Back To the Beginning

Chapter 8

"Ok. Sooo," Caroline moves even closer to Stefan which makes him uncomfortable, "I was thinking. We should all be closer friends! Maybe like.... a double date!"

She taps on Elena and Matt's shoulder to let them know her plans. "Does that sound good?" she asks Stefan. His eyebrows start to get tense when he tries to keep eye contact with Caroline. "Wait - um. I'm kind of confused. By double-date you mean.."

She interrupts him, "Us, silly! Well, and Mattlena. Yep, I just made you guys a name. Doesn't it work really well, Stef?" 

Stefan nervously takes a drink of water, She gave them a nickname?  "Sounds like..." Matt shoots another smirk to Stefan like he has an evil plan, "fun."

"Oh, great! By the way, I'm going to get my drivers license after school today. Matt can you go drop me off there?" Matt rolls his eyes at Elena.

"No -- and can you stop bugging me?  Thank god you're getting your own drivers license so I can stop being your chauffeur." Stefan instantly tries to jump out of his seat to stand up for her but Caroline notices and gets in front of him so he can't stand up.

Elena doesn't respond and just glances away looking hurt, but always looks used to it. Caroline starts to write a message on Stefan's desk with pencil. "Just ignore them, this happens all the time. BTW: Call me" and under it with a 10 digit long number.

"How am I supposed to just ignore it?" he thinks to himself.

---

Stefan sees Elena at lunch and runs up to her, even though earlier that day Caroline had told him to meet with her. He doesn't know if he should ask her about the thing that happened with Matt, so he just walks with her for a second. 

"Hey, are you ok?" he asks.

"What do you mean?" 

"Well, you know.. In our class earlier..."

She interrupts him, "Oh! You mean with Matt? Yeah, I'm fine. He had every reason to say that, I always ask him for a ride." she smiles even though she knows that she's lying.

"He didn't." He keeps eye contact with her which doesn't make him uncomfortable like it did with Caroline. Elena turns her head while walking with him and gives him a longing look, but doesn't say anything.

They both sit down at a table and start to eat lunch. Caroline sees them from across the room and starts to excitedly walk up to them now that she spotted Stefan. "So, are you excited for the double date, STEF? " Elena says mocking Caroline's nickname for him.

"Oh yeah, totally. How about you and Matt- I mean, Mattlena?" They both start to laugh uncontrollably. Elena notices in the corner of her eye an enraged blonde wearing all pink. 

"Really, Elena?" Caroline picks up a grape from her lunch bag and throws it at her. "I get it, I have a big personality sometimes, and yes I make nicknames, but I thought you of all people would get it, Elena. We all know how you used to act before your dad and Jeremy died!" Caroline says confidently but then instantly realizes how much that sentence could've hurt Elena. 

Elena and Stefan both try to run after Caroline when she runs away. "Caroline! Care, I'm sorry!" Elena yells. Stefan doesn't know what to do in this situation because he hardly knows her, but he knows this is mostly his fault for making fun of her and feels bad for potentially splitting up Elena with her best friend.

Caroline runs into an empty classroom which is being remodeled so she knew no one would be in there, and no one would look for her. She bursts into tears after saying hurtful things to her best friend. "I screw everything up! I screw everything up!" She starts to squeeze the grapes in her hand like a stress ball.

"What did you screw up, love?" A mysterious voice asks.