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Bonnie wanted to run to her and hug her and hug her until her warmth made its way through the thin layer of ice that seemed to coat Meredith’s body. Had Stefan done this to her? Stefan’s aura was certainly sorrowful, but Meredith wasn’t angry with Stefan. What had happened b
etween them?
“Next shift,” she said, in the high light voice of someone trying to distract them all.
She took Stefan’s arm in hers and started toward the light of the door, almost dragging him along. She couldn’t help being playful and ditzy, but she allowed her personality full rein.
And her anatomy only helped: diminutive stature, that mop of strawberryblond hair; not to mention her heartshaped face with its delicate features and those huge cornflower colored eyes.
And she seemed younger than the rest—or she could seem young. If she wore lose sweaters to cover her blossoming young femininity, and chattered in a quick, high voice without ever censoring a thing that came into her head, people forgot how old she really was and were tempted to muss up her curls while saying that she really was charming or adorable—and entirely forgetting that she was over eighteen.
But there was another Bonnie beneath that one, and even another still beneath the Bonnie that liked fast cars and fast boys, and that was the one her friends would recognize the most easily. It was this deepest Bonnie who had envied Elena and Stefan, not for their fairytale relationship, but for the stability that she could sense in it. A Bonnie who was, at heart, a woman, and who had been one for a long time.
And Damon had just thrown a challenge to the womanly Bonnie. She could feel the hurt, hot rage burning inside her as she walked with Stefan up the staircase, his arm in hers. Elena? she called. She was furiously calculating if the plan that had just occurred to her might possibly hurt anyone.
Elena?
Silence.
Can you hear me?
Silence.
Elena there’s a Plan B I want to try with Stefan, but I don’t know if you’ll be mad.
I’ll forget about it right now if you’ll be mad.
Nothing. Bonnie tried to think other colors and forms in her mind, to “change channels.” Sometimes it worked.
Elena, if I don’t hear from you I’m going to try it. I can’t think of anyone else that it might hurt, and it might do Stefan some good.
Still no “presence” from Elena.
Bonnie’s heart sank suddenly. Are you leaving this entirely up to me? That would be just like you and Meredith. You would say it would help me grow up to know what I want.
Silence all around her. No one present except herself and Stefan—alone together, as they said.
All right, then. I’m taking you all on. This is my responsibility, and only mine.
Which was all part of being a woman.
Stefan was watching her. He had seemed startled by her eagerness from the beginning, but probably putting it down to wanting to get it over with.
But now, with the door shut and locked behind him, he was watching her, with distinctly worried eyes. As she walked around the room and ended up on the worn, creaky old couch, his aura was burning a puzzled yellow. She wondered whether to feign nervousness, and then decided she didn’t have to feign it. She looked up at him, with her stillwet, stillcornflowerblue eyes at their widest.
Plan B was what the girls called a blitzkrieg plan.
“I tangled the tie of my windbreaker before, and now I can’t see to untie it,” she said.
And that’s the absolute truth! she thought. Yes, if you don’t ask exactly when ‘before’ was.
He untangled it, necessarily standing close to her. All boys were tall compared to Bonnie, but Stefan was just the right height for leaning her head against his shoulder, and so straight and slim and somehow pliant—like a ninja or a panther or something that had to be ready to move in any direction at once. And he smelled wonderfully good. That was one of the most important things to the deepest Bonnie: smell. And another, which he also had, was voice. Stefan was a virtuous knight, faithful to the memory of his Elena—but he also had a voice that could melt butter right out of the refrigerator.
Yes, we have no problems here. I’m attracted to him. But—could he ever be attracted to me?
Bonnie slid off her windbreaker, and then, watching Stefan under her eyelashes, undid the one big button of her jade green sweater, and began to pull it over her head.
Stefan—as expected—made an incoherent noise of protest. That was one advantage she had. She was a gabbler. She could talk the hind leg off an elephant given the chance, and Stefan was a polite listener who didn’t like to interrupt.
