The smile slipped off Matt’s face, and he bowed his head. “I’m guessing you’ve got something to tell me, huh?”
Elena pulled him aside into a little alcove past the lockers, ignoring the curious looks of students passing by. It wasn’t nice—it wasn’t fair—to spring this on him here, right in the middle of the school day, but she couldn’t string Matt along any longer.
“I do love you,” she said in a fierce whisper, when they were as private as they could be. “I do.”
Matt flinched a little and then gave Elena a smile that was almost a grimace. “I guess that’s why you’re dumping me, huh? Because I’m just that loveable. I should have realized before.” His voice was hoarse and, spontaneously, Elena wrapped her arms around him, pushing her face against the rough fabric of his letterman’s jacket.
Unbidden tears rose in her eyes. “Oh, Matt,” she said, muffled against his shoulder. “You’re my friend. My true friend. Don’t love me like this anymore.”
Matt sighed and stroked the back of Elena’s head, running his strong fingers through her hair. “It’s not that easy, Elena. I can’t just stop how I feel. But I won’t try to hold onto you, not if you don’t want me to.”
When she lifted her head to look at him, there was devastation on his face, beneath the steady eyes and the crooked grin. How had she not seen this the first time? She barely remembered this conversation. It had just been a means to an end: getting Matt squared away so that she had an open field to go after Stefan.
A curl of self-disgust twisted inside Elena, and she lowered her head again, wiping her eyes against Matt’s shoulder. She’d gone through this part of her life with blinders on. And poor Matt, once he’d gotten over her, his next girlfriend had become a vampire and finally killed herself. All the craziness here—Fell’s Church, Dalcrest, all along the ley lines—had ruined so much of Matt’s life.
When she pulled back from their hug, Matt was staring at her, his forehead creased with concern. “Are you all right?” he asked.
Elena bit her lip to keep back a hysterical giggle. If she kept up with these mood swings, remembering the future that might not come, everyone was going to think she was having a nervous breakdown. “Listen, Matt,” she said, “we’re good friends, we really are. I love you so much. But there’s nothing for you here. As soon as we’re out of school, you should go. Take a football scholarship. You’re bound to get one.”
He had been offered one, hadn’t he? A good one, at some big football school. And he’d turned it down. He’d come to Dalcrest to help them protect the innocent.
Elena thought of Jasmine, with her easy smile and soft eyes, her fiercely loyal heart. “You’ll meet the right person for you someday,” she told him, trying to make him believe. “She’ll be smart and kind, and it’ll be so much better than we could have been together.”
The smile was gone from Matt’s face. “You’re the only person I want to be with,” he said flatly. His eyes narrowed. “Does this have anything to do with the new guy? He’s always watching you.”
“Stefan?” Matt had always seen more than she’d given him credit for. Elena met his gaze squarely. “I don’t want to date Stefan Salvatore,” she said honestly, and after a moment, Matt nodded, his shoulders slumping.
“I guess there doesn’t have to be someone else for you to break up with me,” he said. “You always know what you want, Elena. And what you don’t.”
“You’re one of my best friends,” Elena told him. “I just want the best for you.”
Matt shook his head, confused. “You’re different since you came back from France,” he said. Then the corners of his mouth tilted up in a small, sad smile. “Maybe the trip was good for you, too.”
“But if you broke up with Matt, who are you going to go to Homecoming with?” Bonnie asked after school, as they turned down the walk to Bonnie’s house. It was a warm afternoon, and Bonnie had invited Meredith and Elena over to hang out.
“I don’t know,” Elena said. “Does it matter?”
Meredith and Bonnie stared at her with identical expressions of shock.
“Does it—” Bonnie echoed incredulously.
“Elena, is there something wrong with you?” Meredith interrupted. “You’re really not acting like yourself.”
Feeling defensive, Elena shrugged. “I guess I just don’t think Homecoming is all that important.”
“That’s what she means when she says you’re not acting like yourself,” Bonnie said tartly, opening the front door.
Yangtze, Bonnie’s family’s fat, elderly Pekingese, greeted them with shrill, yapping barks, trying to wiggle his chubby body out through the open door. Bonnie pushed him back, and he growled and snapped at Elena’s ankle as she went by.
Katherine had killed Yangtze, Elena remembered. Bonnie’s mother had cried off and on for days. The dog was so spoiled, she was the only one who could stand him. But there had been no sign of Katherine in the cemetery the other evening, no wild surge of Power to send the girls running screaming across Wickery Bridge. Maybe if Elena and Stefan didn’t fall in love, none of the terrible things from Elena’s first time around—not even Yangtze’s death—would happen.
Gingerly, Elena reached down and patted the dog’s back, earning another snarl. But wait, she thought, pulling back her hand. If Yangtze didn’t die, wouldn’t the world be different, in ways Elena couldn’t even predict? The dog was the smallest part of all this, but every piece of the world made a difference.