Disclaimer: I do not own TVD or any of its characters

"Unable are the loved to die, for love is immortality."

-Emily Dickinson

This season was a little too humid, or so Jeremy Gilbert thought, as he wiped the sweat off his forehead while taking out his notebooks from his locker, now that he was unexpelled and, you know, alive.

"You dropped your pen", came a sudden voice from behind him. This would be the part where he would turn around to find he was about to be kidnapped or threatened or attacked or killed by some vampire-slash-werewolf-slash-hybrid-slash-original -slash-whatever other fucking creature that had to pop into their fucking lives because they didn't fucking already have an overdose of supernatural in it.

But instead, he found a pretty young brunette- and he instantly missed Elena a little bit more. He was happy to be back, and happy she was in college. But life with her in college and him under Damon's guardianship? Yeah, he was just the last straw away from painting a "FU" over his bloody blood bags.

He had to snap out of his mini brooding and focus his attention on the situation at hand- the girl who was holding out a pen in her hand, looking at him with a big smile and big blue eyes that couldn't hide how smitten she was. Oh, boy. Another one.

Jeremy rolled his eyes. This should be called the Hunters' Curse, how girls suddenly found him all macho and attractive. Granted he had dated enough, but he never had any experience with this kind of female attention. He didn't know what to do, and Damon's "try a foursome, I'll heal you with my blood when you die from the exhaustion of crying over how you couldn't get a boner" didn't help much.

"Um, thanks, but that's not mine." He mumbled at last, while shutting off his locker, after taking one last look at that picture of him and Bonnie that he still kept there, the one taken during one of her birthdays. It was like a reminder of happier times, or like a physical piece of Bonnie that he carried with him, to convince himself she was still with him, here, in Hell High.

"Oh", the girl looked a little flustered, but not discouraged at all. She ran her fingers through her curls, and smiled more brightly, the pen now awkwardly hanging between her fingers. "By the way, I'm May. I just moved here."

"Hi, May", Jeremy offered her a small smile. He tried to keep it brief, but polite. "Welcome to Mystic Falls. Hope you like it here." Or not. Get out of here before you lost it all, he thought in his mind.

May's eyes twinkled with hope. "Thanks!" she coyly tucked a stray strand of hair behind her ear. "I was hoping you could show me around after class... if you're not too busy."

"Actually, I am a little busy, so maybe another time? I'll see you around." And with that, he was gone, as fast as he could.

"Well, May was cute."

Jeremy started in his bed, startled by the sudden voice. He looked around the room, to spot Bonnie standing near the door, with her arms crossed. "Stop doing that!" He hissed at her, placing a hand over his wife-beater, as if to slow down the racing of his heart.

Bonnie grinned. As much as she was still having trouble dealing with the fact that she was now dead, she enjoyed scaring Jeremy every now and then. Though pranks had never been her thing, somehow this almost made her feel... normal. She leaned against the wall, and looked at him with eyes full of accusations. "Why didn't you take her out?"

"Uh, in case you didn't notice, Bon", he said, in his best Damon imitation I'm using sarcasm to hide my pain voice, "the last three girls that I dated kinda died."

"That had nothing to do with you", Bonnie argued. "And you know that. You need to get back to normal life."

Jeremy contemplated in his head. He thought about the deaths- Vickie, Anna, Bonnie, and how they had left him feeling... drained, empty, alone, devastated. How can you love again when everyone you love is taken away from you before you're ready to say goodbye?

"Maybe." He finally said, hoping that the diplomatic answer would please Bonnie and end the conversation, at least for the time being.

But it wasn't enough. She knew him too well to be convinced. She knew what he was thinking. "Maybe fourth times a charm." she tried to reason again. "She seemed really smart."

Suddenly, Jeremy arched up an eyebrow at her, smirking, turning the tables on her. "What, were you spying on us? Are you jealous or something?"

"I'm not jealous!" she sounded a little panicky, like a kid caught in the middle of painting a graffiti on the neighbor's wall, she realized. She quickly controlled the pitch of her voice. "We broke up, Jeremy." She pointed out.

He was quiet for a few moments, remembering the one non supernatural drama in his life recently. "Yeah, but before all of this happened, when we were looking for the cure, together..."He trailed off, suddenly apprehensive about his own beliefs. Was it all just in his head? Maybe death messed up his memories of his last moments?

She took a deep breath. Yes, before all of it happened, she was starting to feel the spark again. When he died, she was rattled so bad, and it wasn't just the expression consuming her. It was like a part of her was suddenly taken away from her. But then... "It doesn't matter." She stated firmly. "I'm dead now. You need to move on."

Silence filled the sharp air between them for a few moments, like an inert gas in a light bulb where the tungsten fiber has burnt out long ago. Then he spoke again. "Hey, Bon? Can I ask you a question?"

"Okay." She sounded unsure, even to herself. Where would this conversation lead to?

He almost whispered the words. "Why were you so mad about Anna?"

Bonnie sighed. She had never opened up to someone about this. Was she about to do that now? Was she ready to do that now?

She walked into the room and sat down on the bed. For the longest time she was engrossed in the clichéd action of smoothing the sheet again and again and again. Finally, she spoke.

"When two people break up and go on to find new loves, it means their story is over and it's time to move on to something new. It doesn't change what they once had. Like with Stefan and Elena, or Matt and Caroline... But when you went back to Anna, it undid everything we had, or I thought we had. It's like everything we had, between her death and her ghost popping out, it was all a lie... I don't know how else I'm supposed to react to that."

"Bonnie", Jeremy stared at her in disbelief. "How can you even think that it was all a lie? I.." He took a deep breath, suddenly craving words but finding none. "Anna and I never broke up, we never said goodbye. I didn't know how to react either."

"Do you know now?" Before she could stop herself, the question had already left her mouth, slipped out of the lips that sighed a hundred times every night thinking about what could have been, should have been.

He didn't need to think for even a moment before placing his hand over hers. And it killed them how he couldn't feel her touch, like he did, so many times before, not too long ago.

"This needs to", Bonnie chocked on some emotions that she couldn't quite put into words. "Stop it. I'm just a ghost now."

"You're not just a ghost." Jeremy stated firmly, his eyes staring intently into her beautiful soul. "You're Bonnie."

She was about to protest again but he beat her to it. "If Elena can be a vampire and still be my sister, then you... " Even though they couldn't feel it, he squeezed her hand. "If Silas can still be love with Amara after all these centuries... I won't let you go, Bonnie, not this time, no."

A/N: It's been a while. Reviews would be nice. Have a nice day! :)