Once they were checked into a room, Tara kicked off her shoes and flopped down on the bed. She was soon accompanied by Willow, and quickly folded herself into the redhead’s arms.
“Do you think less of me now?” she asked in a small voice.
“Absolutely not!” Willow responded with conviction. “If anything I think more of you knowing where you’ve been and what you’ve gone through and seeing who you are now.”
It was a strange feeling, actually accepting that Willow didn’t despise her for her past, and Tara snuggled deeper into their embrace. “I worry that I’ll become that person again,” she admitted.
“Why would you worry?”
“Because it was so easy to just feel nothing, and I don’t know that if I started to feel really bad again for some reason that I wouldn’t just go back to the nothingness.”
Willow tightened her embrace. “Well, you didn’t have me in your corner before, and if you ever start to feel really bad, I’ll be there for you.”
“But what if something happens to you?” This was something Tara didn’t want to think about. Ever.
“If anything ever happened to me, which I promise to do my best to never let happen, then you have Kim. And Adam. And you have every other person who knows you and can’t help but love you. You never have to go through anything alone.”
Willow’s words began to sink in, and a few happy tears filled Tara’s eyes. She looked up at her girlfriend and whispered, “I have to be the luckiest person alive to have you,” before capturing the redhead’s lips in her own.
Willow reciprocated the kiss and pulled back only briefly to say, “I’m the lucky one,” before diving back in.
The pair spent the next few minutes luxuriating in the feel of their lips and tongues dancing against each other. Suddenly, in a bold move, Tara rolled the couple over, effectively pinning Willow beneath her.
Enjoying this new position, Willow cupped Tara’s face with one hand and used the other to pull the blonde even closer against her body. She found an exposed stretch of skin where Tara’s shirt had ridden up slightly and began trailing her fingertips lightly over the flesh.
Willow’s light touches sent goosebumps over Tara’s body causing her to moan into their kiss. Tara pulled her body back slightly just enough to allow her hand to snake under Willow’s t-shirt where she began stroking her girlfriend’s side. “I love you so much,” she gasped between kisses.
“I love you too,” Willow breathed before trailing her kisses along Tara’s jaw line.
Tara felt like melting on the spot, and deftly lifted Willow’s body slightly in order to unhook the other woman’s bra in a swift move. Without removing Willow’s shirt she managed to pull the article of clothing out and tossed it the floor beside the bed.
Willow let out a squeak of enjoyment as she felt Tara’s warm hand begin kneading her breast. She let her own hands wander down to slide only a fraction under the back of the waistband of Tara’s jeans in order to pull their lower bodies into a slight rocking motion.
They continued kissing and rocking and caressing each other for several enjoyable minutes before their movements started to slow. Even in the heat of their passion, both knew, without saying anything, that they didn’t want their first time being together to occur in a random hotel room in the middle of nowhere. Eventually their movements ceased, and the two flushed women slid back into the simple embrace where they had begun.
“I could kiss you for days,” Willow mumbled with a contented sigh.
Tara only smiled in return.
After minutes of comfortable silence, Willow started to think back to past conversations and piecing things together with what she now knew about Tara. “When we were shopping with your sister in L.A. she said you could afford that jacket you tried on a hundred times over. What did she mean by that? Was she saying that if you and your dad made up he’d give you money?” she asked.
“Not exactly,” Tara replied nervously.
“Then what did she mean?” Willow asked, looking down at her girlfriend.
Tara wasn’t sure exactly how to respond and decided to say, “Despite my frugality, let’s just say I’m not exactly hurting for cash.”
“Huh?” Willow responded, completely confused.
“I told you my mom had a trust fund from her parents?”
Willow nodded.
“Well, her will left the remainder to me and my sisters,” Tara explained.
“Oh.”
“Two point four million.”
Willow’s eyes bugged out.
Tara finished lamely, “Each.”
Willow thought her eyes were going to completely fall out at that. “Oh,” she squeaked.
ray
It was not Cam who told me to read this fic. I thought it was. And I posted my reply before verifying. And for this I should be punnished. 
I would really love to see this story done someday
I'm also an Ohio native, so I smile at those references and laugh out loud at THE Ohio State University. 
