"How about spin the bottle?" Tyler proposes, trying to hide a huge grin from his face.

Caroline rolls her eyes, moving her lips into an unnatural position, before giving him a condemning look. "You just want to shove your tongue down as many throats as possible," she says, disgusted by the very idea.

He looks at her, confused by her statement, as if wanting to do that is such a bad thing. "Well," he starts seriously, but then his eyes start glimmering with excitement, "Yeah!" he turns his head towards the rest of the group and pretty much all the guys burst into laughter, with Tyler in charge.

Her lips part a little, as if she really expected him to deny it, and she gives me I-can't-believe-you-dated-this-jerkface look. I just shrug, downing the small amount of vodka left on the bottom of my cup. It's not like I want to kiss my ex-boyfriend half drunk in a corn maze, but there's nothing I can do about it - it's the end of the school party and people are so drunk already that some mistakes are bound to be made.

"What about truth or dare?" Caroline proposes, desperately trying to avoid having to make out with someone she wouldn't ever make out with under any other circumstances.

"Everyone always dare someone to kiss someone else," Tyler points out, and he has a point, since there's not much to do here, in the middle of a maze, in our middle of nowhere town. "So it's basically spin the bottle, just with us having to hear Sean confess he had sex with his cousin."

"Third knee cousin!" Sean yells from the crowd, and everyone burst into laughter again.

"That doesn't make it better, man!" Tyler retorts grudgingly, angry that all of the attention has been stripped away from him.

I guess everyone accept that we will be playing spin the bottle after all because they start forming a circle, and some guy chugs down almost half liter of beer in one breath to free a plastic bottle for us to play with. Caroline grabs my wrist and pulls me down next to her. The guy who drank all that beer is the first one to spin the bottle, and it points towards some girl whose name I would probably know if I weren't buzzed. His buddies start cheering, but the girl frowns before smiling politely and giving him a quick peck on the lips.

Stefan appears behind me and replaces my empty cup with a full one.

"Spin the bottle, eh?" he says softly. Stefan's voice always turns extra soft when he gets slightly buzzed, like he's trying to put you to sleep.

Before I'm able to say anything in return, even though I have no idea what I would say, a bunch of guys start shouting in our direction.

"Yo, Stefan, over here!" he drags his look lazily from me, to them, before giving me an apologetic look, like he's asking for my permission to go play with the other boys.

I shrug. "Go," not that I care. But I do care. I like that we're friends. I like when he chooses me over them. I like when he decides to spend his time with me rather than with them, lately more than ever.

He gives me a light smile before standing on his feet and taking a running step towards the rest of the football team.

It's hard to keep track who gets to kiss who. All I get to hear are cheers and shock and laughter.

At least until Rebekah shouts, with her squeaky voice and over the top accent - "Stefan, baby, come 'ere, I get to kiss you!"

Her little possy starts clapping and shouting cheers of support, while I can see Caroline looking at me from the corner of her eyes. I monitor Stefan's reaction through my lashes, pretending to play with my cup.

He looks up at her, confused by her sudden statement, but she doesn't seem to notice. She saunters over to him, bumping people on the back of their heads with her knees. When she comes so close that she's basically standing in front of him, he realizes that he has no other choice but to stand up as well.

She flops her arms around his neck, digging her fingers into his skin, and pulls his lips down on hers, aggressively. Some guys from the football team cheer, some stay calm and collected, while I desperately try to see is there any tongue involved.

He's the first one to pull away, obviously, and she looks a bit disappointed after he does so. Rose hands her the plastic bottle, and she pushes it in Stefan's hands.

"Your turn, gorgeous," she winks at him and goes back to her place, giggling. Her friends greet her as if she just won the Nobel Prize.

I look at Caroline, who's still watching me curiously, trying to detect something that's obviously not there, or I'm just that good at hiding it, and mouth the word gorgeous to her, while rolling my eyes.

She huffs, sporting a tiny grin on her lips.

While we're making fun or Rebekah and her choice of words, we don't even notice that everyone have stopped talking and are looking in our direction.

Stefan has spun the bottle - and it's pointing right at me.

Over the years, Stefan and me were lucky - whenever one of us spun the bottle, it never pointed to the other one. Well, once, while I was with Tyler, and Stefan kissing me would break some sacred bro code between them. "The only way I'd let you kiss my girl is if you were another girl," I remember Tyler saying, and those word shook my bones with anger. That's one of the reasons why I broke up with him - he always thought he has to let me do something.

People are staring at me, in silence, patiently awaiting my next move.

"We don't have to do this," he says with that soft voice of his, and all eyes turn to him.

Before anyone else complains, I retort cockily. "Why? You afraid you're going to like it?"

I would have never said that if I haven't consummated at least five cups of vodka by now. Still, I'm slightly buzzed, not drunk to the point that I have no idea what I'm saying.

I hear few gasps, the loudest one coming from Caroline who's sitting right next to me.

Other girls wouldn't dare to talk to him like this. If he told them that they don't have to kiss him, which is as close to refusal as you can get, they would run off crying.

I get up on my feet and start walking towards him on my toes. I've left my shoes in his car, saying I don't need them, out of some reason. As it turns out, I do need them, because the ground is covered with tiny rocks that are now hammering themselves into my soles.

I'm wearing denim shorts and Ramones top with its fringes falling across my stomach. I must look like a savage, or a homeless person at least.

"Come on, Stefan," I tease him, smirking, "What harm can one kiss do?"

He stares at me, intensely, before answering - "Fine."

His answer throws me back a little.

I don't know why his refusal angered me. Why wouldn't we kiss? Why would different rules apply to us? It's just one kiss, it's not going to destroy us. We're not going to fall madly in love or start up a chain reaction of events.

Why doesn't he want to kiss me?

But now that I'm standing in front of him, ready to smack our lips together, I don't want to kiss him either.

I'm afraid of what it might mean, of what it might make me feel, I'm afraid that I'm the one who's going to like it too much, and that he's not going to like it at all.

But I'm not the one who makes the first step. My feet stay on the ground, not moving, not even an inch. I feel like I'm sinking in.

One step is all it takes for us to stand as close as two human beings can, body to body. My mind goes straight to that day in my backyard, that moment we've never discussed or brought up again, that moment when we came so close to kissing each other. I spent the rest of the day in my room crying because I've felt like this changes everything, as if something is shifting, as if I'm losing my best friend. My mom is the only person I've talked with about it, and she told me that kissing him doesn't mean he'll stop being my best friend, but that he'll simply become something more. And that made me feel significantly better, but when I saw him the next day he didn't bring it up, so neither did I.

He lifts one of his hands and the tips of his fingers flutter above my elbow. His touch is so gentle that I have no idea have I imagined it, or is he actually touching me.

I look down at where his skin is supposedly meeting mine, but before I'm able to do anything, to convince myself of anything, his lips are on mine.

He kisses me, gently, softly, slowly, and I'm surprised when I find myself kissing him back. Why am I surprised? I shouldn't be surprised when, I realize at that moment, this is what I've wanted to do for a long, long time.

He tastes so, so, so sweet, like Harshey's kisses and maple syrup on a hot, thick pancake, like first rays of the morning sun on your skin or the happiness of catching a shooting star. His lips, soft like satin, remind me of all the good memories we ever had together.

It's time to pull away, our time is over, our kiss should have ended a long time ago. It wasn't even a kiss, it was a peck on the lips, so soft, so quick, like butterfly clapping its wings. A butterfly kiss.

But he doesn't let me pull away, as if he can sense that I don't want to pull away either. Maybe he's my genie, fulfilling one of my three wishes.

But oh, if all of his kisses can make me feel like this, then I would spend all of those three wishes on kissing him.

He puts his hands on my hips, but somehow they circle around my body and all of a sudden his arms are wrapped around my waist. He kisses me stronger, deeper, rougher, he kisses me in a way that I'm glad he's holding me, because my bones have liquefied and I'm pretty sure I'm unable to stand on my own.

I press my palms against his chest to steady myself, because all the blood from my brain has rushed into my heart, which is beating wildly, like the cries of an Amazonian woman. I'm dizzy and lost and I have to hold on to him to fight the urge of falling into him.

People around us start cheering and shouting. Some are even laughing; not cruelly, but amused.

"Fuckin' finally!" someone yells.

I try not to listen to them, because I'm holding my dreams between my lips, and that's all that matters.

"Wait, aren't they bangin' already?" Sean's words sneak themselves past my barriers and travel inside of my brain, making a commotion.

Some people laugh and, this time, their laughter changes in length and form, which makes me stop the kiss. My palms on his chest harden, like a stone, and I push myself away from him, our lips detaching.

I can feel the cold wind on my hot and bothered mouth. I want to close it shut, but I need air, because he stole everything I've stored inside of my lungs.

Something's missing. The skin of my lips is growing thicker and harder; it's lonely and it's weeping.

I look him in the eyes, he seems to be awaiting answers from me, while I expect the same from him.

Something inside of me snaps - dreams become hazy, excitement converts back to fear, and my want only confuses me more than it used to.

I back away from him, turn around, and start walking with a running step. I can see his lips in my mind, forming my name even before I hear him saying it out loud.

I make my way through the maze. I don't know where I'm going. Maybe it's better that way.

He says my name couple more times, each time louder.

I stop when I reach his truck, like I've hit a dead wall. I turn around, and there he is, standing in front of me. I cross my arms across my chest, taking a defensive stance, before saying - "Can you please take me home?"

"Elena.." he says my name pleadingly.

I tear my look away from him. "Stefan, please, just take me home."

He doesn't say anything after that, but instead he sighs and nods, taking his car keys out of his pocket.

We stay silent for the entire drive, him looking straight ahead, me looking through the window, even though darkness is the only thing I can see. When we reach my house, he parks the car in front of it and turns the engine off. I know that I should leave before he says anything, but I don't. I'm too curious about what he has to say to me.

"I told you we don't have to do it," he says, his voice low, but not soft anymore. Instead it's rough, serious, scary.. like whispers from your nightmares.

"I know," I say, looking down at my lap, at my dark skin kissed by early summer sun, "That wouldn't solve the problem."

"And the problem is..?" he asks, curious to know the answer.

"The fact that I wanted to kiss you," I answer honestly, "The fact that I've wanted to kiss you for quite some time now."

Silence fills the small space of his truck. Silence keeps my head bowed down. Silence crawls inside of me and tightens my throat shut.

"I see," he says after several moments of silence, moments that have stretched time into a never ending void, swallowing me whole, making me feel like I'm fluttering into eternity. "The truth is, I've wanted to kiss you for quite some time now as well."

His answer makes me raise my head and look at him with expression of shock and disbelief on my face. "You have?" I ask, and his grimace tells me that I shouldn't be so surprised by that fact.

"Yeah," he nods, confirming his previous statement, "Lately, all I've been doing is thinking about kissing you," he confesses.

I can't believe he's been going through the same stuff I've been going through and that I haven't noticed it.

"But that's wrong!" I argue him, "We're friends! And friends don't kiss!" I know how childish and ignorant I sound, but I can't find any better words to describe how I feel about this whole situation.

"I want to do more than just kiss you," he says, words barely getting out of his mouth, as if there's an invisible barrier inside of his throat.

"What do you mean?" I ask in horror.

A light smile makes his face lines pop up, making his whole face brighter once he realizes how awfully wrong that sounded. "What I mean is, I want to be with you," he bites his lower lip, his eyelids fluttering, "As more than just friends."

As more than just friends.

What if something goes wrong? What if we try, and fail, and realize that there's no going back? What happens then? Then I lose him.

But this way.. this way I don't have him the way I want to have him.

I lose him in both scenarios, either by giving up, or by never giving in. By giving up, losing him is certain, by giving in.. the possibilities are endless.

"I want.." I whisper, barely hearing myself. I clear my throat, because this is something that needs to be heard, which is why I raise my voice. "I want that as well."

His lips still hover above mine, but I can feel the change in his posture. His whole body tenses, especially the muscles still near my skin. I can hear his breath getting caught in his throat, but he releases it soon, probably to hide his initial reaction.

He moves further away from me, and I try to hide my disappointment, both from him and myself.

"His name is Matt," I say, not really sure why I decided to share that piece of information with him. It's like my brain came up with those words, but they never got a permission to crawl out of my mouth.

Stefan's eyes widen with shock, discomfort, surprise.. probably every emotion known to mankind.

"We're engaged. He proposed before I came here. Actually, that's why I came here.." now I'm just rambling. Words are knocking each other, stepping over one another in a hurry to get out of my mouth. "To ask you for a divorce. So I can get married."

But I never asked him. I commanded him. I showed up and demanded from him to put his signature on a bunch of papers, no explanation. I thought not seeing each other for six years is an explanation good enough, but I never took how he might be feeling into account.

Say something. Please, say something, I plead silently, in the privacy of my own mind.

But before he gets a chance to say anything, in case he ever planned to, the doors fly open, and a soft, young voice says - "Mr. Salvatore, I - "

One of the waitresses opens the door, the same one who told me that I can find him here, and when she sees us, staring at each other, me shaking like a leaf, and him with a dead look in his eyes, she stops in place.

"I'm sorry, I - " she starts, but I interrupt her mid sentence.

"It's okay, I was just leaving," I head for the door, and she steps aside for me to pass freely. He doesn't try to stop me.

He doesn't even say a word.

STEFAN'S POV

She is so soft and comfortable. When I wrap my arms around her, I sink into the elastic of her skin and lose myself in a place between heaven and hell.

How can someone so tiny feel so big, so strong, so powerful and important in my arms? She is made out of force ten times bigger than this entire planet, she is made out of particles which fell from the surface of the moon and sand that stars shook off before the sun ate them; they've been traveling through the galaxy for millions of years, through time and space, which is why, when you look into her eyes, you see planets still undiscovered, things one simple human being can't even begin to comprehend.

In Elena there's a beauty humans won't ever discover, no matter how far they travel, no matter the size of the ships they build.

The tips of my fingers push into her flesh and I can feel her bones shaking with excitement and relief. She becomes so fragile in my arms and I'm afraid that she will fall apart into pieces and that I won't know how to put her back again.

Please don't protest to me kissing you, please don't protest to me kissing you, I plead in my mind, the words moving by the speed of light, before my lips fall down on hers. The feeling is underwhelming, at least until she starts kissing me back.

Pressing my lips against hers feels just like kissing a memory, a print on a pillow, an image disappearing through a thin air.

But when her lips start moving, synchronized with mine, everything inside of me comes alive.

I'm on a roller coaster of emotion as her skin keeps rubbing gently against mine, as her breath travels down my throat, into my lungs, and I get a new, fresh piece of her to carry around with myself.

After six whole years, I finally feel complete again. My fingers graze against the hem of her shirt, exposing the small of her back, and I can tell where her spine begins. She puts her hands on my chest and my heart starts bouncing against her open palm.

Then, she pushes me away. Or she pushes herself away from me.

I don't know how much time passes until she says those words - there's someone else - because looking at it now it feels like seconds, and then it feels like an eternity.

The image in front of my eyes start breaking like a mirror and she disappears with the broken fragments. She's rambling, talking about things I don't want to know, each word she says I completely throw out of my vocabulary, pretending that I don't understand what she's saying. Maybe that will make it less real.

It doesn't.

My thoughts become too loud, and her voice turns into background noise. I don't know which is worse.

There's someone else.

His name is Matt.

He proposed.

That's why I came here.

Divorce.

So I can get married.

Those sentences keep replaying themselves in my head, like a broken record, long after she leaves the room.

I start crying as soon as I get back home. Tears started gathering in my eyes after I left the storage room we've been trapped in, but I've managed to hold them in.

I fall down, exhausted by my own thoughts, victimized by my own mind, and fall asleep on a pillow drenched with tears. When I wake up, the sun is replaced by the moon, and there are gazillion of stars circling around it, like its faithful minions.

I get up, dizzy and disoriented, still in my day clothes, all creased and crumbled. My hair is a mess, and there's a dried trail of tears on both of my cheeks. I don't have to look at myself in the mirror to confirm it, I can feel it.

I open my bedroom door, because the room feels too small, too stuffy, too full to fit me inside as well, and I stumble over to the living room, lead by the light buzz of our tv.

I find my dad half asleep in his armchair.

"Dear God, Elena!" he exclaims when he sees me standing there, looking like I just arrived from a battlefield. "You look like hell. What happened?" he sounds concerned.

"Why didn't you tell me Stefan went looking for me in New York?" I ask. Not angrily, not accusatory. I just...ask.

He tightens his jaw, his expression turning serious and hard. "Because it doesn't matter anymore."

No, it matters.

It shouldn't matter, but somehow, out of some reason, it does.

"Why didn't you tell him where I am?" I ask curiously, wanting to hear it from him.

"Because I decided him showing up at your doorstep is not what you needed at the moment."

"That wasn't your call to make."

"And giving him your address wasn't my call to make either," he argues, "When it comes to this, I can't win," he sighs. "I wanted to tell him, after he came back, after he.." he coughs, "After I saw how destructive he was towards himself. But then he got better, and opened Will's Playground, and everything - "

"What?" I ask, interrupting him in the middle of his sentence, horrified by the sound of that name.

He looks up at me, his eyes traveling to mine, buzzing from the intensity of my voice. "Before Empire, there was Will's Playground," I squeeze my eyes shut, clenching my fingers into a fist, "It was for children only. After it expanded, Stefan found it.. inappropriate. You didn't know?"

No, I did not know that he..

I shake my head no before opening my eyes. "I have to go."

"Elena.." he starts, trying to stop me, to keep me here.

"I'll be fine," I reassure him, even though I don't believe in it myself, "There's just someplace else I need to be right now."

I turn around and take a running step towards the front door, disappearing into the night. There's a chilly breeze outside, and the night is so dark that I can barely see a finger in front of my nose. Broken street lamp is buzzing while producing barely visible light. I can feel the tears welling in my eyes again, and this time I have no choice but to let them out.

I know where I'm going. I can draw a path in my mind. I remember everything about this town - I just like to pretend that I don't.

It's a ten minute walk from my house. Up the hill, where the grass reaches your knees.

One, two, three steps, add several more, and I'm up.

I'm shaking, but not from the cold. From memories. The chilly wind is not responsible for the goosebumps on my skin.

I move among small stone tablets, trying not to step on any of them, out of respect.

I know where I'm going - fourth row, second parcel.

I'm close.

I miss him.

I'm sorry.

I never meant to.

It's all my fault.

Please forgive me.

My breath gets caught into my throat. My lungs are empty.

It's hard for me to stay alive that way.

Good.

I deserve it.

The tears are trickling down my neck. They're everywhere.

I fall on my knees, bruising them on the edge of a stone.

I sob.

"Hi, Will," I say softly, quietly.

The stone is cold. So was he when I touched him that night. When I yelled his name and reached for his hand.

Angels blank, cold eyes are piercing through me.

I close my eyes.

"Mommy's here."