A/N: Apologies for the mix up the last time I updated. In making changes to chapter 15, I had accidentally uploaded an unfinished chapter from a different story *face burning with embarrassment* Now that things have been corrected, on with the show. Enjoy! Thanks for reading and your infinite patience with me.

||Bonnie||

A peculiar end to a day that began with promise. I couldn't do my job as a relationship columnist if I ignored signs, and there were signs a plenty written over the walls in loud, red paint.

Stefan's mouth moved with near incomprehensible words after he said the most cliched thing a person could say in a situation like this: It's not what you think. I wasn't an idiot, and game recognized game. Something had been set in motion in my absence and whatever that had been, I was seeing it manifest right here in this basement. I never once looked away from the yet-to-be-identified woman, and she never did the same with me. Her dark brown eyes assessed me, breaking down my exterior the same way a jeweler would scrutinize a new batch of diamonds. She would see nothing but quality.

I never liked the business of comparing yourself to others or women pitting women against each other. It was an industrial complex of its own with insidious roots in misogyny. But there was nothing wrong with sizing someone up to know how you should respond to the energy they were unaware they were sending out. She was pretty—no, scratch that. Gorgeous. The kind that black men bent over backwards to prop up, professional athletes paraded on their arms and kept pregnant around the clock, and the kind that Fashion Nova brokered contracts with. And there she stood in a towel that covered very little, damp from an obvious shower, black hair curling beguilingly, full lips cocked into a smirk.

"Did I interrupt something?" I asked while interrupting Stefan who snapped his jaws together.

He wagged his head from side-to-side. "No, it's not like that…Why don't I start with an introduction?"

"That would be helpful."

A nervous laugh escaped from his lips. He pressed his hands together like he was about to pray, "Bonnie, I'd like you to meet Lourdes. Lourdes, this is Bonnie my…better half," he smiled widely showing off his longer-than-normal incisors.

"Hey."

"What's up?"

Lourdes and I chorused simultaneously, tossing wane smiles at one another before redirecting our attention to Stefan. That gave me a modicum of information, but the jury was out on whether this towel- clad chick was a totally random person. I studied Stefan carefully. I knew his tells when he was being evasive, feeling uncomfortable, or outright lying. He was clearly the second one. Uncomfortable. Hell, so was I.

"Any particular reason you were waiting for Lourdes to come out of the bathroom?" I asked like a trial lawyer.

"Just being a good…host. There had been an incident earlier," he explained.

"Yeah," Lourdes chimed in. "Someone mistook me for a toilet."

"Ooh," I grimaced.

"Yeah," Stefan scratched along his hairline. "Someone puked all over Lourdes. I offered her the shower. It was the least I could do. I couldn't have her going back to her hotel in that condition."

"Right, I sorry to hear that. Well it looks like you could use some clothes unless that's already been taken care of," I hinted pointedly.

"That's what I was about to ask. Stefan…" Lourdes folded her arms across her chest, pushing her big boobs up and now they were threatening to spill out of her towel. I knew she had to feel the draft.

He snapped his fingers like he just remembered the awesome invention called clothing that started its humble beginnings as fig leaves. Fig leaves would cover more than that towel. "I should probably try to find something else for you to change into. Hang on. Don't go anywhere."

"I'm at your mercy here," she flirted. Oh yeah, I could hear a flirtatious inflection the same as bats using echo location to target a meal in pitch darkness.

"Ah, I-I'll get you something. Just hold on," Stefan cleared his throat and ducked his head in a poor attempt to hide the fact that his cheeks were stained with color. "Bonnie…?" he stretched out his hand and, after a beat or two, I took it.

"Maybe she should stay…" Lourdes tossed out the second our backs were turned. I glanced at her over my shoulder. "I'd don't want to stay down here by myself."

"We'll only be gone a minute."

"No, it's all right, Stefan. You go find her something. I'll keep her company."

"Bon…"

"It's all right. Are you afraid something's going to happen?" I challenged with one-half playfulness and one-half seriousness furling off my tongue.

"No," he nearly whispered. He flicked his gaze to Lourdes, then me, then to Lourdes once more and finally back to me. Stefan took a step forward, tipped my chin up with his forefinger and slanted his mouth over mine. The kiss was brief and firm. When he pulled away and offered me the smile that usually caused a nuclear meltdown in my ovaries, I suppressed the need to sigh because I knew the purpose of that kiss was to send a message.

Like the wind he was gone, and I was alone with a nearly naked woman. Joy.

Lourdes was running her fingers through her locks as she admired herself in the mirror. With her seemingly distracted, I perched myself on the arm of the couch, folded my arms, and waited. If ignoring me was her idea of needing company I could have taken my ass upstairs. Yet my curiosity won out.

"So," she eventually said after a millennium passed, "how long have you and Stefan been a thing?"

Oh, how disappointing. Starting with the predictable stuff. "How long have you known Stefan? Did you just meet him tonight?" I countered.

She smiled, revealing a crescent line next to the corner of her full bottom lip. "I met him a couple of years ago. We lost touch and just happened to reconnect tonight."

Reconnect? Interesting.

"Not gonna tell me how long you've been dating?" she detoured to her original question.

"We're fairly new but we've known each other for a long time. So why don't you tell me something. Why did you want me to stay behind and not Stefan?"

Lourdes stopped finger detangling her hair and swiveled toward me. "Because I knew how it would look if I had suggested otherwise. I'm not an idiot."

"Never said you were. But you assumed I would have a problem with it?"

"You wouldn't?"

"I'd have a problem with it if I had felt threatened." I let my implication hang. The affable look Lourdes had been maintaining this whole time melted. If it were at all possible for the temperature to drop in the basement, it would have with the icy darts she was aiming straight for my pertinent body parts.

Her head whipped back to the mirror. Foiled, and she didn't like it.

"You know…you're really beautiful," Lourdes sighed and not knowing her I couldn't tell if that was a defeatist sigh. Perhaps she had expected me to look like an ogre. I chose to take her compliment at face value.

"Thank you. The same can be said about you. It sucks you had a terrible night."

"Yeah, well it be like that sometimes. Sometimes you go out just because your girl wants to, and you're determined to make the best of it even though you want to stay and chill. You see someone you…dealt with in the past who treated you like a human being. So it's only natural you start to think, 'well maybe we could try again' just for them to blurt out at the last minute they're with someone. Although…they were—"

"Lourdes are you down here?!" bellowed a contralto voice amid the clomps of heavy boots on the stairs.

Moment interrupted. And it wasn't until that moment I realized I had been digging my nails into my arms and my heart had started hammering against my ribcage. What had she been about to say?

"Lourdes!"

"Yeah, Mia I'm down here!"

"What were you about to say?" I pressed.

"Don't worry about it."

If there was one thing I hated was being dismissed or treated with flippancy especially when someone knew something I didn't and wanted to be glib about the details. Games were for children and last I checked I was full grown.

"Oh, I'm making time to worry about it," I said. "What is it that you're dying for me to know that you won't come out and say?"

She had turned back to admire her reflection in the mirror once again. "I should let Stefan explain since he waited until the literal last second to let me know he wasn't available." Her dark eyes slid back to me, looking for a reaction. One happened she just couldn't see it.

"What do you mean by that? I'm not in the mood to play mind games," my molars smashed together.

"Neither am I so talk to Stefan."

"I'm talking to you because you blurted out that piece of intel. So explain?"

Unfortunately, it was no longer just us two gals.

Mia was not what I had predicted not that I had time to predict anything. She was a tall and lanky blonde who wore a plaid, off-the shoulder shirt and tight jeans She sauntered by leaving behind a cloud of a pretty good smelling perfume in her wake.

"Bitch, what happened? Where the fuck are your clothes?" she exclaimed with her arms wide open.

"Girl, it's a long story."

Mia wedged herself into the bathroom. That was my signal to leave and that would be for the best. I swear I hadn't come all this way to catch an assault charge, yet this entire situation was a needle being shoved under my nail. I ran into Stefan on the staircase and tried to dodge him.

"Bon?"

Skirting around him on the staircase took some nimbleness on my part, otherwise I would have fallen down the stairs.

I heard Stefan curse and the sound of his feet thundering down the stairs.

I marched upstairs and could feel the marked difference not just in sound level but also temperature. It was humid. The crowd had thinned some, but not a whole lot. Determination heralded my footfalls as I barreled through the crowd, squeezing through the maze of bodies looking for a remedy.

I could piece together what Lourdes had been inferring during her little monologue. Not to make excuses for Stefan, I knew how he could be. So damn personable and emphatic that you couldn't just help but to spew your guts revealing secrets best left in the closet. Add in his affectionate nature, and that face that made you think of ripped bodices, hand-holding, romance, and sex up against a wall, you were fucked. A walking subliminal message, he is. You could fall in love with him or the idea of him while he just viewed you as a buddy.

So, what the hell happened to inspire Lourdes' cryptic words?

A familiar hand latched onto my arm and swung me around. My titties crashed into rock hard abs. My back bowed just a little as my chin jutted up.

"Are we about to fight?" he asked, his other arm snaked around my waist and pulled me closer.

"If we are, we might want to take it outside. Would hate to get blood on the furniture."

Stefan's eyes narrowed. Being nearly a foot taller, he had to hunch his back, bend the knee a little. His mouth was right at my ear, breath hot and tinged with the scent of the drinks he had been tossing back all night. His body…I could feel that through the layers of his clothes picked to draw the eye. My nose grazed his jaw and for a second I was thrust back to that infamous night in our apartment when our mouths accidentally touched in our first unambiguous kiss.

Unfortunately for him I wasn't really feeling him. I pushed Stefan back with my hand on his chest.

He stared at me quizzically. "How much trouble am I in?"

A muscle in my jaw twitched, "Why would you be in trouble?"

"I know you…what did Lourdes say to you when I left to get her clothes?"

"Something and nothing. Who is she really?"

"Lourdes," he answered without missing a step.

I rolled my eyes in exasperation. "I'm not talking about her name, punk. I mean, who is she to you? It was clear you didn't just meet her tonight."

"No…she's…she's an old friend."

"What kind of an old friend?" There was a classification of "old friends". Platonic, casual, with benefits, romantic. "Remember," I cautioned, "we always tell each other the truth, even if it hurts."

As I waited for Stefan to gear up and do just that, there was a ripple of awareness that hijacked the room. Swiveling my head, I found the epicenter. Lourdes. Even dressed in oversized men's clothes, she still managed to twist the heads of those whose blood and loins heated at the sight of a beautiful woman. Her friend was trailing behind her. Lourdes paused at the door, her gaze finding Stefan, but he was too busy staring at me, could feel his eyes burning into my profile.

"Your ah—friend is leaving," I mentioned.

Stefan's head jerked up and twisted towards the foyer. "I should probably say goodnight, but…"

"That's what a good friend would do."

Stefan whipped his head back to me and frowned. "Bonnie."

I stepped back with a tight smile on my face. "Don't let me keep you from saying good night at the last minute."

With those parting words, I went off to make myself another drink.

||Stefan||

Pins, needles, shards of glass, hammers, nails, anything sharp and pointy felt like it was being stabbed into my head, eyes, mouth, ears. There was a riot in my stomach that led to me leaping out of bed where I barely made it to the toilet before torrents of foul-smelling vomit came up. It went on and on and on to the point tears were coming out of my fucking eyes that throbbed like a bitch. This was the precise reason why I limited myself to no more than three to five drinks a week. I surpassed that last night—er all day and was paying for it by hooking up with the commode.

Somewhere in the far recesses of my mind I wondered where Bonnie was. I tried to remember anything specific about last night and it was a total blank. Did I even talk to her, did we speak at all? I felt like…shit I couldn't really remember, but the fact she wasn't hovering over me being a mother hen spoke volumes. Right now, I lacked the coherency to interpret it or even guess at where she might be. It hurt to think, even turned my stomach though there shouldn't have been anything left in it. Another rumble of nausea swept through me, my mouth filled with saliva, and I was hunched back over the shitter.

Flushing the toilet, I collapsed against the cold porcelain tub thankful of its chilly relief. If anyone expected me to do more than lie on my back wishing for death today, they were going to be solely disappointed.

Limbs shaking, white balls of light bursting before my eyes with each tiny movement, I finally stood and peeled off my clothes. It sapped me of what little energy I had. I managed to shower without incident, found some aspirin, brushed my teeth, and stumbled my way out of the bathroom.

The bedroom was empty. I stared at the rumpled sheets and frowned. Two of the pillows were missing. Bonnie's luggage was still in the room, but she was not, and her phone was nowhere to be found either. A bad feeling propelled me to dress as quickly as my hungover body would allow, and twenty minutes later I miraculously made it to the kitchen.

Amara, bright and cherry was hard at work whipping up breakfast. The smell alone made me wince and groan. Vaughn was passed out at the table where he probably slept all night. I could see various body parts scattered around the living room. Guess everyone hadn't made it home last night.

"Good morning, Stefan," Amara greeted, the sound of her voice made my headache even worse.

"Morning…have you seen Bonnie?"

"She's not in the room with you?"

If she was why would I ask if you've seen her, I refrained from saying. "No."

"Well she's gotta be around here somewhere. Do you want some coffee? You look like you could use a cup."

I left Amara standing there and went in search of my roommate. She wasn't in the living room, nor was she in the basement. Panic was slowly taking over and I was about to start banging on doors to do a room check when I saw her coming out of the room at the far end of the hall. For a second I couldn't remember who was staying in that room, and my jaw clenched because it could be Eddie's.

Bonnie stared at me for five seconds and proceeded down the hall essentially ignoring me.

"Bonnie…"

"What?" she didn't stop but continued through the house to our room with me fast on her heels.

"Where did you sleep last night?"

"You don't remember?"

It was embarrassing to admit I got so blitzed that everything's a blur. But apparently, I did something that pissed her off. It was on the tip of my tongue to offer up an apology, but we had a rule to only say sorry when we truly meant it. Since I couldn't remember what I had done, if I uttered an apology, she'd know I was just saying it to clear the air.

"Don't worry about it, Stefan."

I shook my head and, using the tips of my fingers, shoved the door open and promptly shut it. "What am I not worrying about?"

She glared mostly because she had to hop out of the way to avoid being hit with the door. Bonnie sighed loudly and headed to her luggage where she rummaged around for a change of clothes.

"Bonnie? Tell me what happened."

"Check one of your friends' Instagram. That'll answer your question."

It took me three tries before I managed to disconnect my phone from its charger, unlock it, and open up IG. I didn't have to scroll long before finding a video shot straight from Eddie's living room. I clicked on it, slightly dreading what it might play.

"ATTENTION! ATTENTION! EH, SHUT THE FUCK UP!"

My eyebrows almost lifted straight off my damn forehead because it was Derek who yelled, which surprised the hell out of me because the man hoarded words like he had a limited supply. People quieted down, the music stopped abruptly, and everyone focused on the man standing in the center of the room with his girl Braeden.

"I have some good news. Tonight, I asked this beautiful goddess standing beside me to by my wife and she said yes!"

The cheers from the stragglers had been deafening.

I looked up at Bonnie.

"Yes, that's right," she answered my unasked query.

"No way," I breathed.

"Yes way."

"He did it."

"You knew he was going to propose?"

Relief surged and it made me dizzy. I gaped at Bonnie like she just made feathers float.

"Yeah," slowly last night was trickling back to me. "When we were pre-gaming he mentioned wanting to propose."

No response from Bonnie after that revelation. Okay. Typically, she'd be giddy about something this big, unable to contain her joy, but she was uncharacteristically subdued.

"We have a lot we need to talk about, Stefan."

My entire body groaned at the thought. It wasn't that I didn't enjoy our conversations, it's just that sometimes they required a lot of inter-contextual decoding, and in this moment I lacked the wherewithal or the sobriety to handle it.

"We need to talk now?" I rasped.

"Yes, because if we put it off, we won't get around to talking about it until it's too late. If there is going to be an us, we need to talk."

That put me on red alert, and I felt my mood slipping. Blindly I reached out for the bed and sat down on the edge. My heart climbed up my throat although I tried not to let it show. Anytime someone muttered those words nothing good followed. Someone either wanted out of the arrangement or wanted to change the terms. So there we were in our corners; Bonnie leaned up against the wall arms folded and ankles crossed over one another, and me the drunk using a bed to remain upright.

The frog in my throat asked, "What do you mean if there's going to be an us we need to—"

"It's just as I said, and I mean we need to get somethings out in the open. I have something I need to let you know but there's something from you that I want to know first…Lourdes."

Fuck.

"Who. Is. She?"

I could use a drink. Swallowing with some difficulty, I said, "Someone I hooked up with a long time ago."

"I figured…tell me the story."

"Bonnie…"

"Remember our rule, Stefan. We tell each other the truth no matter how much it hurts."

How I was resenting that rule right now, because I did not derive pleasure from hurting her intentionally or unintentionally. I tried to find some wiggle room without having to divulge minute details, but Bonnie was giving me what Damon referred to as her "judgey eyes."

"How much of the gory details do you want?" I bartered instead.

"As much as you want to share."

My headache was becoming a full-blown migraine and I was dying for a glass of water or for the ground to open up and swallow me, whichever came first. Two worlds colliding and collapsing on one another and it was falling through my hands like grains of sand. But this was our way. This was what we did and how we kept each other accountable. Didn't mean it was comfortable or felt good. I sure as hell didn't want to reveal what I had almost let happen, but I couldn't lie about it either. I respected Bonnie too much to do that.

I also knew she wasn't going to like this but here went nothing.

"We met literally the night I graduated," I began quietly. "She had been doing club promotion at the time. The fellas and I had been bar hopping and she stopped us, talked us up to head to a spot off of U Street. But me, she gave me her number. I used it. We spent two weeks getting to know each other and we weren't fully clothed when it happened."

Bonnie seemed to file that away but rattled off another question, "You hadn't seen or spoken to her since your two-week pleasure fest?"

"No. We had an understanding. Seeing her last night was a shock."

"I guess it would be…Did you give her the impression you were single and ready to mingle?"

"No," was my automatic reply.

"No?"

"What exactly did she say to you?"

"That's my point. She was on the verge of saying something interesting, but we got interrupted. What she did say was how she thought she could try again but that someone waited until the last minute to say they weren't exactly available. So, what happened in that minute before the last minute?"

If I could rewind the last twelve hours, the number of things I would have done differently…

I ran my hands through my hair in agitation before letting my arms fall and swing limply. "We were talking…I had turned my head away for a moment and when I looked back at her, she was coming in closer. I knew she was about to kiss me and I shut it down. Told her I wasn't available. That's what happened…before the puke incident. Bon…look," I moved to stand in front of Bonnie though my muscles felt weak and my headache hadn't budged, "seeing her again kind of threw me off. I wasn't expecting it and when she initially asked if I knew anyone here, I said the first thing that popped into my head…I told her I was here with friends so it wasn't like I lied."

"Ah, so now I'm just a common friend?" Bonnie maneuvered around me and entered the bathroom where she started rooting around in her makeup bag for something and started slamming products down on the counter. I winced a little.

"No…It was an oversight and I apologize. I wasn't trying to diminish who you are to me."

"Tuh. What would have happened had I not been here?"

"Absolutely nothing! You think I would jeopardize what we're trying to build for a meaningless fuck?"

Our eyes connected in the mirror and she said:

"I put nothing past anyone. All it takes is one crack in the foundation to have a flood on your hands. The foundation we have…I don't know if we should risk it. Maybe…maybe we shouldn't…"

"No!" I hauled ass inside the bathroom and grabbed Bonnie by the arm turning her to me. "I'm not letting you back out of this. Maybe we've done things backwards or too soon, but I want you. I want our friendship. I want…" I hesitated.

Her eyes were as big as marbles. "What, Stefan?"

The room went on an unexpected but should have been expected tailspin. My skin went supernova, gag reflex fluttered worryingly, but I dug deep and mustered up enough control over my body to press out, "I just want you, Bonnie. No one else. Just you. Do you know why I kissed you that night in the apartment? I kissed you because during dinner it clicked. What I had been looking for in a girlfriend, in a partner, I had everything right there in reaching distance. You're everything I've ever told myself I want, Bonnie. The best moments of my day are the moments I get to spend with you. I hope you believe that."

Exhaustion had me stumbling to the bed where I fell on it face down. My lids drifted shut but snapped open a minute later when I felt the bed dip. Bonnie was next to me.

She nibbled a corner of her lip, traced designs on the duvet with her fingers, avoided eye contact. The longer the silence drew out the tiny pinprick hole I felt forming in my stomach was gaining ground and widening into a chasm. Did I royally fuck things up?

"I am…annoyed," she finally said, and I could hear the annoyance in her voice. She sighed a second later. "But…that was a hell of a speech. It's the truth? That's why you kissed me that night?"

"Yes."

"And the best moment of your days is when we're together?"

"Mm-hmm."

Another significant pause ensued, and she ended the anticipation by saying, "Hearing that makes me feel better about a lot of things…Thank you for being honest."

"For you, I always will be." And I meant that shit. I wouldn't lie to her.

"And I won't lie to you either, Stefan," she said as if she read my mind. "We'll put this…road bump behind us and move forward. Deal?"

Taking her hand, I kissed her knuckles. "Deal."

"Good." Bonnie rolled off the bed, a visible pep in her step. She headed for the door. "You need to put something on your stomach even though I'm sure that's the last thing you want to do. I'll be right back."

"All right."

"Oh, and before I go there is something I need to tell you."

"What is it?"

"I'm gonna be a sugar baby. I'll be right back with some food."

It took a second for her words to register since she purposely ran them together, and when they did, I jolted upward causing my brain to slam against my skull. "WHAT?!"