We'll Always Have Summer | Stefan Salvatore

Chapter Twenty-Three

1993 — Mystic Falls, Virginia

   To say that the Gilbert girl was bad at cooking was an understatement. Florence was, in fact, terrible. The only thing she knew how to make was boiled broccoli, and the majority of the time they were overcooked. Her mother was the one that did the cooking, the perfect food perfectly placed in the bright white fine china with the baby blue rims her mother had given her for her wedding.

   If Florence wanted to describe her mother in one word, it would be perfect. It was how her mother had always been, the woman who faught if one messed up how she put the ketchup in the fridge. So, one could understand how the youngest Gilbert felt when her mother did something so unperfect of her. It was strange. So unlike her mother.

   Florence watched Stefan move around the kitchen in the Salvatore house. He moved just like her mother did—perfect. His fingers opened drawers and pulled out things without him looking, knowing well where they were. He moved around while talking to her, mentioning little things of the lives he lived. He told her about the 1880's, how he spent them in Canada with his good friend Lexi. According to him, Toronto was beautiful in the fall, but it had been over a hundred years ago since he last visited the city. She wanted to visit the city as soon as he finished.

   "What did you do in the 70's?" she asked, laying a hand under her chin.

   Stefan scraped bits of chopped onion into a sauce he was making and smacked his lips together. "I was in, uh, Harvard."

   Her eyes widened. "You went to Harvard?" She choked on her saliva and coughed, her hands pressed to her chest for several moments. When the coughing died, she wiped away the tears from her eyes and smiled. "The Harvard University? Did you meet Bill Gates?"

   He laughed and shook his head, wiping his hand on a hand towel. "No, I didn't meet Bill Gates because he was in pre-law." He laid against his hands on the counter and looked at her with a foreign smile. It was as if he were remembering the very words he was telling her. "When I was around twelve, my mother got sick with consumption. I used to go to town and pick up her favourite teas and bring her flowers, just a few things that could lighten up the day." The smile disappeared from his lips. "My father sent her away as she got worse and worse, until she eventually died."

   "When did this happen?"

   "It happened in 1858." He turned and walked back to the industrial-sized oven. "I saw my mother slowly die and doctor's did nothing to prevent it. It was then when I decided that I wanted to become a doctor, try and save lives unlike the doctors that couldn't help my mother. So, I studied in several medical schools: University of California, Perelman School of Medicine, Duke University, Stanford School of Medicine, and lastly Harvard School of Medicine." He stopped and raised a finger at her, smiling. "Fun fact: I left for war in 1942 to be a combat medic and an ambulance driver."

   Florence stared at him with admiration. Her life had always been driven due to what her parents wanted; her father wanted her to become an Olympic swimmer and her mother told her to do something fulfilling for her future. None of those things were what she wanted to do, but she did them because her parents told her to do so. She found Stefan admirable, the way he knew what he wanted to do in his life when he was a child. There was a part of her that wished she was just like that, so focused in something that would do something great.

   "No," Stefan quickly interrupted her train of thought. "Don't you dare, Flo."

   "What?" She sat up and raised a brow. "I didn't do anything."

   "I can see the cogs in your brain turning," he said, standing straight and crossing his arms. "We had this conversation before, remember? We went to Bill's cabin, I made some great wine slushie, and you sat on the counter and told me you didn't know what you wanted to be in your life. I told you about how people don't know what they want to do in their lives, then I called you stubborn, and than you continued to eat the vegetables."