As she examined her new appearance in the mirror before her Bonnie realized that she was lucky her mother had even recognized her. Her stylist had done a fabulous job. She had transformed her from Bonnie McCullough: Superstar into regular Kelly Parker: Meredith's best friend from NYU-her alias for anybody who asked that wasn't family or a close friend. Bonnie's once trademark curly red hair was replaced with stick straight black locks that fell just to her shoulders. The eyes looking back at her were no longer deep brown but a sparkling, crisp blue thanks to colored contacts. Her manager was going to kill her when she found out what Bonnie had done to her precious hair, but Bonnie was taking no chances in anybody recognizing her. She hoped that the few minor changes would be enough to make her unrecognizable to the public. The last thing she wanted or needed was the press tagging along on another one of her vacations. She needed a break from her fast-paced L.A. lifestyle. Plus this was all about focusing the spotlight on Meredith and her wedding and Bonnie was thankful to hand over the limelight to someone else for a change.
Bonnie had just finished applying some light make-up when she heard her cell phone ringing from deep within her Dooney and Bourke handbag. She walked over to her bed and opened up her purse, searching blindly through her belongings and coming up with nothing. 'Too much crap' Bonnie thought and let out a frustrated sigh. The cell phone topped ringing for a second, and Bonnie almost gave up, but the ringing started up again and so she finally gave up trying and turned her bag upside letting its contents fall to the bed below. 'There you are' she thought triumphantly as she found the tiny device hiding among her lexomil, her first class boarding pass, her ipod, and the several books and magazines she had shoved into her bag for the trip. Bonnie opened up the phone just in time to catch Meredith. "I'm here," Bonnie nearly shouted into the phone.
"Oh, hi! I'm glad I caught you finally. How was your flight?"
"Long, high. I took some lexomil though, so I slept through most of it."
"That's good. So I was wondering," she continued in normal Meredith fashion-wasting no tome and getting straight to the point. "I know you're tired, but everybody's here finally and Elena has been looking forward to showing off her cooking skills and so she's put together this dinner party for tonight at the boarding house and are you available tonight?" Meredith asked in a rushed voice.
"Of course, Elena doing manual labor? I wouldn't miss it for the world." Bonnie replied with faux excitement, but Meredith seemed to buy it.
"Great! I'll see you at seven then. At the boarding house." Meredith replied, her relief that Bonnie had accepted evident in her voice.
"Seven o'clock, see you then," and with that Bonnie hung up. She looked down at her watch. It was six o'clock. 'Good, just enough time to get ready and not enough time to really think this through.' She gathered her toiletries and headed for the bathroom to take a nice relaxing shower.
Half an hour and three outfits later Bonnie was sitting in the boarding house's drive way in her parents new Prius, parked behind a familiar car. She'd been parked there for a good five minutes, but she couldn't bring herself to get out of the car.
'This is stupid, just get out of the car and go inside.' She knew she probably looked like an idiot, sitting in her car staring off into space. Something inside of her was stopping her from opening the door. Alarms were going off in head and for some reason she was terrified of what would happen once she left the safety of the car. Bonnie had actually been in a good mood once she'd showered, and she'd been looking forward to the dinner on the drive over. She'd turned into the driveway happily anticipating the night to come, but when she had parked her car and looked up from gathering her things from the seat beside her she felt gooseflesh rise on her arms and she was frozen to her seat, something deep within her saying this was a bad idea. A knock on her window however pulled her out of her reverie. She looked up, expecting to see Meredith looming outside her car, instead she was met with a pair of blue eyes that nearly matched her own and a flash of blonde hair. Elena was standing outside of her car, and suddenly Bonnie was hit with a wave of nostalgia and a familiar pang of loneliness that she pushed out of her head as she opened the door.
"Bonnie?" Elena asked.
"Yea." Bonnie choked out and nodding her head for emphasis. Elena smiled and threw her arms around the shorter girl, happy to have her friend back. Bonnie pulled away and examined her friend. She looked different; she looked happy, content. Bonnie wondered which Salvatore brother was the cause of her friend's happiness these days. Before she could ask though Elena spoke.
"I'm so happy to see you Bonnie! Eight years is too long!" She squealed with happiness. Bonnie searched for something in her eyes, something that would contradict the happiness in her eyes. It would be harder for Bonnie to hate her if she thought her friend was already miserable, but Bonnie found nothing but pure bliss in the blonde's eyes and Bonnie's hatred for her former friend grew. She suppressed the ball of anger growing sickeningly in her stomach though and went on with her performance.
"I'm sorry I haven't called. You're right, eight years is way too long." Bonnie apologized, even managing to bring a few tears to here eyes for special effect. Elena just smiled obliviously and they started towards the door.
"You're here now though. I've even cooked your favorite dish, chicken Parmesan. Oh Bonnie it's going to be divine, all of us together again! Just like old times!" Elena gushed as the opened the front door. Bonnie looked up from her Channel boots that she had deemed particularly interesting the entire time that Elena had been talking and found herself staring into a pair of familiar black eyes.