PROLOGUE - -
God, he really is beautiful, isn't he?
Jenna Michelle Sommers stares down the hall at a crowd of people gathered outside the doors to the cafeteria - or, namely, just one person. Damon Salvatore. She tries her very best not to be too obvious, but it doesn't matter, not really; practically every girl in sight has their eyes on him, too.
And why wouldn't they? He's gorgeous, after all. Tall, dark, handsome, with piercing, ice-blue eyes and rock-hard abs that any girl would kill to touch, just to graze their fingertips over -
"Earth to Jenna!"
Her best friend, Andie Star, waves her hand in front of Jenna's face. Blinking, Jenna turns to face the other girl - but not before shooting one last, longing look down the hallway of Mystic Falls High School.
"Admiring him again?" sighs Andie (like she can talk, she spends her entire fourth period concentrating on him instead of her English literature textbook).
Jenna reaches into her open locker for her chemistry textbook, tossing a quick glance at the clock. Less than a minute to the bell, and then she can go spend her entire fifth period doing exactly what Andie did all last class. Who needs to know how to balance chemical formulae, anyways? "Doesn't everyone?"
"Yes," grins her friend, leaning against the locker next to Jenna's. "Why wouldn't they?" Mischievously, she meets Jenna's blue eyes with her sparkling brown ones, running her fingers through her curls. "Too bad he's an ass."
Jenna casts another look towards the beauty of the twelfth grade. He's laughing, slamming his locker shut and heading for the chemistry lab. The bell rings; a loud, shrill sound that makes a boy down the hall jump, startled, and drop a heavy biology textbook on his foot. Jenna shuts her locker, turning back towards Andie again.
"But he's ridiculously hot!"
"Do you want to go to the winter formal with me?"
Jenna looks up from her chemistry textbook, startled. Crap, it's him. "Wh-what?" she stammers. Great. Just great. She looks (and sounds) like a complete idiot. What if he takes it back?
(What if she didn't hear it properly? What if this is a dream?)
Damon Salvatore smiles down at her, his eyes shining under the fluorescent lights of the chemistry lab. "I said," he repeats slowly, "do you want to go to the winter formal with me?"
Okay, so she heard him the first time. Maybe she just wanted to hear him ask her again. His voice was all silky-smooth and pretty and it made her heart skip a beat -
"Me?" she asks, half-hoping he'd say it again, because it's a beautiful sound. He only nods. Well, that's good enough for her. Damon Salvatore wants to go to the winter formal with her! She doesn't care why. It doesn't matter. This is a dream come true, so Jenna just smiles and tries not to sound too eager. "Okay."
Only once he turns away does she allow herself to blush.
"Let me get this straight," says Jenna's older sister, Miranda, carefully wrapping a lock of Jenna's auburn hair around the curling iron. "The guy you've had a crush on for six years asked you to go to the winter formal with him?"
"Yes!" cries Jenna excitedly; the sudden exclamation causes her five-year-old niece, Elena, to nearly fall off her lap. She glances at the clock on her bedside table for the hundredth time. Forty-two minutes until the formal. "Isn't it amazing?"
Miranda laughs, placing one palm on her little sister's shoulder. "Stop bouncing," she orders, though the seriousness that she's clearly attempting to force into her words doesn't exactly shine through. "You'll ruin your hair."
She's dancing with Damon Salvatore.
(Please don't let her wake up and this have all been a dream, a terrible, beautiful dream.)
Jenna wants to freeze time, to capture the moment so she can remember it forever. She wants to remember the jealous glares from every other girl in the room. She wants to remember his hands on her waist, his body only an inch and a half away from her own...
"Why did you ask me to go with you?"
Immediately, she wishes she didn't ask. Everything was so perfect, and now she'd ruined the moment, given him the opportunity to snatch away all that happiness and -
"Because I like you."
- everything was right again, it was all okay.
"I have for a while, actually," he adds, flashing his beautiful smile at her. It's strange; just those little words have drawn Jenna in like a moth to a flame. And, very suddenly, in front of everyone (add this to her list of things she wants to remember), Damon Salvatore leans down and presses his lips to hers.
AUTHOR'S NOTE | This is a rewrite/update of my story "Over My Head." I had literally no muse for continuing from the place that story had reached, so this is me trying again, and hopefully it'll work a little better. The prologue isn't all that different from the first version, but starting now, it'll progress a little differently.