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 79th cycle. Now cycle 80!
"Report & Breathe"
Nora (AU! Beth)/Grace (OC), Emily (OC; Nellie V.)
Sunshine Girls 2 series
(all series now listed under the communities tab in my profile)
Emily Holt was finding that suddenly she was filled with an energy to accomplish all things. On that Friday night, she had done all of her homework, cleaned her room, played with her cousins, gave them both their baths, and got them to bed, where she told them a story. Her aunt and uncle were out, which left her in charge of them both, and that was just fine by her, because then she had something else to think about, other than the fact that she was waiting for Nora and Grace to let her know how the date had gone.
She'd fallen asleep on the couch, and when her phone rang she nearly rolled off to the floor. She looked at the time at the top of her screen before answering.
"What sort of time do you call this and do I even want to know?" Emily rubbed at her eyes.
"Em!" Grace's voice went up in such a way that made Emily wonder if she was blushing on the other end of the line. "And I've been home a while, I almost forgot to call."
"Well you did," Emily pointed out, and she looked at the screen again. She'd had a missed call from Nora, had to have come as she was sleeping. "Alright, so tell me, how did it go?"
"You know I wouldn't be telling you any of this right now if you weren't… well, you?"
"And I'm touched, I am," Emily promised, which went along the same tone as 'now spill.'
"It started off… strange."
"Sure," Emily nodded.
"But we got over ourselves I guess, and then it was great."
"You're going to have to do better than that," Emily frowned.
"We went to dinner," Grace went on. "Then we went dancing."
"You did? Where?"
"That new place, across from the mall. It was packed and…" She muttered something under her breath.
"Grace?"
"Sorry, the stamp's hard to wash away," she explained, which explained the sound of rushing water in the background. "We spent the rest of the night there, then I drove her home. And before you ask, no, we didn't kiss." She wasn't even going to pretend like this would not have been her exact next question.
"Are you guys going out again soon or…"
"We haven't decided when, but we might just do something at home the next time," Grace revealed, and Emily couldn't help but smile at how casual the words 'next time' had sounded.
After hanging up with Grace, Emily had seen that Nora's call had come in twenty minutes before, so she quickly called her back.
"Where were you? Here I was thinking you'd have pounced on that phone…"
"Ha ha," Emily glared into nothing. "I fell asleep on the couch and missed it. I just talked to Grace, I heard you two had a very nice time," she smiled, pleased at the thought.
"She said that?" Nora asked, and Emily could hear the smile.
"She's a shy one, you know, except apparently when trying to woo you," Emily explained. "But yes, that's what she told me. Now your turn."
"I…" Nora started to speak, losing her voice a moment. "I can't stop smiling," she admitted, and Emily had a smile of her own. She would never make any distinctions in between the two, but like it or not, she had known Grace for six or seven years, while her friendship with Nora preceded her ability to make memories. She could have been her sister, for the way she cared about that girl, and knowing that she was suddenly this happy was all she could have wished for her.
"Heard you went dancing?"
"We did," Nora laughed. "You wouldn't know it by looking at her, but that ginger doesn't just do wonders in pointe shoes. You know in movies when everybody just backs away and just leaves the dance floor to someone?"
"Did that happen?" Emily's eyes went wide.
"Well no, but it felt like it might have. I had trouble keeping up with her because I kept watching her."
"You mean you got caught up staring at her?" Emily teased.
"I just… I…" Nora sputtered like she was trying to get out of it. "No, you know what, yes, that is exactly what I was doing, I was staring. How could I not, the way she was moving, and she was right there in front of me, and what can I say, I was turned on. But I kept it together, because, well… first date," the words had come tumbling out of her mouth, until she ran out of breath and had to breathe in before finishing her sentence.
"Woah, hey, hey, alright," Emily took on a soothing tone, though on the inside she was laughing so hard. "Hey, I'm glad you two had a good time, I really am."
"So am I," Nora breathed, and Emily remembered how worried she'd been earlier that day; she couldn't even hear that in her voice anymore.
"Are you going to be the date asker next time, because I had this thought…"
"I think I've got it covered," Nora insisted.
"Right, no, sure," Emily nodded. "Is she your girlfriend now, is that…"
"We didn't get to that part, no," Nora answered, and Emily could see her slowly shaking her head. "The one thing we sort of agreed on was that, when we're at school, we still want to keep this to ourselves, for the most part. Not like we'd lie about it, but we don't want to flaunt it either." She didn't say it, but the words 'especially when Francesca's around' came to mind.
"Sounds fair," Emily replied. "We'll keep it quiet."
"I should go, I've got to get up early tomorrow and my feet are killing me," Nora breathed out.
"Okay, well I'd tell you to have sweet dreams, but I think that's pretty much a given, isn't it?"
After they'd hung up, Emily gathered up her things and went up to get ready for bed, just as Mike and Tina returned. It was only then that she found, much to her dismay, that while she'd been falling asleep earlier, now that she'd spoken to both Nora and Grace, she couldn't close her eyes anymore.
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!