While Josie and Penelope were just starting their Happily Ever After, Hope's was still a long way off.

It would, however, start at prom. Or maybe it had started a long time ago, years, in fact, when she'd met the strangest twin sisters, and one of them had growled at her while the other extended her hand so that they could become friends. The one with the brown hair, the friendly one, had introduced herself as Josie, and her growly, blonde sister as Lizzie. Hope had accepted Josie's offer of friendship, and secretly decided that she'd end up making the blonde smile one way or another.

It's been difficult, but Hope thinks she's done pretty well up until now.

Lizzie stares at her, eyes wide and shocked, and doesn't look like she's ever going to look, let alone smile at Hope again.

Hope supposes the kiss might've had something to do with that fact.

Okay, so rewinding, she believes the entire evening was cursed. With like, the Goddess of Love or Beauty or Romance or whatever, because it was in the fucking air. It had started with Penelope, who had completely, absolutely lost her breath when she had seen Josie descending the stairs, and had lost her chill so hard Hope believed she'd never find it again.

"Cat got your tongue, Park?" she had nudged the girl, who was standing next to her, and Penelope had just elbowed her back, not once taking her eyes off Josie.

What a dum-dum, she'd thought, before she saw Lizzie following her sister, and promptly lost her own train of thought.

Lizzie looked like an angel. She'd been wearing a simple black dress, but it looked like it was made for her, enhancing her blonde hair that she'd tied up on the top of her head. Her eyes looked deep, and warm, and now she was looking right at her and what the fuck, why was she sounding like a Young Adult novel in her head?

"Jeez, Hope, rein it in, will you?" Landon teases her in a whisper.

"Shut up," she whispers back to him.

Lizzie, who had by now made her way to them, and had presumably heard the end of the conversation, frowned at her, confused.

"Oh, uh, nothing," she'd explained, the words feeling strange and thick and confused in her head "I, just, um…"

"Are you okay?" Lizzie had asked, her expression shifting to concern.

"Oh, I'm great," she finally managed "You, um, look nice."

The girl in front of her blushed, and damn it, Hope should've known back then.

"You kissed me!"

"Okay," Hope raises her right eyebrow and her index finger "I do believe you've got that wrong. You kissed me."

"Definitely not," Lizzie declares. Her cheeks are flushed, and her chest is heaving with deep breaths, and her lips still look swollen, and all Hope wants is to close the gap between them and kiss her again.

Not that she had kissed her the first time.

The details seem a little blurry right now, because her head is still full of Lizzie's shoulders, and her fruity-smelling hair, and her still dark eyes, and the taste of her lip gloss and damn it, tangent. The point is, she was pretty sure she wasn't the only one. They'd just reconvened in the girl's restroom to make sure their plan of Josie becoming Prom Queen was going according to plan and then the topic had shifted and somehow come to rest on their dresses. Hope had told her that the dress that she was wearing had been a gift from her father, and somehow her voice had cracked, remembering the way that Caroline and Alaric had taken so many photos of them, and realizing that her dad would probably have done the same, and then Lizzie's arms were around her, holding her tight.

"It's alright," Lizzie had murmured "It's okay. Let it out."

And then after a while, they'd separated and somehow kind of ended up with their arms still around each other, faces right up close. And then they'd just leaned in.

"Ha!" she cries out triumphantly "It was both of us. I remember now. You kissed me too."

"I most certainly did not," Lizzie protests, not meeting her eyes, but sounding highly affronted "And why do you sound so excited anyway? Aren't you dating Landon? Oh, my God, I enabled cheating; I am an asshole….."

"We're not dating!" she tells her, in the shrillest voice possible, then clears her throat "I mean, we're not dating. Landon and I are just….."

"You came with him to Prom!"

"Well, yeah, we're friends. He's my best friend. And my favourite ex. We're definitely not dating, if that's what you're thinking. Really not dating."

"Oh," Lizzie says, a little deflated "Either way, this is…..you know."

"What?"

"A bad idea, of course," she completes, and Hope ignores the strange twinge of disappointment in her chest.

She nods, slowly.

"I guess it would be awkward" she says.

And at the same time, Lizzie says "It's not like we like each other like that anyway".

There is a minute of complete silence, and then Hope steps back.

"Yeah," she says brightly "Agreed."

Okay, so maybe she wasn't being completely honest when she told Lizzie she agreed with her observation that they didn't like each other. Maybe she's lowkey had a thing for her ever since they were kids. You know, in the way where you want to be around someone all the time, and like hearing them giggle, and kind of doodle their name on the last page of your notebooks in sixth grade. She's dated people, she's liked people, Lizzie is just this girl she kind of always comes back to as her idea of the perfect person. But it's always been lowkey.

Well, up until now, that is.

Kissing her has kind of opened a door in her head that she cannot seem to close now, no matter how hard she drags it. In fact, she's broken off the doorknob, and now it seems like it won't ever be the same again. She keeps thinking of Lizzie all day, keeps staring at the back of her head in the classes they share (she now knows the girl has a habit of twirling a pen between her fingers when she's not writing notes, knows that she runs her hand through her hair at regular intervals to fluff it up to make it look good. She knows Lizzie doesn't need to). She keeps zoning out in the middle of conversations whenever Lizzie walks into a room, feels her eyes helplessly gravitate to her presence whenever they're near. It's so bad that Penelope's noticed.

"Oh my God," she says out loud at lunch where they're all sitting together, Josie on her lap, and the others sprawled out on their chairs. Lizzie is sitting next to her today, and she feels electricity every time the skin of her arm brushes against hers.

Damn it, it's so soft.

"What?" M.G asks, confused.

"Oh, nothing," Penelope tells him, giving Hope a meaningful look.

She frowns at her, confused, and Penelope shakes her head as though saying later. And as soon as they're all gone, Josie after leaning down to kiss her girlfriend, she leans forward on the table, and looks her right in the eye.

"You have a thing for Lizzie Saltzman."

"What, I, never, what, okay fine. How did you know?"

"It's super fucking obvious, that's how. You kept jumping about a feet into the air every time she so much as looked in your direction."

She groans, head in her hands "Oh, it's looks that bad, huh?"

"It's worse that when Josie and I were doing our little dance around each other."

"But now you guys are together," she points out, and she can't help her own wistful tone.

Penelope gives her a piercing look "Oh damn, you like her. Fuck, it was bad enough when I thought it was just a crush, but you have it bad for her. Bad enough for love poetry, and serenades and shit."

"I'm not as lame as you," she snarks.

"And yet, who out of us is with the girl they're madly in love with?"

"Penelope, it's," she starts, softly "It's never going to happen. She's one of my closest friends, and I can't lose her. Plus, she doesn't feel that way about me."

"So what, you're going to push it down, and forget all about it?" Penelope asks her, and she sounds genuinely sympathetic.

"I'm going to try," she shrugs, and means it.

Except, it's really hard to when she find herself making out with said girl a week later, in a broom closet on the third floor.

Again, she's not really clear on the details, but it involved them trying to sneak out of some class for a bunk with all their other friends, except, M.G, Josie, and Penelope sneak out of their class relatively easily, Landon just charms Mrs. Schneider with a smile, but she and Lizzie find themselves stuck on the third floor with no visible exit and teachers coming. So, she'd just grabbed Lizzie's hand and jumped into the closet.

After that, she'd just made some stupid joke about what had happened the last time they'd found themselves alone in a confined space, and after the awkward laughter, they'd just kind of melted together.

Which brings them to this very moment, where all Hope can think about is lips, and soft skin, and silky hair. Lizzie kisses with a focused intensity that takes Hope's breath away, presses her lips onto hers like she knows exactly what she's doing, and she's blown away by the entire thing. She's got Hope pressed against the door, and is kissing her like she never wants to stop.

Hope doesn't want her to.

But she does, eventually, leaning back, breathing hard "Wait, wait, what are we, oh God, what are we doing?"

Hope just stares at her, and thinks, lips, hair, skin.

"Would you stop staring at me like that?" Lizzie asks again, and this time there's a note of pleading in her voice.

Hope finally clears the muddle in her head, and looks right at her.

"I don't think I can," she says finally, and leans forward to kiss her again.

So that's a massive failure, but Hope doesn't think she minds very much.