Started my daily ficlets to make the hiatus pass, then decided to keep going with a 2nd cycle, and then a 3rd, 4th, etc through 82nd cycle. Now cycle 83!

A/N: So I had a bad week, which made for this massive delay, the first in nearly five years, but I'm all caught up now, and the chapters/stories will be rolling out over the evening, before things get back on track tomorrow :)

"Pretend & Celebrate"
Nora (AU!Beth)/Grace (OC), Emily (OC; Nellie V.), Francesca (OC)
Sunshine Girls 2 series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)

If anyone had told them that they would be fixing up Nora's ex with Grace's ballet classmate at Nora's birthday party, up until a few weeks before, they would never have believed it. But now here they were, at Nora's house, streamers and balloons everywhere, people everywhere, and one of those people was Francesca, chatting with Ethan when Emily came toward them, ushering the tall slender girl in their direction.

"Hey, sorry to interrupt, I just wanted to say, this is the girl I told you about, the one from our club," Emily spoke to the girl at her side, indicating Francesca. "Francesca Saito, meet Sarah Ann Burke." Sarah Ann smiled, recognizing the name from her new friends' stories, and she held up her hand in a wave.

"Hi, nice to put a face to a name," she smiled. Francesca blinked, waving back.

"Yeah, same here. Heard you moved up here from New Mexico, that must have been a big change."

"Definitely," Sarah Ann agreed, while Emily gestured for Ethan to follow her, discreetly leaving the two girls alone.

"You should go into business," Ethan told her.

"Has crossed my mind, yeah," Emily chuckled.

It wasn't as though they expected Francesca to just take a leap, not with her last relationship, but they were taking those first steps, and anyone who'd see them interacting throughout the party could see they had real potential.

Emily went upstairs, looking for Nora, and she knocked at her bedroom door. Grace came to let her in, as Nora was rifling through earrings.

"Trying to be fashionably late at your own party?" Emily teased.

"I can't find the…" Nora looked up, catching Emily's reflection and turning around. "Oh, right, I lent them to you… last year."

"Oops…" Emily came up, pulling one earring off and relocating it on to Nora's ear, following up with the other. "There… Do you mind if I just…" she pointed to the earrings, and Nora nodded.

"Is she here yet?" Grace asked. "Sarah Ann, is she…"

"She's here, she's met Fran, everything is going perfect…" she held up a pair, questions in her eyes. Nora and Grace nodded, so she went about putting the earrings on. "You are okay with this, right? I know I've asked before but…"

"Hey, I want her to be happy, why wouldn't I be okay with this?" Nora pointed out. She gave a smile Grace's way, and Grace returned it. They got to be happy, so happy, and it was about time Francesca was, too.

"I'll go see how it's going with the food," Grace told them, now that Nora was ready. She returned downstairs, slipping into the kitchen. Quinn and Finn had taken the littler girls off to visit Mike and Tina, leaving the house to them, as well as all snacks and drinks. They would be lax enough on the rules, so long as they didn't go overboard.

Grace was looking into the ice levels when she heard a click of heels and looked up to find Francesca standing there. "Hi," Grace closed the refrigerator door. "Do you need anything?"

"No, I…"

"How's it going with Sarah Ann, have you two been talking?" she smiled.

"We have," Francesca had a small smile at the thought, which amused Grace to no end. "But I saw you coming down here and I just… I wanted to talk to you for a second." Grace could sense Francesca was hesitant to speak, and she didn't understand why. "Look, don't be upset, but I was hanging out with Emily the other day and she sort of accidentally let it slip about your situation right now." Grace flinched briefly, but she blinked and pushed it aside.

"It's alright," she promised Francesca, resuming her ice check.

"I had no idea it was that bad."

"Well that was the idea, I guess. I didn't want people finding out and…"

"I won't tell anyone, I promise." Grace turned back to her, nodding slowly. She believed her. "Can't even imagine what that must have been like for you. I mean I can, sort of, but my father just ignores me now, that's as bad as it gets. Have you… have you been back there since, or…" Grace did not see herself talking about this with most people, but maybe because Francesca was who she was, and she could sympathize in ways most others couldn't, she felt more at ease about discussing it.

"I thought about going there, today, when I arrived, but…" she shook her head. "I'm not ready. She hasn't called either, so it's better things stay this way for now I guess."

She left out the part about how she'd freaked out the night she'd left her mother's house. Since then, she had been working solely on living her life in the best way she could. She may not have been in the position to bring Nora over to the Schuesters' house, but her girlfriend had been right, in the end it was the one place her mother could try and control them in, but it was only one place out of countless others. So it wasn't so much a victory for her anymore, and Grace was at peace with it. Her life had been up ended from normal to hellish in a matter of so few days, but it had taken weeks to put it back together.

"Thank you for looking in," Grace nodded to Francesca. "But you should get back out there, talk to Sarah Ann some more. You two look good together," she smiled.

"Here's hoping," Francesca smiled back. Tapping Grace's shoulder in thanks and in solidarity, she went back into the party.

Grace soon followed, finding Nora had finally come down, Emily, too, and having put aside all the unexpected oddities of this party, they all had a blast, celebrating Nora's eighteenth birthday. By the end of that party, Francesca and Sarah Ann would have exchanged numbers, Emily would have disappeared with Kelly upstairs, and Grace and Nora would dance with abandon among their friends. Grace didn't think about her mother anymore, and Nora looked on with a smile as her ex danced with the ballerina.

THE END

A/N: This is a one-shot ficlet, which means that signing up for story alert will not bring you any alerts.
In the event of a sequel, the story will be separate from this one. And as chapter stories go, they are
always clearly indicated as such [ex: "Days 204-210" in the summary] Thank you!