Flashback
Xander hated flashing back. Bad enough he had to live through it once, his mind kept hitting the instant replay
button as a kind of much deserved self-torture.
“Why?” Maya had said. “Does it matter?”
She switched on the windshield wipers. For seconds the only sound was the swish-whomp of them slicing through the
torrents that slashed down on her Daddy’s pick up truck. When Xander didn’t answer, she’d ventured an oblique
look at him. Her shoulders were rigid as handlebars against the seat.
And what had he said? Xander curled his hand around his coffee mug and tried to remember the exact words. What
he could recall with blinding clarity was the pinch of concern between his own brows that had corresponded with
the oh-so-nifty near panic in his heart.
“He called you a succubus.”
Ah, that was it. Post-Thanksgiving dinner, Maya’s longtime family friend – the well-muscled, bronze god of a man,
Lance – had laughingly called her a succubus. Xander also recalled inhaling a mighty gulp of Shiner Bock.
Maya had glanced askew again, but kept her focus on the darkening road. Raindrops pelleted the windshield.
Xander’s breath, chilled by the AC, bloomed a foggy circle on the passenger side window.
“It was nothing, Xander,” Maya said. But her small, white-knuckled fingers adjusted on the steering wheel.
The cab of the truck drew in around them. Xander drummed his fingers on the dashboard.
“Succulent succubus,” he said, going for breezy. Breezy like a knife’s edge just before it slices through something
vital.
“He’s a show off,” Maya told him.
Rain dashed the road, chased by gusts off the bay. The storm was strengthening, almost to the point that Xander
would have surrendered to caution and pulled into a diner to wait out the worst.
But Maya plunged on, growing, it seemed, somehow smaller and smaller behind the wheel of her Daddy’s Ram
Charger, curling in on herself like she had in her bookshop back in London.
“What’s he showing off?” Xander had asked. Maya had frowned, but did not answer.
They traveled on in silence, the rain pounding on the rooftop. At first, Xander had felt gallant, rescuing Maya from
the smiling behemoth football player whose name she had charmingly stretched into two syllables with her deep
Texas drawl. Lay-ance had been drinking beaucoup Bud Light with Maya’s uncountable brothers when he recalled a
juicy story from their time at Barber’s Hill High.
Now Xander’s flashback was flashing back. His mind showed no mercy.
Xander’s tongue curled behind his teeth at the thought of Lance’s partial retelling of the tale.
“Remember, Maya,” Lance gushed, slurring her name. “Senior Skip Day, when you drank those margaritas…”
Maya had shot a startled half-grin at Xander. “Come on, Lance. No one wants to hear about that,” she’d said.
“Let me tell you, man,” Lance went on. “Maya can’t hold her liquor. She was swabbin’ the floor.”
“Lay-ance!”
Lance had doubled over, knees pulled in, butt thrust out, hands laced behind his head. With clumsy beer-soaked
motion, he undulated his hips, groaning with a sickeningly accurate imitation of a girl gone wild.
“Like this, huh, Maya,” he had said, picking up the rhythm. “Succulent little succubus put on a show…”
At which point, Xander swooped in, all knight in shining beer stein. “I think,” Xander had said. “The lady said we
didn’t want to hear about it.”
Lance dropped his arms. A meaty pout creased his full lips, making him look like an absurdly pissed off chimpanzee.
An absurdly drunk and pissed off chimpanzee in a room full of his beer-guzzling, Stetson-owning, cowboy-boot-
wearing pissed off friends.
“That right,” Lance said, drawing up to his full six-inches-taller-than-Xander height. “Cap’n?”
Xander thought he had said something clever, though he couldn’t remember what it was now. He did remember
Lance phoning in a punch, which Xander cleverly dodged. Before the fight could go further, he whisked Maya out
the front door, down the porch steps and across the dewy lawn where they absconded in her Daddy’s shiny new
black truck.
They had driven into quiet velvet darkness, the stars blanked by low riding clouds plump with rain.
When they turned south on I-87 bound for Galveston, Xander had turned on Maya.
“Succubus?”
That word again. Xander tested his coffee, but it was still too hot. And too bitter. The waitress, a muffin colored
girl in orthopedic shoes, had neglected his creamer for the third pass running.
Maya’s answer: “He’s a show off.”
“What’s he showing off?” Xander had asked.
“His big boy vocabulary, of course. Got himself a Master’s degree,” Maya had said.
“Of course.”
Xander had gripped the door handle, digging little half moon shapes with his nails into the under side of the vinyl.
The steady, insistent drone of the rain roared overhead.
Xander had to raise his voice. “Of course, Freddie called you that…”
Maya sent a wounded his look in his direction. “Yeah, well. We already established the not-niceness of Freddie.”
“What was he talking about?”
“Who, Freddie?”
“No, Lance.”
“No.”
Xander swallowed.
“Why not?”
The pick-up darted beneath an underpass. For one perfect, still moment the rain cut off. Maya whimpered when a
second later the rain resumed its assault.
Maya checked the rearview mirror, then cranked the wipers up a notch. “Do you mind if we table this discussion till
sometime less perilous?”
Xander sat forward. “Kinda yes. I mind.”
Maya flicked her eyes to him, then back to the road. She fussed with the AC controls. She ran a rather unsteady
hand through her short blond curls.
“It was nothing,” she said.
Likely story, Xander mused then and now.
“If it’s nothing, then why aren’t you sharing?” Xander asked.
Maya drove on.
“Maya,” Xander said. His voice swelled like thunder in the cab of the truck. He hated the way she cringed away
from him, hated how she seemed to fold her shoulders in like the broken bones of a wounded bird.
“I just think we should be honest with each other,” Xander had said.
Seemed logical. Reasonable, even. He’d just pulled a Prince Charming, after all. Did he not deserve to know why said
damsel was distressed?
Maya jerked the steering wheel hard right, skidding over the textured shoulder and into the flattened pale grass
that fringed the freeway.
“I’m not telling,” Maya told him.
“Yeah, but…”
She turned to face him. The dashboard lights painted her face into sharp angles of amber and shadow.
“You’ll just have to trust that Lance is an asshole,” Maya said. “And that some stories should not be repeated.”
“I get that,” Xander said. “Believe me, I do. But it’s already brought up and…”
Maya kneaded her fingers into the hem of her powder blue skirt. “I think you should get out,” she told him.
Twelve hours later, still soaked to the spine, Xander couldn’t figure it. And while he balked wordlessly at her
unexpected and sudden command, she leaned way over him to unlatch his door.
“It’s raining,” Xander had said.
“I know,” she told him.
And so it was, Xander wound up stranded on the Strand in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. Sure, he had been
guilty of prodding, but he hardly thought it was enough to warrant a dumping out onto the roadside. Besides, wasn’
t it reasonable if he wanted to ascertain beyond doubt that his current girlfriend was not in fact a succubus?
In the kitchen, the cook and the waitress struck up a murmur of conversation. Xander sighed. Didn’t look as
though they were in a rush to earn a buck, and after his double feature flashback, he didn’t think he could eat
anyway. He would just pay for his coffee and try calling home again.
As Xander got up, he caught a few words of the conversation. “Kinda sucks,” the waitress said to the cook. “Local
girl?”
“Nah,” the cook answered. Xander couldn’t see the man in the kitchen, but could hear him tinkering with the
spatula on the grill.
“Makes you wonder, you know? Why a girl’d be out in a storm like that?”
The waitress mopped the counter with a dirty rag. Xander felt his legs go numb as he neared them. All of his
Sunnydale experiences sent up flares of dread and he knew.
“What girl?” he asked.
The waitress jumped like she’d been caught not working. She tucked her strawberry hair behind an ear and said,
“Oh, some girl drove her truck into the bay last night.”
He didn’t wait to find out if the girl had lived or died. Xander went out into the blinding sun and ran until the seawall
met the sand and he couldn’t run any more.
Xander hated flashing back. Bad enough he had to live through it once, his mind kept hitting the instant replay
button as a kind of much deserved self-torture.
“Why?” Maya had said. “Does it matter?”
She switched on the windshield wipers. For seconds the only sound was the swish-whomp of them slicing through the
torrents that slashed down on her Daddy’s pick up truck. When Xander didn’t answer, she’d ventured an oblique
look at him. Her shoulders were rigid as handlebars against the seat.
And what had he said? Xander curled his hand around his coffee mug and tried to remember the exact words. What
he could recall with blinding clarity was the pinch of concern between his own brows that had corresponded with
the oh-so-nifty near panic in his heart.
“He called you a succubus.”
Ah, that was it. Post-Thanksgiving dinner, Maya’s longtime family friend – the well-muscled, bronze god of a man,
Lance – had laughingly called her a succubus. Xander also recalled inhaling a mighty gulp of Shiner Bock.
Maya had glanced askew again, but kept her focus on the darkening road. Raindrops pelleted the windshield.
Xander’s breath, chilled by the AC, bloomed a foggy circle on the passenger side window.
“It was nothing, Xander,” Maya said. But her small, white-knuckled fingers adjusted on the steering wheel.
The cab of the truck drew in around them. Xander drummed his fingers on the dashboard.
“Succulent succubus,” he said, going for breezy. Breezy like a knife’s edge just before it slices through something
vital.
“He’s a show off,” Maya told him.
Rain dashed the road, chased by gusts off the bay. The storm was strengthening, almost to the point that Xander
would have surrendered to caution and pulled into a diner to wait out the worst.
But Maya plunged on, growing, it seemed, somehow smaller and smaller behind the wheel of her Daddy’s Ram
Charger, curling in on herself like she had in her bookshop back in London.
“What’s he showing off?” Xander had asked. Maya had frowned, but did not answer.
They traveled on in silence, the rain pounding on the rooftop. At first, Xander had felt gallant, rescuing Maya from
the smiling behemoth football player whose name she had charmingly stretched into two syllables with her deep
Texas drawl. Lay-ance had been drinking beaucoup Bud Light with Maya’s uncountable brothers when he recalled a
juicy story from their time at Barber’s Hill High.
Now Xander’s flashback was flashing back. His mind showed no mercy.
Xander’s tongue curled behind his teeth at the thought of Lance’s partial retelling of the tale.
“Remember, Maya,” Lance gushed, slurring her name. “Senior Skip Day, when you drank those margaritas…”
Maya had shot a startled half-grin at Xander. “Come on, Lance. No one wants to hear about that,” she’d said.
“Let me tell you, man,” Lance went on. “Maya can’t hold her liquor. She was swabbin’ the floor.”
“Lay-ance!”
Lance had doubled over, knees pulled in, butt thrust out, hands laced behind his head. With clumsy beer-soaked
motion, he undulated his hips, groaning with a sickeningly accurate imitation of a girl gone wild.
“Like this, huh, Maya,” he had said, picking up the rhythm. “Succulent little succubus put on a show…”
At which point, Xander swooped in, all knight in shining beer stein. “I think,” Xander had said. “The lady said we
didn’t want to hear about it.”
Lance dropped his arms. A meaty pout creased his full lips, making him look like an absurdly pissed off chimpanzee.
An absurdly drunk and pissed off chimpanzee in a room full of his beer-guzzling, Stetson-owning, cowboy-boot-
wearing pissed off friends.
“That right,” Lance said, drawing up to his full six-inches-taller-than-Xander height. “Cap’n?”
Xander thought he had said something clever, though he couldn’t remember what it was now. He did remember
Lance phoning in a punch, which Xander cleverly dodged. Before the fight could go further, he whisked Maya out
the front door, down the porch steps and across the dewy lawn where they absconded in her Daddy’s shiny new
black truck.
They had driven into quiet velvet darkness, the stars blanked by low riding clouds plump with rain.
When they turned south on I-87 bound for Galveston, Xander had turned on Maya.
“Succubus?”
That word again. Xander tested his coffee, but it was still too hot. And too bitter. The waitress, a muffin colored
girl in orthopedic shoes, had neglected his creamer for the third pass running.
Maya’s answer: “He’s a show off.”
“What’s he showing off?” Xander had asked.
“His big boy vocabulary, of course. Got himself a Master’s degree,” Maya had said.
“Of course.”
Xander had gripped the door handle, digging little half moon shapes with his nails into the under side of the vinyl.
The steady, insistent drone of the rain roared overhead.
Xander had to raise his voice. “Of course, Freddie called you that…”
Maya sent a wounded his look in his direction. “Yeah, well. We already established the not-niceness of Freddie.”
“What was he talking about?”
“Who, Freddie?”
“No, Lance.”
“No.”
Xander swallowed.
“Why not?”
The pick-up darted beneath an underpass. For one perfect, still moment the rain cut off. Maya whimpered when a
second later the rain resumed its assault.
Maya checked the rearview mirror, then cranked the wipers up a notch. “Do you mind if we table this discussion till
sometime less perilous?”
Xander sat forward. “Kinda yes. I mind.”
Maya flicked her eyes to him, then back to the road. She fussed with the AC controls. She ran a rather unsteady
hand through her short blond curls.
“It was nothing,” she said.
Likely story, Xander mused then and now.
“If it’s nothing, then why aren’t you sharing?” Xander asked.
Maya drove on.
“Maya,” Xander said. His voice swelled like thunder in the cab of the truck. He hated the way she cringed away
from him, hated how she seemed to fold her shoulders in like the broken bones of a wounded bird.
“I just think we should be honest with each other,” Xander had said.
Seemed logical. Reasonable, even. He’d just pulled a Prince Charming, after all. Did he not deserve to know why said
damsel was distressed?
Maya jerked the steering wheel hard right, skidding over the textured shoulder and into the flattened pale grass
that fringed the freeway.
“I’m not telling,” Maya told him.
“Yeah, but…”
She turned to face him. The dashboard lights painted her face into sharp angles of amber and shadow.
“You’ll just have to trust that Lance is an asshole,” Maya said. “And that some stories should not be repeated.”
“I get that,” Xander said. “Believe me, I do. But it’s already brought up and…”
Maya kneaded her fingers into the hem of her powder blue skirt. “I think you should get out,” she told him.
Twelve hours later, still soaked to the spine, Xander couldn’t figure it. And while he balked wordlessly at her
unexpected and sudden command, she leaned way over him to unlatch his door.
“It’s raining,” Xander had said.
“I know,” she told him.
And so it was, Xander wound up stranded on the Strand in the middle of a raging thunderstorm. Sure, he had been
guilty of prodding, but he hardly thought it was enough to warrant a dumping out onto the roadside. Besides, wasn’
t it reasonable if he wanted to ascertain beyond doubt that his current girlfriend was not in fact a succubus?
In the kitchen, the cook and the waitress struck up a murmur of conversation. Xander sighed. Didn’t look as
though they were in a rush to earn a buck, and after his double feature flashback, he didn’t think he could eat
anyway. He would just pay for his coffee and try calling home again.
As Xander got up, he caught a few words of the conversation. “Kinda sucks,” the waitress said to the cook. “Local
girl?”
“Nah,” the cook answered. Xander couldn’t see the man in the kitchen, but could hear him tinkering with the
spatula on the grill.
“Makes you wonder, you know? Why a girl’d be out in a storm like that?”
The waitress mopped the counter with a dirty rag. Xander felt his legs go numb as he neared them. All of his
Sunnydale experiences sent up flares of dread and he knew.
“What girl?” he asked.
The waitress jumped like she’d been caught not working. She tucked her strawberry hair behind an ear and said,
“Oh, some girl drove her truck into the bay last night.”
He didn’t wait to find out if the girl had lived or died. Xander went out into the blinding sun and ran until the seawall
met the sand and he couldn’t run any more.
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.Chapter Index.
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
Anywhere Out
of This World
Blood, Pressure
The Drawing Board
All's Well
Anywhere Out of
This World
Mourning Sickness
Welcome to Hell
Relative
Matters of Time
& Fishes
International Calls
Empty as Houses
Lusty Wrong Feelings
Enthralled
Thanksgiving
Seduced
Innocents Lost
Burn
Flashback
Not A Chance In Hell
Empty Rooms
Two Roads Diverged
Starfall
Blindsided
Not Her Own
Outta Here
The Valley of the
Shadow of Death
Comes the Rain
Smoke and Mirrors
Drawn to You
Team Angel
By Fire Reborn
Salvage
Ashes to Ashes
Life Is...
With A Little Help
Appearances Deceiving
Familiarity
Sweetness
Not All Who Wander
That Old Black Magic
For Lorne
Drawn Together
Lost to Sand
Fall of Triumvirate
Parallel Lives
The Lovers
Avenger
Double Cross
Pursuit
Ripper's Girl
Pandemonium
Negative Space
Raveled Threads
Asunder
Human Hands
Singular
Fragmented
Symmetry
Plans
Rogue Squadron
Legends
 |