Written 2012 by VeGirl

It was late that evening when Stefan and Lexi returned. Stefan was his usual brooding self and Lexi was her sparkling and positive self.
"Elena, may I have a word with you?" Stefan was direct and wanted to deal with the subject straight away.

"Sure," she said, a little surprised and followed after him upstairs as Lexi plopped down in the couch, asking what we were watching on TV.

I couldn't stop myself. "Is everything okay?" I asked with a nod toward Stefan and Elena.

"Oh yeah," she said with a smug smile. "I'll whip him back to shape."

"Thank you Lexi," I was about to say, but the words came from Damon's mouth.

Lexi turned and looked at Damon with an appreciative and flirty smile. "My pleasure!" She wiggled her eyebrows and gave him yet another flirty smile.

I interrupted the conversation with a huge yawn.

"We gave your room to Anna by the way. But here are another three in this house, take a pick!" Damon said. "I made them all up by myself. Well I compelled someone to do it..."

We all started to laugh out loud.

"That is so sweet Damon; as long as you don't compel me to do your chores," Anna said.

"You're on to me already? Dammit!" he said and Anna laughed.

I stood up and wished them good night. Damon took my hand and we left Anna and Lexi for the privacy of Damon's room. I slept like a baby that night, tight in his arms.

* * * * *

Lexi came in through the patio-doors when Anna, Elena and I sat by the kitchen table eating breakfast. "Oh, I didn't remember how good it felt with a morning run in the woods before. Sunrise is so much better than moonlight." She plopped down on a chair by the table and her big blond braid fell forward as she bend down to take the shoes off.

"I'm the one who delight in hedonism. What happened?" She laughed and we filled in.

"Did you find that boyfriend of yours?" Elena asked.

"Yes, but he had really lost it this last year. I think I'll give him a year to bounce back or I'll dump him. We have the beauty of time on our side."

I was really surprised by her cold heart.

"But I was searching for my dear friend Bree. She was nowhere to be found."

Elena and I shared a look and didn't know what to say when Anna harrumphed. "'Wasn't it Damon that killed her?"

We all stared at her and I think Elena, Anna and I stopped breathing.

"Oh, relax, I already know about it," Lexi said with a sigh. "I know my sweetie-pie tried to kill Damon and that you saved him Elena. Thank you."

Elena looked surprised at her. "Why are you thanking me?"

"My boyfriend is a sweet man, or at least he was, and killing someone would have wrecked him."

"Revenge is a bitch..." I mumbled.

Lexi nodded and we sat in silence for a while.
"So what are we doing for the day? Can't we go to the beach?"

We kept staring at her.
"Lexi, you are a little hyper. What have you've been doing?"

"I ate someone in the woods... He was drunk." She giggled.

We all gasped. "What?!"

"Oh relax, I didn't kill him." She rolled her eyes at our reactions. Luckily Stefan and Damon came walking into the kitchen at that moment. "Guys, tell the girls there's nothing wrong in eating someone you meet in the woods. It's not like I killed him."

"Okay," the guys said and shrugged. Elena, Anna and I gasped.

The three of them started laughing at us. "We're just kidding. I didn't eat anybody, and I won't." Lexi thought it was hilarious.

"Not as long as we have soccer mom in the freezer." Damon filled in and came to stand by my side. "Or maybe you're offering?" He looked straight at Anna, who gulped.

I elbowed him in the ribs and he chuckled.

Stefan smiled at us, standing by Elena. "So what are we doing?"

"Lexi wants to go to the beach."

"Of course! I haven't been at a beach in daylight for three hundred years," she chuckled.

"We have a lake just a mile away," Stefan told all of us newcomers to town and at that moment it was decided. We were going to the beach.
After throwing some bathing suits in a bag, Elena and Stefan jumped into his small red Porsche and Damon and the rest of us girls in his Camaro.

When we arrived at the lake Stefan and Elena had stopped by the Grill and bought us a picnic basket so we had all sorts of goodies waiting for us. But most of all we wanted to get in the cooling water on this hot day.

The day held a lot of laughter and splashing water. Mostly I enjoyed when Stefan and Elena was joking around. Clearly the talk they had the night before had worked wonders and they were on their way of healing.

We were really acting like kids joking around, splashing water at each other. It was a long time since I had so much fun, just six adolescents enjoying themselves, not caring that three of them were on a special diet.

It was when we sat down on the blankets, munching on the goodies from the basket, the subject appeared.

"Must be kind of practical being a vampire, not having to go shopping, deciding what to eat and the time in front of the stove... "

Everyone just stopped and stared at me with their mouths open.
"Really, Emma?" Anna looked at me with a slightly disgusted look.

All the others started to laugh.

"What? It's not okay talking about it? It's not like it's some kind of secret, not in this group."

"I've just never heard of it as practical," Lexi said laughing. "There is so much food to choose between now, not like in the 1700:s. Does anyone know of samp?" We shook our heads.
"It's some sort of porridge made out of corn. That's what I ate when I was human. There was some salted pork in it or fish."

We were all wrinkling our faces and laughing.

"There was more stuff like casseroles in your time, right?" she said looking at the brothers.

They nodded affirmatively. "Yes and the potato were getting more common," Stefan replied. "But we ate corn-pasta, being Italian and all." The brothers smiled at each other.

"And now you eat people."

"Anna!" Elena and I yelped, but the others just snickered.

"I would think that to be boring. Always the same," she continued to be slightly rude, I thought, but they weren't offended.

"There are quite different tastes," Damon informed and the three smiled secretively.

"Really? Like different blood types?" I felt the need to ask.

"Oh yes!" Lexi said and the other nodded. "You have a strong strawberry-scent around you," she explained and I thought about whom else had told me that.

Hmm, it must have been Claws...

"You're probably a B-type," she said and I snickered a bit. She reached for my hand and I giggled, thinking about palm-readings and looking at Anna and Elena. They suddenly gasped and I whipped my head in Lexi's direction at the same time I felt a small pinching in my index finger.

She had bitten me!

I tried to jerk it free, but she held it in an iron-grip.

She suckled it slightly and then let go of my hand.

I was watching her with huge eyes as she rolled her tongue in her mouth as it was some kind of a wine-tasting.

My eyes flickered to the guys who were watching her intently with their eyes blackening.

"Mmm!" she exclaimed. "Wild strawberries, and there's a dark undertone... What is it? Coffee and chocolate?" Her eyes turned to Damon.

"It's more like a Pinot Noir with the dark chocolate," he said and I was totally fascinated watching them discuss me like a bottle of wine.

Lexi grabbed my hand again and before I could react, she had my finger in her mouth again, sucking it slightly and then dropping it again.

"Hey!" I yelled, but she only put a finger up to stop me from talking, and amazingly enough I got quiet.

She rolled her tongue once again and then smiled at Damon. "You're right; it's spicier like the Pinot Noir and with the hint of dark chocolate."
The three vampires smiled at each other and us three humans were just eyeballing them.

"Oh, and you're B+, by the way," she told me.

"Elena's A negative," Stefan said.

We gasped. It felt like something very private was discussed openly, like our sex-life or something. We were getting uncomfortable, even if we all knew Elena had given Stefan her blood to build up a tolerance for human blood. Anna and I had seen in on tv.

"You're more like Irish cream and Zinfandel with a clear note of cherries," Stefan told Elena, who looked as shocked as I felt. Everything went silent for a while.

"Okay, this is something you should never discuss in public!" Anna said blunt and we all started laughing.

"A- is very unusual," Lexi said, continuing the discussion on a more medicinal level.

"Yes, the B+ too," Stefan continued.

Us humans sat quiet and observed them for a while as they discussed different blood types.

"I'm an AB-, by the way," Anna said and quieted them up.

"We knew that..."

"Well excuse me!"

"That type is very unusual, but the scent is strong," Damon said and I was once again amazed.

We sat very quiet for a while to let that set in.
"Could there ever be just a regular conversation between us?" I blurted out.

Stefan, Damon and Lexi looked innocently at each other. "This is normal, isn't it?"

Oh my God!

~~ Authors note ~~

Thanks @Mswriter! It was actually Liv's day by the lake that inspired me to write this chapter.
Hope you'll all like it as much as I did... ;-D

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