Despite all the buzz from the street, the night felt silent and numb. He has been sitting at the same position for almost an hour, staring at one tiny spot on the kitchen wall. His hands were busy rolling the empty can of coke on the kitchen platform. Even his open kitchen was feeling claustrophobic. His eyes drifted to his flashing phone, the same name coming over and over again. Practically, he should be sitting in his lab, and working on the paper due for next day. But, there he was, sitting and staring, mostly staring at anything which wasn't his phone. He wanted to throw away the phone, just because he couldn't handle that her name was flashing. His hands moved and grabbed the chilled beer bottle, which he took out but didn't go for. He needed something strong to deal with the heart squeezing ache he was feeling. Okay, maybe it was an exaggeration, but the sensation wasn't pleasing and he wanted it to get over. His place looked nothing but an eyesore to him at that very moment. When after like five or ten times, the phone stopped buzzing, he realized the broken pieces of his phone, crashed on his wooden floor. He cursed himself, not because the mobile phones were expensive, but he wouldn't be able to see her name on the phone again. Caroline! He never gave a thought on her name, the way it sounded, as if it had its own musical note to it. Ca-ro-line. How perfect it sounded on his tongue, when his own lips whispered her name, it echoed in his hollow walls.

"What was that noise?" Ivy came into her house at the same time when he threw away his phone. "Did you just threw away your phone?" The confusion was all over her face. She couldn't understand his recent behavior. He had been happy with her, living a decent life, but in the past few days, she had seen him sitting absent-minded.

"No, I just dropped it." He lied to her face, the thing which he has been doing more often lately. "It's fixable."

"Are you having September blues?" she tried to ease the tensed air around him, but he didn't respond.

"Just some work stress." Diversion to work talk always helped him in escaping the talks he never wanted to have.

"Anyways, I brought Chinese food." Ivy put the take-out box on the platform, beside his empty booze bottles.

"Great!"

"God, I am so hungry right now, I can eat the whole damn thing." Ivy kept talking while opening their dinner boxes.

With one swift motion of two fingers, he swept his dinner box of Tso chicken towards her. "You can have it."

"Not that hungry, huh?"

"Nope…"

"But, you have to eat something… or else you will fall sick." She kept talking in between her munches, but his mind was stuck, as if he was blocked in a traffic from all directions, and he couldn't even move his bones.

"By the way, there is this great restaurant right across the street, La De Carolina"

"What did you just said?" The iris in his eyes divulged, and he turned his head towards her.

"The restaurant… across the street…. I was talking about the restaurant."

"Oh."

"Stefan? Are you all right? You have been distracted these days." He could see the concerning painting her face. A surge of guilt rushing through his bone made his heart beat faster. The reason behind that guilt is still mysterious to him.

"Yeah… Yeah I am fine." He lied once again, and she didn't push him anymore either.

She might have had asked more questions, so he decided to eat the dinner she bought, to keep the questions at bay anyways.

Whatever the hell was going with him, and his mind, it was driving him crazy and it needed to stop.

But it didn't…

And it didn't stopped at Ivy either to attract attention to himself.

"What the hell is going on with you?" Lexi encountered when he came running late into the lab, and started putting his lab coat on.

"What do you mean?"

"You have started coming late to the classes, you have stopped hanging out, and also you have started a tendency of being a lethargic and being locked up in your apartment.

"I like to stay IN my apartment sometimes."

"Correction! It's not sometimes but most of the time these days."

"Whatever!"

He doesn't want to argue with her, or to talk to anyone. Unlikely of Lexi to let it go so easily.

"Stefan-"she starts but was cut with his ringing phone.

He stared at his buzzing phone, the one he broke a few days back, and fixed it later. He didn't want to, but then he missed looking at her name, and thus, he just fixed it anyways.

He swallowed when he saw her name coming on his phone once again.

"Are you going to take the call or what?" He heard Lexi asking the question his heart had been asking to his brain.

"Or are you ignoring her?"

"I am not… ignoring her." His hovering thumb on the green button pressed it finally, and he brought the phone near his ears.

"Hey…"

His heart stopped for a second when he heard her rose silky voice. He didn't realized until now how much he had been missing her voice.

"Hey"

"Finally we can talk. I have been trying to reach you for last few weeks. Everything all right?"

He could sense the worry all over her face, and that didn't make him feel good.

"Yeah… Yeah everything is fine. I was just a little busy so couldn't take your calls. Sorry."

"That's fine… I was just worry if something happened to you."

The smile involuntarily came on his face. The thought of her getting worried for him was making him feel happy and guilty at the same time. Guilty because of the lie he was giving her, and happy because… his thoughts wondered for a while for reasoning of him being happy for her worries.

"I am fine, Caroline." His heartbeat made a jump when he heard himself taking her name. It felt like an eternity since he called her name out loud.

"So you are not avoiding me?"

"I am in a lab." He knew if he kept talking to her, she would figure out his lies, and so he just went with the safe facts.

"Oh… I am so sorry, I called you in the middle of your work."

"It's fine." But, it wasn't fine with the battle his brain was having on whether he should or he shouldn't avoid her.

"Okay, I will call you later then. And when you are free we will talk."

"Sure."

"Goodbye, Stefan."

He didn't want to say goodbye, because now it was feeling real more than anything.

"Caroline?"

"Yes?"

He thought for a while before saying "Take care."

He could hear her sighs clearly on the phone. As if she was almost expecting him to say something else, anything other than that "take care."

"You too." She disconnected the phone, and he was back at staring at his phone.

"What the hell was that?" Lexi rested her elbow on the lab platform in front of them, while raising an eyebrow on him.

"What was what?"

"That" she eyed his phone. "Are you guys fighting or something?"

"No." "Look, let's just wrap this experiment okay, we have a lot of work to do."

Lexi sighed and put her hands in air in defeat. There was no point arguing with Stefan, because he doesn't even wanted to talk.

And that was the last time she made an attempt to call him….

Not the last time for him to call her though.

Days passed with molasses speed for him. He wasn't paying attention to his work, or sleep, or food, or even his girlfriend. He knew Ivy didn't deserved that and he had to keep his head into his life. He was making a big mess out of nothing.

And when he took the phone to finally call her back, it went in the voice machine. His impatience wasn't paying off well, and thus, one after another, he left a bunch of voice mails to her. He never realized when he became so drunk and talked to her bitterly.

When he woke up with the migraine in his head, he felt awkward and guilty for calling her. The conversation from the last night rolling over and over again in his head, which was coming to him in bits and pieces now.

He saw her calling him, and when after a second his fingers found the receive button, he picked up the phone

"Hey, did you called me?"

"Where were you?" His mouth was working faster than his brain, and when the words jumped out of his mouth without any notice, his brain cursed him.

"Uh I was out at the dinner."

"With Jesse!" His tongue did it again, and this time the irritation made its way with the words.

"Stefan, are you drunk?"

"What if I am?"

"Why were you drunk calling me then?"

"Because you are my best friend. And you are ignoring me."

He paused for a second and continued. "And moreover you are trying to be with someone who is not your type."

"Stefan, I have called you lately but every time I did, you were busy." Keeping the thoughts aside she continued.

"But… But you didn't come to see me either."

"You could have done that too, you know."

"I did, you know. I came to meet you. And when I came, you were going out to on a date."

"And how many times did I called you after that Stefan? God, Stefan we both were busy, what's your point."

"Never mind."

"You know what Stefan? I hate you for ruining my peaceful night for me. We will talk when you are not drunk and when we can have a normal conversation."

That was the last from her he heard, and that was the last call he did to her that month.

Hate… she hates him. It shouldn't hurt, but the floating ache bursting in the middle of his chest was painful. It felt as if he was going through something he never went before. Just one word from her, left him into such a state.

When his worried friend crashed in his place, he couldn't let her into his problems.

"Stefan… if you won't talk to me about what is killing you, then how will I help you?"

"It's nothing Lexi…"

"Yeah, right. Look at yourself in the mirror and then tell me." When he didn't say a word, she tilted her head, as if she knew what exactly was happening to her best friend, and was waiting for him to realize by himself. "Is this about Caroline?"

Like an alarm, his head popped up at her, when he heard the name. "What about her?"

Lexi shook her head, taking a step forward towards him, and took a seat beside him on the sofa. She didn't have to say anything else for him to tell her more. When she put her hand on his shoulder, giving it a little squeeze, he sighed, and looked down at his hands.

"She said… she hates me."

"I am sure she didn't mean it."

"I drunk called her."

"You did what now?" by the shock on her face, he could imagine that how put of character he must have had behaved.

"Yeah, I did, and said some things which I shouldn't have had. And now she hates me."

"Stefan, she might be angry. That's why she said that. You should talk to her."

"I am not calling her unless, I am sure I won't screw up things again."

"And by that you mean?"

"I mean, I am going to make things better for her first...

"You are an idiot."

"Tell me something I don't know."

And when they met in the carnival, things did resolved between them. He got his friend back, the one who became his best of the friend in such a short span of time. That was the day when he finally smiled the way he had been smiling since he met Caroline Forbes back in the train.

October, 2003

They have got on being friends once again, and so he didn't want to ruin anything. He guarded himself in talking about stuff like, Jesse, and her dating someone. And since he was dating someone else as well, he decided to pay more attention to his dating life as well. And since, she had stopped taking the train he took, there was less time when he used to actually meet her, but their conversations on the phone started to prolong.

When he called her once in the weekend, he could hear her muffled voice clearly.

"Caroline… what happened? Is everything all right?"

"Yeah…" she said slowly, but then her yes became a no, when she sniffled.

Panic attack started to rush on him. "I will be right there."

"What? No…. it's just when Monica proposed to Chandler, I couldn't help the tears. It's so beautiful."

"Who?"

"FRIENDS Stefan… it's a show. God you should increase your horizon in watching the television."

Stefan chuckled in relief. "Well, I am good…. But I can watch it… with you."

"You wanna binge watch? The last season is on the run right now, we can do a re-watch of season 1 to 9."

"I don't have the disc though."

"Then leave it..."

"I think Mrs. Robinson have the disks. She have a lot of shows and movie discs, I can borrow that from her" He said instantly. "Wait, I will be back."

"Are you sure? But it's raining heavily."

"Caroline, she is in the same building as I am."

He went to ask for it, but unfortunately, the door was locked. He wasn't going to give up so soon though. He prayed for the shop across the street to be open. He came out of the building, and couldn't even see anything one feet away from him because of the heavy rain. He put the hoodie over his head, and made his way towards the shop.

"So do you have the discs for show called "Friends", I need all the seasons."

"I don't think this shop has the disc for that show, but you can check out the shop on the Jefferson Street."

"That's like five blocks away."

"Yup, that's the one."

Stefan sighed, and came out of the shop. He could have just went back to his apartment and told Caroline that he was unable to arrange the disc, but he walked towards the other shop. He almost cursed the shop when even they didn't have the show disc.

He looked around in many places, and finally he did have all the seasons. Exhausted and drenched in the rain, he reached back to his apartment.

"Hey..."

"Hey, back. So, it took you a long time. Did you went to another country to arrange the disc?" she laughed jokingly. Ironically, it did felt like he went to another planet to get the discs.

"No, Mrs. Robinson wasn't letting me go."

"Oh."

He didn't say about where and in which corners of the streets he went for those discs, because for some reasons, his brain stopped him in looking like a desperate fool.

During the whole show, they were on the phone, and when they both dozed off into sleep while watching the show, their phones were still on.

"Hello?"

He heard her creamy voice in his ear, melting like a chocolate. "Hey." When he heard his own croaked voice and saw the break of the dawn, he realized that it was morning, and their phones were still on.

"We dozed off." She said probably stretching herself.

"Yeah… yeah we did."

"We will be late for work. I gotta go. See ya Stefan." even though they used to see each other less lately, it was her habit of saying goodbye like this, and he liked it.

The smile was wide for some reason which he couldn't anticipate. Maybe his heart and brain finally were agreeing on the fact that he felt really chirpy that morning. He wondered if it was because of the reason that he woke up with her voice in his ear, as if she was there with him the whole night beside him. Even the thought of that made him shiver. His brain virtually smacked his head, because Caroline was his friend. And nothing more than that could happen between them.

"Someone is in a good mood today." Lexi smirked at him.

"Oh, really?" he played back.

"Looks like, the dating with Ivy is hitting off well."

The smile dropped off from his face.

Ivy!

He had almost forgotten about her. And like a sixth sense, he got the text from Ivy at the same instant.

"Busy?"

He didn't texted her back, but called her instead.

"Hey, what's up?"

"Nothing much, actually I wanted to tell you something."

"What?" his eyebrows furrowed on the way Ivy was talking. It didn't give him a good vibe.

"Actually I bumped into Caroline today. And we were talking and everything"

"So?" Stefan was confused for how could it possibly be a bad thing?

"And Jesse was with her as well, so I might have accidentally suggested for a double date… which is on this Friday by the way."

"Oh."

"I am so sorry, Stefan. I should have talked to you before making the decision."

"Hey, it's fine."

It wasn't

"It's not a bad idea."

It was the worst idea.

"Friday then?"

"Friday it is."

He looked at flask in his hand, thinking of how he is going to survive the double date. He thought that he was fine, but now that he has to actually witness them together and cozy in front of his eyes was making things worst for him, and he started feeling sick all of a sudden.

"Why are you looking so pale?"

"Huh?" he forgot that he was with Lexi, and he blanked out in the middle of his experiment. "I uh, nothing, I am fine."

He wasn't though. He was terrified by the thought of how the hell is he going to survive the date now.

A/N : Thanks to all of you who are reading and loving this one. I hope this chapter made you happy. What are your reviews?