A/N: This is one character I actually like and she's so oblivious to what's going on with her friends and her history teacher and Damon. So I decided to give Caroline a secret, that isn't really a secret. .. Dnh. .
He was the one to end it. He needed a break; time away from her. He wasn't into it; he had things on his mind. He needed a friend, not a girlfriend. She'd heard every excuse in the book. She was aware that he had issues. Problems with his not here, nor their mother, his dead sister, the fact that his best friend had kissed both of them. He thought she was sweet and cute but she needed more than he could give and he wanted out.
Matt Donovan dumped Caroline Forbes.
He wasn't as sympathetic as Matt once was. He was a player, an ego with legs. He was Tyler Lockwood. She hadn't expected his shoulder to be the one she leaned on but it had been. He had stood alongside the brick wall that held up the squat building that was Mystic Grille where Matt worked. He had nothing else in mind but some pool and maybe a few drinks because he too had a lot on his mind. He heard them speaking; or rather Matt speaking and Caroline asking why. She sounded so beat, so heartbroken that he would have to be a callous bastard to not ask her if she was okay when Matt left her there to cry.
"How are you?" He had asked and Caroline wiped at her tears, her pale fingers darkened by her smudged eyeliner as she sniffled. She hated that question because she knew that no one really wanted an answer. He was just being polite. Tyler stood there a moment, wondering if she'd ever answer him but she just stared at him, bright eyes full of tears and questions. God did she have so many questions.
"Sorry," He muttered and he didn't know what he was apologizing for, he just assumed that since Matt was no longer interested in speaking to either of them, they could both not be spoken to by Matt together. Stupid? He knows. He turned away from her, his hand on the handle to the door when she placed a small hand on the material of his jacket.
"Wait," She told him and it was spoken so softly that he turned to make sure it had actually been her and not his imagination accompanied by the wind. "I'm sorry," She told him, moving her hand and stepping back once.
"No problem." He told her, letting go of the door and stepping out of its range. He looked at her.
"He broke up with me," She told him though she was sure he heard that he'd seen.
"Yeah," He said, for lack of better word. Tyler was nowhere as cuddly as Matt had been. He would not; he could not offer hugs when you felt down. He could however, try even if he didn't know what he was doing. For Caroline it was the thought that counted. She watched Tyler again. Studying him. She wondered where they both went wrong, to be shunned so badly from their respective group. She knew why no one really associated with Tyler. He just spoke trouble, like Damon had. But that had never stopped Caroline. But now that Caroline no longer had Matt to distract her and keep her company she noticed it. She noticed how both Elena and Bonnie were ignoring her again and it was better when they were fighting because Bonnie talked to Caroline, though the conversations were clipped and cryptic she at least had an inkling of what was going on. Now? She was just alone. No boyfriend, no friends, no parents.
Tyler, he thought of himself as a fuck up. He always seemed to do the wrong things or say the wrongs things, like with Vicky. And you could see how that turned out. Or the thing with Matt's mother. He hadn't meant for it to happen, he had been drunk and as always down on his luck. And now his father. His father, a poor excuse for one, but his father nonetheless was dead, and even in the house with his mother he had might as well been alone.
"I-" Caroline started but she didn't finish her sentence because she bent her head and began crying; sobbing into her cupped hands and speaking mumbo jumbo about Elena and Bonnie and Matt and her mother and everything.
Tyler was no expert in crying girls. Maybe naked, maybe drunk but not crying, sad girls so he wasn't sure what to do. It was on impulse what he did. He reached out, something he hardly ever does and pulled Caroline to him. The embrace was different, it was awkward at first. It was new.
It was the beginning of something incredible.