I woke up Saturday to an empty house. Not surprising.

Does anyone actually live here anymore?

I picked up my book and went into the living room to read. However, I only managed to read a page or two before I was distracted by what happens when people only come home to eat or sleep: the house gets messy. There were dishes piling up in the sink; there were papers scattered all around the kitchen and living room; and there was a thin coating of dust on everything.

I don't like cleaning, but I cannot tolerate it when everything is this messy. So I changed my Saturday morning plans from reading to cleaning.

I tackled the papers scattered around the house, mostly unimportant remnants of mail that Aunt Liz must have opened and read while travelling between the door, the kitchen, and her bedroom. Then I dusted in the living room. And I had just finished filling up the sink with soapy water when I heard the floorboard creak. I knew it couldn't be an unwanted vampire because no one was here to invite him or her in. And if it were a human criminal, I could handle myself. Though who would break into a house mid-day on a Saturday? I turned around slowly and found Klaus leaning against the kitchen doorframe.

"You know, love, there are people you can hire to do this." He wiggled his finger at the kitchen sink. "Services even. Or you could save the cost and just compel someone to do this for you."

"You know I don't compel. And I really don't mind doing this."

He harrumphed, but said nothing.

"Did you come over here for a specific reason, or were you just hoping to get lucky and find me doing some mundane, human task?"

" 'Get lucky'?"

"Wow — a thousand years old and he still has his mind in the gutter."

"I left you a voicemail an hour or so ago. I texted you more recently. When you responded to neither, I came to make sure you were okay. Or to see if you were angry with me and purposely not responding. As far as I could remember, we didn't seem to be fighting."

"Oh." I felt my empty pockets. "My phone must be in my room. What's up?"

"I wanted to request your company for dinner this evening."

"Dinner?" He nodded. "Are you going to cook again? That hasn't happened for a while."

"No, not this evening. I thought we could go out for that nicer meal I promised you when we were at the beach."

"And I told you that it wasn't necessary."

"But I promised."

I could already see the pointless direction that this conversation was heading in.

Why am I always getting into circular, pointless conversations with people?

"Please honour me with your presence at dinner this evening."

I rolled my eyes, more at the cheesiness of 'please honour me' than the actual request. "Fine."

"Wonderful. I shall be back at 6:30 to pick you up," he said before leaving the house.

C walked by my bedroom door just as I was finishing getting ready.

"You look pretty, Ri. Plans with Klaus?"

"Uh…" I'm sure my face showed my confusion. I wasn't sure what to tell C.

"You're right; all we do is have circular, never-ending, going-nowhere arguments about you spending time with him. It's awful and tiring. So I'm done with it. This isn't me liking him, and this isn't me liking that you're spending time with him, but this is me acknowledging the fact that you want to spend time with him."

"Thank you, C."

She walked into my room at sat down on my bed. "What are your plans tonight?"

"Dinner." I paused before asking her, "Do you think I look okay? I have no idea what I'm doing and I don't know what to expect."

C inspected my outfit: a long, dark purple sweater, black pants, and black boots. "You look perfect, Ri. Classy and fancy, but not over-the-top."

I nodded. "Okay. Thank you."

"You don't know where he's taking you?"

"No. He likes surprises."

At 6:29pm, according to the time on my phone, I heard a knock at the front door.

He certainly doesn't lose points for tardiness.

I went to answer the door, but just as I stepped out of my bedroom, Aunt Liz stepped out of the living room and answered the door first. I wasn't aware that she was home. I ducked back into my room to listen.

"Klaus," she greeted him upon opening the door.

"Good evening, Sheriff Forbes," I heard him say as I stuck my head into the hallway.

"Please, come in." Aunt Liz gestured for Klaus to step inside. He did so and thanked her. "You're always welcome around here, Klaus; you saved Caroline's life. And Riley has taken quite a liking to you."

Now seemed an appropriate time to make my presence known. I softly cleared my throat and caught Klaus's eye. "Hi."

Aunt Liz turned to look at me. "You look lovely, Riley."

"Thanks."

"Your Aunt has spoken my exact sentiments."

"We're going out to dinner," I explained to Aunt Liz. "And C is hanging out with Elena, I believe."

She nodded. "Have a nice time, you two." Aunt Liz rested her hand on my shoulder as she spoke. She pointed the index finger of her other hand at Klaus. "Remember what I said, Klaus: within the state, please."

He smiled. "Of course."

As we walked out of the house and down the walkway, I realized the meaning of Aunt Liz's words. " 'Remember what I said'? When did you and Aunt Liz talk?"

"This morning. Before I called you, I went to the police station. I wanted her to be aware of my intentions toward you."

"Seriously?" I asked with a laugh. "You spoke to Aunt Liz? About me? In her office? At the police station?"

"Yes," he responded simply. In a very gentlemanly fashion, he opened the car door for me. I smiled and thanked him as I got in.

"Do I get to know where we're going this time?" I asked as Klaus drove away from the house.

"We're going to a restaurant a few towns over. It's classier than the Grill; and besides, we can eat there any time."

"Is this another part of courtship?"

"No. I've decided to set aside courtship. We shouldn't follow a plan set out by someone else; we'll just continue on as we are, spending time together and getting to know one another."

"I like the sound of that." This whole scenario might be less intimidating if it didn't have a title like courtship.

We drove in silence. Klaus wanted to talk, but I could not shut my mind up for long enough to be an adequate conversationalist, so most of his attempts at initiating a conversation fell off nearly immediately. His comments/confessions on the front porch left me with a lot to think about. But honestly, I really had no idea what to think. Other than Rebekah, I'm probably the only person in town who trusts Klaus, but I don't know if I trust him that way.

Eventually, Klaus pulled into a parking lot beside a restaurant. I had only unbuckled my seatbelt when he was opening the car door on my side. He held out his hand to help me from my seat. I took it with a smile and stood up from the car.

He held out his hard, gesturing for me to take his arm. Narrowing my eyes, I ignored his arm and started walking towards the restaurant's front. When I looked back at him, he clutched at his heart as though my rejection truly hurt him. Laughing and rolling my eyes, I pulled the door to the restaurant open. He was quickly at my side to hold the door open for me and rest his hand against my lower back.

Once inside, Klaus gave the name "Mikaelson" to the hostess as the reservation name, and we were seated in a semi-private area in the restaurant. Once we were seated, the hostess took our drink orders and left two menus.

"I thought Italian food would be the best choice. All humans seem to enjoy some form of Italian food."

"That's generally a safe assumption." I looked at the menu.

"Though I guarantee that the best dish in this place will not even begin to compare to the worst dish you could be served in Italy."

"I don't doubt that."

"You should let me take you there."

"I would really like that," I said, not looking at him; I was still reading the menu. "In a year or so, when I'm eighteen and have finished high school."

Klaus sighed.

I finally looked up at him. "I know it's a lame, human goal, but it's important to me. And I know you'll never properly understand that, so please don't make a comment on it now."

"No worries, love. I believe we've both come to the realization that that particular conversation goes nowhere." I nodded. "Thank you for coming here with me. I'm glad you agreed."

I smiled. "Me too."

We were silent after the waiter took our orders. I suppose neither of us were sure what to talk about.

"Tell me more about yourself," Klaus finally said.

"Wow, that's so specific," I chuckled.

"What do you mean?"

"That's too vague of a question; I wouldn't begin to know how to respond."

Klaus thought for a moment as a slight frown appeared on his face. It was replaced with a mischievous smile as he spoke. "Let's play twenty questions."

"No."

"Why not? This way, I can be more specific with my questions."

"Ten," I said upon consideration. "Ten questions."

"Riley, that is not a compromise."

"Of course it is. You want to ask twenty; I want to answer none. Ten is the exact middle."

"I supposed I don't have much of a choice."

I smirked. "And no questions about C or her friends; I am not your snitch."

He rolled his eyes. "I'm not interested in your friends, Riley. Only in you." He locked his gaze with mine.

I broke eye contact, feeling very self-conscious. "You first."

"What were you like at your previous school?"

"Seriously, that is your first question?"

"Yes, and that was yours."

"No, that's not fair."

"And for future reference, love, you should answer mine before asking one of your own."

I scoffed, but answered. "How was I at my old school? Exactly as I am now, minus the vampire abilities."

"That's not an answer, Riley."

"I just don't understand the point of the question."

"They are my ten questions and I can use them however I wish. Please answer."

"I was a loner and practically invisible. I was nerdy. Quiet." I shrugged. "I don't know; this seems like a question better posed to a former classmate."

He nodded. "What was your mother like?"

I smiled as I began to speak, remembering her. "She looked like me — or I suppose, I look like her — except she had short, curly hair. She wore glasses sometimes. She wasn't book-smart like me, but she had way more practical, real-world smarts than I do. She was a bit scatterbrained. And she would play clueless sometimes to get a laugh out of other people, which always annoyed me because she was not a clueless person."

"You speak of her as if you were her mother, not the other way around," Klaus noticed.

"She went through a phase, for a few years, where should would go to a psychic— or fortune teller — two or three times and year and have a reading. This one she went to specialized, I guess, in past lives. She told my mom that the two of us had been together in a past life, except I was the mother and she was the daughter. I never believed in any of that psychic stuff, but I always remembered that because it kind of made sense."

We fell into silence again as the waiter brought our food and we both took some initial bites.

"What career are you planning to have?" he asked.

"I don't know."

"You stress the important of finishing high school, yet you don't know what you'll do after?"

I raised my eyebrow. "Is that your question?"

"Yes."

I shrugged. "I've never know. I could never narrow down my options. Then everything came up death and vampirism and I haven't had to think about. I guess it doesn't matter now."

"Why not?" He seemed puzzled.

"How can someone have any sort of a career when they never age or change at all?"

His face turned serious as he put down his fork and leaned closer to me. "The beauty of being a vampire, Riley, is that you can be whoever you want, wherever and whenever. You have innumerable opportunities, and you have forever to explore them all."

"I suppose. Though now that I do have forever, I kind of don't want to work. I just wanna go out and see everything in the world." I held my hand out in front of me. "Once I've finished high school, of course."

I focused on my food again, trying to think of a question to ask him.

"How many times have you been in love?" he asked abruptly.

I looked up at him. "Never. How many times have you been in love?" I know it's lame to ask the same question, but it seemed only fair to ask it of him. Plus, I really had no idea what to expect as an answer. Sure, everyone in Mystic thought of him as a murderer now, but could someone live a thousand years and not experience love?

He was no longer looking at me. He was focused on a non-specific item on the table. "Once." He took a sip of wine before asking, "What is your favourite colour?"

I laughed slightly at the sudden switch in topic. "Black. Or silver."

He hmm'd. "Interesting. I would have guessed purple."

"Purple is third," I conceded.

He took a bite and then laid down his fork. "If you could go anywhere in the world, after finishing high school, of course," he specified and I smiled, "where would you go first?"

"Where would you want to take me?" I copied his movement and laid my own fork down.

"You can't answer a question with a question, Riley."

"Please answer mine first."

"I'd take you wherever you wanted to go."

"That's not an answer."

He pondered his answer, as if it were an incredibly important question. "Tokyo. You should see Tokyo."

"I like that answer."

"Where else would you like to go?"

"I'd like to go to London, maybe. And Paris. And Sydney. Rome. Vienna. New York City. Juneau. The North Pole."

He laughed at that last one. "The North Pole?"

"Sure" I shrugged. "There are polar bears there."

He laughed again. When he didn't immediately ask another question, I decided to ask one of my own. "Who was she, the girl you loved?"

His face quickly turned serious again and he waited a minute before he spoke. But he never took his eyes off mine. "Tatia," he began. At first, I thought he would end there. "She was the original doppelganger, the originator of the doppelganger line. She was the most beautiful woman I had ever seen. Every man in the village was drawn to her, even though she'd had a child out of wedlock. She was charming and captivating in every single way: how she walked, how she spoke, her laughter. She was breath-taking." He seemed to be lost in his memories. He spoke of her in wonderful, kind ways, but I saw sadness in his eyes, and it didn't seem like the sadness of time-passing. Something had happened; something other than time.

"What happened?"

"Elijah and I fought over her. Quiet severely, at times. We both cared very deeply for her. In the end — or rather, the beginning for us — our mother used Tatia's blood to turn us into vampires." He smirked, but it wasn't his usual smirk; this one was more bitter. I looked down at my half-eaten food. I felt Klaus's eyes on me.

"Do you miss it?" Klaus asked. I snapped my head back up; his eyes gestured towards my right wrist. I looked down and saw that the fingers of my left hand were fiddling with my bracelets and toying with the empty space that had been left behind after the hunter took my daylight bracelet. It was an action I wasn't aware I was making.

"I find myself doing that sometimes." I switched to playing with the ring on the index finger of my left hand. "It's not that I don't like my ring — I do, and I cannot thank you enough for thinking of getting it for me — but I do miss my bracelet. It was part of me for years. It was always one of my favourites, even before I turned and was made even more aware of how essential it was to me."

I laid my napkin on the table and slightly pushed my plate away from me, indicating that I was done eating. "Okay, you have one question left."

"I knew you would never let me ask more than ten."

"I think I've rambled on enough."

He shook his head. "I could listen to you speak all evening."

The waiter came and asked if we wanted dessert. I nodded and Klaus ordered. As the waiter left with our plates, I looked at Klaus with raised eyebrows, waiting for his question.

"What made you take a chance on me?"

"Tonight?"

"No. In the first place. I'm sure you heard tales of my actions in Mystic Falls before you arrived. Yet you took a chance and spent time with me anyway, despite what you probably heard."

I pressed my lips together in thought. I wasn't sure how, or even if I could, explain it. "I turned you down once."

"I remember."

"I felt terrible about it afterwards. Immediately. I realized that I had let someone else, C in this instance, determine my opinions and actions. It made me feel sick; I had let C force-feed her opinions to me. From the day I was turned against my will, I vowed that I would never have anything forced upon me ever again. I hated that I had been mean to you when you had given me no reason to. So the next day, I went to your house before school and I apologized. And ever since then, I haven't paid attention to whatever anyone said against you, choosing instead to form my own opinions about you."

"Is that why you don't compel people? Because you don't want to take their choices away from them?"

I nodded and took a sip of my water.

Like a perfect gentleman, Klaus drove me straight home after dinner. I rolled my eyes when he insisted on walking me to the door, but I appreciated the gesture nonetheless. He had a hand on the small of my back, and as much as I hated to admit it, I really didn't mind.

I turned around to face him once we reached the front door. I contemplated shooting a snarky comment at him, but decided against it when I saw the serious look on his face. "Thank you for dinner. You were right: I really liked that restaurant. It was a nice, welcome change from the Grill."

"My pleasure love," he replied, sincerely, nodding his head. I nodded back, pressing my lips together. I fidgeted with the hem of my sleeve, trying to make the moment less awkward.

"Well, I should probably…" I trailed off, pointing in the direction of the door behind me. When I looked back at him, the intensity of his expression took my breath away.

Before I could say or do anything too impulsive, I put my hand on Klaus's shoulder, leaned up, and gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. "Good night, Klaus," I whispered, before opening the door and stepping inside. I gave him one more quick smile through the glass before setting down my keys on the table by the door, then turning around and walking to my bedroom.

As I shut my bedroom door, my eye caught something in the dark. It was Klaus, standing inside my bedroom beside the window. I finished closing the door and turned on the light. "Klaus? What are you doing here?"

"I left out one very important part of the evening," he replied as he crossed the room, stopping right in front of me. Before I could ask what he left out, he cupped my cheek with his hand and slowly bent his head down until his mouth hovered over mine. I held my breath, or maybe just stopped breathing, with the anticipation.

He looked at me with such intensity, pausing as if to ask permission. I closed the gap between us and he pressed his lips to mine.

It was nice and it didn't last very long, but it left my lips with a tingling sensation as Klaus whispered "Good night, Riley." He was gone when I opened my eyes.