ALMOST IS NEVER ENOUGH | TVD [1]

VIII • ONE HUNDRED AND SIXTY-TWO CANDLES

eight. one hundred and sixty-two candles

Salvatore Boarding House

Stefan is safe and soundly asleep, in a serene environment, on the living room vintage couch in which he's blissfully having a dream about an alternate life with Rosie Kartwright; obviously a much better one if only the world would be much kinder for them without any distractions in the way. He wakes up when his book falls from his lap to the carpet floor below, then aroused by a noise somewhere in the spacious, empty room, "Damon?"

He slowly gets up and looks around and he hears further disturbance before he is attacked by a vampire, pinning him to the floor of the foyer, "Lexi?!"

The old three-hundred-and-fifty-year-old female vampire, with long, straight platinum blonde hair and pretty hazel-green eyes, smiles at him, "Hi."

"What are you doing here?" Stefan asked his long lost friend, who he hasn't met or seen since sixty-seven years ago in New Orleans of Louisiana.

Alexia Branson embraces him into a hug, "How could you even ask that?"

"I missed you." Stefan chuckles as he returns the loving gesture, smiling.

"Happy Birthday." His oldest best friend wished him.

They proceed to joke around in Stefan's excessively massive bedroom upstairs on his big queen-sized bed, laughing at a joke she shared.

"Stop. I don't know, some freak shot at me with wooden bullets. I bail in under sixty. And why is a news reporter hunting vampires?" Lexi asked, who has been lurking around the small town of Virginia nearing the precise day of her best friend's birthday — November 1st, therefore knowing her foes.

"I don't know who knows about us. That guy did. There could be others. Do me a favor, while you're here, please be careful." Stefan advised her.

He really doesn't want her to get caught in the crossfire, although the much older vampire seems to only know how to overestimate herself.

"Why stay? I'm headed to New York for the weekend. Bon Jovi in the Garden. 'Wanted dead or alive', it's our theme song. It'll be a blast."

"Do you think he would actually remember us? That was a pretty crazy weekend, huh?" Stefan chuckles as he remembers the old fun days.

"We can make him remember us. Come on! Let's go. I mean, what's keeping you here?" The platinum blonde young woman asked him cluelessly.

"I told you — it's Rosie." He repeated himself, "By the name of Minerva."

"Huh. Well, no wonder I never found her. Let's just hope she's better than the last girl you got all sprung over, or what you think was even real love." Lexi scoffs as she remembers his chestnut brunette vampire ex-girlfriend.