Ten
Joyce Summers sat in a small restaurant that was across the street from an outlet mall about halfway between Sunnydale and Neptune. She'd gotten there early; Veronica and Buffy weren't here yet. She didn't know what she'd say to them, but she wanted to see for herself what Keith must've seen. She wanted to be as good a parent to Buffy, as he was to Veronica.
Butterflies fluttered in her stomach as she waited.
She hadn't come completely unprepared. She took a chance and asked Willow about them. Her daughter's friend stuttered and looked like a deer caught in headlights for the first minute or so, but once Joyce assured her she already knew and just wanted an opinion, Willow backed up what she'd suspected--the girls were enjoying "new relationship" bliss, and even if she reacted badly, it wouldn't stop anything.
Here they came. They both were nervous but trying not to show it, joking with one another. Veronica had her arm secure around Buffy's waist.
Truth be told, Joyce was glad they were nervous; it meant her taking this well mattered to them, and that she wasn't totally irrelevant. She reached her hand up to flag them down. When they walked closer, she stood from her chair, and Buffy wrapped her in a tight embrace.
The tears in her eyes must have seemed strange to the restaurant's other patrons, but she was hugging her daughter again, and they'd never understand what that meant. While Buffy smiled and wiped her eyes, Joyce felt compelled to hug Veronica as well, who started off surprised, but whose hug then grew in strength.
Joyce could only guess, but Veronica had to be thinking about her own mother. The mother that abandoned her, and stole her daughter's college education away to support a severe, drinking habit. Joyce drank too much herself sometimes, but thankfully she wasn't anywhere near Lianne.
When she came to Neptune to go to college and Lianne Reynolds was her roommate, she spent many nights trying to get her over being dumped by Jake Kane, and then suddenly, Lianne was the twenty-four-hour party girl who dealt by getting drunk. That's when it started.
She was wild, and had her fair share of sexual experiences, both socially accepted and not, but Joyce was the only one who saw her after. She was someone just trying to fill a hole. It was right before spring break that Keith came into her life (well, they'd gone to high school together, but she hadn't really given him the time of day, then). That's when things began to turn around for her.
Joyce met Hank Summers not long after, and the two, new couples would remain together, and remain friends. Keith would become sheriff, and Hank an excellent stock broker, and she and Lianne would live the lives of women married to powerful men. But Lianne never let go of Jake, not completely--that was the problem.
But Veronica was not her mother. She was very driven, very sensible. And it was evident that she was very into Buffy, as well.
As they sat down to lunch, they talked. About everyday things. Joyce could see the girls waiting for her to ask questions, but she just observed. Buffy and Veronica acted like the friends they'd always been--ribbing each other, doing little routines only they seemed to get, making fun of their surroundings--they weren't calling attention to the fact that they were a couple. But if you watched them for longer than five seconds, you could tell. It wasn't something they could hide.
Part of the reason the girls got so close, was because of the wives she and Lianne had been, going to functions and parties all the time. Aside from the big events, they'd never made much time for their daughters. However, the two women had enough sense to see that their girls got along, and would keep each other entertained, thus helping them to not realize their mothers weren't there.
So Joyce felt somewhat responsible for where Veronica and Buffy found themselves now. It wasn't that she had any kind of moral objection (she'd been through college with Lianne, remember); it was just that same thing all mothers wanted for their daughters. Marry, settle down, have kids, and make a better go of it than she had. And of course, she didn't want Buffy to have to face the moral objections of others.
But Joyce really had no protective power as far as that went. Buffy was going to be eighteen, and she'd been saving the world since fifteen. If Joyce couldn't shield her child, what else was there to do except support her? For years she'd tried to be the parent she wasn't when Buffy was five, and got it all wrong. Whether she liked it or not, she'd missed five, and there was no going back.
Buffy was a teenager--a remarkable one--dating another remarkable teenager. Who happened to be a girl. A girl who'd been her best friend.
She could do a lot worse, but couldn't do much better. Taking her own wants for her daughter out of the equation, Joyce saw two people who understood and were obviously good for each other; and as Veronica somewhat conveniently excused herself to the bathroom and squeezed Buffy's hand, she saw how much her daughter's chosen partner cared. Through that simple gesture.
Not that she hadn't already, but, it was the reinforcement she needed right then. Objectively, as a parent judging if this was a positive relationship for Buffy to be involved in, she had to say that it was. Absolutely. Her personal hope of marriage and the traditional had to be forgotten. There was nothing bad here.
It was time to make a good parenting decision.
"So whaddaya think?" Buffy repeated her question from two days before.
"Well, Dawn's staying at Janice's, so I'm in no rush, and...I think I want dessert," said Joyce, and then smiled, resting her hand on Buffy's arm. "And you can tell Veronica it's okay, sweetie. She can come back now."
Buffy looked down at her chest, and saw the mic wire partially visible. "Oops."
"So how was your first date?"
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