Learnin' The Blues
Author's Note: The singer in this fic is Katie Melua, whose album Call Off The Search I adore. Let's pretend that as she was working towards stardom, she did a little tour of America and played at a certain Sunnydale nightspot. In this fic I use two songs - Learnin' The Blues and Blame It On The Moon. Both of which belong to Katie Melua, I own nothing.
Willow arrived at the Bronze half an hour before it opened. She sighed and turned to leave when she heard the door open. She glanced up at the familiar face of the bartender who had been serving her glasses of water, orange juice and cola since the first time she came to the Bronze.
"Willow," he greeted. "You're early."
"Yeah," she answered distantly. "I guess I lost track of time. I thought you'd be open."
He frowned at her, dumped the bag of rubbish and pushed the door open.
"Come in," he said, "I'll get you a drink on me. It's not safe to hang around out here."
She gave a weak smile and slipped past him into the warm familiarity of the Bronze. It seemed large, gaping in its emptiness. Chairs were upturned on tables and the stage was deserted save for a chair and microphone in the middle, ringed with a singular spotlight.
She gulped, looking away from the stage and heaved herself up onto a bar stool.
"You ok?" the bartender asked as he set a glass of orange juice in front of her.
"Yeah," she replied. "I'm just a little tired, that's all."
It wasn't a lie. She hadn't been sleeping since Oz had left. She had suddenly realised how many nights she had spent with him rather than in her own bed. She couldn't sleep without him, there was no one to cuddle, no one to play with her hair. How was she supposed to sleep?
She sighed and sipped her juice as the bartender set about pulling the chairs from the tables. There was the hauntingly familiar strum of a guitar and Willow turned sharply on her stool, insanely expecting to see Oz on that stage getting ready for a gig. Which was ridiculous because Willow had memorised the dates and venues of all the Dingo concerts for the next three months and they weren't playing the Bronze for a month and a half.
And Oz had gone.
He left.
Went away.
Disappeared.
Deserted her.
And he wouldn't have done that if he loved her because he wouldn't have slept with that woman if he loved her and that was why he had gone.
She stared at the stage and saw a pretty young woman settling into the chair with her acoustic guitar resting on her leg, she strummed it gently and carefully adjusted the pegs. She smoothed the strap of the guitar around her neck before adjusting the position of her microphone.
Willow turned away, hunching back over her drink and was halfway through another sip when the girl began to sing with only her guitar to accompany her.
"The tables are empty,
The dance floor deserted,
You play the same love song,
It's the tenth time you've heard it."
Willow swivelled slowly in her chair and stared past the empty tables and across the deserted dance floor at the woman singing so plaintively. You play the same love song… Willow was reminded of how she had spent the last two days sitting on her bed listening to that song Oz had wrote her, the one they had first performed at Homecoming. Her favourite song, she said. Our song, he said.
"That's the beginning, just one of the clues,
You've had your first lesson...
In learnin' the blues."
That's a nice way of putting it, Willow thought, somewhat spitefully. The woman had caught hold of all the feelings of heartache – the emptiness, the feeling that you had to cling to something, even a stupid love song to remind yourself of the good times at the same time as you remembered the bad, the constant feeling that you're on the verge of tears. The woman had taken all of that and turned it into a pretty little line that rhymed beautifully. Willow wanted to pull her lovely curly dark hair.
The woman's eyes, which had been closed as she swayed with the music, opened slowly and Willow had the uncomfortable feeling that she was staring right at her.
"The cigarettes you light,
One after the other,
Won't help you forget him
When you're losing your lover."
Willow stared, felt herself flush with shame as she remembered going again to Oz's empty room with Devon behind her, telling her in an annoyed tone: "Like I said, Willow, he left nothing. There's nothing in there." He had stood behind her in that room as she stared around, before heaving a frustrated sigh and leaving her to it. He had left a battered packet of cigarettes behind on Oz's bedside table and she had snatched them up and sat on a bench on campus, lighting them one after the other, trying to inhale the smoke in defiance of her absent boyfriend, only to choke and cough, throw the cigarette away and start all over again.
She had finished the packet before she realised it hadn't helped; before she realised she wasn't in the movies, where woman smoked rather than washed their men right out of their hair. All she was left with to accompany the pain Oz had thoughtlessly left behind was a scorched throat and clothes that smelt like a bonfire.
Anyway, the woman was wrong on one count. Willow wasn't "losing her lover," she had already lost him. Morosely, Willow thought she had lost him a long, long time ago
She had lost him to his werewolf situation, which would always have been one thing she would never have been able to share with him, never completely understand.
She had lost him when she had recklessly thrown herself in Xander's arms and looking back, perhaps he was still lost even when he asked to get back with her.
She had lost him to a woman that understood his wolf and his music – which Willow found infinitely worse because it was so every day, yet she never understood all the words he would come out with. She had never had a clue was a diminished ninth was.
And she had lost him in the physical sense. He had disappeared. No explanation. No note. No phone call to say he was fine and when he'd be back.
If he'd be back.
"You're only burning a torch you can't lose,
But you're on the right track,
For learnin' the blues."
Willow didn't want to learn the blues. And she didn't just want Oz to come back and make this all fine again. She wanted to go back, back to before he ever met that other woman, back before he had looked at someone other than herself. If she had to, she'd go back to before she ever embarked on that fling with Xander.
But she realised that was impossible. And because of that, she didn't want to go on burning this damn torch for Oz. She wanted to douse it in cold water and walk away. She wanted to be happy Willow, not sobbing over a stupid song Willow.
"When you're out in a crowd
The blues will taunt you constantly,
When you're out in a crowd
The blues will haunt your memory."
That's what Willow hated most. She couldn't go anywhere, not here, not the Espresso Pump, not anywhere on campus, hardly anywhere in Sunnydale where she didn't think of him. Everything reminded her of him.
They danced just over there.
They snuggled in that corner there.
The first time he bought her a coffee was at the Espresso Pump and they had sat at what was to become their favourite table.
On the bench in front of her dorm, he had crept up behind her and handed her an apple for being the "brainiest girl I know."
Willow sniffled, feeling her stomach churn with a feeling she supposed the singer would call the blues.
"The nights when you don't sleep,
The whole night you're cryin',
But you cannot forget him,
Soon you even stop tryin'."
Willow finished her orange juice and stood up. The singer had a point. She couldn't forget him. Just as she'd never be able to forget Buffy or Xander if they ever left. Oz had been the centre of her universe, she'd never be able to wipe him from her memory because then she'd lose all those times she and Oz hung out with the other Scoobies, all those times at the Bronze and countless other fantastic memories. What was the point? All this energy she was putting into wallowing and trying to forget him was getting her nowhere. She was going in circles.
"You'll walk the floor,
And wear out your shoes,
When you feel your heart break
You're learnin' the blues."
Willow straightened up, smoothed her hair and headed for the door. She thought she knew the blues as well as the best of them. Her heart was broken, it had finally decided to break instead of agonising over whether or not it ought to, so now she could mend it.
She gave the friendly bartender a wave and opened the door to leave, only to find herself face to face with Tara McClay.
"Hi," Willow said, a little surprised. Tara was the last person Willow expected to see here.
"Hi," Tara replied, voice a low whisper.
"They don't open for another twenty minutes," Willow told her.
"Oh, I know. It's just… I heard singing."
Willow smiled at her.
"Yeah," she replied softly. "Me too."
"Were you helping out here?" Tara asked.
"No," Willow shook her head and lowered her gaze for a moment. "No, I was leaning the blues."
She looked up to see Tara's reaction to this answer, expecting a question or a flummoxed expression at the very least. Instead, Tara met Willow's eyes and Willow realised that Tara's eyes were a beautiful blue and with the realisation came a warmth that stirred through the pain in her stomach. After a moment of studying Willow, Tara nodded in understanding and started to back away with a smile of goodbye.
"Do you -" Willow blurted, reaching out to grab the elbow of Tara's soft blue sweater. Tara took a step back towards Willow and Willow's fingers unconsciously stroked the material as she asked, "would you like to go to the Espresso Pump with me?"
"Sure," Tara nodded.
Willow slipped her arm through Tara's, who smiled shyly at the contact, and together they headed towards the Espresso Pump in the cool blue light of the Full Moon as it rose in the darkening sky.
Katie Melua watched the redhead leave her seat as she strummed her final chords and she watched the brief but warm exchange between the two women at the door, which remained propped open, allowing in a sliver of moonlight. With a smile, Katie started a new song.
"Guilty feelings in the night
As I wonder is it wrong to feel so right?
Now that's it gone too far to call for a halt,
I'll blame it on the moon 'cause it's not my fault;
I didn't think that this would happen so soon,
So I'll blame it on the moon…"
The End.