"Have you got everything?" Liz asked for the millionth time. I rolled my eyes but nodded. If she didn't let up I was gonna miss my flight. The flight she so desperately wanted to put me on. "Good. You know your father and I–"
"Are only doing this for my own good. Yes, mom. I know." I frowned.
I don't know what was wrong with me. Okay, so I knew why I was upset but literally any girl my age would gladly accept that her parents were shipping her off to London no matter the circumstances. I mean it's not like I'd be a total pariah all on my own in a foreign land. I'd be living with my big brother, Stefan. But then again I couldn't just conveniently forget that this was my parent's way of pawning off all their problems, me, on their prodigal son who'd luckily escaped the dysfunctional farce of their relationship a few years ago.
I'd never been my parent's favorite, they never had any time for me and we were never really close as a result. But after everything that happened with Damon…well lets just say I was downgraded from least favorite child to the barely tolerated offspring, losing my status as a child of theirs entirely. It wasn't hard to see how my parents blamed me for everything that happened. I didn't mind it much. I was a little busy throwing myself into my partying career. A little liquor here, a few joints there, I'd found the perfect cocktail to forget all my worries. When the loud thumping beat thrummed through me, jolting my consciousness back from floating away with the alcohol and drugs I could just be one with the party. I could be free. I didn't have to find new ways to cope with what I had done. As far as I was concerned all I had to do was live my life to the fullest by having fun. Living it up just so happened to help assuage my guilt. Granted it was because I couldn't feel anything, much less guilt, but that wasn't the point.
"Well, this is it then. Love you, Caroline." I stared blankly at her as she forced a smile onto her lips. I felt small prickles on the edge of my heart. Her smile hadn't been happy in at least a decade. There was too much sadness behind them, especially now.
"Ditto. Bye mom." I gave a small half-hearted wave and made my way to my terminal.
I did still have some time to kill, but wandering around the little delis and sitting in a hard plastic chair beat spending any time with my mother that wasn't absolutely necessary. Odds are she would have just made awkward small talk and assured me that I'd be ok with Stefan and that the time away would do us all some good.
When the plane finally did start boarding I was relieved that my parents had put me in the first row of seating. Granted they could've set up a private flight for me like they did for Stefan or at least let me buy my own ticket so that I could be in the comfort of first class but at least I could get off the plane without having to deal with too many cranky people on my way out.
Finding Stefan in the crowd of people was easy enough. He'd already found and retrieved my luggage for me and I don't think many men would be walking around with several bright teal suitcases. Especially not men in black leather jackets, black sunglasses, and wicked looking boots. I smirked when I saw him. His badass look was totally thrown off by the warm, loving smile he was giving me.
"Caroline!" he pulled me into a bear hug the second I was close enough. "You look so different, Carebear."
"Look who's talking." I smile my first real smile in months. Stefan was always able to dredge out the best in me, he didn't make me feel like the spawn of Satan like our parents did. He nudged me in the ribs gently.
"Come on, lets get you to your new home." I nodded appreciatively.
Stefan and I had always been close. Out of everyone in my family, he was my favorite. At 22 he was 3 years older than me, but I'd never really felt the age gap until he moved away to London. I'd hated him for a whole year after he'd left, which was a new record for me considering the longest I'd ever been able to stay mad at him up until then was only 35 minutes. I missed him dearly and felt so alone and sad being stuck with our family without him. But did he care? Nope. He'd just left me to move halfway around the world.
But he visited often and was eventually able to wear me down and talk to me about why I was conveniently never home when he was anymore. Big brother visits were considered family time but I'd always made an excuse to be somewhere else, anything to avoid the prick that'd left me. Anyway, once we'd talked it out and I realized I was being silly, he went back to being the only person in the family that I actually liked, despite his prodigal son status.
Despite the circumstances I was excited to be living in London with my big brother. I wanted to see what he'd made of himself. After he graduated valedictorian of his high school class my parents were dead set on shipping him off to some Ivy League. Yale was in our blood, for the past 5 generations, but they would have happily settled for Princeton. Stefan on the other and hadn't very much liked the idea. He'd told me he felt like he was trapped in a little box. He didn't want to go to college just to please them. It was considered the next logical step after high school, but his heart wasn't in it. He was getting crushed by a box of their making. So he skipped out on the whole college experience, moved out to England, and became a supervisor at some merchandising company. Now he'd worked his way up to CFO of said company and even did a bit of freelance modeling when he found the time. I was really proud of him.
The ride to his house wasn't very long, just a little bit of traffic. We caught up on a ton of things in the small span of time. He told me a little bit about the school I'd be going to. A two year 'Sixth Form' option for high school graduates where you can choose the classes you take. That's all I'd managed to catch of it anyway. I was more focused on being tourist-y and gazing out the window at interesting stuff, that and I was a little too focused on how wrong it felt to be on the left side of the road rather than the right.
"Are you excited to start?" he asked, pulling into a very modern-style apartment complex. Stefan got out the car and pulled some of my bags from the trunk. I took out the rest and followed him inside.
"Not really. I'm more excited to be done with it." I was honestly just biding my time until our parents were sufficiently satisfied that I had changed for the better. Then I'd collect my trust fund money and be done with them.
"Oh come on, look at it this way: you get out of college and you get to be in England." I let a smile slip, conceding that he'd made some very good points. Like him I'd had no desire to go to college. I'd barely passed high school after everything that happened. It wasn't that I got bad grades its that I was just never in school. I spent my time partying hard. It just so happened that my recoveries usually happened during the school day.
"And I get to be around hot British guys with their hot British accents." I nudged Stefan in the ribs playfully. Accents for me were like beer goggles, it helped that most foreign guys I'd come into contact with were hot but that wasn't the point. I was excited to begin partying with the best of them but judging by Stefan's disapproving grimace, I'd either have to hide it or not do it at all. Poor Steffy, older brother syndrome kicking in and I've only been here for like an hour.
Stefan's apartment was on the top floor and the elevator let out in a hallway where there were only two doors across the hall from each other. If Stefan bought out the apartment across the hall and then gotten permission from the super he could do some renovations it'd be a very plush penthouse. Stefan went to the one on the left and swiped his key through the reader. His apartment was very nice, if not a little too big for someone on his own. It had four bedrooms, three bathrooms, a full kitchen, a dining room, and a rather spacious living room, all decorated very modernly. It looked like something straight off of google.
"God, Stefan. Lux much?" he laughed, telling me that apparently his coworkers would disagree. While all this seemed very luxurious to me, they found it to be a downgrade from where he should be living.
"Here let me show you your room." Stefan walked down one of the hallways on the left side of the apartment and put my bags in front of the door at the very end. I gave him a hug and thanked him and he wandered off, promising to give me some time to settle in.
Taking a deep breath I opened the door to my new room, almost afraid of what I'd see. I'd always been one for bigger and brighter while Stefan was content with the simpler, more solid things. I say aqua Stefan says black, I say magenta, and Stefan says white. There was no winning.
The room was pretty nice though, I had a decently sized closet with sliding mirror doors, a full sized bed in the center with purple and white sheets and comforter, there was a flat screen tv docked on the wall directly across from the bed, and a desk off to the other side of the bed that already had a few books on it. The walls were a pleasant shade of purple with classic white moulding and a plush white carpet to match. She had an eyegasm just being in it.
Before allowing myself to enjoy any of it I set a schedule in my head. It should only take me about an hour or so to get all my clothes and essentials put away. There was even an en suite bathroom in the corner of the room. It was very simple but very pretty. Once unpacked and sufficiently settled I changed into more comfortable clothes. I went to find Stefan. It smelled like he'd already started on dinner. I closed my bedroom door behind me and followed the scent of sweet potatoes to the kitchen.
"Look at you being all domestic. What if you mess up your hair?" I slide into a barstool and watch him at work. It seemed like he'd actually grown to know his way around the kitchen. He was chopping up veggies like a pro and the steaks he was cooking looked like they had been perfectly prepped. He threw a carrot at me and resumed to spinning around the kitchen grabbing one thing or another. "Hey, Stefan, I just wanted to say thank you."
"For what?"
"For everything. For always being there for me. For taking me in after everything. And for treating me the same despite what happened. I mean if it weren't for you, mom and dad would have shipped me off somewhere else on my own. Anything to get rid of their out of control trouble child."
"You're not out of control Caroline. You and I both know how much you savor having control. You've just had a bad year. Anyone in your position would take it hard." He sighed. "Plus we both know our parents can barely handle their own troubles maturely and responsibly, and they know that too. They just did what they knew would be best for you, Care. You're not some burden, you're my baby sis. Besides I could use the company."
"Ah, so I take the broody loner thing carried over to England? There's no 'company' you have to speak of right now?"
"So not going there with you, Ms. I'll-kiss-a-new-boy-every-day-to-piss-off-my-parents. But no, not right now anyway." I stared at him suspiciously. Stefan hadn't had a serious girlfriend in a while. Not since his awful high school sweetheart, Elena Gilbert. Even I thought they would last forever. She had us all snowed. He couldn't still be bent out of shape over her could he? "Anyway do you want to start as soon as possible or on Friday so you can have more time to get supplies and adjust to the city?"
Smooth topic change. I took the plate of food he handed me and shrugged. I wouldn't mind starting school on Friday. I did need to email my teachers and find out exactly what I'd need for their class and some time to relax in general. But since I'd already missed a week of classes, postponing it any further wasn't an option. I was way too far behind for my liking.