Tara caught herself humming as she walked back to her dorm. As weird and suspicious as it was that she kept running into Willow, it was also doing wonders for her mood. She liked Willow a lot— probably too much, really. She knew she should be trying harder to control her feelings, but in truth, the little leap her heart gave when she thought about Willow felt too good to fight against. She hadn't let herself really like someone in years, and she was surely entitled to one little harmless crush after the traumatic year she had had. It wasn't like it could actually go anywhere— on top of everything else, the odds of Willow being gay were slim— but she'd forgotten how nice it was to even think about someone that way.

It was enough to cut through her nervousness about possibly losing her pen. It was silly that something like that would make a difference, but her coffee with Willow had left her with a renewed sense of optimism. She had that class in a few days. Someone must have picked it up by accident, and they would naturally return it if asked. She was worrying too much. It wasn't like last time. It wasn't like her shoebox…

She clamped down on that thought before it sent her into another grief spiral. She couldn't keep thinking about that. She should think of happier things. Like Willow, and Willow's shocked face when she realized that Tara was lying about liking mochas, committing the ultimate blasphemy. Tara's lips curved into a smile at the thought.

Tara sat cross-legged on her bed, opening one of her textbooks to this week's chapter and flipping a notebook to a blank page. She intended to take notes, she really did, but she found herself using her fine-tipped pen in the margin of the notebook to write the word Willow in different fonts and with different embellishments. W's were often some of the prettiest letters in a given script, and she tried out a few different versions, letting them sweep and curl their way across the page. Willow. Willow. Willow.

She caught herself twenty minutes later, the page almost filled with the word in different sizes and shapes, and she ripped it out of the notebook, blushing furiously. She felt like a creep, writing her name over and over like that, even if she really didn't mean anything creepy by it. It was just a pretty name, that was all. She couldn't quite bring herself to crumple and throw out the paper, so instead she folded it up and slipped it into the book like a bookmark before closing it. She clearly wasn't going to get any work done today, not with the bittersweet taste of coffee and chocolate still on her tongue and the image of Willow fresh in her mind.

She wondered if the trend would continue, and she would continue finding herself in unexpected places, only to run into Willow there. Strange as it was, she actually thought it was kind of a reasonable trade-off. The weirdness of getting lost balanced against the rush of seeing Willow again. But that was just her massive crush talking. She rubbed her forehead.

"What are you doing?" she whispered to herself. But she knew the answer. She was living. She was letting herself live, letting herself feel things and experience things she usually didn't. This was supposed to be her chance. Twenty was just a year away, and she wanted to let herself really live these last months of normal life. And that meant indulging herself when it came to things like this.

So she would allow herself this one giddy crush, this one fleeting friendship. Maybe nothing would come of it except a few more impromptu conversations. Or maybe everything in the universe would bend her way for once and Willow might like her back. She wasn't delusional enough to imagine that they could ever have a relationship— even if an entire lifetime of karma and luck broke her way, it wouldn't be enough for that— but maybe they would get to have a moment together. A touch. A kiss. Something. Anything.

And whatever this magic was that was pulling them into each other's path, she would figure it out. She would dig through all her books until she found an answer, and she would pray to every god that would listen that it was something simple and innocuous. After all, she had witnessed enough darkness in her life. The world had pushed her into shadows so many times that she had just learned to live there. Surely after all that, she had earned the right to a little light, a little sun. And where better to find the sun than here in sunny Sunnydale?

Giving up on any thought of schoolwork, she stretched out on her bed for a nice long daydream. In the morning, she would search through her grimoire for possible explanations about her lapses. She would ask around campus about her pen. She would actually finish her studying. And maybe, just maybe, the universe would bend her path into Willow's once again.

She couldn't wait.