"Is that everything on the list?" Stefan asked Elena, walking towards the checkout at the grocery store.
Elena sat in a wheelchair while Damon pushed her around. She hated the chair but the crutches were starting to bruise her armpits, and they both knew they would be in the store a long time. She wanted to make the young kids Damon coached snacks for their game later in the afternoon, and when Elena made anything, it had to be perfect and slightly over the top. Damon told her sliced oranges and water was the norm. She was baking them cookies.
"I think so," she said, her gaze shifting from the cart to her list, tick, tick, ticking off items.
"I can come back if you have forgotten anything," Damon said, because he knew how important it was for her to do this. It was not as if she had a lot of anything else going on, and he could tell she was starting to go stir-crazy.
Stefan started loading the items from the cart while he got out Giuseppe's company credit card—part of his sponsorship deal. That was when they heard two women ahead of them gossiping about that Donovan kid and the builder's daughter and The Night the Town Turned Red and Blue and Black. He looked down at Elena, but she was looking down at her hands. "That poor Donovan kid," one of them said, "he must have been so lost to do something so horrible."
Damon clenched his jaw, his fist. he started to speak, but Stefan beat him to it. "That poor Donovan kid tried to kill my brother's girlfriend, his best friend, our sister from another mister, lady!" he shouted. Damon should tell him to stop. He didn't. Stefan added, "Now hurry up and buy your super-sized tampons and twelve-inch dildo and shove them up your ass!"
Damon swore the look on her face was worth listening to her bullshit. She looked first at Stefan, then to Damon. She ignored Elena sitting in the wheelchair, the aftermath of that poor Donovan kid. "You Salvatore punks!" she scolded, aghast.
Damon smiled up at her, insisted he paid for her groceries. Killed her with kindness and her guilt. Once her bags were packed and in her arms, Stefan called her a whore and Elena found her voice. "Have a phenomenal day, bitches."
Stefan cackled, high-fived her. Damon told her she just earned a handy, and she high-fived him, too. And that was what life was like in Mystic Falls: The poor Donovan kid, the builder's daughter, and the Salvatore punks—the topic of all gossip. But gossip was like dust, floating in the air, temporarily marring the things it landed on. It was not forever. It was not them.
"Hey," Sarah said, stepping beside Damon as he kept an eye on the game.
"First base is that way!" he yelled, pointing to the base. "You are running to third! Come on, boys!"
"Matt Donovan's mum is here," she said.
He ignored the twisting in his gut at the mention of his name. "What?"
"She is here."
Damon faced her. "Where?"
Sarah pointed to Elena sitting in the stands wearing the team jersey. Elena mentioned she felt left out so he ordered her a team jersey. The back of hers said: Damon Salvatore's. Sitting next to her was a woman he hadn't seen since before Elena left the hospital.
"They have been sitting together, laughing and talking for half an hour. Is it her?" Sarah asked.
"It is her," he confirmed.
"What the hell is she doing here?"
"I have no idea."
The umpire called the game, and Sarah and he both whispered, "Thank God." Then they gathered the kids who belonged to them. Sarah took the gears and the boys to the minivan while he made his way towards Elena. She stayed seated, Kelly Donovan was standing. "Hi, Damon," she said, her voice soft. "Your team definitely has…potential."
"I don't know if potential is the right word," he told her, but he was looking at Elena who was looking down at her hands. "Mrs Donovan, you mind if I have a minute with my girl?"
"Sure," Kelly said. "I will be down by the dugout."
Damon waited until she was no longer within hearing distance to sit next to Elena. "That was a little rude, Damon," Elena told him.
"What is she doing here? Is she giving you a hard time?"
"No." She scoffed, and shook her head. "She is not like that."
"So what did she want?"
"She wanted to thank me. And you."
"For what?"
Elena faced for the first time since he sat down. "For giving her the courage to leave her husband. She gave him the divorce papers a couple of weeks ago, and he signed off on it. He is leaving her the house and leaving town."
He nodded slowly, looked over at Kelly standing by the dugout, wringing her hands as she watched them. "I'm happy for her."
"Me too," Elena said, then tapped on his arm. When he looked back at her, she was frowning. "She doesn't have anyone, Damon. Her son is in—"
"I know where he is, Elena."
"And now her husband is gone and I'm her only real friend."
"You consider her a friend?"
Her gaze dropped. "You know, when I spent that week in the hospital in Richmond, she wasn't just there to pay the bill. She stayed by my side the entire time. She never left. Not once."
Damon sighed and took her hand in his. "Babe, I want to like her. Really, I do. And I have tried," he told her truthfully. "But she knew what was going on with you, and she should have told someone."
Elena shrugged, her eyes filling with tears. She was quiet for a long moment. Then: "I should have told someone, too, Damon. But you don't understand that fear." A sob escaped her and it broke his heart. "That fear chokes you. Silences you. And I want so badly to find a way to explain that to you, but I can't. And with her—I don't need to. She knows. She has lived in that fear for so long."
He grabbed her crutches and handed them to her. "Come on." Then he helped her down a few steps and towards a waiting Kelly. "I'm sorry for being rude earlier, Mrs Donovan."
She smiled. "Kelly, please."
"Kelly."
It was strange—how knowing her name, saying it, separating it from the part that darkened her—changed the way he saw her almost instantly. "We are having a cookout tonight—my family and Elena's. It won't be anything fancy, burgers and hot dogs, but I'd like it if you came."
She looked between Elena and Damon, unable to hide her uncertainty. "Thank you for the invitation, but I'm not sure that I would be very welcome."
"You will be," Elena assured. "Damon's family doesn't just open up their home, they open up their hearts."
x x x
Elena believed that she had the greatest boyfriend in the world, and she didn't just say that because she had experienced both ends of the spectrum. She said it because it was true, because there weren't many guys around who were willing to sacrifice so much not just for him, but for his family. Who had a heart larger than the world, who spread his love as if it was never-ending, and maybe with him, it was.
"Go long," Damon shouted, football in his hand. Mason and Stefan ran farther away from him, shoving each other and laughing as they did.
"Damon has got a good arm," Jules said, joining Elena at the table while Giuseppe worked on the grill close by. "He ever plays?"
"He has played everything and been good, too," Elena told her. "But when he started to get scouted by colleges for track, he cut out the rest and focused on that."
"Has he made a decision about University yet?"
Elena shook her head.
Giuseppe said, "You know Damon. He does everything in his own time."
It was true. Damon did.
She looked over at Damon, now wrestling on the ground with Stefan and Mason while Sarah approached, water pistol filled and aimed. Stefan saw her, stood up, her arms crossed. He shouted, "No guns around Elena!" and swiftly took it from Sarah, threw it as far as he could.
Elena's heart sank and Sarah looked over at her. "Sorry," she mouthed.
Elena shook her head. It was fine. And it was also really, really sweet of Stefan to be so protective. Damon's alarm went off on his phone sitting on the table, and she called out to him. He approached quickly. He ran to his truck and returned a few seconds later with his backpack. Then he sat next to Elena, his little notepad and all her pill bottles set out in front of him. She got a napkin, placed it between them while he went through his notes, sets out his meds.
She didn't take as many painkillers as she used to, but they made her groggy, unaware, and when Damon noticed, he made it his mission to take over. He placed four pills, all different colours, on the napkin and slid it over to her along with a glass of water. "Wait," he said, checking his notes again, "Yeah, it is right. Go ahead."
She downed the pills, noticed Kelly watching her, sadness, sorrow and regret unmasked in her features. "The medication you need—it is all covered by insurance, right?"
Elena nodded. "As long as we get them from the hospital pharmacy, it is covered."
"Is it a hassle for you to go there? Is there a different pharmacy that—"
"It is no problem," Damon cut in, offered her a heart-stopping smile. "The service there is better anyway."
Elena squeezed Kelly's hand resting on the table. "Please don't worry," she said, her voice low, words only for Kelly. "I'm doing well. I'm happy."
"Good, Elena." Kelly held back her tears. "That's all I want."
"And you?" Elena asked. "Are you happy?"
Kelly looked around, took in the joy that only the Salvatore family could bring. "I'm getting there."
Later in bed, Damon massaged her injured leg. "So you and Kelly got pretty close, huh?"
"Yeah, we did."
"Even before Richmond?" he asked. "It just seems like it was more than just a week spent in a hospital, but if you don't want to talk about it, I understand."
She watched him a moment, watched him focus on her leg and not much else, and she wondered how much to tell him, wondered which parts would be too much for him to handle. "We spent a lot of long nights cleaning each other up after…" After the Donovan men did their damage.
Damon nodded, his hands slowing, his throat bobbing with his swallow.
"But in Richmond, it was different. We didn't have to whisper or tip toe around our feelings. They weren't there so we could be open about everything. I told her about you."
He looked up now, his eyes meeting hers.
"I pretty much spent the entire week telling her about you and me, how we met, your family. It was the only thing that could cheer me up, take my mind off everything that was happening."
"What did you tell her about me?"
"I told her that you were a man of strength and honour and sacrifice. I said that I had been in love with you since we were twelve, since I saw you coming down your porch steps in your Superman T-shirt with Newton. And I said that I made a mistake keeping my feelings for you a secret for so long." A smile tugged on her lips and she tried to restrain it, but she couldn't. Because Damon was looking at her in a way she spent years hoping he would—as if the world began and ended right where their hearts connected.
He stopped massaging her legs, laid down beside her and kissed her once. "And what did she say to that?"
"She convinced me to go home, to not hold back my feelings anymore, to let you love me and to love you back. And now we do. We love hard, love fierce, and love right. And we are learning, Damon. Always learning."