Elena found out about the craft store a few months ago via internet. Apparently, she traded one Saturday shift for three Sunday shifts at the small movie theatre where she works so she could hop on a bus to check it out. When she told Damon that she had been, he got so mad. He gave her this huge lecture about how girls like her shouldn't be traveling on buses by themselves. He yelled, told her she was naive and she should have told him she was going so he could have driven her. Then she started getting angry back because she was crazy. She said that his anger was unjustified and that he was overreacting. He told her she was an idiot. She said he was stupid. They froze each other out for three days. Those three days sucked. So Damon apologized—even though he didn't really know what he was sorry for—and told her she was right. She wasn't. If anything, she was stubborn and clueless.
Still, he conceded. Like he said, those three days sucked. Elena forgave him quickly, then started on about how she was old enough to do what she wanted. It wasn't about her want to go visit the store. It was about her safety. So he told her that, which then led to another argument. Another three days of not talking to each other, and then, on the fourth day, she opened her locker and there—next to her psychology textbook—was half a Snickers bar.
So, Damon was a sucker who hated fighting with his best friend.
She was still wrong.
He was right.
The end.
"This place needs some form of organization," Damon whispered, hovering behind Elena.
"It is kind of what makes it amazing, though," she said, half turning to him, her smile uncontainable. "All this yarn and thread and patterns everywhere."
"Is there something you are looking for in particular?" he asked. It was not that he was in a rush to get out, but he was hungry. And antsy. He skipped his run and now he had all this built-up adrenaline, and he didn't know what to do with it.
She smiled up at him, and the adrenaline doubled.
He smiled back. "You have a list, don't you?"
"It is only a small one. I promise," she said quickly, her hands on his chest as if she was trying to calm him. Now she was biting her lip, her full, strawberry-tasting bottom lip, and an image flashes into his mind with what he could do with all that built-up adrenaline. It included her, her bed, and her lack of clothing.
Blink. Push out fantasies. Breathe.
He said, "Take your time. Honestly."
"You can sit over there," she told him, removing her hands from him and pointing to a chair covered in yarn. "Go on your phone or something. I won't be long."
"I left my phone on your bedroom floor."
"Oh."
"I will help you find what you are looking for. What is your next project?"
She seemed to hesitate. "A cross-stitch."
Without so much as a flinch, Damon was already making his way to the right area, "So we need to find all the right coloured threads, right?"
She nodded
Good. I can do that. It is time-consuming and mind-numbing and it will take my thoughts away from her, her bed, her naked in her bed, Damon thought.
She told John she had dated. Oh, hey random thought he tried to forget about. Nice of you to sneak up on me like that.
He placed his hand between them, palm up. "List me."
They spent two and a half hours in the store without so much as a single complaint from Damon. Maybe because he still felt guilty about last night, or maybe because Elena was smiling and happy and no longer sad, because he wasn't lying when he said he didn't like seeing her sad. Or…maybe because he couldn't stop thinking about her "dating" other guys.
What did that even mean? She went on dates, then they dropped her off at home and she went to her room and knitted him gloves? Or did she go on a date, sneak the guy back to her room through the basement door and have wild monkey sex with them in the same bed he was just fantasizing about?
Wait! Am I sleeping in another guy's sweat and leftover sex juice when I get into her bed at night? What the hell, Elena?!
"Are you okay?" she asked, sneaking up behind him. "You look lost."
She was right.
He was lost - drowning in visions of her with faceless guys having over-the-top sex in positions he had only ever seen on the Internet. Obviously, he didn't say that to her. That would make him insane. "I'm fine," he told her. "Did you see anything else you like?"
She nodded, her eyes bright. "And now that I'm not saving for college, I can buy all the things!"
He pouted, and her hands went to his chest again. Maybe I should pout more often, he thought.
"We should finish up here and find somewhere to feed you. You look hungry."
Damon exhaled loudly and placed a hand on her waist, the other holding the basket filled with different coloured threads. "I am hungry," he told her, just not for food.
He tightened his grip so he could pull her closer to him. Her arms were at her sides now, her breasts pressed against his chest.
"Where is the list?" she said, her voice hoarse. She cleared her throat, repeated the question. Her cheeks were red. She was blushing. Fidgeting. Her eyes wouldn't meet his.
Her body was reacting to his body. To the closeness.
Damon liked that she was blushing. That she hadn't pulled away. She turned to face the wall of threads but didn't move too far, her back was to his chest, his hand on her waist, the top of her head an inch below his chin. She smelled good. "What number are you up to?" she asked.
One, he almost said. It was not the answer she was looking for, but it was the only number in his head. He had one year left with Elena. One year to make her see him the way he saw her.
One.
He was holding her hand.
He didn't know how it happened, when it happened, but they were crossing the road towards a diner and they were holding hands, and not in the way he held Stefan's hand when they were younger, but in the way he held his girlfriend's hand. Because he had one of those…a girlfriend, not a hand. Rose had been his girlfriend for about six months, and she was the only girl he had ever stuck with through an entire summer. Rose's hair was shorter than Elena but she was still beautiful. She ran track, like him, and knew the demands and the self-control it took to be where they were. She was also easy—not sexually, but that, too, he guessed—but she was fun and they got along, which made Damon felt like an asshole for enjoying holding another girl's hand more than hers because like he said, she was his girlfriend.
"I'm still so full from breakfast," Elena said. "I'm probably just going to get a salad."
He laughed out loud. "You? A salad? You will be going straight to the back of the menu—dessert—and you will probably order two different ones."
"Or not!" Elena exclaimed, nose in the air. "I'm trying to watch my figure." She patted her stomach.
"Shut up. You have an amazing figure. Especially considering you do absolutely nothing to maintain it."
She stopped in the middle of the road, causing an oncoming car to brake and swerve slightly. "You think I have an amazing figure?" she asked.
This girl is blind. Naive. And also completely unaware of her surroundings.
He pulled on her hand and dragged her off the road and onto the safety of the sidewalk while he waved an apology at the driver who was cursing at them. "You do. But I would prefer it if you were alive."
He opened the diner door for her and she stopped just inside, scanning the place for what he knew was a corner booth, a table made for 4-6 instead of just the two of them because he knew what she would do the minute they sat down. She would dump the contents of the paper bag he was holding and mark off all the items on the list to make sure they got everything she wanted. And she would do it alone because she didn't trust him, all because of that one time he read her handwritten 5 as an 8 and got the wrong coloured threads and the store was closed the following day, a Sunday, and she couldn't finish her project on the weekend and Damon swore, she acted as though he had set her hair on fire.
They got a corner booth. She ordered two desserts. He ordered a steak sandwich and loaded fries, and she handed him her phone as soon as the waitress left because she knew he needed to work out how many calories he was about to devour to calculate how many miles he needed to run to burn it off. He typed in her PIN number, the same code she used for everything, a code he memorized from her bike lock when they were twelve. Then he glanced up at her. She was too busy, focused on marking the items off the list, which gave him a little time to go through her phone and look for any interaction with guys she might have dated/had monkey sex with.
Damon went through her text messages first.
An invasion of privacy? Maybe. A way to placate my insanity? Definitely, he thought.
The first three sets of messages were from whom he had expected. Him, John and Isobel.
Then there were a bunch with numbers but no names linked to those numbers.
Are we still on for tonight? One reads, dated last Saturday.
Damon frowned. What the hell?
"Having trouble?" she asked
He dropped the phone, caught red-handed, even though she would have never known if it wasn't for his guilt-ridden overreaction. Her eyes narrowed, her gaze dropping to the phone now on the table, a clear view of the message he had just read.
Elena smiled.
That was good. At least she hadn't picked up the fork and threatened to stab him in the eyes. "Was that an accident, or are you curious about something and don't want to ask?" she said.
He pushed the phone aside. "What do you mean?" he asked, feigning…he didn't even know.
"You seemed to have a reaction to me telling my dad that I had dated. I'm surprised you haven't brought it up yet." She said it so casually, like she was asking him about how many calories might be in the brownie she just ordered and not the copious amounts of sex she was having in their bed. Okay, it was not theirs, but it might as well be. Now she was ticking off items on the list.
Tick.
Tick.
Tick.
His jaw was ticking with the visions blowing up his brain. Stop having sex in our bed!
He cleared his throat and leaned back in his seat, one arm on the table, the other balled at his side. "How many guys have you dated, anyway?"
Good question. Good start, he thought.
She shrugged. "A few."
"A few?" he asked, leaning forward. "A few like, between three and five, or a few as in…there's a number but you have lost count?"
She smiled again.
She ticked. Again.
Damon waited.
Elena looked up at him. "Why does it matter?"
"Why keep it a secret?"
"You have never asked before."
He sighed. "Do I know any of them?"
"Again," she said, her smile spreading. "Why does it matter?"
"I do know them, don't I? Am I friends with any of them?"
Her coffee arrived the same time his water did. She waited until he took a sip before saying, "Mason and I went out a few times."
He spit out his drink. "What?"
She was laughing, wiping at the list now splattered with his post-mouth water. Luckily, he missed her recently-purchased items. "We didn't want to tell you in case you were all excited about the prospect of your two best friends dating. Needless to say, it didn't work out."
"You are serious right now?"
Elena shrugged again. "It was toward the end of freshman year. He came up to me after school all nervous and he said he always thought I was beautiful but I was always your girl, you know? But then you dated a bunch of girls that year so he figured it was just in his head—you and me—so he asked me out, and I don't know…for a moment, he made me feel beautiful, so I said yes and we went out a couple of times. He was my first kiss."
Damon couldn't speak, too busy stewing, replaying her words over and over.
She went back to her list. Tick tick tick.
Then their food came and they ate and she talked but he barely listened.
She paid for their food, made another joke about not needing money for college anymore, and as she packed her stuff back into the paper bag, a girl approached, around the same age as them. "Hi," she said, smiling brightly between the two of them. She kind of looked like Roe, his forgotten girlfriend, the girlfriend whose hands didn't feel anywhere near as good as Elena's. Only the girl in front of them had blonde hair, wider hips, bigger breasts than Rose. "Are you guys leaving?" she asked, reaching into her pocket.
Elena smiled.
Damon nodded.
"Oh," said the unnamed girl. She revealed a piece of paper from her pocket and slid it across the table towards him. It had her name, Charlotte, and her phone number. She was grinning when Damon looked back up at her, but he didn't look at her long. Instead, he was drawn to Elena, to her reaction. She was focused on packing up her things. Too focused. Like she was avoiding the situation completely.
"Um…" He looked up at Charlotte, at her waiting expression. "I have a girlfriend."
"Oh," she said again, and then focused on Elena. "I'm sorry, I thought—" She covered her face, as if embarrassed. She was not, though. Any girl who had the confidence to approach a guy who had shown absolutely zero signs of noticing her couldn't possibly be embarrassed about getting turned down. "I thought she was your sister."
Elena found her voice for the first time since Charlotte approached and used it to say, "Oh, I'm not his girlfriend. Definitely more like his sister. It is cool."
He remembered the phrase suddenly…sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me?
It was bullshit.
Words hurt.
Sticks and stones may break bones, but words dig and dig and dig deep into your heart until the hurt resonates, and your heart fails to remember the reason it beats in the first place.
For a moment, almost for an entire day, Elena was that reason. Until those words: Definitely more like his sister.
Damon drove home in silence.
She sat in the passenger's seat. In silence.
He dropped her off at her house. Still silent.
Then he drove to Mason's house so he could punch him.
He didn't.
He was not really a punchy kind of guy, no matter how badly he wanted to be. Instead, he looked Mason in the eye and he asked, "Why her?"
Mason said, knowing exactly what Damon was talking about, "What does it matter? I wasn't the one for her. And besides, you are two years late. That's two years too long. What the hell are you waiting for, Damon?"
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