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I love you guys!!! :) :)
Chapter 31

"The right thing?" Buffy echoed. "The right thing to do is to leave here and go after Fred—Where is she? Did you just leave her? Where were you all night? You did leave together."

"Whoa, calm down there Buffy," Jonathan said, holding up his hands.

"I will not calm down until you start answering some questions young
man!" She pointed at herself. "You see what you just did? You made me
sound like my MOTHER. Not cool Jonathan, not cool."

"I bet once the little tyke is born, you're going to be sounding like your
mom a lot."

"Off topic! Let's get back on the Fred train and discuss last night and you
and her and today and the calling off of this wedding." Buffy sat, attempting
to appear calm.

Jonathan pointed at her. "I knew you were up to something. You and
Lorne all with your secret talks and then when I saw you talking to Fred.
Buffy, why don't you tell ME what's going on?"

"Harmony's using you. And you know it. I don't want her to use you, ergo I
try and stop you. That's it in a nutshell. Why don't you tell me why you
want to marry her? Do you actually love her?" she wrinkled her nose at the
thought.

Jonathan sighed and ran a hand through his hair. His head popped up.
"You do realize that you're trying to control me. Like my parents."

Buffy looked aghast. "What? No! Your parents didn't care about anyone
but themselves and your stupid brother—I care about you Jonathan and
don't want you to be put in a situation where you're being used and abused
like you were with your parents. If you marry Harmony, that's what I see
coming Jonathan. Can't you see that?"

Jonathan sighed. "I thought she did love me," he smiled softly. "She was
the first girl to ever show me real interest. She pampered me and seemed
to really care. She brought out the sun."

"Are we talking about the same person? Is there another Harmony out
there I don't know about?"

Jonathan gave her a look and sat down next to her. "She took an interest in
me. She brought me dinner, cleaned me up and took me out. I thought she
might be the one and how lucky was I to have found someone so full of life
and so pretty? I never thought I'd find someone. Thought I was destined to
be alone. Then Harmony was there making with the advances and I loved
her."

"Do you still?"

Jonathan sighed heavily. "I proposed and then Fred came along. Fred is . . .
an angel. I felt so comfortable with her and I could talk to her about
everything and anything. Harmony never asked me questions about work
or wanted to know about it, but Fred was excited about those things and it
was fun to chat with her about it. It was like we had our own language."

"I can pretty much guarantee that you do because no one knows what the
hell you're talking about."

Jonathan laughed. "And, she makes me laugh. I realized that aside from
the, pardon me, ‘dumb blond' moments, Harmony never really made me
laugh."

"She has dumb blond moments? I pretty much thought that was her full
time," Buffy said dryly.

"But Fred and I were good friends and I was engaged and I couldn't break
things off with Harmony on a whim, on a feeling that might be one sided."

"And its not."

"No, it's not."

"So then why are you here?"

"Because so many things are tied up with Harmony. Her salon that I co-
signed for, her plans for our house—"

"All things to tie you to her so that she can control you and you can never
get out. She is using you. You have to know that."

"I didn't want to think it. Didn't want to think that the person who swore
she loved me, would do it," Jonathan whispered sadly. "She changed after
we got engaged. Gradually."

"How?"

"She got more distant. Didn't want to go out as much. I thought it was
because she was so busy planning the wedding, but then I'd started hearing
she'd been seen out with her friends partying. She stopped . . . uh, she
stopped. . . "

"Got it Jonathan."

"Right."

"So, preview of married life. No sex from Harmony unless she wants
something from you. That conniving little twit. She got what she wanted –
your proposal and agreement to co-sign and felt she didn't have to ‘work'
for you anymore. Jonathan, I love you to death, and I hate to say this, but
as smart as you are, you're really dumb. How could you NOT have seen
through her?"

"When you've spent your entire life being unloved and then someone
comes around and makes you feel like you're worth something, you want to
hold on to it and overlook any of the bad to keep it," Jonathan said bitterly.

Buffy's eyes welled up in tears. "I'm sorry. I am. I didn't realize . . . God,
Jonathan, we were really good friends, why did we lose touch?"

"Don't feel guilty over that now, Buffy," Jonathan said gently.

"I'm emotional. I'm pregnant, it's a thing. Don't pay any attention to me."

"Last night got me really thinking. The way Spike talked about you all
night. The way he feels about you is the way I feel about Fred. He voiced all
of my feelings for her when he was talking about you. I felt so dejected."

"Why?"

"Because I didn't think I could ever have that. Not with Fred, not with
Harmony, not with anyone."

"So why are you here if Fred told you otherwise?"

"Duty, like I said."

"Another reason, because that's bullshit."

"I'm scared," he whispered.

"Of what?" Buffy asked incredulously.

"Haven't you ever been afraid of loving someone? Fred is my best friend
and I'm so afraid of jeopardizing that. What if something happened and we
lost it? What if we broke up and it was nasty and we hurt each other and
could never get that back? It terrifies me. I'd rather marry Harmony and
at least still have Fred in my life than not at all."

That hit Buffy like a truck. Hadn't she expressed the same thing to Spike?
God, she was afraid of it still! The mere idea of it terrified her. What was it
Spike had told her? Oh yes.

"Jonathan, you and Fred will mess up. You'll argue and you'll hurt each
other, but you'll also laugh and make up. If you and Fred are anything like
Spike and I then you have something that doesn't come along very often, if
at all.
Spike and I are best friends. He's still the guy I run to when there's a
problem, still the guy that I want to share everything with. If I never gave
Spike the chance, if I never took the chance to love him and let him love me
back . . . I wouldn't be protecting myself. I'd be stopping myself from really
living. It's a roller coaster ride and it goes up and it goes down, and then it
mellows out every once in a while, but as long as the person you love is in
the cart next to you, then that's all that matters. I'd rather be on that ride
with Spike than on the ride with someone that would push me out to my
death the first chance they got. It's not protecting either of you by going
through with this wedding, it's just shooting yourself in the foot. It's
stopping yourself for the chance of great happiness and its being a coward. Something I KNOW you are NOT. You stood up to your parents, you
disowned them and you made a life for yourself. Don't let someone else take
that life over. Instead, SHARE it. Share it with someone you really and
truly love. Someone you have a chance at great happiness with.
Nothing is certain in this life. I don't know that you and Fred will live
happily ever after or that Spike and I will, but on the other hand—how do
you know you won't or I won't? Why stop yourself from living by always
wondering ‘what if?'"

"Wow," Jonathan said, a look of awe on his face.

Buffy nodded, "I know. I turned all Obi Wan and Yoda right there."

"If you were Yoda, your sentences would be backwards."

"How's this: Marry Harmony, you shall not," Buffy said in her best Yoda voice.

Jonathan laughed. "Thank you Buffy. You helped a lot."

"Then what are you going to do?" Both heads snapped up to see Fred
standing in the doorway, flushed and out of breath. "Because I love you
Jonathan and I'm willing to break up that wedding and . . . and take out
that bride if you don't call this off!"





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