Chapter 2
A/N Thanks for taking a chance on this story. I love to have people reading and commenting. Katherine is an important part of this story and she is introduced in this chapter.
"Stefan Meets Josh"
Stefan heard the piano the moment he stepped out of his Porsche. He knew right away it wasn't Damon playing. Not his style at all. So who was pounding the keys? He saw Damon's Camero and farther down the driveway, Mrs. Flowers' Mercedes. Whoever was at the piano hadn't arrived in their own car, unless it was Mrs. Flowers and she was into that kind of music, which he doubted.
The front door was unlocked, as it usually was when someone was at home. He entered quietly and peeked into the study. A kid! A teenage boy. Stefan stood at the edge of the doorway and watched. The youth hadn't seen him yet, concentrating on the keyboard. More attuned to that kind of music than Damon, Stefan appreciated the boy's skill faster than the older brother had.
Stefan was surprised that Damon was allowing the young fellow to pound away. Maybe Damon had retreated to the back patio.
The music suddenly stopped as the boy spotted Stefan.
"You don't need to stop," Stefan said, entering the study. "Who might you be?"
"I'm Josh Salvatore. Mrs. Flowers is my great aunt," Josh said, ready with answers this time.
"No kidding? I'm Stefan Salvatore. I guess we're distant relatives," Stefan said, and he held out his hand.
Josh shook his hand firmly. "Cool. Good to meet you, dude. Eh, Stefan. Damon says I'm not to call y'all 'dude.'"
"It's okay with me," Stefan said with a small smile. Attending high school, he was used to the way the kids talked to each other. At least Josh wasn't using the common four-letter words. Probably Mrs. Flowers had insisted he didn't. Ladies of her generation preferred not to hear that sort of language.
"You got a backpack," Josh noticed as Stefan laid it down on the nearest chair. The corner of a school book stuck out the top. "Are you in school?"
"A senior. If you're here, I guess you skipped school?"
"Yeah. Had a fight with my old man and hitched over here to visit my aunt," Josh admitted.
"You'll have to make up the work. Not fun," Stefan said, heading for the desk to look at the mail. He saw the letter addressed to him. Who? He wondered, sniffing. The letter smelled old and looked a bit battered. Who did he know in Tulsa, Oklahoma? He tried to make out the postmark. In fact, there were three postmarks, one of them new. Chicago.
Really curious, he carefully opened it while Josh went back to playing. A photograph fell out and he picked it up. It showed a pretty young woman wearing a straw hat, jeans and a plaid shirt. Stefan was shocked to see that the woman was Lexi, his old vampire friend. Lexi, who'd been dead-dead for a year now. He remembered that she had asked him if he had ever received a letter she had written him and he had said he hadn't. Writing letters to people on the move was often a waste of time. Somehow, someone had tracked him to Chicago and then to Mystic Falls. The fact that someone had tracked him at all was worrisome in itself, although Damon had managed to do so while Stefan was with Klaus.
The letter from Lexi told him of the death of someone they had both liked a lot. Stefan knew this already because she had told him in person when she had come to town. Stefan still felt a touch of anger when he thought of how and why Damon had killed her. The letter also mentioned how much she missed her old friend Stefan and the fact that they had had so many good times together. Stefan knew the good times had been because she was such a fun person.
Lexi had tried to find Stefan each time he had a birthday and many years she succeeded. The last time had caused her death. No more birthdays with Lexi.
"You look sad. Bad news?" Josh asked from the piano.
Stefan hadn't even noticed that the youth had stopped playing. "Old news really. But it reminds me of a friend who died. Two friends who died." He was pleased that he now had a photograph to remember Lexi by.
"Bummer. I lost a friend last year. Overdosed."
"Sorry to hear that."
"Me, too. Is there anything to drink around here?"
Stefan gave the boy a look.
"I meant like a Coke or something. A soda. Aunt Theo drinks tea all the time," the boy hastily said. "That's not what I want. And I didn't mean booze."
"We have Cokes and root beer. A friend likes root beer," Stefan said. "Come on to the kitchen." It was Jeremy Gilbert who liked root beer when he wasn't drinking real beer.
Stefan led the way to the kitchen, followed closely by Josh. The boy was shorter than Stefan, which was not surprising for his age. Which was what? Stefan wondered.
"How old are you?" he asked.
"Fourteen, but I'll be fifteen in a couple of months," Josh said, carrying himself as tall as he could. He stood five feet four and a half inches. He knew his father was five feet nine inches, so he expected to grow at least that tall, if not more, sometime. Sometime soon, he wished.
Heading for the refrigerator, Stefan suddenly wondered if Damon had any bags of blood in there. "Have a seat. Coke or root beer?"
"Coke," the boy said, plunking himself down on a chair.
Stefan retrieved two cans of Coke and noted that there were no bags of blood. He reached up to the nearby cabinet, changed his mind and opened another cabinet for a package of chocolate chip cookies. He set these on the table, handing Josh a can. The boy opened the can and took a long swallow. He also eyed the cookies as Stefan opened the package. For a few minutes the two of them ate and drank hungrily. They carried on an easy conversation.
"Why are there Post-it Notes on the cabinet doors?" Josh asked, looking around.
"Your aunt is re-organizing our kitchen. Without the notes we can't find things," Stefan said with a grin.
"Is that okay with you and Damon?"
"Yeah. Damon gave her permission. It's no big deal."
"You've lived here all your life and you don't care that she comes in and starts moving stuff?"
"Damon and I don't care so much because we don't live here all the time. We move around quite a bit."
"Why? 'Cause of his job?" Josh's aunt had told him that the brothers' parents were dead.
"No. Private reasons."
"What's he do for a living?"
"He's working with the sheriff these days," Stefan said, not wanting to say that Damon had no job and did nothing but cause trouble half the time. He did help out the sheriff on a volunteer basis now and then.
"Oh, wow. So he's a cop?"
"In a way. Don't cross him, okay?"
"Okay," Josh said.
Damon, who had heard Stefan say "Don't cross him, okay?", walked into the kitchen. He assumed Stefan meant him and was warning the boy. In a moment, Mrs. Flowers also came into the kitchen.
"Don't spoil your appetite for supper, boys," she said.
"Nothing spoils my appetite, Aunt Theo," Josh assured her.
"Mine either," Stefan quipped. He looked at Damon, who was scowling a little. Damon shook his head just slightly, a subtle warning, and Stefan wasn't sure what it meant. One thing it could mean was that the boy didn't know they were blood drinkers.
There was a knock on the back door close by and Damon, being closest, went to it. He could see who was there, because the door had glass in its upper half. He smirked and didn't open the door.
"Don't make me talk to you through the door, Damon. I can probably break the glass," growled the young lady on the outside.
"Katherine. How nice to see you," Damon said snidely after he opened the door. He knew that she could not get into the house since Mrs. Flowers had signed the lease papers.
The lady of the house moved closer to Damon to see who Katherine was. This was one of the people Damon had told her not to invite in. She was surprised to see that the young woman did look just like Elena, as Damon had warned her.
"I need to come inside, Damon," Katherine said. "All my stuff is here. I need to change clothes." There was a spot of blood on the thin shoulder strap of her lace camisole top.
Josh had moved over to see the newcomer. His eyes were fixed on her cleavage and rather good chest. Her tight cami top revealed that she was not wearing a bra.
Katherine spotted him, saw his fixed stare and spoke up, "Hi there, sweet cheeks." She looked him in the eye as he met hers, and then she moved her eyes down to his crotch where he had begun to respond to her breasts. Her stare increased his response. Totally embarrassed and red-faced, Josh turned and hurried from the room.
"That wasn't nice, Katherine," Stefan said.
"He shouldn't stare. Of course, I'm used to it, but still, that was fun. Now really, I need to come in."
"Mrs. Flowers," Damon said, "Katherine is often not a nice person at all. And as I told you before, she is one of us. She can't come in without an invite from you."
"You told me not to invite her in," the woman pointed out.
"Damon!" Katherine said, glowering at him.
"Maybe Bonnie could do a spell that would limit Katherine's access to the basement area she's been using," Stefan suggested.
"See, Damon, Stefan is not as closed-minded as you," the pretty vampire said with a false smile.
"That's a thought," Damon said. "We could ask Witchy. In the meantime, you can't come in, Katherine. Go hang out somewhere else. I'll call you if you got your phone."
Katherine swore at him, patted her small purse and then vanished in a blur.
"Damon, that probably wasn't smart to make her mad," Stefan said. "If something happened to Mrs. Flowers, Katherine could come right back in."
He realized that his statement was frightening to Mrs. Flowers and he thought to amend it. "I mean…"
"She might attack me?" the older woman said with alarm.
"Nice move, Stefan," Damon said. To the woman he added, "Don't go outside tonight. We'll get Bonnie over here and try to fix this." He wished Katherine would just leave town, as she often did.
"Oh, dear. This isn't good. Perhaps we should just let her in," Mrs. Flowers suggested.
"No. This is life with us vampires," Damon murmured to her. He gave her a crooked smile. "For now, don't invite her in. I'll see what we can do to accommodate her."
"Please do. Thank you. Now, I need to see if Josh is all right. She really humiliated him," the woman said.
"Let me go talk to him," Stefan said. "You know, guy to guy."
"Yes. All right. That would be better," she agreed.
"I'll call Bonnie," Damon said. "I don't know that she'll help, but I might as well ask."
"Don't be snarky to her," Stefan said. "Be nice."
Damon gave him a sneer and then reached in his pocket for his phone.
Stefan went up to the boy's room and knocked on the door.
"Go away."
"It's Stefan. I want to talk to you. About that woman."
"No."
"Yes," Stefan said and he opened the door easily because it wasn't locked.
"Leave me alone! She did that on purpose! In front of everyone!"
"Yes, she did. She didn't like you staring at her boobs." Stefan sat on the bed, because Josh was at the desk.
"If she didn't want me to look, why does she dress that way?"
"You have to learn to balance looking without staring. You have to make frequent eye contact so women know you don't consider them just a couple of boobs. Or just a pair of legs. Or ass. Women like to be admired for their looks and their clothes, they really do, but they don't want a guy to stand there like an idiot, drooling. You were practically drooling. It's real uncool."
The conversation went on about Katherine and about women and about a guy's response to them. Stefan's understanding of the situation was from a young male's point of view, but also based on decades of experience. He made it interesting enough with funny little stories to keep Josh's attention and not fall into lecture mode.
Josh's attitude loosened up quite a bit. Despite the humiliating episode, he hoped to see Katherine again.
A/N Working on the next chapter. Katherine isn't going away. Please review to encourage me to keep going with this story.
