the vampire diaries matt and elena first date - l.j smith (first color ebook reader .TXT) 📗

An untold tale

Matt and Elena first date

Dedicated to Red and Natalia—a sweet tale of new love blossoming

A date . . .with Elena Gilbert!
Matt nervously opened his wallet again and counted his cash. A ten dollar bill and six cents left over from what the six neighbors on the cul-de-sac had given him to rake all the autumn leaves from each yard into a giant bonfire-pile. The rest had gone into buying this crisp new pair of casual/formal dress pants. Seven dollars and twenty cents left over from cleaning attics and mowing lawns—the rest of that money had been carefully invested in the jacket he was wearing right now—a letterman’s jacket wouldn’t do, not on this occasion, and he’d heard that Elena didn’t like them. A ten dollar bill from helping Mr. Muldoon carefully change all the light bulbs in his house that the old gentleman couldn’t reach any longer.
Twenty-seven dollars and twenty-six cents . . . plus . . .
He turned the wallet around and pulled it out from its special place of honor—a concealed compartment in the wallet’s side. And there it was, folded in half, as crisp and new-looking as when Uncle Joe had given it to him.
A hundred dollar bill.
He could remember Uncle Joe—Great-Uncle, really, but always called Uncle, pressing the bill into his hand while the nurses were out of the room. “Don’t blow it on just anything,” Uncle Joe had whispered in his grating voice. “Keep it till a specialoccasion comes. You’ll know when the time is right. An’ fer God’s sake”—a pause, while Uncle Joe had a long and racking coughing fit and Matt held him up—“don’t y’dare spend it on cigarettes, right? Don’t you get the habit, boy, cause it’s only going to bring you grief.”
Then Matt had gently lowered Uncle Joe. The glass-shattering coughing was beginning and Matt wanted a nurse to check on Uncle Joe’s oxygen saturation level. It was 85 when it should have been 100—maybe Uncle Joe needed more oxygen.
That had been exactly two years ago and two days ago. Exactly two years ago today, Uncle Joe had died.
Matt found that he was grinding one fist into his thigh, painfully. It was hard, hard to remember how Uncle Joe had gone.
But now, looking at the hundred-dollar bill, all Matt could think about was the old man’s mischievous smile and his rasping words, “You’ll know when the time is right.” Yes, Uncle Joe had known, hadn’t he? Matt would have laughed himself sick if Uncle Joe had told him what he’d be spending the precious money on. At just-fourteen young Matt’s thoughts about girls and cooties had not entirely separated. Okay, so he had been a late bloomer, a slow learner. But now he’d caught up. And he was going to wear his new pants and an ironed shirt, a real tie that his mother had given him last Christmas, and his brand new sports jacket to the most wonderful event he could imagine.
Blowing over one hundred dollars in one night with Elena Gilbert.
Elena . . . just thinking her name made him feel as if were bathed in sunlight. She was sunlight.With that marvelous golden hair that floated halfway down her back, withher skin, the color of apple blossoms, even after tanning season, with her eyes like luminous, gold-flecked blue pools, and her lips . . .
Those lips. Together with the eyes, they could turn a guy upside down and inside out in no time. At school those lips were always in a model’s slight pout, as if to say “Well, really! I expected more than this!”
But Elena wouldn’t be pouting tonight. Matt didn’t know where he’d gotten the courage—he’d as soon have dumped an ice bucket over football Coach Simpson’s head after they’d lost a game—but he had managed to work his way up to asking her out. And now, with Uncle Joe’s hundred-dollar bill, he was going to take Elena Gilbert on a real date, to a real French restaurant: a date that she’d never forget.
Matt glanced sharply at the clock. Time to go! He certainly couldn’t be late.
“Hey, Mom! It’s quarter to seven! I’m out of here!”
“Wait, wait, Matt!” Mrs. Honeycutt, small and round and smelling of cookies, came at almost a run down the hall. “Going without at least letting me see you?” she scolded, her eyes beaming. “Who ironed that shirt, may I ask? Who heard about the sale on jackets in the first place?”
Matt gave a mock-groan and then stood, genuinely blushing, as she looked him over.
Finally, Mrs. Honeycutt sighed. “I have a very handsome son. You look like your father.”
Matt could feel himself going an even deeper red.
“Now, you’re going to wear your overcoat—”
“Yeah, of course, Mom.”
“You sure you’ve got enough money?”
“Yes!” Matt said. Yes! he thought jubilantly.
“I mean, this Gilbert girl, you hear all sorts of things about her. She goes out with college boys. She expects the moon on dates. She doesn’t have any parents to watch over her. She—”
“Mom, I don’t care who she’s been out with; I’ve got plenty of money; and she lives with her aunt—as if it were her fault that her parents got killed! And if I stand here another minute, I’ll end up getting a speeding ticket!”
“Well, if you’ll just let me find my purse, I’ll give you ten dollars, so you’re covered, just in case—”
“No time, Mom! G’night!”
And he was in the garage, smelling the familiar smells of grease and oil and rust and must.
His car—well, he was sort of hoping Elena wouldn’t look at his car. He’d hustle her into it and out of it. It was just a junkyard collection of miscellaneous parts that Matt had somehow managed to attach to the skeleton of his dad’s wreck and make use of as a vehicle. In his own mind, he referred to it as “The Garbage Heap.” But there was nothing he could do about it, so he was just hoped Elena wouldn’t see too much of it in the darkness. He had the way to Chez Amaury memorized, so he wouldn’t have to turn on the map light.
Oh my God!
This was her street. He was here already! With a sort of gasping gulp he couldn’t help, Matt loosened his collar a little as he turned. He felt as if he were drowning.
Okay. Gulp. Outside her house. Off with the ignition. Pull out the keys.
Okay. Gulp. Keys in his pocket. Outside the front door.
Okay—gasp—finger on the doorbell. Matt spent about a minute getting his nerve up and then he forced himself to press the little round button.
Distant chimes . . .
And then he was looking at a thin, rather plain woman, who gave him a bright smile and said, “You must be Elena’s new date. Come in, come in. She’s still upstairs, you know these young girls. . .”
The woman seemed as hospitable and kind as his own mom, and she did everything she could to make him comfortable. But eventually there was a pause in the conversation that couldn’t be ignored.
“Y-you’re Elena’s Aunt Judith, aren’t you?” Matt managed.
“Yes! Oh, don’t tell me I forgot to introduce myself again! Yes, you can just go ahead and call me Aunt Judith like everyone else. Here, I’ll get you some chips or something while you’re waiting. These young girls, you know. EH-LAY-NAAA!” She hurried out as Matt cringed and resolutely refrained from covering his ears.
“Here you go; some Fritos,” Aunt Judith was bustling in with a bowl. But Matt’s eyes weren’t on her. They were on the vision in blue descending the stairs.
Matt had heard of something so stunning it knocked your eyes out, but he’d never imagined that he’d actually see something like that metaphor in the flesh. And yet here it was, in front of him, walking down the staircase.
Elena was an angel.
That was what this dress somehow hinted at. It was . . . well, Matt didn’t know the right names for such things, but it was strapless and sort of followed her curves at the top. The color was a pale silvery-blue that made him think of moonlight on snow. The top was embroidered with some kind of clear beadwork, and there was a silvery flower at one shoulder. The bottom of the dress was layers and layers of some see-through material—chiffon?—and the layers foamed and bubbled down to Elena’s knees. Her long gorgeous legs looked even longer and more gorgeous than usual, and she was wearing adorable silver high heeled shoes with flowers on them that matched her dress.
Elena smiled at him as she came down the stairs and for just a moment Matt thought about all the other guys she had smiled at that way. Coming down those stairs all dressed up was a regular occasion for her, smiling down at a guy was a everyday thing. But then Matt put the thought out of his mind. He and Elena were going to have a wonderful evening together. Tonight that smile was just for him.
“Listen, I want you to make sure you keep warm—” Aunt Judith was beginning, when Elena, never taking her eyes off his—said, “Hello, Matt.”
Her voice was sweet, with just a trace of a southern accent that lingered in your ears. It made everything she said sound like a secret she was only telling you.
Something stuck in Matt’s throat. He couldn’t get a word out, not while he was so close to her, so close that he could smell her perfume. She smelled like roses in
summer, and lavender from an old dowry chest. And also like. . . another scent that must just be her natural fragrance, eau de Elena. Matt was glad he’d scraped the dirt and grease out of his fingernails with a toothbrush and scrubbed the rest of himself lobster red in an effort to get rid of the smells of old car and musty attic.
But he still hadn’t spoken. And then somehow, old Uncle Joe, who seemed to live in Matt’s back pocket, gave him a wallop and the words, “You look great, Elena,” came out in a rush.
She did look great. Her skin was like magnolia petals, but always with that faint tone of rose over her cheekbones. She wasn’t wearing any makeup that Matt could see—but how could you know these days with girls? Her eyelashes were long and thick and dark and they looked almost too heavy for her eyelids—as if, Matt admitted to himself, she was slightly bored with what she saw. But the eyes that they framed were alive with a living eager flame. They really were blue with little splashes of pure gold here and there in them. Her lips, though—yeah, she was wearing lipstick. He didn’t know what name it went by but it should have been called Invitation to Criminal Attack.
Suddenly Matt froze. There was a sound of giggling nearby—multiple sounds of giggling—and they weren’t coming from Elena. He turned slightly and saw, yes, the Top Four, Robert E. Lee Highs’s most sought-after girls. Elena’s best friends. They looked like a rainbow.
Dark-haired Meredith Sulez, wearing something comfy-looking in lavender, glanced over at him and smiled. Caroline Forbes, more formally dressed in turquoise—maybe she was going on a date too?—smirked and tossed her auburn head. And dainty,diminutive Bonnie McCullough, the cute redhead in pale green, hid her mouth with her fingers, still giggling.
Their job, obviously, was to put him through the gauntlet.
“Hey, girls,”—that was Caroline,