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 77th cycle. Now cycle 78!

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

It was a sign that some things had changed that it took so long for Nora to go to Emily with this. She'd been made to realize how much her friend had been caught up in the middle all this time, without Nora realizing it, and going to her now would have felt very much as though they were sliding back into where they'd been. She didn't want Emily to feel as though she was being used as nothing more than a sounding board, but there was really no one else she could have turned to with this.

When she did go to her, she must have been wearing her hesitation on her face, because without a word, Emily had signalled for her to come and sit, and then she'd remained there, in silence, waiting for her to speak. The look on her face said it all: she'd been expecting this.

"How did I even get here?" Nora lay back on Emily's bed, feeling like her head was pounding a very motivated drum solo.

"I'm assuming you don't want me teasing you by saying 'you drove here,' so be more specific?"

"She's going to break up with me," Nora sighed.

"Francesca?"

"Who else?" Nora nearly snapped, though she caught herself, feeling as though she might be constantly inhaling and exhaling. "The worst part is I don't feel nearly as much that this would be a bad thing as I should be thinking it. I shouldn't be relieved for someone to dump me, should I? I care about Francesca, I do… so much."

"As much as Grace?" Emily asked, and Nora felt the monster in her gut hopping up and then inside her.

"I couldn't do it. I couldn't just break up with Fran, then pick up with Grace like nothing happened. Then it would be like Fran meant nothing, but she did. She was the first girl I dated, for real, not just one bad date and that was it. She was the first girl I could call my girlfriend, the first one I ever…" She stopped herself, knowing there was still such a thing as a limit to the things she would discuss with Emily.

"You know, I hate to always be the one who points things out…" Emily started.

"Are you kidding, you love doing that," Nora glared back up at her, chuckling.

"Well, that's true," Emily admitted after a moment. "The point is, you're talking about Francesca and you like it's in the past, and it's not even hard for you to do it." Nora bowed her head; that was true. "But you're right, you probably would need to wait, before anything happened with you and Grace." Nora waited for a moment, a question prodding at her, one she had never seen herself asking about, but now…

"So all this time, while I was with Francesca, she… I mean, Grace… she would come to you?" Emily hesitated to answer. "That bad?"

"What do you want me to say? If it was the other way around, would you want me telling Grace about what it was like for you?" It was rare that Nora would see Emily be so serious about anything, and it only left her feeling that much queasier.

"But you did tell her. Didn't you?" Nora countered, and Emily bowed her head.

"And I feel horrible about it. If I hadn't said anything…"

"If you hadn't said anything, I don't think it would have changed anything, would it? Maybe it would have taken longer for this to happen, but… maybe this was always where we were headed," Nora looked down, touching her wrist. Would she be able to feel the bracelet Grace had made her again? Would she be able to take it out of its hiding place and slip it back on her arm?

"Nora, look… She found out you'd had feelings for her because of Francesca, because of something she told her, after you two had your first date. When she came to me, she already knew, in some way. I just sort of… filled in the blanks. I didn't want to, but she was desperate to know. I think she must have already started to figure out where her own feelings were at, but she was confused."

Nora could see it all in her head, remembering those early weeks. She and Grace had been pulling apart, and she'd thought maybe it was that with her time split between her friends and her girlfriend, Nora just kept missing out on Grace, or that, now that she was in a couple, Grace felt a bit abandoned… In the end, it had been some of those things, but also it was that Grace had discovered something, and it had been as unexpected as it was life changing. But this was Grace, of course, and Grace was not one of her best friends for no reason.

"She didn't want to break me and Francesca up," she said this aloud, and Emily gave confirmation with a shake of the head.

Now she was seeing even more in her head. She was seeing Grace, while Nora was as unaware of her friend's feelings as she was getting closer and closer to Francesca. If it had been the other way around, well… Nora had already lived this, in some way, back when Grace was going out with Jay. She would have given anything to keep her from going through that, especially for it to have happened at the same time as her realizing she might have liked girls just as she liked boys. And in that moment, she had never been happier to know that this friendship included the likes of Emily Holt, because she'd been there for Grace, through all of it.

"Woah, hey…" Emily laughed, surprised, when Nora had sat up and spontaneously pulled her into her arms. "What…"

"Shh, I'm appreciating you," Nora smiled.

"Right, sounds good," Emily hugged her back. "Whatever happens, you'll get through it."

"Okay," Nora replied, hoping she sounded at all optimistic. Inside, everything was turmoil.

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!