To say that Faith kissing me was a shock would be the understatement of the year but I had a major problem with said shock. Even though my brain was going a mile a second with all the reasons that might have made Faith kiss me, I still slept like a baby.

It was kind of like my brain was freaking out but the rest of me didn't care.

Of course, now it's morning and I still have everything going through my head. I still can't think of why Faith kissed me other than maybe that's why Willow and Oz think she looks at me differently. That she "like" likes me.

Even thinking something like that makes me feel like I'm in grade school.

"Buffy, honey," my mom says as she rushes around the kitchen, "should I plan for three tonight?"

I poke at my eggs and think for a moment. "Not sure, Mom."

"Everything okay?" When I only shrug I hear her sigh. "Do you want to have lunch later? You can stop by the gallery and we can talk about what's bothering you." She pauses. "Is it Faith?"

"No," I say as I look up at her. "I'm fine."

"Okay," she says and she's looking me over like she should be able to see something wrong. "Stop by if you want otherwise I'll see you for dinner, okay?"

The only thing I do is nod as she places her hand on my shoulder for a second before rushing out the door. I watch her go before looking down at my breakfast and make up my mind that this shouldn't be a big deal. Faith never said anything else about it. I won't know what that kiss was about until I actually talk to her.

It isn't too long before I'm done eating and getting ready for the day. The more I think about it the more I want to talk to Faith. I'm not sure what my own feelings are at this point other than I look forward to the time I spend with her everyday but I want to know what she's been thinking.

Normally, we don't meet up until late morning or noon or whatever but I'm a little anxious and now I also don't want Faith to think I'm going to try to avoid her today. She was the one who kept asking if we would still be friends no matter what she did. I don't want to go back on what I said.

When I get to her apartment I knock on the door a couple times but there's no answer. It's not that early and unless she went out after she left me last night, I would think she would be awake, too. Now that she isn't off on her own all the time she's up early. She's told me as much. I'd like to think that means she's just out for a run or something.

"B?"

I turn around and notice Faith walking toward the door, a cup of coffee and a small bag in her hand. Her face is kind of a mask, too, 'cause when I try to determine her mood by the look on her face I can't. "Hey . . . I thought you'd be home."

"No food in the place except leftover takeout, you know that," she says with a smile. "So . . . breakfast."

"Okay."

Faith walks up to me and smiles almost nervously before moving past me and unlocking the door. She walks in and waits for me to follow before closing the door. I sit down on the couch and she sits down next to me, setting her breakfast down on the coffee table.

It's pretty obvious she's not gonna bring it up right away and I don't want to wait. I'm done with any sort of awkwardness where Faith's involved.

"So last night . . ."

She turns her head to look at me and I see something I didn't expect: she smiles easily. I figured there would be more nervousness there. "Not what you expected when I was asking you those questions, right?"

I shake my head. "Not really." I pause. "Why did you kiss me?"

"No matter what anyone else says about you I know you're smart, B," Faith says. "I really like spending time with you . . . I guess that turned into something more."

"Oh."

Faith raises an eyebrow. "I kind of expected a bigger reaction than that. You know, either one of those epic freak outs or, I don't know, maybe I could kiss you again."

I furrow my brow and think for a few seconds because I really don't know what to do. Outside of maybe a passing thought once or twice I haven't thought of Faith that way . . . in a romantic, "I want to see you naked" way. I mean, she's definitely attractive but I was concentrated with my own drama when she first came to town and I wasn't exactly the best friend to her.

Of course, now that we've been hanging out almost every day I see and think about Faith differently. I just don't know if we're on the same page with that though. Not that I didn't like that kiss though. It was pretty short but it was by no means horrible.

And then there was the fact that it felt normal . . .

"B?" Faith waves a hand in front of me. "Did I lose you?"

I blink a couple times. "Uh, no. I was just thinking."

She laughs quietly. "Do you always space out when you're thinking? 'Cause it would explain a lot."

"Stop it," I say as I playfully slap at her shoulder. "I don't know what to say."

Faith doesn't say anything right away and looks away from me. It makes me think she's upset that I haven't said that I want to date or anything like that. "So are we still friends?"

Why would she ask me that? "Faith, we've been over this more times than once. It would take a lot for me to decide this friends thing we're trying isn't working and this is definitely not one of them."

"But you don't feel the same way?"

The only way I can do this is to be honest. "I don't know what I feel. It's a little confusing actually."

Faith sighs and leans back on the couch, her breakfast long forgotten. "So what do we do? Should we just forget about it?"

As confused as I am, I know I don't want to forget about it. That's almost like ignoring a part of Faith and I won't do that. I want to know everything about her, even the part of her that apparently has feelings for me. "No, don't do that. Let's . . . let's just keep doing what we've been doing."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean we continue hanging out and just see where this goes."

Faith looks like she's thinking it over and if she thinks this is my way of avoiding the topic then she's wrong. It's more my way of trying to figure out my own feelings.

"I guess we can do that," she finally says and moves a little closer to me. "So does this mean I can still kiss you? 'Cause I really wanna to right now."

The look on Faith's face is a little cute and I can't help but smile when I see it. "I didn't say you couldn't."

The smile turns into a grin as she leans in and carefully presses her lips against mine. I have to say, the kiss really doesn't suck. It's actually really nice. Faith's lips are so soft and I can feel how nervous she is as she kisses me. Within a few seconds, I even feel myself responding.

When Faith breaks away she still has a smile on her face and when her eyes meet mine I can see so much in them. She moves away from me and for the first time since we sat down she looks at her coffee and whatever breakfast she bought.

"I think my sandwich is cold."

"I guess I should've waited for you to eat before trying to have a deep and meaningful talk."

She laughs. "Nah, I'm okay with the talking . . . and the kissing. Just let me nuke my food and then we should get over to Giles' to report in."

"Sounds good to me."

"So Faith, I have a question."

She looks at me as we walk through a cemetery. Giles read up on a prophecy and he thinks something might happen tonight. Well, either tonight or 42 years from now. He definitely thinks it's one of the two. Either way it means Faith and I are patrolling together and we're supposed to be extra vigilant.

"Shoot."

"Are you gonna, like, take me out or something?"

She stops walking and looks at me. "Take you out? You mean like dates and flowers and hand-holding and one of us doing the walk of shame in the morning?"

Now it's my turn to stop and look at her. "I'm going to say yes to most of that." I pause. "Walk of shame?"

Faith laughs. "Yeah, walk of shame. You know, that early morning walk home wearing last night's clothes that have been hastily collected off a bedroom floor."

"Oh." And now I know my face is red. I still haven't fully comprehended that Faith wants more than a simple friendship. Nowhere in my brain were thoughts of us . . . together . . . in that way.

There are now though. That doesn't exactly suck either.

"B, it's okay," Faith says as she puts a hand on my shoulder. "I was just kidding. Gotta keep you on your toes, ya know?"

Her eyes are on me and I can tell Faith's afraid she's freaked me out. I think it's time I change the subject. "So . . . have you ever dated a girl before?"

We start walking again and Faith doesn't say anything for a few seconds, just keeps her hand in her pockets and her eyes on the ground. "I don't know how to answer that one, B."

And here I thought it was a simple question. "What do you mean?"

Her brow furrows as she looks at me. "I mean, I don't know how to answer your question when you use the word 'date'. If I remember correctly, we've had a conversation like this where I told I didn't date anymore."

"Get some, get gone?"

Faith nods. "You see that it's hard to answer your question now, right?"

I have to agree to that. "So then you've . . . with a . . ." I end up stopping because I can't even say it. I'm a little embarrassed to be asking the question.

That's when she stops walking once again and stares at me. "B, this is why I don't like talking about my past. I don't want you to judge what I've done and it feels like if we have one of those deep and meaningful talks that you seem to want, well, that's what will happen. I don't want that."

"Hey, no judging here," I say immediately even though I know that if I would've asked that question when she first came to town I would have. That was before I knew her though, before she kissed me. "But if you want to keep up with the kissing and whatever then these are questions I'll probably ask."

Faith suddenly gets a dimpled grin on her face. "You need to explain what this 'whatever' is."

I can't help but laugh. "I kind of want you to answer my question."

"Uh, yeah," she says quietly. "A few months ago."

"Oh."

We hear some noise in the distance that stops our conversation and makes us move quietly to investigate. It's actually kind of a welcome break since I took our talk to a more serious area and maybe it wasn't the time for that. That seemed to be something to discuss when we're at her apartment when we're just hanging out.

When we get to where we heard the noise we see that it wasn't a vampire or a demon at all: it was a stray dog that runs away the moment it sees us. I laugh a little at that, that we mistake something we needed to slay with something kind of harmless, but when I look to Faith I see she doesn't share my amusement.

"I thought we'd actually get something to slay."

"I don't know. Think the dog was evil?"

Faith looks thoughtful for a moment. "What did Giles say we were looking for?"

"Vamp with glowing green eyes."

"Just great," Faith says, sighing as she keeps walking. "He was probably wrong and we're walking around like idiots trying to find a dude with green eyes. This is normally a quiet area, too. We should be at one of the cemeteries that has a lot of activity or at least the potential for some."

Giles had told us which cemeteries to go to and none of them were the ones we normally make sure to hit every night. "Let's just get through the ones he wants us to and then do our own thing."

When I look at her she's smiling. "Cool, let's us through this bullshit and find something better to do."

Sometimes it's like she's reading my mind.

"So . . . Faith kissed me."

Willow literally spits out her coffee when I say it. I probably should have waited until she wasn't drinking to let that one out. I know it's somewhat shocking. "What?"

"A couple nights ago Faith kissed me when she was walking me home."

My best friend looks at me like I have two heads. Maybe she thinks I'm joking but this isn't something I'd ever joke about. "And why am I hearing about this now?"

I look around at the other tables at the coffee shop we're at and realize everyone's too involved in their own conversations to be listening to ours. "Because your mom has you working all the time and I wanted to talk to Faith about it first."

Willow leans in. "So what happened?"

"Well, she was asking me questions about what would happen if she did something wrong. You know, if it would ruin our friendship. When I told her that wasn't possible she kissed me." I pause. "And then she went back to her place."

"Okay and then what happened when you talked to her about it?"

I smile a little when I think about it. "She said she likes me, Will. I think she wants us to, like, be a couple or something though we really didn't get that far."

She raises an eyebrow at me. "What does that mean?"

"What it means is that the kiss was a little confusing. It kind of surprised me, you know? I didn't think Faith would ever have those kind of feelings for me so when she asked me how I felt I was honest and said I didn't know."

"So you didn't really give her an answer." When I nod she shakes her head a little. "I can't imagine she took that well 'cause by the way she looks at you I can tell she likes you, Buff."

"No, she kind of accepted my non-answer," I say. "I asked if we could just continue hanging out and just kind of let whatever happens happen."

Willow still has that eyebrow raised and it's starting to annoy me. "But isn't that just leading her on? I mean, I can't imagine the two of you dating and stuff, my brain hasn't completely processed that one yet, but you can't do that to Faith."

"I know that." I let out a breath. "The thing is, Will . . . I think I do like her. We kissed again a couple times since and it definitely did not suck. I just . . . I don't know what to do."

Both of us are silent for a minute and I'm not sure what's going on inside my best friend's head. She's got that look on her face that she does when she's going over the possibilities of something. It's actually making me a little nervous because she's my best friend and while I want her advice I also don't want her to think differently of me. I'm more nervous now since she's been silent for a couple minutes.

Soon I have to say something. "Will, you have to say something."

She smiles. "Hey, I'm going be your best friend no matter what. I'm just saying to be careful. If you don't feel the same as Faith you have to tell her that."

"Maybe I do feel the same," I say quietly.

"Then go with it."

We share smiles as we go back to drinking our mochas and I look around at the people walking around outside. It's a nice sunny day again, something that makes Sunnydale look like such a happy place to live. To me the nice weather is just a trap to get people to live on a hellmouth where there are so many things that want to kill them.

Then I see Faith walking across the street and soon she notices Willow and I sitting at our little table outside. I guess it's not unusual to see her walking around. It's about lunchtime and we're only a few blocks away from her apartment.

Her face brightens as she nears us and I hear Willow laugh as I smile and wave a little at Faith. "That's the look Oz always mentions."

I look back at her and narrow my eyes at her. "Behave."

"But it's so cute!"

"Will!"

She looks at me for a moment then sighs. "Fine."

Faith walks over to our table and smiles down at us. "They let you out of the office, Red? I figured your ma would have you chained to one of the desks."

"No, nothing like that," she says as she smiles. "They do let me out for lunch so I thought I'd meet Buffy for coffee."

Willow looks at me, smile still plastered on her face, and I realize I haven't said anything yet. "Uh, pull up a chair. We were just finishing up."

"Cool." Faith grabs a chair from an empty table and sits down, closer to me than to Willow. "I was just walking around wondering where to get lunch before I walked over to B's here. I guess I saved myself a trip."

When our eyes meet as I turn to her and I really do see the look Willow is talking about. It's weird because I can feel my heart do a little flutter when I see it. That's the first time I've felt anything like that since . . . well, since Angel. It feels like I'm starting to figure out what I'm feeling for Faith.

"I guess so," I say. "You wanna get something here? Will only has a few more minutes before she has to go back."

"Sure, be right back."

We watch as she leaves and when I look back at Willow she has this knowing little smile on her face. "You have to tell me you see it now, right? I'll call you a liar if you don't."

I want to tell her to shut it because she and Oz noticed it before I did but I won't. Besides, she's being all supportive with the fact and Faith and I may be dating soon. "Yes, I see it. It feels nice to have someone look at me that again."

Willow smiles brightly and notices Faith coming back with two sandwiches and a large coffee. "Maybe I should let you two have lunch together."

"You don't need to do that." I give her a serious look. "Faith will think you're avoiding her since you always need to leave when she shows up."

Before she can say anything Faith is back and sitting down. "So what were you talking about?"

My best friend raises an eyebrow at me but I speak up quickly. I don't know how Faith will react to me having to sort out my feelings for her with Willow. "Our very boring patrol last night since Giles got it wrong."

"Yeah, completely sucked."

"Yeah," Willow says, a grin on her face, "and about the kissing you've been doing."