Stefan was supposed to pick her up on his way to school this morning. It was sort of a tradition they had, which she absolutely adored, and she usually enjoyed it very much. But this time, she had neither the mood, neither the courage to spend some alone time with her charming vampire boyfriend, stuck with him in his car. She was afraid she wouldn't persist and she would spill everything out, and so she decided to head to school a bit earlier in her own car and then act as if she had forgotten about their tradition. It may have been a little cowardly, but she simply couldn't think of anything more sensible in that moment.
As a result of her bad luck, she met Bonnie and Caroline at the locker; they were just cheerfully talking about Alaric's birthday being today, and Caroline was in the middle of suggesting to hold a big party for him. Care never let an opportunity to cut a dash with her fabulous organisation skills slip through her fingers.
'Oh, hi, Elena!' Bon Bon greeted her, whereas Caroline only smiled at her briefly and she went on firing off information about how she imagined the amazing party should look like at Bonnie.
'Hey, girls,' muttered Elena and she quickly took all the textbooks she needed from her locker, so she could quickly disappear to class.
Caroline was too busy wondering whether it would be better to decorate the house with light chains or plastic flowers - both of those were incredibly cheesy for someone like Rick, by the way - but Bonnie sensed something was going on and she grabbed Elena's arm. 'Are you ok?' she asked in a worried voice.
'Of course I am. I just... gotta run.' Elena shut the locker's door with a loud slam and she started to recede.
'See you at lunch,' Bonnie reminded her.
'Sure, I can't wait!' Elena called at her, retreating. 'We'll discuss the party!'
As soon as she was around the corner, she leant over the wall and took a deep breath. This wasn't good. Lying to her own friends wasn't in her nature.
She managed to suffer through the morning lessons, but the situation got critical at lunch. She had considered skipping it, but that would have been suspicious. So she sat by their usual table and people from the whole bunch started coming - Bonnie, Caroline, Matt, Tyler, even Jeremy... and, of course, Stefan. Elena hadn't met him in the morning - she did her best to avoid him.
'Eleno,' he said now, all confused. 'You weren't at home in the morning.'
'Oh god...' Elena slapped her forehead in a pretended shock. 'I'm so dumb. I totally forgot we were going to school together today. I'm so sorry, Stefan.'
'Well... it's OK,' he shrugged, he bent forward and kissed her.
It was a nice kiss. When Stefan pulled away from her, Elena watched him and knew she loved him. She knew she had everything that could make her happy. And exchanging Stefan for anybody else would be a fatal mistake. Let alone exchanging him for Klaus Mikaelson.