Chapter 30
And you're on fire when he's near you
You're on fire when he speaks
You're on fire, burning at these mysteries
"So, want to tell me what exactly your plan is for seeing Matt in Nashville?" Bonnie questioned Elena after they'd been sitting at the gate for a few minutes, waiting for their chance to board the plane. "I'm coming along on this ride, at least let me know what's going to happen."
"I've made a mess of my entire life, Bonnie," she said quietly, staring down at her clasped hands in her lap. "I also dragged a lot of people into this mess. One of those people was Matt, and I never really apologized to him. I think it's time I finally give it to him."
"But why now? Why today?"
"I have to get out of this city."
"So why not go to Hawaii?" Bonnie continued to press, but her voice gentle and caring. "Why are you going to see Matt?"
Elena turned to Bonnie and said, "Because he's where it all started, in a way. He loved me and I threw it in his face. He was holding onto hope while I was falling in love with another man. He still had dreams of our future, and I had dreams of Damon. I was horrible to him."
"You made some mistakes, but it's been four years, Elena. Surely, he's moved on and let it all go."
"It doesn't mean that I don't still owe him something." She shrugged her shoulders and shook her head. "And maybe, by seeing him and getting real closure, I'll be able to really move on and figure things out."
Bonnie looked at her sadly as she reached out and placed her hand over Elena's fidgeting ones. "I'm sure Matt will appreciate getting an apology from you, but I don't think this is really about him – not in the way that you think it is." She gently squeezed Elena's hands before she continued. "I think this is about Damon."
Elena's shoulders fell in defeat and sadness. "Everything I do is about Damon in some way, but I owe Matt this much. I just want to move on, Bonnie. I feel like I've left everything in limbo for the past four years and I need to let it all go. Holding on hasn't gotten me anything. I need closure."
"So what's your plan after you see Matt? What are you going to do then?"
"I think I'm going to go visit my brother in Savannah. I haven't seen him since Christmas. Then, maybe I'll go home for a little bit."
"Elena," Bonnie sighed, "You can't run away again. I know you're upset, but you can't run away from all of this."
"I'm not running away," she insisted firmly. Others might think that was what she was doing, but she wasn't. She needed time away, but she would be back soon. Her life was here, and she wasn't leaving that for long. She just needed space, and being in New York could not give her that. It was simply too hard to stay.
"You know you'll have to tell Caroline, right? She'll go crazy if you disappear. And, seeing as I'm now on the run with you, she's going to lose her mind. Once she figures out we're both gone, she's going to be on a manhunt."
"I know," Elena admitted with a soft smile. She wouldn't be able to keep Caroline in the dark for long, but she couldn't tell her anything yet. It was Damon's wedding day, and that was what Caroline needed to be focused on, not Elena running off to Nashville to see Matt. She'd never understand it. "I'll tell her everything tomorrow."
"Why not just stay? You need her too. If we stay, we can all be in this together. Let Caroline be here for this all too. Hell, I'm sure Caroline will come to Nashville with us if you ask her to. Just wait until tomorrow. I just, I know I'm okay in a crunch, but I can't do what Caroline does. You need her too."
She did need Caroline, Bonnie was right about that, but she couldn't wait for tomorrow. "I can't stay." She swallowed thickly as she looked at Bonnie, a pleading look in her eyes. "I can't be here when he gets married, Bonnie. I have to get away. I can't stay here."
Bonnie immediately nodded her head in understanding and pulled Elena toward her. "Okay, we'll go to Nashville right now. We don't have to stay. We don't have to be here. Whatever you want to do, we'll do it."
Elena hauled the armload of bags off of the elevator in Caroline's building, following her rambling friend to her front door. "Why did you let me shop for two hours?" she whined to Elena. "Stefan is going to kill me when he sees how many things I bought when we still haven't had the baby shower yet. By the way, shouldn't you get on that? Isn't the point of a baby shower for it to happen before the baby is actually here? I'm, like, 30 weeks pregnant, Elena. Time is kind of running out. Besides, if you and Bonnie wait much longer, there won't be anything left that I actually need for him, and then Stefan will really get mad. He's been testy lately. I think he's getting nervous about the baby. And don't even get me started on Damon. I have no idea what's gotten into him, but he's been a complete asshole lately."
She could only roll her eyes as Caroline continued to prattle on about Stefan and how he'd been acting weird lately. Elena suspected that the reason for his behavior would be revealed very soon. In fact, she predicted Stefan would be back to normal in a matter of moments.
Caroline waddled into the penthouse – yes, waddled. At thirty weeks pregnant, she'd officially hit the point where she could no longer walk normally. However, it was something that could not be pointed out to her for fear of death or dismemberment. She loved all aspects of her pregnancy, except for the ones that made her feel like she was anything but an adorable pregnant woman, and waddling did not make her feel adorable. Damon had been the one to learn the lesson the hard way. She wondered if he still had a bruise from where Caroline hit him with her purse. She and Bonnie probably owed him an apology for that one.
They rounded the corner, and in an instant, Elena knew that all of the lying and deceiving has paid off. They're assaulted with a chorus of "Surprise!" led by Bonnie and Caroline's mother, both front and center in the crowd of women.
Elena watched Caroline's face in giddy anticipation. The blonde's blue eyes flooded with tears and her mouth hung open in shock. She stood silently, shaking her head in a daze as she took in her normally pristine living room that was now filled with her friends and decorated in an array of blue of and white. "You guys!" she finally exclaimed. "How did you surprise me?"
Giggling, Elena dropped the shopping bags to the floor and slid to Caroline's side. She wrapped an arm behind Caroline's shoulders and guided her into the room. "The how doesn't matter right now."
"Mom," she cried, reaching out to the mother she hadn't seen in months. "What are you doing here?"
"My baby is having a baby," her mom told her as she held her tightly. "I couldn't miss this."
After a few tear filled moments, Caroline pulled away and took in the sight before her yet again. "Seriously, how did you guys pull this off?"
"Stefan and Damon may have provided some assistance," Bonnie informed her with a smile. "But we'll talk about all of that later. Right now, it's time for your baby shower!" She produced a necklace from behind her back, a lone clothespin hanging from it. "All baby showers need games," she said as she placed the necklace around Caroline's neck. "So, from this moment on, no more saying the word baby. You say it, we take your clothespin and vice versa. Person with most at the end wins a bottle of wine."
Elena grabbed Caroline's shoulders and pushed her toward the couch. "Shall we begin?"
In an instant, Caroline was drawn into a crowd of giggling women assaulting her with a barrage of questions, leaving Bonnie and Elena standing toward the back, happy smiles on their faces. "And to think Stefan didn't believe we'd pull it off," Bonnie said.
Elena chuckled as she watched Caroline beam with joy over all the attention she was receiving. "Caroline thought we'd dropped the ball. We definitely got one over on her for a change."
"And it will never happen again." Elena had to agree with Bonnie's words. It was a miracle they'd pulled this off. They'd never be able to surprise Caroline like this again. "So, shall we join the party?"
Elena was sucked into the whirlwind of what exactly it meant to attend a baby shower thrown in Caroline's honor. For the next three hours, she participated in games and listened to Caroline tell story after story of what it was like to be pregnant, and how great Stefan was being to her. She got more presents than she could possibly need, but Elena wrote down the information for all of them, making sure that her best friend would be able to send cards to each and every person for the gifts she'd received.
Everything went off without a hitch and Elena knew she'd put together the perfect baby shower with Bonnie's help. They'd given Caroline everything she wanted. It made her feel great. It really did. Yet, as she watched her friend bask in the glory of it all, it hit her like a sucker punch to the gut. Caroline had everything she'd ever wanted in her life. She had her dream job, was married to her soul mate, lived in a truly amazing penthouse, and she was going to be a mother. In just a few weeks, the child that was growing inside of Caroline would be in the world. He would no longer be this foreign concept to everyone. He would be a real living and breathing person. She'd get to hold the child in her arms that she'd felt growing inside of her for months.
Elena would have none of it.
She didn't have her dream job. She'd never even written a novel, no matter how many drafts she'd started. She didn't have some great penthouse high in the sky. She didn't have a child – a child she hadn't realized how desperately she had wanted until it was gone. And most of all, she didn't have Damon. He belonged to another woman now.
"Hey, wanna help me in the kitchen?" Bonnie came up behind Elena and spoke softly in her ear. Elena nodded and followed her friend, carrying a bag of wrapping paper with her. Once they were away from all of the guests, Bonnie glanced into the living room to make sure that Caroline was still deep in conversation with a group of her coworkers before saying, "It's okay to be jealous."
Elena grimaced and glanced away from her friend's knowing gaze. "I don't want to talk about this."
"I'm not saying you have to. I'm just saying it's okay to feel how you feel. Don't beat yourself up over it, okay?" Elena slowly nodded her head as Bonnie approached her carefully. "You've been amazing about this whole baby shower. You've gone above and beyond. Everything has happened how it should have, and it's winding down. Why don't you head out and give yourself a night away from all the baby talk?"
"I can't. You saw how many presents she got. She's going to need both of us to help her sort through everything and then there's all of the food. I can't leave you to clean it all up."
"That's what Stefan, her mom, and I are for. He'll be back soon and Liz is staying for a few days. Go home, Elena, before Caroline gets a good look at your face. If you won't do it for yourself, do it for her."
She could see that Bonnie didn't like the negotiation tactic she'd had to choose, going lower than she would have liked. However, Elena knew that Bonnie was using the only weapon she had: Caroline. She'd feel bad if she left for herself, but Bonnie was right, if she stayed and Caroline thought for even a moment that she was upset, it would devastate Caroline. She'd feel like she'd forced Elena into planning the baby shower, then she'd cry, and then Elena would cry. It would be one big mess, and Bonnie was making her see that.
"Okay, I'll leave, but not before telling her goodbye. She'll know something is up if I just disappear."
"Hey, what are you two doing in the kitchen?" Bonnie and Elena turned to the entrance of the kitchen, finding Caroline with a perplexed look on her face. "Did we run you off with all the talk of fashion?"
"No," Elena quickly denied, shaking her head. "I was just telling Bonnie that I needed to head out. I have plans with Colin tonight."
Caroline's eyes brightened at the news. "Yay!" She giddily clapped her hands. "What are you two going to do? What number date is this? Is this the sex date?"
Elena blushed at Caroline's last question. "It's not the sex date, Caroline. We're just going to dinner. It's a casual dinner, that's all."
"Well, this has been happening for like a month now. It definitely means something."
"It means he's a nice guy, and I need to leave, so I don't stand him up."
"If this were any reason other than Colin, I would so not let you leave my baby shower this early. However, I will make an exception for that hunky man, and the hope that you will get a nice taste of him tonight."
"On that note," Elena laughed and rolled her eyes in disbelief, "I'm going to grab my purse and head out. Call you tomorrow?"
Caroline came forward and wrapped her arms around Elena. "You better call me. I'm going to want details about exactly what is going on with you and Colin."
Elena continued to laugh as she pulled away. "Goodbye, Caroline." She offered a quick wave and farewell in Bonnie's direction, and then quietly slipped out of the penthouse, immediately heaving a sigh of relief. She'd done it. She'd survived the baby shower. Now she needed a distraction.
She hadn't been lying when she said she was going out with Colin tonight, but they weren't supposed to meet for another hour, which gave her more than enough time to partake in a few calming drinks at the bar. So, she sent quick text to Colin, telling him to meet her at the bar instead of her apartment, and then made her way back to her area of town, giving herself a few silent minutes for all of the thoughts she'd pushed out of her head for the past two weeks to flood in.
It had been two weeks since Halloween, which meant it had been two weeks since that moment in Caroline and Stefan's guest bedroom. She hadn't allowed herself to think about it at first, partly because it wasn't where her focus needed to be, and partly because she didn't want to think about it long enough to try to understand why Damon was opening up to her again. She was scared to question it, scared of where her thoughts might lead her. That attempt lasted for two days before her brain went on complete overdrive.
She wasn't naïve enough to believe she wasn't completely desperate for whatever Damon would offer her. If friendship was what he had to give, she'd take it, and revel in it. She thought about everything, from that night, trying to piece it all together and form any sort of understanding she could, but she found little to none.
Then, in some weird form of twisted fate, as she entered the doors of Green Street Bar, smiling warmly at the familiar faces she passed, her feet came to a halt when she came to the forever-familiar head of Damon Salvatore. He sat at the bar, head hung over his glass of scotch that Mark apparently still kept in the same place for him, even after all these years. A part of her told her to turn around and walk right out before he saw her, but another part of her told her to sit at that bar and have a drink, whether Damon was there or not.
She needed the alcohol to numb the feelings swirling inside of her right now. She needed to silence the barrage of questions that assaulted her brain, all reminding her of Caroline's current pregnancy and her own failed one. She had not come here thinking that Damon would be here, but he was. He was sitting ten feet away from her, and she could turn and run or sit beside him and join him for a drink.
When Mark stood in front of Damon and slid Elena's favorite pomegranate martini right beside Damon, she knew she had to take option B. He knew she was here, and that was his invitation to join him. So, with nerves swelling inside of her, she slid onto the stool beside him and ran her finger over the rim of her martini glass. "How'd you know I'd be here?" she asked him.
He looked up from his half empty glass and stared at her in understanding laced with a bit of longing, or possibly despair. "Caroline's baby shower was today. Figured you'd be seeking out your third best friend tonight. Looks like I'm right." A whisper of a smile flashed over her lips and she turned to her drink in front of her. "Thought I couldn't go wrong with a Pomegranate Martini."
"You thought right," she told him encouragingly. "Now just make sure that a couple keep coming after this."
"That bad?"
"No," she denied, "Not bad. Just long and tedious. I was surrounded by 40 women, some pregnant, some with kids, some thinking about kids, and all the conversations revolved around babies and Caroline's baby for three hours. Anyone would need a drink after that."
"At least we didn't have to plan this one together," he pointed out. "Small favors."
Elena laughed quietly. "Caroline already has to share the spotlight with a baby. She's not about to share it with Stefan too."
She stared down at the cocktail Damon ordered for her, seeing it as some sign of a peace offering. They'd come to an unexpected truce on Halloween, but nothing was ever official with Damon until he sealed it with a drink. The night hadn't been a fluke or a drunken mistake on his part. He meant it. He meant every word he'd said in that room that night, which meant that he was also jealous.
She had felt a vast amount of confusion after that night, unsure of what it all meant. Though he was cordial to her after that, they had not had any more moments like in that bedroom, and she had not pushed for anything. She had spent months practically begging him to give her another chance and just listen to her. Then, out of the blue, he was giving her what she wanted, but she felt paralyzed in fear from it all. How did they move forward with this?
"Was Caroline surprised?" he questioned after a few moments of silence. Apparently he was not having the confusion that she was.
"Yeah," she said, still looking down at her drink. "She thought we'd forgotten. Thanks for distracting her these past two weeks." It wasn't the most prophetic thing to say, and was probably a bit of a copout, since there was so much more she needed to say, but it was all she had right now.
Damon chuckled quietly and looked down at his drink. "Any chance I get to mess with Caroline is good in my book."
"Yeah, about that," she laughed, finally finding some break in the angst inside of her, "We just asked you and Stefan to do what you could to distract her. Did you really have to tell her that she waddled like a duck?"
Once Bonnie and Elena got serious about planning Caroline's baby shower, they'd pulled Stefan and Damon in, knowing that they'd need all the help they could get to keep it from Caroline. If she'd known when her baby shower was going to be, she would have taken over the whole thing, which would have completely defeated the purpose of it all. So, Stefan and Damon had been assigned the task of keeping her distracted from it at all times. Obviously, that had meant Damon giving himself a free pass to drive a hormonally charged Caroline out of her mind for two weeks.
"You told me to keep her in the dark, no matter what. When she started rambling about how you and Bonnie had blown her off for lunch, she was five seconds away from figuring it all out. I had to pull out the big guns."
"By telling her she's fat?" she demanded incredulously. A part of her was amazed how easy it was to fall right back into this banter with him, when only moments before she'd been confused and unsure. Now, she was laughing and things were normal. In an instant, he could do this, pull her out of her head and into this ease they once had.
"I did not say she was fat!" he denied fervently, a wide smile on his face. "I told her she waddled, which was totally and completely true. She's lost all ability to walk like a normal person, which really isn't surprising since she's the size of my arm and has a basketball strapped to her stomach. Anybody would waddle under those circumstances."
"She cried for an hour!"
"After she beat the shit out of me!" he exclaimed.
"She did not beat you."
"My bruise would tell you differently."
Elena rolled her eyes and looked down at the bar, staring into her brightly colored drink. She and Damon fell into an awkward silence after that, neither sure of where to carry the conversation now, and she was reminded that the ease did not last forever. This attempt at finding their friendship again was still brand new. She didn't know what the boundaries were this time. Three years ago, when she'd first been getting to know him, there had been no boundaries. She could say anything to him. There was no limit to what they could talk about. She got to share all of her thoughts with him, and now she couldn't.
The desire was there for both of them to get something normal back between them, but there was a discomfort there that had never been there before. Halloween had been an exception to it all. His behavior had been so unexpected that she'd easily fallen into it, too surprised to really think about what she was doing. Now that almost a month had passed since then she still didn't know how to approach any of it. She didn't know what to think or do. He did this to her. He could make her feel comfortable and at ease one moment, but then confused and scared the next.
It left her in the awkward position, where they would be fine for a few moments, and then she'd freeze up, unsure of what to say or do. Damon would pick up on the tension and drop everything, leaving them in this tense silence until one of them finally made an escape or they were interrupted. Then, she'd spend the next several hours beating herself up over it all because each time that happened was a lost conversation with them, a lost chance for her to be able to look at him and listen to him.
Those thoughts would inevitably lead her to wondering what had changed. He had been so vocal about the fact that he hated her and wanted to cause her nothing but pain. Then, one night, they were sitting on a bed as he told her that he was tired of the fighting that had left her so drained for so many months. He was telling her that he wanted to try – he wanted that ease back. It had all been music to her ears, but it had left her so painfully confused, and his inquiries about her date had only served to mess with her head more. She didn't get it. She didn't understand what it meant.
Was he jealous? Was he making a simple observation? Was it said to specifically get under her skin and make her think that he was jealous? Did it mean anything at all? Those were the questions that consumed her, but she was too scared to bring it up with him, and even if she did, the odds that he would give her an honest answer were practically nonexistent.
She was just lost and confused, and she wanted answers. She needed them.
"Why are you tired of fighting me?" she finally questioned timidly, scared that she was pushing the envelope too far. This was all so new and surreal. There was a tentative olive branch they were both holding onto, and with just one wrong squeeze, it could break in their hands, gone for good. She didn't want to lose that. Even if she couldn't have him romantically, she could at least have him like this, and she'd take anything he could give her. She missed him that much. She couldn't go on like this, though. She needed to know what was happening, even if it did push the envelope too far.
He was silent for several moments, contemplating his answer as he swirled the ice around in his empty glass. When she was sure she was about to explode from the anticipation, he spoke. "It wasn't doing anything anymore," he admitted, equally as quiet as she had been. "At first, I enjoyed the pain I caused you. I needed it to feed something inside of me. Then it stopped working, and it took too much effort to try and make it start again." With nervous eyes, she looked up at his earnest face that she once thought held the answer to everything she needed to know – sometimes she still thought that. "It takes a lot of energy to hate you, Elena."
Elena closed her eyes and let out a deep sigh. "It takes a lot of energy to be hated by you."
"Nothing can ever be easy with us, can it?"
"I don't know. I thought things were pretty easy for a while."
"Maybe in some ways," he admitted. "We always had those complications, though. You're a stubborn woman." A slow smile eased its way onto Damon's face.
"Do you admire that trait again, or do you still loathe it?"
Damon turned to her, a pained look in his eyes. "I never did loathe your stubbornness, and that is what I loathed."
They fell silent as he stared at her, entering the territory of the unknown once again. His eyes bore into her soul, seeing things she thought long gone. Even after all this time, he still understood her, still saw her. All of the anger and wishes to the contrary could not change that. He'd tried to blind himself to that reality, but she could see it now, see that he still understood her.
It gave her the courage to smile and say, "They promoted me to a junior editor at my job. I'm not just a first reader anymore." It was a shaky subject for her to bring up, that she knew. It could easily devolve into an argument about her time in Chicago, but it felt wrong to not tell him. Even if she hated every day that she'd left him and gone to Chicago, she was happy to finally have something to show for it. Sure, she had those moments of anger about where her life was, but she was getting somewhere now.
He continued to stare at her for several energy filled moments before he held his glass out in her direction. "Congratulations," he said quietly.
She slowly lifted her martini glass to tap it softly against his glass. "Thank you, Damon. That means a lot."
"One of these days you're going to have to actually write something of your own. You can't read other people's work forever." He lowered his glass back to the bar and moved closer to her, sliding his knee between both of hers, his hands both resting low on her hips as he looked at her. "You have to make it all count for something. If you don't ever write, everything that's happened in the past two years is all for nothing."
She swallowed thickly, her heart pounding loudly in her chest, as if it were fighting to break free from her body. He hadn't touched her since Halloween and it gave her just as much of a reaction now as it had then. It was confusing and captivating all at the same time, leaving her pulled in two different directions, which only left her with more questions. Everything with Damon lately seemed to leave her with more questions.
"I know," she told him softly, her voice barely loud enough to reach his ears, but at his slow nod, she knew he'd heard her. "I'm trying."
"We've both been saying that a lot lately, haven't we?"
She smiled as he laughed and shook his head. "It's all we've got."
His shoulders relaxed and he blew out a deep breath, but his hands didn't move from her waist. It was practically driving her insane that she could feel the tips of his fingers on her skin, but she could do nothing in return. All she could do was remain frozen in place and hope that he wouldn't move them. She didn't want to lose his touch just yet.
"So," Damon began uncertainly, "Have you eaten dinner?"
The question came so unexpectedly that she found she had no voice as he watched her, waiting for an answer. What did she even say to this? How did she respond? There were so many factors she had to consider. No matter how desperately she might wish it, if she said yes, this wouldn't be a dinner between two people trying to be friends. This would be a dinner between two exes, one who was in a committed relationship. She wasn't twenty-two anymore, and could no longer delude herself into thinking that this would only affect them. His sister-in-law was her best friend. His brother hated her. It was nothing close to as simple as his question made it sound.
However, in the middle of all of her confusing thoughts, she didn't have a chance to get an answer out of her mouth before she heard her name called from across the bar. "Elena!" Her head turned at the sound of Colin's voice, immediately remembering the other reason the question was so complicated. She already had plans. It was why she was here – to meet him.
He smiled as he approached them, and she quickly moved to her feet, losing Damon's touch on her skin in the process. "Hey," she greeted him, immediately finding herself in his arms as he hugged her and brushed a soft kiss on her cheek. When she pulled back and returned to her seat, she could see the confusion on Damon's face and the tension in his shoulders. He looked to Colin and then to her, trying to piece together what was happening in front of him, but she knew he'd need her assistance to understand. "Damon, this is Colin, the guy Caroline set me up with."
A knowing look settled in his eyes and he slowly shook his head before looking back to Colin. He extended his arm toward the other man while plastering a smile on his face. "Nice to meet you." After they shook hands, Damon motioned back to Elena. "I thought this wasn't –"
Elena quickly jumped in before he could finish his question. "Oh, Colin and I are just going for dinner. He seemed to have the same idea as you, figured I'd need a bit of a break after being surrounded by pregnancy for a few hours. We're just going to head up to that little Thai place that I like."
A flash of remembrance sparked in his eyes and she knew that he knew exactly which restaurant they were going to. "Right, I remember that one." He turned to Colin. "I can't say that I remember the food, but I definitely remember the view." His eyes moved over to hers. "Best view in all of New York City."
Elena struggled to swallow down the last sip of her cocktail, but her throat felt closed and raw. She knew there was no view from the Thai restaurant other than graffiti covered buildings across the street, which meant his words carried a different meaning altogether. "It was a good place," she quietly acknowledged. "Good memories."
What was going on?
"So, Colin," Damon began, casually swirling his alcohol in his glass as he stared at the man standing next to her, "What is it that you do?"
Colin slid his arm behind her shoulders and rested his hand on the bar. "I'm a model. That's how Caroline met me and got the idea to set me up with Elena."
Damon's eyes widened in shock. "A model?" He looked at Elena, a tight smile on his face. "How interesting." Elena tried to keep her form relaxed as Damon looked like a lion after its prey.
"Damon," she said, worry lacing her voice.
"What?" His eyes slid to her, feigned ignorance and complete innocence fluttering in his gaze. "It's truly fascinating. I didn't think models were your type." When she tilted her head, her eyes begging him to stop whatever it was he was trying to do, he merely smiled wider. "Don't look so scared, Elena. I'm not going to hit the boy. In fact, I'll even share a drink with him. You are old enough to drink, right?"
Colin continued to smile, looking unfazed by Damon's attempt at whatever it was Damon was going after. "I've been legal for awhile. I just look young as a side effect of protecting what makes me my money."
"Right," Damon sounded the word out slowly, but motioned Mark over to him. He quickly obliged, but his eyes widened as he took in the trio in front of them. "Mark, my friend, would you mind making a drink for Elena's friend here?"
"Yeah, Blue Moon with an orange, right?" He asked Colin, who quickly nodded. As he was turning around to prepare the drink, he looked at Elena and asked, "I know you're retired and all, but we're out of oranges. Do you want to come back here and slice some up for me?"
She knew Mark couldn't possibly be close to being out of oranges, but she agreed, nonetheless. "Sure." She jumped off the stool and made her way behind the bar.
She retrieved two oranges and a knife, and was quickly slicing them up when Mark slid up next to her. "Please tell me you know what you're doing."
She didn't look up from the oranges as she questioned, "Would you believe me if I said I did?"
"Maybe if you didn't look like a deer caught in headlights."
"I didn't know he was going to be here, okay?" she hissed, finally glancing up at her former coworker.
"Damon or your new boy?"
"Damon!" she gritted out from between her teeth, trying to keep the look on her face as neutral as possible. "And Colin isn't my new boy. We're just friends."
"Tell that to your ex-boyfriend."
"I have," she insisted.
With a sigh, Mark grabbed an orange slice from in front of her and placed it on the rim of the glass of beer in his hand. "Maybe you should tell him again. And while you're in the process, maybe figure out what you've gotten yourself into."
"Why are you talking to me like I've done something wrong? Nothing is going on."
"He had his hands on your ass not five minutes ago. And he was waiting here for an hour before you showed up."
"We're trying to be friends. He's over me, Mark. He's made that perfectly clear since the day I showed up and he slammed a door in my face. I'm just trying to get my friend back. And his hands were not on my ass."
Mark sighed again and looked at her with a sense of pity. "For your sake, I hope you know what you're doing."
Elena grabbed the drink from him and made her way back to Damon and Colin, who were staring at each other, both silent and unmoving. She smiled and handed the beer to Colin. "Your drink."
"Thanks." He accepted the glass from her and quickly drained it of half of its contents before she could sit down.
"So," Damon motioned between Elena and Colin, "You two go out often?"
Elena looked at Colin then back to Damon. "A couple times a week."
Colin set his beer down on the bar and rested his hand on Elena's shoulder. "You ready? We should probably get to dinner."
"Yeah," Elena readily agreed. She could feel the tension, and she wanted to be free of it as soon as possible. She wasn't lying when she said that nothing was going on with Colin, but the energy changed the moment he appeared and Damon realized who he was. She didn't understand it, but she didn't want to stick around to see if she could figure it out. "I'll be out in a second. I just need to pay my tab and say goodbye to Mark." She watched as Colin nodded and exited the bar before she looked at Damon. "Thank you for coming out here to see how I was after the baby shower."
He smiled tightly. "I needed an excuse to see Mark. We have a bit of a forbidden friendship going on. I can't let Alaric get jealous."
"Right," Elena nodded as she grabbed her purse, knowing he was deflecting her words of thanks. "Anyway, I'll see you around?" she asked, somewhat hopefully.
"Yeah, I think you'll be seeing me around," he agreed, but his words sounded distant and hollow. "Go have fun on your date."
"It's not," she began to explain, but he cut her off.
"Go, Elena. I'd hate for him to wander off with a stranger offering candy."
She looked at her feet and nodded her head, wishing that things were comfortable like they had been just a few short minutes ago. Slowly, she made her way to the exit, but before she got too far, she turned around again. He was staring after her, and when her eyes caught his, he looked at her expectantly, waiting for her to speak. "Damon, for what it's worth, it really does mean a lot that you cared enough to come. Even if we didn't talk about it, I know you're the only one that gets it. Thank you."
He smiled sadly at her, his eyes filled with a longing that she understood all too well. It was the look of wishing that things hadn't ended up this way; that they weren't in this place. And when she waved before she turned to continue out of the bar, she knew that even if he never said the words, a part of him wanted the same thing she did, for her to have never lost the baby. Though it hurt, it gave her some small sense of comfort that she'd never gotten before she left him. She didn't feel quite so alone in the loss anymore. However, that would be the last thing they ever truly shared. He was with Andie now, and she was getting to know Colin, open to seeing if anything could come from it. It still sucked, but she had to do what Damon said; she had to make the past two years count for something.