Even though this is an AU, it's a lot different than anything I have written before (more low-key High-School story). I'm not sure how well I will do with this style and I have a feeling this might be a slow upload because I am focusing on my other story (Lost in the Waves) but I wanted to have this story going for when I hit a snag. And because I am apparently addicted to ficwriting now. Hope you enjoy.

Chapter 1: The Fool

Part 1

Naomi rolled over in bed and sighed; it was the start of what would be another undoubtedly boring day in the small town her mother had moved them to when she was thirteen.

"It will be wonderful love," Gina had promised. "Fresh air, sunshine, nature; the way life is meant to be lived. Not like Bristol. You'll see, you'll love it."

Naomi had waited to fall in love with the little village; and four years later it still hadn't happened. She'd barely made any friends – everyone was too young or too old or just too incompatible. The college she went to was unbelievably small; with just enough students have tightly knit little cliques, none of which seemed to have room for her. All these years later she was still 'that city girl' the outsider; rumors had immediately began buzzing. The first day of school Naomi had been in a miserable mood and it had only been made worse by one of the girls, Arcia, following her around insistently asking questions about her old town; Naomi had snapped out an irritated sarcastic comment to shut her up, which had started a never ending battle between them. By the end of the day the entire school believed that her mother had moved to their town because Naomi was a drunk, a pill junkie, and had gotten pregnant. A few weeks later new rumors had spread thanks to another girl named Mandy, who said Naomi was a lesbian and had tried to jump her in the shower room. With Arcia leading the trendy-bad-girl clique and Mandy as the ringleader of the student council; the new girl found herself with few people who were willing to risk befriending her.

At least it was summer break and Naomi wouldn't have to deal with any of her classmates for almost another month. Without college there really wasn't much for her to do; she saw little point in getting out of bed today.

"Morning sunshine!" her mother called as she bustled into the room uninvited. "Wake up love, the day's wasting."

"The absolute nothing to do will still be there tomorrow…" Naomi groaned as she stuffed her head under a pillow.

"You have to get up Naomi, we're going to meet the new neighbors." Gina insisted as she yanked the covers off of her daughter.

"MUM! I sleep naked! Fuck's sake!" her daughter yelled.

"Oh and I've never seen it before…all the more reason to get out of bed." Her mother laughed.

"They aren't neighbors, they're practically a block over…" the blonde grumbled as she pulled on a shirt.

"We can see their house from here. That makes them neighbors." Gina corrected. "The relater said they have two daughters your age…this could be your chance to get to them before Acria, Mandy, or one of their minions do…" she added hopefully.

"Mum…" Naomi sighed. "Fine."

She pulled on the cleanest pair of pants she could find on the floor and followed her mother down the stairs and into the kitchen; immediately noticing a basket of muffins on the table.

"Mum!" the blonde laughed as she rolled her eyes, "seriously?"

"What?" her mother asked.

Naomi knew it was pointless to explain how cliché a basket of muffins was; or how pointless it was to try to make any kind of first impression on the new 'neighbors'. Truth be told she loved her mother's warm streak – even if it was strange and over the top sometimes. People didn't greet newcomers with baskets of treats these days; families moving in just wanted to get settled and not be hassled but there would be no explaining to her.

"Oh that must be their car now…" Gina said excitedly from the window. "Yes it's definitely them."

Naomi fixed her hair as best she could in the hallway and threw on her shoes. "I'm not carrying the muffins." She insisted, she had to draw the line somewhere.

Part 2

Emily sat scrunched up against the window of the car; Katie had sulked next to her in the back seat the whole drive and eventually fell asleep against her. On the other side of her sister James bobbed aggressively to the music from his iPod, singing aloud some of the trashy lyrics from time to time. Their mother chattered the passenger seat about the town they were moving to - unaware of the fact that everyone else in the car had tuned her out hours ago.

"Ugh!" Katie groaned when James' flailed to the music and accidentally smacked her leg. "Little shit!" she spat as she kicked at him, causing her press harder against Emily in the process.

"Ouch" Emily gasped when her head hit the window.

"mum!" James yelled in a oh-so-innocent tone.

"Katie!" Jenna snapped from the passenger seat.

"Easy now…" Rob said from behind the wheel.

"This is stupid!" Katie huffed as she adjusted herself in the seat. "Couldn't we get a proper sized car at least? Like this whole thing doesn't totally suck enough. What?" she turned on Emily.

"Nothing…" Emily said. "…just trying to breath here."

"Then you shouldn't take up so much room." Katie huffed and crossed her arms, ready to start another bout of sulking.

Emily ignored her and stared out the window; she was happy to be leaving Bristol, they had lost the house and their parent's had found jobs at a little college in a small town. The school had even helped on the down payment to the house they were moving into. This was the way life was going to be and she was looking on the bright side; at least she wasn't leaving anyone special behind, she hadn't been dating anyone – ever. Emily supposed she could feel a little sorry for Katie; her sister was leaving three boyfriends behind, even if that made them a little less 'special someone's' and more 'a lot of fun', she could see how that would be hard for her.

"You're just mad because you're phone battery died so you had to stop sexting your boyfriends." James said and received another kick that shook the back of the car.

"I'm just mad because you're a lying little fucking perv!" his sister yelled, pulling his iPod out of his hand. "Open the window Ems!"

"mum!" James pleaded.

"Girls!" their mother moaned, rubbing the side of her head.

"We're almost there…" their father assured them all as he turned onto their new street.

Emily let out a sigh of relief as they neared a house with their moving van parked outside. It was the largest house on the street; which wasn't saying much, all the houses on the quaint little street were a miss-match of styles in different variations of small. Theirs was a moderate Victorian style home; the upside was the girls would have separate rooms with a shared bathroom, but they had been warned the rooms would be very small. Emily couldn't believe that separate rooms didn't make Katie excited – it certainly made her feel like the move was worth it. Instead Katie had become increasingly hateful towards her any time she brought it up. Men were already carrying boxes into the light blue house and her mother barely waited for the car to come to a complete stop before jumping out of the car to begin instructing them on where the boxes should go. Emily opened her door quickly, desperate to stretch her legs and put some distance between her and her sister for the first time in six hours. Katie crossed her arms, determined to make her point by refusing to leave the car and help move anything in; James pushed his door open and grabbed his music player quickly and dashed away into the house to find which room would be his. Her dad poked his head in the back seat to try to reason with her.

"It's not so bad love…" He insisted.

She turned her head away from him; her lower lip stuck out in a pout as she glared at the front yard. One of the moving men waved from the front porch and she couldn't help but smile, he was very fit and wasn't wearing a shirt.

"Fine. I guess I can go look at the house…" Katie sighed, allowing her father to open the car door for her as she stepped out and tried to flatten the wrinkles out of her miniskirt.

Part 3

"Shouldn't we give them a little more time?" Naomi said as they stopped in the doorway.

"Muffins are best when they're fresh." Her mum said as she pushed her daughter out the door.

Naomi walked slowly behind her mother as she made her way down the street; as they approached the house she began to size up the people she could see in the yard. There was a tall brunette standing by the doorway, obviously the mother, in professional style clothes giving orders sharply to the moving men. Control Freak Naomi thought; she could tell right away the woman wasn't anything like her mother, who had made lemonade for their moving men, there was something in the way the dark haired woman held herself that told the blonde girl that she was a harsh.

Princess she assessed when her eyes landed on Katie, who was flirting with a dark haired moving man, a school-girl smile on her face as she giggled and played with her dark red hair. Naomi was sure she would have no luck with this girl; it was obvious that she was destined to be one of Arcia's little fan-girls. A young boy came rushing past the girl and she slyly stuck out her foot to trip him. The blonde's jaw dropped – if nothing else maybe this girl would give her nemesis a run for her money.

Naomi watched as the blonde boy rolled on the porch, angling his head up his sister's short shirt. Her mother and her were close enough to hear him yell. "You're not wearing any panties bitch!" He received a hard kick and crawled away towards his mother. Perv, she decided easily, feeling very glad that she had chosen to wear pants today.

A tall muscular man carrying an armload of boxes stopped in the doorway to give the brunette woman a kiss before disappearing into the house. He was back out quickly and immediately noticed the two blondes standing on the sidewalk and waved, a genuine smile spread across his face. He bellowed a hello to them and jogged down the stairs to meet them, he talked excitedly and loud. Intense, Naomi thought, but nice.

"Jenna look! The neighbors are here with sweets." Rob called, holding up the basket and motioning for his wife to join them.

"Oh thank you so much." Jenna said, walking to the steps but not coming down to meet them for fear she would lose control of the movers.

"It was no trouble. Just wanted to welcome you to the neighborhood." Gina said with a wave.

"I think they have the couch in the front room already if you want to come in." the muscular man offered. "I'm Rob, that's my daughter Katie, and the boy over there is James. Emily's in the house somewhere."

"Don't be silly!" the blonde woman laughed, "We can't just sit around while you're moving, we'll help." She nudged her daughter. "Naomi, introduce yourself to Katie and offer to help."

"mum…" the blonde said weakly, it wasn't that she was unwilling to help, she didn't know these people and if some girl came up to her offering to help her move boxes her first thought would be that they wanted to snoop through her things.

Her mother gave her a pleading look and Naomi rolled her eyes and made her way over to Katie, who had followed the shirtless boy to the back of the truck. He stood there holding a box marked Emily-Fragile but was obviously distracted by the redhead at his side.

"Hi…I'm Naomi…I live down the street…my mum sent me over to help…" she said as cheerfully as she could muster, which wasn't very cheerful at all.

"Naomi?" Katie snorted and then checked herself. "Oh, yeah…I'm Katie."

"My name's Tony." The dark haired mover said with a cocky smile as he eyed the blonde.

The redhead obviously didn't like the attention the blonde was getting and her eyes narrowed jealously.

"…yeah…" Naomi said, rolling her eyes at the guy's come-on. "So…is there anything I can do to help?" she asked the girl.

Not only was the guy flirting with both of them but the blonde was pulling the too-hot-to-care tactic? Katie grabbed the box quickly out of his hands and pushed it into Naomi's arms. "Yeah, take this up to my sister, will you? She's in there somewhere. Tell her to get her lazy ass out here and help, I can't do everything myself."

The redhead resumed talking to the handsome guy, leaving Naomi bite her tongue as she turned to carry the box inside. Bitch, she reassessed as she walked up the stairs.

"Emily?" she asked the brunette at the door.

"Oh her room is up the stairs, all the way to the back on the right." Jenna answered without really looking at her.

Gina had followed Naomi up the stairs and was trying to make polite conversation with the brunette with little luck.

"I'm sorry I'm not better company right now, but you know how it is, if you want anything done right you have to oversee every detail." Jenna was saying.

As Naomi started up the stairs she heard her mother say something about lemonade and stifled a laugh – knowing her mother was headed home to make drinks for everyone. She reached the top of the stairs and headed slowly down the back hall, the last door on the right was slightly ajar and she nudged it open silently with her foot. A girl with the brightest red hair she had ever seen lay sprawled on the floor of the room with her eyes shut. A strange feeling traveled through the blonde as she watched the girl, who she assumed, was Emily. The girl was smiling and humming a tune to herself that Naomi didn't recognize.

"Shit!" the girl screamed when she opened her eyes to see a blonde girl holding a cardboard box in the doorway. "Sorry…didn't see you there…"

"Most people don't when they have their eyes closed." Naomi laughed with a smile.

They stared at each other in silence for a moment; the redhead sitting on the floor unable to take her eyes off the stunning blonde and the blue eyed girl shifting uncomfortably as her mind came up blank while she tried to slap a label on the brown eyed girl.

"So…uh…where do you want this?" Naomi broke the silence.

"Oh!" Emily sprang up to take the box, placing it gently by a pile of boxes in the corner. "Shit…sorry…uh…thanks for bringing that in…I'm Emily."

"I'm Naomi." The blonde said. "I live down the street…it's the brown stone building. My mum and I came over to say welcome to the neighborhood…" she finished, making a face that clearly said it wasn't her idea.

"Thanks." The brown eyed girl said, still staring at the other girl.

"Well…I'd better go…mum's probably trying to carry a gallon of lemonade over by herself…" Naomi laughed as she backed out of the room.

"Yeah." Emily said, blushing a little, "thanks again! See you soon…" her brain felt numb and unable to come up with anything better to say.

"Ok…" the blonde laughed as she left the room and made her way back outside and down the street.

Emily sat down next to the boxes and sighed; less than an hour in their new home and she had already embarrassed herself in front of possibly the most beautiful girl she had ever met. Maybe life wasn't going to change after all; her luck was going to stay the same forever it seemed, but at least she could be unlucky in her own room with a little privacy for once. She turned to see which boxes had already made their way out of the truck and let out an embarrassed cry; the box the girl had carried in for her was the very one she had packed her secret wooden box in. Even though there was no way for Naomi to have known that, the redhead was completely mortified.

Naomi tried to shake the strange feeling growing in the pit of her stomach as she made her way back into the kitchen. Her mother stood at the table squeezing lemons over a pitcher. Gina looked up and sighed at the look on her daughter's face.

"Don't judge them already Naomi." She said with another sigh.

She knew her daughter had a tendency to make snap judgments; and those judgments, she felt, robbed her of the chance to make friends.

"Please tell me you didn't slap a label on all of them already." Her mother said hopefully.

"No…" Naomi groaned, rolling her eyes. Her mind still racing to find a place to fit the girl named Emily.

"Good." Gina said brightly. "This is a new town for them, a new house, new everything. And it just might be a path to something new for you too…I just don't want to see you get in your own way like you sometimes do…"

"mum…" the girl pleaded.

"Get me the sugar will you dear?" her mother said instead of you know you do that.

"Sure." Naomi sighed.