The sound the gym makes when it turns into the gym again is even louder when you're standing right next to it.

I lose my grip on Rebekah and Bonnie when I fall to the ground. My palms hit the hall floor, but the jolt of pain I expect from the open wound doesn't come. I look at my hand. The cut is nothing more than a thin white line, like an old scar.

"The locket," Bonnie breathes.

It's gone. My hand flutters to my neck, remembering the weight of it, the feel of it against my collarbone.

Rebekah dusts off her clothes. Bloodstained and tattered, she still looks somewhat offensively beautiful. "At last," she says. Her voice only shakes a little. "I can finally leave this horrible little town."

Bonnie reaches for me, and I put my arms around her. "I'm sorry I thought you were trying to kill me," I say into her hair.

"I'm sorry I made you think you were in love with Damon," she says.

"Oh my god. Damon." I pull back from her, but the hall is empty except for the three of us.

"He left," Rebekah supplies helpfully. "I suppose it's possible the witch was right."

"Of course I was right," Bonnie says, but she frowns a little, like something has just occurred to her.

I should be happy about this. I should be relieved. Why do I feel like bursting into tears?

"This makes us even," Rebekah says to me. "I will be sure my brother doesn't bother you again."

I don't ask her what she means by that. Rebekah's ruthlessness would be easy to mistake for complacence, if you didn't know where to look.

She starts down the hall, then looks over her shoulder. "Incidentally, Elena, Shakespeare had it wrong," she says. "Portia was never more a slave to her father than when she refused love based on a deception."

And then she's gone, and I'm left thinking how much more clever comebacks sound with an English accent, and also wishing I'd finished The Merchant of Venice.

"Come on," Bonnie says. "I'll get you home."

Jeremy and Alaric run toward us as we approach the doors. "We heard the explosion," Alaric gasps. "Are you -?"

"We're fine," I say. I let go of Bonnie's hand and grab my brother in a hug. "You were a rock star, Jer."

"You weren't so bad yourself," Jeremy says, giving me a crooked smile.

"How did you know? With the," I gesture at his face, where he's done a terrible job of wiping off the fake blood.

"Tyler," he says. "He texted me in the car. Told me I'd need to flex my acting muscles because Rebekah had asked him to, quote unquote, show Elena that she's serious."

"Wow," I say. There are always loopholes.

"Yeah, well, he also told Rebekah where to find us. So don't go giving the guy a medal."

I let him go and look at Alaric. He's sweaty and disheveled, and I can see the residual fear in his eyes. Fear for me. Fear he doesn't need to feel, not anymore. "You don't have to be here," I tell him.

His face goes carefully blank. "Elena, if you don't want me around, all you have to do is say the word."

"Ric," I say, exhaling in frustration. "I mean, I'm not the doppelganger anymore. You don't have to protect me."

He gives me an unreadable look. "You're Isobel's daughter. You're Jenna's." He swallows hard. "I don't give a crap whether or not you're the doppelganger. You're Elena. And I'm - I'm not going anywhere."

"Good," I say, and I'm mildly horrified to find that I'm crying. I really hope he doesn't notice that I wipe my face on the shoulder of his jacket when I wrap my arms around him. He smells like bourbon and flannel and vervain. He smells like home. I hold on to him for a long time.

"Okay, let's get out of - oh." I turn to Bonnie, but she and Jeremy are apparently working through some issues of their own. Issues which seem to involve their tongues in each other's mouths. I spin around quickly, trying to un-see that particular scene.

Ric laughs. "I'll bring you home," he says.

As we reach the door, I hear Bonnie's voice from behind me. "Elena. I ended the impulse spell."

"Good," I say.

"No," she says. "I mean I ended it before. When Tyler told me what was happening. It's been hours since the enchantment stopped."

Hours. Was that before the bunker, or after? I close my eyes for just a moment, but everything in my head is a question mark and I can't separate one emotion from another. I turn to give Bonnie a wan smile and follow Alaric out to the SUV.

I never thought of myself as impulsive. Acting on impulse seemed dangerous to me, irresponsible. Damon has always acted on impulse and it made me feel like I was walking a tightrope, never knowing when he'd stamp his foot and send shockwaves to knock me down.

Maybe it needs to pass through my system, like the flu. I'll sleep it off, and when I wake up in the morning I won't keep looking up every time I hear a noise, thinking he's lurking in the corner or half-hiding in the shadows.

I wake up freezing, the window wide open. Just like I left it.

Now I wonder if the thing I was afraid of was the truth of it. You can't lie when you're doing and not thinking. Lies require premeditation. Truth is imperfect and unplanned and messy, but it's real.

Maybe I just need to think about something else. I'm pretty sure my closet could use reorganizing. I could line up all my shoes by heel height. No, that's stupid. Maybe by color.

I keep my phone face-down on the dresser. When it's face-up, it's too tempting. I make rules for myself: I will only check my messages once every hour. Every half hour. Every fifteen minutes.

At some point I won't want to call him anymore, right?

Damon said once that everything he tells me is the truth. Maybe that's the scariest thing of all.

He's well on his way to a good drunk when I finally stomp into his living room.

"We need to talk," I say.

"Just FYI. No good has ever followed those three words. Three? Four. Unless you don't count the to, which only has two letters anyway. Or we." He waves the bottle at me. "Drink?"

I grab the bottle out of his hands. The scotch burns as it goes down. "You haven't called me."

He takes the bottle back. "You haven't called me."

"It's been three days."

He shrugs, almost falling down. This is especially impressive considering that he's already sitting on the floor. "Three days. Try a hundred and fifty years. That is a long time to wait for someone to get in touch."

I cross my arms over my chest. "While your psychological scarring is almost certainly deeper and more impressive than mine, it doesn't change the fact that you owe me an explanation."

"I owe you?" He squints at me, his face annoyingly pretty by firelight. "Goes both ways, sweet cheeks."

"You did not just call me 'sweet cheeks.'"

"Deal with it," he says, taking another long drink of scotch. "And yes."

"Never mind," I say. "This was obviously a huge mistake."

I spin on my heel, stalking out of the living room. I slam the front door on my way out. It makes a huge, satisfying noise that turns out to not satisfy me one bit, so I pull it open again and slam it harder.

I'm halfway to my car when I hear the door open again.

"That Damon guy," he says, falling into step beside me. "I don't know what you see in him. What's got you so upset?"

"The boy I'm in love with is being a non-communicative jerk. You?"

"Girl I'm in love with stomps a lot. What was it we needed to talk about, again?"

"I don't remember."

"Good," Damon says. He grabs me by my belt loops, drags me over to him, and kisses me.

Everything stops. I can't hear the crickets or the distant sound of traffic. I can't feel the cold winter air seeping into my jacket. His lips are the only things that exist, and the heat from his body, and his restless hands, sliding under my jacket and over my back. I clutch at his collar to keep from tilting and falling to the ground.

I don't know how much time passes but at some point the world stops its merry-go-round impression and he rests his forehead against mine. "No," he says, breathing hard, his fingers clenching and un-clenching against my waist. "I don't think there's still something between us. Must have been a doppelganger thing."

"You're right," I say, struggling to control the hectic thrumming of my heart. "I certainly don't feel anything now that the enchantment's ended." I look up at him through my eyelashes, enjoying the way his breath catches. "But maybe we should test it out one more time. You know, just to be sure."

He smiles against my lips. "When you put it that way," he says, and then he's doing something extremely interesting with his mouth, and I decide that whatever we need to talk about can wait a little longer.