Chapter 7

"Let me get this straight…that painting that is hanging in your living room was painted by you?" I ask completely absorbed in our conversation. He nods his head and takes another small nibble out of the breadsticks that were pre-set on our table. "Can you do that?" Damon looks up at me with questioning eyes. "You know…eat?"

"Sure, I mean as long as I can keep a healthy amount of blood in my system. Why? Are you worried that I'm killing myself in front of you?" He chuckles in amusement. I shoot him a joking glare and watch the young female waitress walk over to our table. She looks at Damon and her face just lights right up. She starts to fiddle around with her slicked back ponytail. Then her eyes fall upon me in the chair right across from him. That is when her pace slows and her face drops in disappointment. I clear my throat and cram a huge piece of bread in my mouth to hide what I just saw. "I saw it too. Way to piss our waitress off. Someone's food is going to be spit in!" He sings to me tauntingly. I shake my head no until I hear our waitress step in front of our table.

"Welcome to Restaurant De France. May I get you guys something to drink?" She asks holding up a pen and a pad of paper.

"A glass of red wine please." Damon says scanning his menu.

"A coke." I say without thinking. I glance up to see Damon's eyes peeking up at me over the menu. They look skeptical. I can just hear him saying: A coke? Really Emma? "Did I say coke? I meant…um…the same as the gentleman here."

"And how old exactly are you Miss?" The waitress says with attitude. Oh shit! She can tell I'm underage! I swallow and frantically look at Damon for help. He nods his head at me reassuringly.

"What are you implying?" He practically shouts at her in an accusing voice. "Are you accusing me, a man well into his twenties, of being in a relationship with a woman who is not even old enough to drink?" His act, as always, is extremely convincing. I can't help but feel my skin jump at the sound of him saying that we're in a relationship. "I want to see your manager right this second!"

"Why?" She swallows nervously.

"Uh, why do you think? I'm going to give him a piece of my mind! For God sakes! If she weren't old enough to drink don't you think she'd be…Hm, I don't know, IN SCHOOL?"

"I'm so sorry sir! I-I didn't…I didn't mean to insult you." She quickly recoils her attitude. She sounds frightened at the thought of her boss hearing about this. "That was my mistake sir. There will be no need to call out my manager, I assure you! My greatest apologies! I'll bring out a whole bottle of our finest red wine, free of charge!" She scurries away, practically quivering.

"Oh my God! I can't believe you just did that!" I giggle, hiding my face with my menu. Damon takes the menu and tugs it down from my face. I look over at him in confusion.

"Don't hide your face while you're laughing. You're depriving the world of a beauty." He says with a wink. I internally kick myself as I feel my cheeks heating up to a red shade. Damon is always so charming to me. Or he has been recently. Something has to be influencing him to act this way. Damon gazes at my face in recognition of my eyes on him. I blush and look down at my menu. "What is it?"

"You're not normally this…" I trail off, lost in words. "…fun. You're normally just a pain in the ass." I joke as I decide that I cannot read this menu. It is completely in French and guess who takes Spanish instead! Damon laughs right out loud at my comment and sets his menu down in decision. "What are you getting?"

"Why, do you not know what the hell the menu says?"

"Um…no I don't." I admit sheepishly. Damon shakes his head and is on my side of the table in a nano-second. I try my hardest to not glance over at his beautiful face. I know I'm not doing a very good job of it but, I'd give myself credit for trying.

"Well, lucky for you I do know French. What do you want?" He asks looking at my face. I keep my voice as steady as possible as I tell him that I don't care. He smiles at my reaction to how his closeness is making me react. I clear my throat as he brings his chair around and sets it right next to me. Now he's just acting like this for his own amusement. I glare at him and his smile grows. "Do you want to just ditch this place after we receive our free bottle of wine? I do have to bring us all the way back to Mystic Falls."

"Don't you want to eat your food? We haven't even ordered it yet." I say as the waitress sets the bottle down on our table. She looks pissed at what I just said. Damon stares at her in innocence.

"I'm sorry Ma'am. My girlfriend isn't really feeling very well. Unfortunately we are going to have to go." He croons, petting the back of my hair lovingly. I feel his lips up to my ear. "Act sick." He mutters to me. I droop my face and try to put on my best 'I'm about to throw up' expression.

"Well, isn't that just too bad? Please do come again soon." She fakes a smile and stomps off. Damon grabs the wine bottle and before I have time to ask, we are flying towards his car. The car ride is full of absolute silence all the way home. I do notice however that where Damon stops his car, is not my house…

"Damon, this is your house. Not mine."

"For this week it is." He says opening his door and getting out. I watch him walk into the house in disbelieve. I trample out of the car and rush after to him into the house. I see a few of my suite cases that I had unpacked and put in the back of my closet. That means Damon went into my house and went through all my stuff!

"Damon!" I call into the empty room. I pick up both of my suite cases and gasp. They are empty… "DAMON!" I shout, now mad. He appears in front of my suddenly with a sadistic smile on his face. I raise my eyebrows at him like my mother used to do when she knew that I did something naughty. "Why are my suite cases here and why are they empty?"

"Well, that would be because I took them from your room, filled them, and brought them here. Then I unpacked everything for you in your room." He says smiling and taking them from my hands. "You may go and take a look. Go upstairs and turn right. Your room is the room at the end of the hallway."

"No, I'm going home Damon!"

"No, you're not."

"Yes I am! You cannot force me to stay here!"

Damon catches me by surprise when he grips both of my wrists tightly and slams me up against the wall. "I think I can!" He snarls. I gasp and am about to scream on the top of my lungs when I look into Damon's eyes. They have playfulness embedded into them. He's not actually going to hurt me. I sigh and Damon starts to laugh. I try to fight back and be upset but, I can't help but laugh too.

"You really had me going there." I laugh my body still shaking slightly, not caught up with how I feel now. Damon wraps his arms around me, still laughing. I hug him back and take a deep breath. I feel extremely safe around Damon even though I know that I shouldn't. "What should we do now?"

"You never got to eat lunch, the whole reason I pulled you out of school. Why don't we go into the kitchen and I'll cook you some food." He suggests pulling out of the hug. I nod my head and we walk into the kitchen together. "What do you want?"

"I don't care."

"Ok, Italian food it is then." He says smiling up at me. I nod my head and he begins to prepare the food. "Do you mind if I cook something that will take a while to make?" I shake my head no as he throws a towel over his shoulder.

"I didn't even know you could cook."

"Yeah, well when you've been around as long as I have, you tend to pick up a lot of different skills." He shrugs his shoulders and continues to cook more and more.

"Damon…" I ask slowly and a little scared of how he will respond. He looks up at me with questioning eyes. "I was just wondering…how did you…you know…?" He burrows in his eyebrows and leans in, not picking up what I mean. "What's the story of how you got turned into a vampire?" Damon stands up straight and the look in his eyes is one I never want to see. I see pain and sadness in his eyes. "I should have never asked…I'm sorry." I begin shaking my head. "Never mind."

"No, no. It's okay. I don't mind." Damon lies, trying to be a gentleman. "I guess you have a right to be curious." He sighs and turns to me. "The year was 1864. I was madly in love with a woman named Katherine. She turned out to be a Vampire. Stefan and I both were in love with her at the same time. Stefan tried to get the town to accept her as a vampire, exposing her in the process. Let's just say that the town didn't accept her. They rounded her up with the rest of the town's vampires and piled them all in the church. They burned them all up. When they took Katherine, Stefan and I both ran after them, trying to get her back. We were both shot in the process. Turns out, Katherine was sneaking vampire blood into me and Stefan's systems and we were turned into vampires."

"How did that turn you into a vampire? I thought that in order to be turned into a vampire, the vampire had to bite you or whatever." I say not looking at Damon's face. I stare down at the food he's concocting up. When I do look up, Damon is rolling his eyes. "Isn't that how it works?"

"No." He scoffs in amusement. "Say that I decided to turn you into a vampire." I stand up straight at the thought of it. "I'd have to make you drink my blood or any blood of a vampire for that matter. Then, I'd have to…kill you…" He pauses to watch my reaction. I swallow as my head begins to pound. "When you woke up, you'd have to drink the blood of a human, otherwise you'd die by the next day. Then, Valla! You'd be a vampire."

"Oh…" I say kind of regretting asking him that question. At least the topic is off of Damon's dead ex. Damon laughs again and I sigh in the relief in hearing him laugh again.

"Yeah, oh." Damon laughs stirring something. "This will be done soon." He states, placing a cover over the saucepan. I smile at him as we walk over to the kitchen table. "Anymore questions for me?"

"How long have you been in love with Elena for?" I boldly ask bracing myself for the consequences of asking him the wrong question.

"A few months." He admits, to my surprise. My head snaps up and I watch him. He's keeping his eyes diverted from my face. He's staring down at the woodwork of the table. "I decided it for sure after Stefan finished his first football game." I part my lips slightly, not sure of what to say.

That was the last thing I expected to come out of Damon's mouth. I had expected him to deny it and scream at me for accusing him of it for a second time. I feel a sadness wash over me for a reason that I'm upset is all too true. I'm sad because Damon's in love with Elena. Not me. All this flirting, kind acts, and sentimental talking…it's all because she isn't in love with Damon. All because she chose Stefan instead of him. I'm just the substitute.

"I…um…" I say trying to clear the lump in the back of my throat. "At least you're admitting it now." I clear my throat again with no success. "I think that…I'm going to go to my room." I nod and get up shakily from the table. "Just come and get me when the food's done, okay?"

"Yeah." Damon says, still not looking at me.

He doesn't even try to stop me when I decide to leave the room. He knows the reality of this situation. I guess I'm not as good at hiding my feelings as I thought… He knows how I feel about him. I know how he feels about Elena. I don't even know why I thought he'd forget about Elena suddenly. I may be pretty but, I'm not as pretty as Elena. Plus I'm even younger than Elena and it's already illegal for Damon to be dating her. Not that it really matters if you think about it. He's a vampire for crying out loud! If they try to arrest him he can erase their memory of the case.

I make it to the room that Damon said is my room. I race in there and slam the door behind me. I don't feel a single tear push towards my eyes. I don't know why. Normally something like this would send me into a fit of tears. But no, I just feel like lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling and thinking things over, which is exactly what I do. I flop down on the bed and stare up at the white ceiling.

That's when I notice. I jolt back into an upright position and look around the room. This is the same room that Damon had brought me into the last time I had been over at his house. Back when he was using me to piss Stefan off. If I'm not mistaken…this is Damon's room…

Why would Damon give me his bedroom to sleep in for the week? Does this mean he was going to sleep in this bed with me? Was he going to sleep on the couch? In another room perhaps? Was he even going to sleep at all? There has to be an explanation to this.

I'm ripped out of my train of thought by the light rapping on the door. "Come in." I say in a soft voice. Damon walks in, smiling weakly. He looks a little worried. "Is the food done?" He shakes his head no and takes a seat next to me on the bed. "Then why are you here?"

"I wanted to apologize for how I reacted down there." He says looking me right in the face. "I was being a coward. I couldn't even look at you. That is not the way I should be acting around a lady such as you." As the words flow from his mouth I feel as if I am talking to the guy that was a boy in 1864, not the vampire living today.

"It's fine, really. See, look." I point to my eyes with a fake smile on my face. "No tears." Damon doesn't look convinced but he lets it go and takes my hand.

"Let's go back downstairs." He says tugging me from the bedroom. I unwillingly follow him down the stairs. "The food should be almost done." When we enter the kitchen I see a bowl that wasn't there when I went upstairs. It looks like a bowl of leaves and spices. "Take a seat in the dinning room. It's right through that door there."

I do as I'm told and walk through the door I was directed. Outstretched before me is a long, huge, gorgeous, dinning room that's almost the size of the entire first story of my home. It's a banquet hall… I guess that makes sense since this is a home from 1864. I see a pretty chair and sit right in it. It's not like the rest of the chairs. This one has different decor to it.

"Alright, right here we have your and my lunch." He smiles carrying two plates with something piled on top of them both. When he looks up at where I'm sitting, he nearly drops the plates of food. "Um…" Is all he says, before continuing to me as if there is nothing wrong? Damon is a vampire. He didn't do that out of clumsiness.

"What's wrong Damon?" I ask as he sets the plate in front of me and taking the seat next to mine.

"Nothing…it's just that…that seat used to be where Katherine sat back when she stayed in the boarding house."

"Oh! I'm so sorry!" I squeal, jumping up from the chair. "I'll just sit somewhere else then."

"No, sit there. It's about time I let that go. It's just a chair after all." Damon says grabbing my wrist and pulling me back into my seat.

"Can I ask you something Damon?"

"Are the questions going to be like the ones that you asked earlier?"

"No."

"Then go ahead."

"Are we sharing a room?"

"Yes we are." He says digging into his food. "Anymore questions?"

"But, why? There are plenty of rooms in the house. Why don't you just give me my own room?"

"Because it'll be harder to protect you from a different room."

"Why do you need to protect me?"

"Hey, you've passed your question limit. Now it's my turn to ask you the questions."

"Um…okay? Hit me with your best shot."

"What brought you to Mystic Falls?"

"Well, my mom and dad got divorced when I was seven and my mother has been all work and no play ever since then. She's trying to maintain our lifestyle without a man in our lives. I've tried to get her to date but she refuses. She got a promotion in her company and we had to move here for it. No questions asked, I was packing my things and saying goodbye to all my friends and now here I am."

"Well, I'm sorry about your parents."

"I'm not." I admit without a regret of finally being able to say it out loud for the first time. Damon shoots me an interested look, telling me that I need to explain myself further. "They fell out of love. They weren't making each other happy anymore. I'm glad that they were both smart enough to get out of the relationship mutually before either one of them had the chance to hurt the other."

"You can't honestly believe that." Damon says shaking his head and taking another bite of his food. "Divorce is hard for everyone, even you."

"Next question." I shoo the topic away before he has the chance to uproot any feelings that I haven't even felt myself yet.

"Okay, since we are on the topic of love. How long have you been in love with my brother?"

"I'm not." I plainly state and am shocked at how true the words feel to me. All of this yearning and wishing that Stefan wasn't in love with Elena seems to be gone. It's been replaced… "What happened the other day at the battlefield was a mistake. Stefan and I both just got caught up in a moment. The kiss didn't mean anything." Damon's lips curve up in a smile that shows that he's done something wrong. "What?"

"Nothing, I just…" He trails off shaking his head.

"Huh?" I ask as anger begins to wash over me

"Nothing." Damon says looking away from me. I narrow my eyes at him, telling me that he's not telling the whole truth. "I'm just thinking about that kiss. I kind of wonder how far your fondness for Stefan goes…"

"Not anywhere past friendship Damon!" I defend myself, as if I need to explain myself to him. He shoots me an arched eyebrow, as if he doesn't believe me in the least.

"The way you guys were kissing tells me different."

"You're wrong Damon!" I snap, taking a deep breath. I can't lose my temper around him. I don't want to set him off too. That could be much, much more dangerous. "Things have changed since then…" Damon's eyes flare up a new expression, hope. I stare down at my food and poke at it with my fork, wanting to change the subject immediately. "What is this anyways?"

"Osso Buco, it's my favorite Italian dish. I figured I make it so you could try it." Damon says smiling sweetly up at me. I smile back and take a bite and moan happily over the exploding flavor.

"This is absolutely delicious!" I cheer taking another bite. Damon's small smile stretches and he opens the wine bottle. Before I know it there is a glass of it in front of me. "You're okay with my drinking this?"

"Why wouldn't I be?" Damon asks pouring himself a glass of it as well. "Cheers." He raises his glass up in my direction quickly and takes a big gulp of it. "Go ahead, try it. It won't kill you." I look up at his teasing eyes and grimace slightly. I pick up the glass and take a tiny swig of it. I smile as it's on my lips and I take a big sip. "Good?"

"Fantastic." I say as I finish off my first glass and Damon re-fills it for me. We sit together at the table talking over a bottle of wine and slowly my vision starts to blur and talking becomes much harder. As time goes by, glass after glass, Damon becomes more and more amused.

"You have wine on your lips still." Damon points out after I finish off the last of the wine. I blink at him a couple of times and laugh, hiccupping slightly. Damon laughs at me and grabs a napkin. "You are so drunk." He chuckles, wiping my mouth off for me. "Have you ever been drunk before?"

"Nnnnnoooopersssss!" I laugh trying to stand up without falling over. "Are you ssssure I'm drunk? Becaussse I feeeel ffffine!" I say tripping over my own two feet. Damon laughs at me again and rushes to my side, holding me up against him.

"I'm pretty sure. I'm going to guess that was the first time you've ever consumed alcohol so, you're even more drunk than the average person would be after drinking that much wine." Damon says. He opens his mouth to say more but he doesn't. He is staring up at something. I follow his gaze and spot Stefan standing in the doorway looking mortified.

"Hey Ssssstefan! How wasss ssschool?" I ask trying to mask my drunkenness without any luck.