When they were fifteen, Caroline ditched their last hurrah of summer camp to visit her older cousins in Dallas. Caroline had bragged all the last week of school, how she was going to be spending her summer flirting with quarterbacks at senior parties while Bonnie and Elena were to be stuck making arts and crafts with snot nosed children. But, Caroline's city cousins were eighteen year old twins who weren't too thrilled about sharing their summer before college saddled with fifteen year old, small town Caroline. Not to be discouraged by their babysitting dilemma, the twins had painted Caroline up like a baby hooker, complete with heavy eye shadow and a spandex dress, dragged her to meet friends at a night club and told her to play a mute when the bouncer asked for ID's. Once they were safely behind the velvet rope, her cousins bought her a drink, patted her on the arm and gave her the sage advice to stay put until they came back from the dance floor. In the hour her cousins had left her alone, Caroline met a hot guy who offered her a 'blue dolphin,' which she thought at the time sounded too adorable to be dangerous, and she washed it down with her vodka and sprite , and ten minutes later she couldn't stop clenching her jaw and asking people to give her a hug.
She couldn't remember what had happened after, but was told her cousins found her in VIP, standing on a couch, rubbing her hands over the textured wallpaper with pupils as dilated as a character from a Japanese Anime.
Bonnie and Elena were horrified when she told them the story, however, when Caroline didn't seem traumatized by blacking out in a club, Bonnie had asked her how did she feel while on the drug, and the bubbly blonde answered in the only way she could, "Bonnie, it was like heaven wrapped in hugs."
Bonnie giggles into her pillow, her sticky lips smearing the dry cotton.
This is heaven wrapped in hugs.
Her limbs stretch out and her spine curves inward like a content cat and she considers calling Caroline to tell her she was sorry for judging her about taking ecstasy and that maybe, just maybe, they could do the drug together, and Caroline wouldn't have to worry about blacking out and mean cousins because she, her best friend would be right there for her.
She opens her closed lids because she thinks she will do just that but her head and arms feel incredibly heavy, like she had fallen asleep in a hot bath, and her lilac walls are swelling and shrinking, and she wonders if they are breathing.
Her scalp is being nuzzled and lips are wandering, catching on the strands of her hair, and she deliberately rubs her thighs together to quell the throbbing when she catches the hint of musky cologne.
"Bonnie."
Her name is being called but it sounds hollow as an echo, and it draws upon a memory of when she was a little kid yelling down a plastic enclosed slide to Elena that she couldn't do it and Elena yelling back up from the other side, "Don't be scared, Bonnie," She was so nervous about sliding down the slide and was shaking her head, getting up from the platform, before Caroline pushed her down the tube.
She smiles and recognizes the memory is indicative of the trio's friendship, her leery of the unknown, Elena softly encouraging and Caroline ripping the Band-Aid off. Her brain plays the reel of their friendship and the images begin to crackle and fade the further it plays into her childhood. Vivid bright colors dim to watery pastels as she recalls her loneliness on the first day of Kindergarten and Elena introducing herself and patting the empty space next to her on the reading carpet with a smile wide and genuine, "Do you want to come play at my house after school?"
"Yes" she replies to the little Elena but feels a hard chest crush her into the mattress as the echo calls her name again, "I said I was far from it", cool breath tickles her ear and she shivers.
Far from what? She wonders.
Bonnie's reel is playing the scene when she was eight and wringing her hands under her desk because it was Mother/Daughter day and each kid was excited to go to the front of the class and stand next to their mother and talk about what she did for a living.
She was the only one whose mother was not present.
Bonnie wants to disappear into her chair and wishes she had pretended to have been sick and stayed at Grams, but then she hears Elena's mother's proud voice, "Elena and Bonnie, please come up girls." Bonnie looks up at Elena's mom, confused, until Elena nudges her desk, grinning and impatient for Bonnie to rise from her seat when Timothy Green loudly voices, "Why is she going to the front? That's not her mom, "and Elena's hair whips around as fast as the words she spits back at Timothy Green, "She's my sister."
Bonnie curves her body deeper into herself, bringing her knees to her heart, because she can physically feel the loss of her friendship with Elena, "She's my sister," Bonnie repeats and her sweet euphoric high begins to taste bitter. She wishes she could hold to the warmth of that recollection, like she could again intertwine her fingers with her best friend and walk hand in hand to the front of the class and stand with her.
But it slips through her mental grasp and she's left with brown eyes she no longer recognizes, eyes she always sought comfort and confidence from were now distracted and uncertain. Bonnie blamed vampirism. Bonnie blamed Salvatores.
The reel snaps and she feels pressure of unshed tears behind her eyes.
She's in her Gram's kitchen, the elder woman sits a mug of freshly brewed tea in front of her, and tips Bonnie's chin up with one finger, "Look at me chile, you're a witch Bonnie and with that comes a great responsibility, do you hear me?"
"Yes ma'm."
Did that mean constantly worrying about an absent father? A vampire mother? And a damsel-in-distress prone doppelganger?
Did that mean always sacrificing her happiness and putting herself last forever and ever, amen?
"Relax," her bedside companion coos and brushes their lips on the nape of her neck, making her muscles loosen. She becomes conscious of fingers crawling along the length of her arm, denting her skin with each step, reminding her of the nursery rhyme, 'itsy bitsy spider', and she thinks she should probably slap the creepy-crawler away, because spiders are deadly, and she's sure the spider on her is the deadliest of them all. But then the spider, with its pressured spiny touch, travels down her thigh and it makes her ponder if this particular spider wants to be her friend.
"Open your eyes, Bonnie."
She is concentrating on what her English teacher is scribbling on the chalkboard as she stares at it from the back of an empty class. "Nostalgia, Ms. Bennett is a Greek compound, 'Nostos' means homecoming and "Algos" means pain. So, Ms. Bennett, knowing the prefix and suffix, what does the word nostalgia mean?"
"An ache for home."
She preens as she watches the teacher nod approval but the rest of his lesson is drowned out by her father's scratchy voice singing an old Jamaican tune and she's wiping down a coffee table with furniture polish burning her nostrils. Her father is clearing the mantle, and he stops to inspect her work and smiles, "Always take pride in everything you do, baby girl. Whatever it is, whether it's cleaning a toilet bowl or brain surgery, you got to give it your all."
"Yes sir."
"Bonnie."
"Let's play Ring-A-Round a Rosie," Caroline orders, grabbing Bonnie and Elena's hand. Bonnie's cheeks are red from the sun and perspiration is beading at her temples as she smiles, "Come play with us Grams," she shouts at her grandmother seated on the back porch. "I'm too old to play but I'll sing along," she says and Bonnie wishes she could go back and tell her she was never too old to play.
Bonnie's hands are melded to her friends with sweat as she sings in unison, "Ashes, Ashes," they sing higher and higher until their favorite part, "We all fall down!'
And this time when she falls back laughing, hands letting go of her best friends, she doesn't land on lush green grass but on a hardwood floor in a grand apartment in St. Petersburg surrounded by unanswered letters all requesting for her to come home.
The fingertips once trailing in the valley of her waist have now morphed into a broad hand kneading her roughly, rocking her as if its unsure if it wants to push her away or pull her closer. There is a confusion of the want.
A piano is playing, tinkling like running water and she's observing the contents of her cocktail glass swirl till it creates a tiny hurricane and she's leaden by a sadness she has never felt in her entire eighteen years and she struggles from where this memory comes from, and surmises in her state she has crossed her memories with her imagination of bits of Poe or Byron.
Her arms are folded underneath her head and her legs are crossed on a down mattress as she rolls her eyes at the sight of a beautiful woman crying at her dressing table. Her tears streak her pale face and Bonnie catches her eyes in the mirror. "You're deranged and I hope someone breaks your heart as you have mine," the beautiful woman says in English with a lilted French accent.
She looks over at the blonde and yearns for the blue veins, charting her young life along her neck, "Someone already has," she answers in a voice that doesn't sound like hers, it's deeper, darker.
The image of the beautiful woman scatters like petals of a dandelion and Bonnie's fingers are tangled in Elena's corset strings. Elena angles her head over her shoulder and curls her upper lip, "Remember, no rules," and the wound of betrayal throbs over living out a century based on a lie. But she doesn't get a chance to lament for long because she's running in a fire-place lit living room and knocks over a small decorative vase on a mahogany table and she quickly hides under it until a raven haired woman with luminous blues eyes - Bonnie has seen before but can't quite place - coaxes her out and hugs her close, "When your father comes home, I want you to run over to the Lockwood's, okay, sweetie?," her delicate hands brushing away a lock of hair that has fallen in her face.
"Bonnie, Bonnie, Bonnie," the echo has become a moan.
She forgets to run to the Lockwood's because Stefan is now there, but he's all of five, and skipping in his dark gray shorts and matching vest as they race to a rope swing at the top of hill. She wins but Stefan's smile doesn't disappear, it brightens, and she gives up the swing to him and says, "You can go first, I'll push you."
Then she sees herself, with her brassy brown curls piled atop her head and her neck stretched under her own mouth, and she tingles, not only with the spacey sensation of seeing oneself outside of oneself, but with a gnawing hunger unlike any craving she has known before, and she whispers, "What I'm trying to say Judgy, is I hope one day I do something for you to stop hating me, because I don't hate you. Far from it."
"Far from it."
"Far from it."
"Far from it."
The words are flashcards flipping behind her closed lids and Bonnie realizes these images aren't a part of her imagination or an excerpt from a romantic poem but they belong to the broad hand splayed over her quivering stomach.
She gasps and jolts upright from her pillow to see candles burned down to nubs, scattered around the carpet, and she coughs and waves her hand to clear the myrrh filled smoke that has created a thick smog in her bedroom. She moves her mouth to speak to the body lying next to her but her mouth smacks with a sticky substance and she brings her fingers to the corner of her lips and looks down to see blood. Blood?
And all of a sudden, she is so very aware of the heavy arm wrapped around her waist and who it belongs to.
"Damon?" she asks like maybe it wasn't him.
The distinctive male body inches closer and makes a pillow muffled noise that sounds like, "Are you okay?"
Bonnie removes Damon's hand from her person and hops from the bed. She didn't know why she was acting so peculiar; she was the one who had asked for the blood.
And as she draws the curtains and opens her window to let the cold air rush in, she tells herself she did this for Elena, but it does nothing for her anxiety.
"I'm fine," She snaps.
Damon raises his upper body from the bed and runs his fingers over his face in annoyance and when he catches Bonnie staring at him, he winks at her, and Bonnie ruminates over when she has ever, in the history of her life, had her heart flutter with anything but fear and anger around Damon.
The vampire swings his legs to the floor, his impeccably creased button-down is wrinkled and his dark hair, the color of a crow, is tousled and his bright blue eyes are narrow as if the lids were too heavy for him to open wide. And even though she knows fully well he is a vampire and completely in control of his faculties at all times, seeing him act as if he is just as affected as she is by the blood exchange made her want to be vicious. Because she knew once he stepped one foot out of her room, it wouldn't mean anything to him, and it made her mad because his words of wanting to be given a chance to redeem himself meant so much to her.
His fingers are doing whatever they want again and they are rubbing her shoulders, "Did it work?" His whisper is much too close to her ear.
Bonnie squirms under the awkward stab at familiarity, "I don't know," wanting him to leave so she can be alone to analyze what the hell happened when she ingested his blood.
He snorts and reaches for the leather jacket draped over her desk chair, "Do you feel different?"
Yes.
"No."
Bonnie escorts him to the front door and doesn't offer a 'thank you' or a 'good-bye', and she's all too relieved when he follows her lead and drives away without a word.
She quickly climbs the stairs to throw away her ruined sheets and leaves the window open to shoo out the lingering memory. She blares pop music, hoping to occupy her thoughts with lyrics of nights filled with wanton abandonment, something she has never experienced, and hadn't given much thought about, but she's aware of each line while she sings along in her scolding shower. She dresses in another pair of pajamas that are too big for her and lies down only to toss and turn for an hour because she can still smell him.
Bonnie is tired but she gets up and replaces bed sheets and swaps pillowcases, and even spritzes lavender perfume into the air, but when she lies down in an attempt to rest for the second time that evening, she groans because she figures out that it isn't her sheets, or her room, but it is her that carries his scent.
BBBBBBBB
"Aren't you like, supposed to be at school? Is it a holiday or something? "Lucy arches a manicured brow at her younger cousin while sipping her trendy coffee.
Bonnie locks the front door to her home behind them, "I skipped. I don't feel well," she informs, pulling out her red knit cap from her coat pocket.
Every once in a while Bonnie was glad she didn't have a parent breathing down her neck, like today when she had to call her school and pretend to be sick, she didn't also have to put on the theatrics of holding a thermometer under warm water or doubling over, grabbing her stomach, feigning a stomach virus only for them to call her out on her lie and ask what was the real problem. Because she was pretty sure it wouldn't have gone over well, telling her Dad she was too exhausted to go to school because she was up all night from the bad batch of vampire blood she drank.
She tried to sleep, but every time she closed her lids, Damon was there with her, still in her bed, taking up residence in her head with his frayed memories and her desperately dangling from their ends, unwillingly understanding who he was, while she tied each one together so she wouldn't slip and fall into a darkness where she believed Damon hid from them each day.
Lucy shuffles her feet backward from Bonnie like the girl had announced she had the bubonic plague, "What's wrong with you?" She asks, twisting her mouth in disgust.
Bonnie runs her hand over unruly bangs to tuck under the cap, "I'm not sick but I'm not," her cheeks fill with air that she blows out of frustration because her stupid hair won't stay out of her eyes and she doesn't know how to explain how she woke up feeling like she needed to collect on a debt from the world, she doesn't think she can convey to Lucy what she feels because she is certain the emotions don't belong to her, have never belonged to her, they are borrowed and are the wrong color and fit too snug in places, cutting off her circulation at the pulse and neck. "I'm not myself," she says as more of a question with the small space between her brows crinkling, "But the good things is, I think I have my powers back."
"You think or you know?" Lucy asks, following Bonnie off the concrete porch, her monogrammed leather bag swinging on her arm.
Bonnie hadn't planned on calling Lucy, what she had planned on was a day filled with judge shows and claims of who was the father playing in the background while she frantically searched for an explanation in the grimoire on what happens when a vampire and a witch share blood, but when she slammed the book closed, cursing the name Salvatore, she looked around the living room to see all the candles had lit.
Lucy reaches for the handle of the passenger side door of Bonnie's Prius and sees Bonnie has no intention of driving anywhere as she watches her cousin jerk her head both ways to check for oncoming traffic before crossing the street.
"Where are you going?" Lucy yells out to her, annoyed that she has to walk anymore then she has to in her stiletto boots.
"Once again, the Salvatores' prove they have no clue how magic works and the cure needs more than a witch simply reciting words, I need to pick up some books from Grams to research what else I need," She says to her cousin who is trying to keep up with her steps into the clearing in the woods but Bonnie has the advantage of wearing Converses, "I thought we could take a walk through the woods to her house and I could test out my powers."
Twigs snap under Lucy's boots as she stops her trudge abruptly, "You do realize it's like thirty degrees."
Bonnie halts her steps and looks around at the barren, ashen trees, pointing their cold bony limbs upward to a drab and lifeless sky. She offers Lucy a weak smile, "We are witches, we love nature, remember?" She says her each word as a huff of white air.
Lucy straightens her earmuffs over her ears, "You are just dying to get back to helping Princess Elena"
Bonnie rolls her eyes, tramping along the worn path, "Don't call her that," She says not bothering to wait for Lucy to catch up or respond, "I have the power to help the ones I love, I can't sit back and watch my family suffer knowing I can protect them and finding this cure is bigger than just helping Elena, it will help my mom, and anyone else who might want to take it," She adds the last part of anyone else wanting to cure themselves of vampirism to better state her case but she knows her cousin is not convinced and she's not sure she's convinced herself either, because really the cure was her chance to right two wrongs , to have her sister back as she was intended to be, as a human, and to prove to her mother how important it was for her to have a relationship with her, by giving her her humanity back.
Lucy doesn't take the bait. "I'm not even going to start on Abby, Bonnie because we both know she's a sensitive topic for you," Lucy continues unafraid by the daggers Bonnie is throwing at her with her eyes, "Which one was it?"
"Which one what?" Bonnie asks, feeling her cheeks betray her by growing warm.
"Don't play dumb, was it Stefan or Damon, please say Stefan," Lucy pleads with a hope Bonnie hates to have to dash by uttering one name.
Bonnie leans against one of the thin trees and folds her arms across her chest, "Damon," she says softly with the sound of his name traveling through her nerves which she felt were turned inside out, raw and exposed to the elements.
Lucy shakes her head and takes a sip of her coffee, "So, he gave it to you huh?
Bonnie replays Lucy's questions as she digs the tip of her rubber sole into the damp earth but she doesn't know why they make her angry. What was she supposed to do? He was there and she wanted to get her powers back, she didn't know she was going to have to live and breathe inside his damn memories. The blood spell was only supposed to be a boost not to give her a glimpse of a fiend's life and now she was stuck wading in a murky ocean of Damon's emotions that was making her seasick. It wasn't like Lucy was telling her of any other way to heal besides waiting on spring and that's when the questions resonate, "Wait a minute!" She waves a finger in the air, pointing it at her cousin," You knew vampire blood would get my powers back all this time and you never told me?" Bonnie could hear her voice becoming shrill.
"I was hoping you wouldn't take the easy way out," Lucy levels before perching herself on a collapsed tree.
Bonnie slid the knit cap from her head because she feels overheated, like she is actually producing steam from her scalp, "Next time don't leave out information Lucy, tell me everything and let me decide what's best for me, okay?"
Lucy nods and occupies herself with finishing off her coffee.
Bonnie closes her eyes and is accosted by a naïve grin of a fresh face in Confederate grey and her own heart squeezes.
She flashes her eyes open and turns to the elder witch, "How long will it last? She needs a timeframe on how long she will have to endure Damon's pictures.
"Your powers are good to go now, it'll last as long as you don't overextend yourself again," She says, placing the empty cup on the dirt ground.
Bonnie narrows her eyes at her cousin because of her vague response; she thinks she is holding out on her again and she won't tolerate it, "That's great Lucy, but what about seeing the vamp's memories and feeling their emotions, how long am I going to have those?"
Lucy does the unthinkable and wrinkles her brow," Bonnie. What. Did. You. Do?" She spells out, leaves crunching as she comes to place her leather gloved hands on Bonnie's shoulders.
Bonnie looks up at her cousin, feeling all of her eighteen years and 5'2 height, "I did the spell with the blood sharing," She blurts like that piece of information should make Lucy back off but it doesn't, it only makes her cousin's mouth fall open and Bonnie's stomach drop.
"You shared blood with him!? And did a spell?!" Lucy shakes Bonnie against the tree with each question," What possessed you to do that? Which spell did you use?"
Bonnie thinks about what did possess her because she didn't want to share her blood, but a certain conniving vampire who didn't believe on doing anything without something in return convinced her to give up her blood and now she was paying the price of listening to the devil.
Bonnie ducks under Lucy and pushes her hands out in front of her because she can't take what Lucy is telling her, "Why are you speaking like there's more than one spell for vampire blood?"
Leather gloves fly to cover Lucy's mouth, "Oh my god Bonnie, which one did you use?"
"The only one I saw under the benefits of vampire blood!," Bonnie yells throwing her hands up above her head.
"This is why I tell you all the time you have to stop picking and choosing which spells to read and start from the beginning, the book was created according to the level the witch is progressing, skipping to the back insults your lineage. Why didn't you consult me first? Vampire blood might have helped you but you don't know even know what you've created," Lucy chastises with her hand on her hip.
Bonnie knows Lucy is right, and if this were taking place yesterday then Bonnie would have acknowledged she was wrong and even promise to Lucy she would consult her more, but not today. Today she wants to roll her eyes at her cousin and walk off, and throw in telling her how can she take her serious when she shows the same enthusiasm for a sample sale at Tory Burch as she does at attending a Sabbat, but she does neither, because neither reaction feels like her.
"If you tell me that I'm bonded to Damon, then, please kill me now," Bonnie says, opening her jacket to allow her cousin to take the very life from her body. She's being dramatic but this was Damon they were talking about.
Lucy gives a half-hearted laugh, "You say you can see his memories and stuff, you feel like you may know what he feels?"
Bonnie nods while buttoning her jacket.
"Sounds like whatever you did, you are getting to have a taste of what's it like to be Damon Salvatore," Lucy informs solemnly, bringing in her little cousin for a hug.
"Yay," Bonnie groans as her shoulders slump against Lucy, "Does that mean I am going to start being a dick and trying to have sex with anything that moves?"
Lucy laughs, "Probably."
They continue on to Gram's house in silence before Bonnie blurts, "Did you do something similar to this," She pauses wondering if she should even bring her up, "With Katherine?"
"Similar," she confirms, "And those side effects did wear off eventually," Lucy stresses flipping her hair from her shoulder and not offering a word more.
They never talk about Katherine. Bonnie understood that Lucy wasn't ready to reveal all in regards to her tumultuous relationship with the vampire, but Bonnie suspected their relationship was more than just a vampire using a witch for her magic.
"It'll wear off?" Bonnie chimes, happy to hear a bright side, "Then all I have to do is wait out being a mini Damon for a while, that's a somewhat small price to pay to help my friend if you ask me," She says, smiling at her cousin.
Lucy snorts, "For Elena's sake I hope she returns the favor," she remarks to Bonnie who continues to smile like she didn't hear a word she said. Lucy shakes her head because there was no reasoning with Bonnie when it came to Elena. She sighs deeply in defeat and shrugs, "Well before we go any further, let's see if ingesting that asshole's blood was worth it."
Bonnie's upper lip quirks and Lucy is reminded of a certain Salvatore as Bonnie snaps her fingers and uproots a tree.
BBBBBBBB
Lucy had hit the road before the five o' clock traffic and Bonnie sat with her knees tucked under her chin, gazing out her living room's bay window, during those lonely hours when the sun positions itself for rest and people rush home after a hard day to do the same.
At Gram's, she and Lucy turned the empty home upside down, tearing through every book to learn Bonnie and Damon's blood sharing had created an empathy bond, Bonnie was now privy to the vampire's past and the dark inner-workings of his soul. When Bonnie suggested they try a reversal spell, Lucy reminded her being impulsive with her magic is how she got herself into this predicament, and it would only last for a month or so, and that earlier that day she was singing a different tune about it being a small price to play, blah.. blah..blah.. Bonnie blocked out the rest of her gloating because if she would have listened to any more all she saw was her fist meeting her cousin's face and she stopped herself to ponder if that emotion belonged to her or Damon?
How was she going to keep her emotions separate from him? Maybe she could lock herself in a room and avoid all contact outside of school until she was just good ole' Bonnie Bennett, but the thought of spending a month cooped up in the house made her want to stick her head in the oven.
That definitely belonged to Damon, she thought.
She was about to drag her behind up the stairs when her dad surprised her by coming home a week early and wanting to treat his baby girl to dinner at the grill.
Be ready in an hour," he said, kissing her on the forehead so she could run up and change.
She showers, dresses and is ready and waiting by the door before her father. Was she really this excited to go to the grill? She flings her body backwards onto the couch and busies herself with her phone while she waits. There are missed texts from Caroline and Jeremy wondering why she wasn't at school, she texts Jeremy she'll be back tomorrow and she responds to Caroline's with, 'Going to grill with my dad, but let's talk tonight? I think we are overdue on a girls night out, what do you think?'
Bonnie immediately feels the phone buzz back but she doesn't bother with it because her dad is ready to go.
"How was school?" Her father asks while she rolls down the car window despite the cold weather.
She avoids his question by asking, "How much cologne did you put on, Daddy?"
She was choking on Aqua Velva.
Her father frowns and lifts his collar to his nostril for a sniff, "I thought you liked my cologne? You've never said anything before."
Bonnie had never liked her father's cologne but she also never said anything about it because the man had worn it since her birth so he obviously loved it. She composes herself by rolling up the window, and finds an out by divulging some truth, "I didn't go to school today because I didn't feel good, I think the cologne is bothering me because I'm not a hundred percent yet."
Her father extends his calloused hand to press against Bonnie's forehead, "You don't have a fever. After I drop you off from dinner, be sure to put on socks and rub some Vicks-salve on your chest," he orders.
It's always been this way. Bonnie tells him what she is doing or will do and he never questions her, because she has always been responsible, unlike other teens, and although she is glad she didn't have to deal with him in the morning, at that moment, she wants him to ask her more questions, catch her in her lie, or get mad at her for not calling him to tell him she was staying home, anything other than just taking her word.
"You're dropping me off? Jackie's not joining us?"
Jackie was her Dad's too young for him girlfriend, who was genuinely sweet, even though she was only ten years Bonnie's senior and sometimes behaved as if she were Bonnie's step-mother.
"Not for dinner, it's just you and me," He says like he deserves a cookie, "She thought I should spend more father/daughter time with you since you'll be leaving me for college soon."
I'm glad someone reminds you since Gram's is gone.
Bonnie takes a deep breath and reasons that she knows her father loves her, he just wasn't very good at the taking care of her part, and she has always been aware of this ever since she was a kid, she shouldn't be bothered by it anymore. It wasn't his fault he didn't know how to brush her hair into ponytails before school or how to pack her sandwiches without the crust. Most fathers, she reasoned, didn't know do that stuff. Besides, she would be gone to California soon and she didn't want to spend her last days living at home digging up things she felt she had long buried.
Her father was a good man, he wasn't perfect, but she thinks about Damon's father in comparison to hers and she believes she lucked out.
The doorbell chimes as they enter the grill which is sweltering from the heater and the many mouths opening to talk and eat. Her dad kisses the top of her head, "Grab us a table, I'ma go freshen up," he says, leaving to the men's restroom."
She spots an empty booth and sheds her coat and scarf as she walks toward the back wall through the crowded restaurant. The batting in the old leather cushion falls flat under her and she contemplates taking off her sweater because she is burning up. A family, seated a booth over from her, orders chili and Bonnie watches the middle-aged father wipe the sweat from his brow with the back of his hand after each bite and she can't take it anymore. She pulls the sweater over her head and feels only a bit of cooler in just her tank top.
She quickly checks herself out in the brushed metal of the napkin dispenser thinking maybe she was really coming down with something as she smoothes down her curls and glides a tube of cherry chap stick over her lips.
Bonnie scans the room for any familiar faces and doesn't see anyone particular worth impressing and that's when she sees him, clad in a black t-shirt with his back hunched over the bar, stools to the left and right of him vacant, and empty glasses littered around him.
The waiter sets two glasses of water on the table and Bonnie gulps down both before her Dad slides into the booth.
"What are you gonna get baby girl?"
She doesn't bother with the plastic menu because she knows it by heart and she's too young to order what she really wants which is a glass of something flammable.
"I'll have the classic and a chocolate shake."
Her dad smiles, "The same as me".
Bonnie stands and places her hand on her father's shoulder, "Dad, order for us, I see a, um, friend of uh, Elena's up there," She says and her Dad looks back to see what friend she is referring to. He doesn't see any teenagers where Bonnie is headed and he almost opens his mouth to protest when he notices the lone man at the end of the bar.
"Okay," He settles with himself because his daughter knows best.
She doesn't know why but each step she takes down the worn aisle toward Damon feels like they are triggering the restaurant's heater to turn ten degrees hotter and if her Dad wasn't in the same room, Bonnie thinks she would embarrass herself by taking off her top as well.
Piercing blue eyes casually glance over their shoulder and hone in on the likes of Bonnie Bennett showing off butterscotch skin in a tight black tank top in the dead of winter.
Damon thinks Bonnie must be a vampire too.
He doesn't turn away, but offers her a cursory nod, and Bonnie's breath is caught in her throat because she doesn't see him, but his mother telling her it's okay that she broke an heirloom but that she needs to run over to the Lockwood's before her Dad comes home and Bonnie wonders how many times his mother had to protect him before she died.
He smells like a distillery and he turns his head away once she is close enough to touch him, if one day she ever chose to do such a thing.
"Something making you hot, Bennett?" He asks before shooting the contents of his glass and slamming it on to the bar.
Her mouth waters and she picks a fight with herself for allowing herself to feel compassion for Damon, there were lots of people in the world who had horrible things happen to them and they didn't turn into monsters, why should he be given a pass?
She crosses her arms under her breasts and ignores his question, "I'm here with my dad, I saw you over here and thought it would be rude if I didn't say hello."
Damon snorts and mortifies her by acknowledging her staring father by raising his drink to him. "I smelled you come in," he says, his voice low as he pours another round.
Bonnie has been immersed in Damon's memories for the last 24 hours but the memories she's seen so far have been mostly of his human life and bits and pieces of his obsession over Katherine, she hasn't reached the full expand of his life as a vampire and although she's worried about seeing his descent, his familial break with his brother and his fixation with her best friend, what she is scared to death of is what she will find when the memories come to her, she didn't want to re-live the times he hurt her and feel his satisfaction; she didn't want to hate him more than she already did.
She fidgets, digs her nails into her arm, "I thought I'd go to the boardinghouse tomorrow and speak with you and Stefan about the cure."
"Oh?"
She inhales his musky cologne and speculates her blood must be scented with it, "I know Stefan thinks this spell is it but we are going to need to obtain a few things in order for it to work, I need to get back to my dad, so I won't go into detail here, but, tomorrow"?
"Whatever works for you, Witchy."
"Okay then," She says finding the courage to say what she wants because his back is turned, "Look," She loosens her grip on her arms, "I know I ran you out of my house the other night, so I never got to tell you thank you… for doing what you did."
Damon twirls the glass around in his hand, taking his time like he doesn't understand her words and is waiting for her to translate before he takes another sip and mutters, "You're welcome."
He looks over at a flat screen showing a basketball game he doesn't care about as he senses Bonnie anxiously step closer to him then back, and he wants her to just take a damn seat next to him already and share a drink while 'Dad of the Year' waits, because he's had a long day and he was going to have an even longer night and making Judgy smile was one of the few things he could think of that might turn it all around, but he can feel how unsure she is of whether she wants to occupy one of the stools next to him, and he's tired of people being unsure, so he makes the decision for her by abruptly turning to her and cocking an eyebrow, "Is that it?" He asks as if he just told her to 'get lost'.
Bonnie flinches out of her daze, "Yeah," she nods, "That's it."
She finds herself back at the booth with her father, listening to her dad prattle off about Elena needing to pick better friends and how his sales were soaring. She nods and smiles when she thinks she's supposed to, but her mind is elsewhere, it is busy burning a hole into the skull of the vampire still sitting at the bar.
Her phone vibrates and for a split second she thinks it's from him. Saying what? She didn't know, maybe asking her to come back, because she was positive she felt his want for her to stay, or was that her? She quickly stops herself from analyzing Damon's feelings any further because when she finally reads the text it's from Elena.
"Hey I know we haven't talked in a while, but I can't find Damon and Stefan isn't much help right now. Caroline said you were at the grill, is he there?"
She thinks about interrupting her time with her father again to approach the vampire and make his evening by telling him Elena was looking for him, but she looks up to see him stand and throw down a few bills on the bar without even a wave good-bye.
Bonnie sighs and thumbs her reply back to Elena.
'You just missed him.'