Later that night, sleeping uneasily next to Willow, Tara felt like she was having an anxiety dream. She knew she was in their bedroom but it didn't look like itself, the way rooms can be in dreams. But this wasn't a dream. Tara had actually done it – had cheated – was that the word, cheated? The same one they use when you break the rules to try to win a game? This wasn't a game. And there weren't any rules. There was just this loving, beautiful, hurting, and very powerful witch who'd been devoted to her, who was still devoted to her. And there was Tara herself, overcome by the promise of a world where she could be someone else, someone who had never been inhibited or bound by her family or forced to live afraid. And right now she, Tara, wanted so badly to reach out to Willow, who was sleeping on her side. She wanted to stroke her back, rub her neck and shoulders, say "I'm sorry, Willow, I'm so sorry, it didn't mean anything." But Willow had finally fallen asleep, and Tara didn't want to wake her.
She was sorry. She could not remember having ever been more sorry. And she loved Willow in a language that transcended words, reached far above and beneath words, a love she hadn't thought possible. But she couldn't say it didn't mean anything. She couldn't say that in bed with them, there was no third woman, a beautiful dark-eyed tough wounded woman named Faith. What an ironic name, Tara thought. Did Faith have faith in anything? In anyone?
Faith seems to have faith in me, Tara found herself thinking. She has faith that I'm not…but before she could finish her sentence, even in her own head, Tara was berating herself: Willow had faith in her too, always had, that's how they had come together. Willow had seen Tara's strength before she herself had, had known of her power before she did.
Is it wrong, Tara wondered, to want more than one person to have faith in you? Of course it wasn't, but it was if you missed her warmth, if the feel of her skin sent electric currents through you and made you want to try things, made you want to suddenly take an assertive position in bed and hold her down for the thrill of it, to watch her laugh and say "oh my god I knew it! I knew this was you."
Which is not to say this was about sex. But what had she even known of sex or desire before Willow? It had all been locked away, the notion of want itself locked away, so that she had never imagined more than a chaste kiss with anyone until those rose petals brought them together, levitating around them.
Willow was sex and magic. Faith was sex in the world, the bloodied and full-bodied world, she was sweat and screaming, unsightly marks left on your neck from that unfettered rush of hunger and need. Willow was sex behind a breezy sheet of black gauze, Faith was the rough of a wall against your back. Was having both possible? Was wanting both wrong?