Xander speeds up as he walks toward the Bronze, even though he knows it's useless. He's more than a half-hour late -- there's no way Jesse didn't already order, which means Xander is resigned to drinking a pitcher of Stella instead of a pitcher of Sierra Nevada. He tried, once, ordering his own pitcher, but if he and Jesse each drink a whole pitcher, they get really drunk and then -- well, it's not an experience Xander wants to repeat any time soon. Or ever. He meant ever.

The music in the Bronze is too loud, as usual. As Xander walks in, the music dies, and a deep voice announces that a week from last night -- "That's next Saturday, for you deviants" -- Dingoes Ate My Baby will be playing their first show in a year, now that they're all back from college. Xander remembers Dingoes Ate My Baby from high school.

Sunnydale: where nothing ever changes.

"Hey, man," says Jesse, and they clasp hands and pound each other on the back. Every single day they clasp hands and pound each other on the back, except Saturdays, because Saturday nights, Jesse goes into L.A. and gets wasted and comes back Sunday mornings with hickeys and bruises -- and once he had Paris Hilton's phone number. He never called it, just hung it on his fridge.

"Hey, man," says Xander, and sits down, and lets out a deep breath. He pours beer into his blue plastic cup -- the Bronze just gets classier and classier -- and takes a long sip. Stella is just as gross now as it was when they first started drinking. "Sorry I'm late --"

Jesse interrupts him before Xander can even explain. "You know who I saw last night in L.A.? Cordelia Chase. Man, that brought back memories." Jesse hits his palm on the table. "She is still sooo hot, smoking hot, not like the girls left around here." Jesse glances around and rolls his eyes. Xander looks around too -- they've got to be the oldest people in the place; it's still the hottest hangout for high school kids in town. The only hangout for high school kids in town. "You remember when I made out with her --"

"Just like I suspected."

Xander turns at the sound of a familiar voice -- it nags at him, who is that? He knows the face and the voice, but can't --

"Got any room for an old crush? I'll forgive you for stealing my Barbie, if you give me some beer."

"Willow!" says Xander, louder than he meant to. He slides off the bar stool and hugs her. She has red hair now, not brown, and she's wearing... well, she's not wearing a plaid dress.

"Willow Rosenberg?" Jesse stands up too, and hugs her. "What are you doing back in Sunnydale?"

"Yeah, what are you doing back in Sunnydale?" echoes Xander. Last he heard, she graduated top of her class from some fancy school on the East Coast and went off to England or something. She always was smarter than the rest of them. "Are you still dating the guy from Dingoes Ate My Baby?"

"What?" Willow looks at him for a moment and then laughs. "No, no, I'm gay."

"You're gay?" Xander chokes air.

"Yup. One hundred percent loving the ladies." Willow pulls a stool over and hops up on it, and takes a sip from Xander's cup just like she used to when they were 15. Oh man. Gay.

"Awesome!" says Jesse. "Wanna come out with me next Saturday? I know a --"

"No, no, I'm seeing someone." Willow waves her hand in the air. "I'm back here for a conference on -- well, you don't care. But I thought I'd stop in and say hi, see if everyone was still at the Bronze."

She's totally different. Xander is a little -- confused.

She and Jesse are talking about people who stayed in Sunnydale -- people like Xander, who never went to college. He works in construction, and it's not a bad job. He really likes it, actually. He's a real grown-up, not in his parents' basement anymore, but in a nice apartment. He's gonna be foreman, head of the company some day, probably, and he volunteers at local hospitals, and he's -- Xander's a stand up fucking guy now, not the loser he was in high school.

Jesse, too. A real playboy, but he's got a job, and sometimes he's got a girlfriend, and he lives a couple of blocks away from Xander, and they meet up every night after work for drinks. They've got lives. And as Xander listens to Jesse tell Willow all about it, he realizes that they're, like, real people, practically.

And the thought just makes him sad, because --

"What about you?" says Willow, turning to him and drinking more of his beer. Well, it's Stella, she's welcome to it.

"What about me?" says Xander, and he tries to smile, but can't.

"Hey, yeah, didn't you go to the hospital today?" says Jesse, like he cares. Xander knows Jesse thinks charity is for suckers and volunteer work is for people too stupid to get paid.

"Hospital?" Willow sounds really concerned. Genuine. That's nice. She always was the nicest of them.

"Remember back in junior year when we had to do volunteer work for health class? And I went to that hospital?" Xander takes his drink back from Willow. "I was at the mental hospital outside L.A. -- I was assigned to that girl who thought there were demons..."

"I remember!" exclaims Willow. "She was really creepy!"

"Yeah. She... uh... you know."

"Died?" Willow whispers the word, and Xander remembers that she always did that, and so did her mom. Did you hear that Mr. Chase... stole money? Did you hear that Jenny Calendar... has cancer?

"Yeah. But first she... did this thing they called embracing the delusion, turned her back on... you know, reality." Xander shrugs, deliberately doesn't look at Jesse, who he knows is making faces or rolling his eyes or tapping his fingers, the way he always does.

"But you still go?" Willow looks away from Xander, at the waitress who sets down another plastic cup in front of her. Willow's cup is red, not blue like Xander's and Jesse's. "Thanks."

"While I was there, I kinda became friends with this girl Hannah. Her brother -- well, nevermind." It's not fair, Xander knows, to tell people that Hannah's brother is famous. Not fair to the brother, anyway. Jesse would probably get really interested really fast if he thought that he could meet someone famous at the hospital.

Xander loves Jesse, he really does, but... Jesse can be really... not too cool sometimes.

"So --" Xander breaks off for more beer. "Anyway, I've been going to sit with Hannah, you know --"

"What do you do exactly?" Willow looks interested, but Xander doesn't want to talk about it anymore.

"Read, play cards, drink coffee -- whatever she wanted. For a while she'd been sucked into Buffy -- the demon girl's -- delusions. But once Buffy... died... well, Hannah came out of it a little. I've been reading her the new Harry Potter... But now..." Xander shrugged. "She embraced her delusion last week. And I just found out today, when I went." He looks up at Jesse, who's looking at something across the room. "That's why I was late today."

"Oh, Xander." Willow puts her hand on Xander's arm, and for a moment Xander flashes back to high school, and that same tone, same movement -- and he wonders if maybe he's going crazy.

"Anyway!" he says finally. "Enough about our boring lives! Tell us all about --"

"Being gay," says Jesse, leaning across the table, leering. "Tell us all about it!"