"I'm tryna be alright, but seeing you with him just don't feel right."

"Whaddya think about this one?"

Nicky should have been looking at the picture of the wedding dress in the magazine Lorna was holding, but instead she was looking at Lorna—brows furrowed in thought, bright red lower lip trapped between white teeth. She hated how distracting Lorna's lips were to her, especially now that she'd been wearing that lipstick Nicky had had Red smuggle in. It was a sinful scarlet color, and it made her think things she shouldn't. But really, who could blame Nicky for imagining the way that lipstick would look smeared across her mouth after she kissed Lorna breathless? Or the little red marks Lorna would leave all across Nicky's bare stomach as her mouth dipped lower, lower, lower…?

Nicky cleared her throat. "Uh, it's nice."

"Just nice?" Lorna frowned. "Nice ain't gonna cut it. Not for my wedding."

She sighed dreamily, and from the far-away look in her eyes, Nicky could tell she was caught up in a daydream. That happened often; although she hadn't known her long, Nicky guessed it was Lorna's way of coping with prison. They all had their strategies. Red's was channeling her anger into the best food she could produce with the shitty stuff they gave her to work with; Nicky's was keeping track of how many women she could make scream her name. (It was a lot. She was more than a little proud of it.) Lorna's coping mechanism appeared to be fantasy—the fantasy of planning her dream wedding to a man who, to Nicky's knowledge, had never even been to visit.

This Christopher seemed like an asshole, as far as Nicky was concerned. Not that she'd ever met him, but she really didn't need to. The look on Lorna's face after he failed to show up week after week was introduction enough.

Lorna was worrying her bottom lip between her teeth now. "This magazine's gonna be outta date by the time I'm out. I don't wanna show up to my own wedding wearing something last season…"

Nicky couldn't help but laugh—fashion was something she neither knew nor cared about—but she stopped upon seeing the legitimately worried expression on Lorna's face and the tears that were beginning to well up in her eyes.

"Hey, hey." She reached out and laid a comforting hand on the brunette's shoulder. "Three years isn't that long. Besides, you're a classic beauty, you've got nothing to worry about."

"You really think?"

"I know it."

Lorna beamed, smiling through the tears and sniffing a little. "You're a great friend, Nichols."

Goddamnit. Why did straight girls have to be like this? You complimented them and instead of taking it as flirting, they went straight for… awwwwww, how sweet, you're just the bestest friend ever! Like… no, the point is, you're hot and I want you to sit on my face. Nicky did not understand it. Although maybe Boo was right, Lorna seemed like the kind of girl who wouldn't even go for pink in prison. The fact that she spent most of her time planning her wedding to Christopher probably should've clued Nicky in long ago, but Nicky had always been good at ignoring things she didn't want to acknowledge.

"Now we can't have a crying bride, can we?" Nicky reached out to wipe away the single tear that had tracked its way down Lorna's cheek. "Let's see that smile."

Lorna obliged, laughing a little bit despite herself as she gave Nicky a radiant smile that felt as golden as the sun itself. (Stop being so sappy, Nichols, she chided herself.)

"You got lipstick on your teeth, kid."

Lorna blushed, running her thumb over her front teeth. "Did I get it?"

Nicky nodded in confirmation. "Maybe shouldn't bite your lip so much." Might be less distracting for her that way, too.

"Yeah." Lorna went back to flipping through the pages of her magazine, and Nicky slipped an earbud into her ear, drumming her fingers on the table as the beginnings of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck" began playing. Her parents had hated how much she'd loved that band when she'd gotten old enough to buy her own music, which had only made Nicky love it more. She'd blasted hard rock in her room for hours on end just to annoy Marka (when she actually bothered to come over to the "home" she supposedly shared with Nicky instead of staying with Paolo all the time). It didn't seem like the kind of music that would be soothing, but Nicky felt her eyes closing as she relaxed into the familiarity of the song.

The distinctive guitar riff of Guns N' Roses' "Sweet Child O' Mine" made her pop her eyes open after a few minutes, watching Lorna. For some reason, the song always reminded her of the brunette—not every lyric, but the gist of it.

Now and then when I see her face, she takes me away to that special place. And if I stare too long, I'd probably break down and cry.

"What're you listening to?" Lorna asked after a moment, looking up from her magazine.

Nicky responded by simply handing her an earbud. "It makes me think of you." The statement was an honest one—maybe a bit too honest, but Nicky kind of wanted to see Lorna's reaction. It was a love song, after all.

Lorna blinked. "Is that why you always call me 'kid,' then?"

"What?" Nicky laughed. Lorna had totally missed the point, as usual. "No. I dunno, maybe?"

"It's a good song."

"Really? Thought you only listened to the West Side Story soundtrack." Nicky couldn't help but tease, wearing a shit-eating grin and feeling satisfied when Lorna reached out and whacked her arm with the wedding magazine.

"Har har, very funny, Nichols." Lorna idly flipped a few pages in her magazine before turning back to Nicky. "What would you wear?"

"Huh?"

"To your wedding!" Lorna said, as though it were the most obvious thing in the world.

Nicky couldn't help but laugh. "I'm not really the marriage type."

"Oh. I forgot that it's…" Lorna frowned, seeming unable to finish the sentence.

"That gay marriage isn't legal everywhere?" Nicky smirked. "You can say the word lesbian, ya know."

When Lorna simply blushed and didn't say anything else, Nicky shrugged and continued.

"I'm not bitter about it. Like I said, I've never wanted to get married. Divorced parents'll do that to you."

"Yeah, but you must've dreamed about it a little." Lorna's doe eyes were fixed on Nicky in full force now, and Nicky could feel herself melting a little bit.

Truth be told, she hadn't really imagined her own wedding. Nicky had always known she liked girls, and marrying a woman had never been a possibility she'd been presented with growing up. So why would she have dreamed of it? Besides, there really hadn't ever been anyone she could see herself settling down and growing old with. It was far more fun to play the field.

"Well, I don't know about that," she said slowly, "but maybe you could help me."

Lorna's face immediately lit up, and she rummaged through her stack of magazines before handing a few to Nicky, who took them with a bemused laugh.

"Careful, smile any wider and you're gonna split your face right open."

"Shut up," Lorna muttered, but she was still grinning. "What kinda dresses do you like?"

"Uhh…" Nicky wasn't even sure where to start. She'd listened to Lorna drone on about various necklines and hemlines for hours, but that didn't mean she'd retained any of the information. It wasn't like she'd thought there would be a quiz on this shit!

Lorna looked her up and down for a moment with an analytical squint to her gaze that made Nicky feel at once scrutinized and appreciated. "Maybe a suit? That's gonna be hard, I don't think any of my magazines have suits for women…"

"Believe it or not, I have worn dresses in my lifetime."

"You'd want a dress?" Lorna looked surprised.

"Nah, just pulling your leg." Nicky smiled. "Definitely a suit."

Lorna nodded, flipping through a few pages until she found a section that showed men wearing various styles of tuxes. She pointed to one on the upper left corner. "You'd look sexy in that."

To be honest, they all looked the same to Nicky, but she couldn't help but blush. "Yeah?"

"Yeah." Lorna gave her a fond smile. "Any girl would be lucky to marry you."

Fuck. Lorna could not keep saying these things. It was already hard enough for Nicky to focus on being friends with her without all this fucking sweet talk. Lorna was straight, Nicky had a habit of falling for the straight ones. It was a disaster waiting to happen.

She cleared her throat, aware of how husky her voice sounded. "Well, I doubt that's ever gonna happen. Only one pussy for the rest of my life? Yeah, no, I'm gonna have to pass."

"Nicky!" Lorna looked absolutely scandalized.

"Hey, there're lots of great women out there that I haven't gotten to know yet, if you know what I mean." She smirked.

Lorna frowned. "You are the least romantic person I've ever met."

"Guess it's a good thing you've got me to balance you out."

"As soon as we get outta this place, I'm gonna make you watch West Side Story with me. Maybe then you'll understand."

Nicky raised an eyebrow. "Once we get out?"

Lorna blushed. "What, you won't wanna know me once we're on the outside?"

"I didn't say that."

It was an interesting thought, her and Lorna on the outside. Nicky doubted they ever would've met each other if it weren't for Litchfield; they were just too damn different. And Nicky was a different person now than she'd been before. No matter how many times she'd been to rehab on the outside, she'd always sunk back into using the moment something wasn't going right in her life. And even sometimes when everything had been perfect. It wasn't prison that had gotten her clean—everyone knew prison was a shitty place for that—but Red had really turned her life around. Nicky would always owe her for that.

Sometimes she did wonder what Lorna had been like before. She realized now how little she knew about the brunette's life before prison; Nicky was very open about being a junkie, but Lorna had never said what she'd been convicted of. The only thing she talked about from her life outside was her family. And, of course, Christopher.

They probably wouldn't have been friends if they'd met any other way. What did they have in common, really, other than Litchfield? Nicky was a would-be philosophy major, a college dropout who'd had every advantage money could buy and wasted her life on drugs anyway. Lorna was the sweetest, most traditionally feminine girl Nicky had ever met, with the tight-knit Italian Catholic family to match. They had nothing in common. Nicky didn't believe in love at first sight, and she'd long since stopped believing that there was any god with a plan for her. But meeting Lorna felt as much like destiny as anything she'd experienced.

"How did you know you wanted to marry Christopher?" The question was a simple one, but she felt almost vulnerable as she asked it.

"It felt like destiny," Lorna said, sounding breathless. "We met in the post office—"

"Ah, yes, the sexiest setting," Nicky couldn't help cutting in dryly.

"It was!"

Nicky rolled her eyes. "Come on, how can a post office possibly be romantic?"

"With Christopher, anything is romantic. That's how you know you're in love." Lorna looked faintly surprised. "Haven't you been in love before?"

Nicky shrugged. "I mean, yeah. I guess."

Most of her relationships hadn't really been about love. More like… mutual sexual gratification, and that was usually enough for Nicky. She thought she'd been in love before; she'd had a few relationships in her early twenties, but most of those hadn't lasted long when she'd invariably started using again. For a while, she'd wondered if monogamy just wasn't her thing, but then there was the traitor part of her that fantasized about being held by someone at night. Most frequently, that someone in her dreams was Lorna. Although she would never admit that out loud. It was too fucking embarrassing.

"Love is the most beautiful thing," Lorna was saying, her eyes all dreamy and a slight smile on her lips. She was lost in her own world, and Nicky wished for a moment she could join her there. "When you fall in love, you just know."

"You make it sound so easy."

Lorna looked at her with wide, clear brown eyes. "True love is the easiest thing in the world."

Nicky very much doubted that. Sex was easy; love was not. With anyone else, she would have laughed at the statement, called it insipid or stupid or naïve, but there was something endearing about the way Lorna said it. She wasn't in love with Lorna—it was just a stupid crush she'd get over when she found her next prison wife—but she found her eyes settling on those ruby-red lips again, wishing she could close the space between them.

With any other girl, she wouldn't have hesitated. Because it would be a lie to say this was everything Nicky wanted—she wanted far more from Lorna than the brunette was willing to give her—but she found herself paralyzed. If she had to choose, Nicky knew she'd rather have Lorna as a friend than lose her as a lover.

Hearing Vinnie's voice is an almost-surreal experience. Nicky's not sure of the emotion she feels at first—is it sorrow? anger? envy?—but what she does know is this: there is a kind of tightness in her throat, a burning behind her eyes. She holds it together because that's what she has to do, but inside she feels like falling apart.

She wants to like him. For Lorna's sake, for the sake of whatever friendship they have left, she needs to like Vinnie. In her mind, she's trying to build him up as some kind of fairytale prince, because that's what Lorna always says about him. And even though Nicky doesn't live in fantasyland the way Lorna does, she needs to believe there is something exceptional about this man. Something exceptional enough to explain to her how Lorna can choose him over Nicky again and again and again.

But reality can never live up to fantasy, now can it?

"You know what, fuck you!" Vinnie's voice is tinny and full of vitriol on the other end of the phone. "I didn't sign up for any of this shit."

And it's just so fucking rich of him to say that, like he didn't choose to marry a felon when there are all those women out there in the real world. Nicky tells him as much, barely holding back the anger in her words. He'd chosen Lorna. And yeah, maybe he hadn't known just what he was getting into, but maybe you shouldn't marry someone you've only met a handful of times in a shitty prison visitation room. Maybe you should have to really love them. Maybe you should have to sit on the stairs holding them while they cry, or goof off at every meal together, or have their strangled I love you be the only thing keeping you going for three fucking months. Maybe that's what you should have to go through before you marry someone.

So in reality, talking to Vinnie doesn't make Nicky like him. In fact, she knows now what she's feeling: anger, pure and simple, the kind of pulsing rage that makes her want to punch through the wall or maybe take a hit or two. She pushes a shaky puff of air out of her nose. Nicky has to be strong now, even though she hates Vinnie more than ever in this moment.

She's hated 'Vince Muccio' in the abstract ever since she'd found out the name of the man Lorna married, but there had always been part of her that knew her hatred was born out of jealousy. She didn't know the man; maybe he was great, who was she to say? Ever since coming back from Max, Nicky had always harbored the secret hope that Lorna still wanted her, but when it became clear she didn't… well, Nicky had at least hoped Lorna had married someone with the backbone to fight for her. Because to Nicky, Lorna has always been the kind of girl worth fighting for—and the kind of girl who needs fighting for, often. If Nicky couldn't be the one to do that, she'd hoped Vince would be the sort of person who could.

But what has Vinnie done, really? Show up to visitation a few times, maybe put some money into Lorna's commissary account? Fuck her in said visitation room and then bail the second there's a possibility of him having to take any responsibility for his actions? He's her husband, for fuck's sake. He should be Lorna's knight in shining armor, and yet Nicky is here having to coerce him into doing the right thing. Vinnie should be fucking ashamed of himself.

She doesn't understand how Vinnie could ever leave Lorna. Not just because Lorna is so obviously a catch—goofy and genuine and kind and beautiful—but because even Nicky knows that when you make a commitment to someone, you follow through. Nicky may not have much experience with marriage, but she damn well knows the meaning of loyalty. She'll never be capable of walking away from Lorna. Even though being with her is shitty sometimes, even though it tears Nicky's heart out and makes her want to start using again, the longing is so bad. Lorna's never gonna love her back, but Nicky doesn't have the energy to be angry about that anymore, not in the middle of all this shit. Lorna needs her, and ultimately, that's all that matters.

Fuck Vinnie, she'd said, we'll make it work. I will help you.

And she means it. She knows that she and Lorna can make it through this together, even if they're only friends. Nicky has never wanted the responsibility of raising a child—she's always been too afraid that she'd fuck up a kid the way Marka had fucked her up—but the difference between her and Vinnie is that she would never let that fear make her give up on the woman she loves more than anything in the world. She wishes she could hang up on him, let him walk away from Lorna like the fucking coward he is. If he's too much of a fool to see he has everything he's ever wanted—everything Nicky has ever wanted—then that's his loss. He doesn't deserve to be with Lorna.

But she knows that would be selfish. And Nicky has spent so much of her life making selfish choices. Having seen Lorna sitting there, broken and defeated on the floor and worried about the future of her baby… well, Nicky knows she can't replace Vinnie. She won't be there to take care of the little one after Lorna gives birth. She won't be able to wake up in the middle of the night with the baby or clean up the messes they make or take cute little pictures to send to Lorna—because she will still be in prison. Lorna will be, too. But Vinnie can do those things, and that is why Nicky has to convince him to come back to Lorna, even though she wishes more than anything that she could tell him to fuck off forever.

"You know," she says, and it's the hardest thing she's ever had to say, "all her life, all she has ever wanted is for somebody to reassure her that she is worthy of love. So if you do that, then… you know, she will be good to you, she will take care of you, I mean, she will even overlook all of those things that are so deeply fucked-up in you."

She knows she's not talking about Vinnie, not anymore. She wishes she could say these things to Lorna—their relationship needs some fucking honesty, Nicky thinks—but it wouldn't matter. Maybe it's best that Lorna never knows how much of a force for good she's been in Nicky's life, how the image of her smile in Nicky's mind was what she'd been clinging to when she'd been getting clean the last time. No one has ever made Nicky feel seen the way Lorna does, like despite all the fucking awful decisions she's made in her life, she's still someone worth knowing.

She takes a deep breath. "Uh, and yeah. When she gets out of here she will, uh, I dunno, probably hack your phone or maybe key some female coworker's car. But she's gonna do it 'cause she loves you." Nicky's voice breaks, and she can barely hold back the tears. "And, uh, I mean, some people would give anything to be loved like that."

This is what it means to be someone's friend, Nicky realizes now. She's doing this because it's what's best for Lorna, not for herself. It's not tit-for-tat, not I got clean, now let me fuck you. It isn't about Nicky at all, and maybe if she'd been able to wrap her head around that earlier, she could've avoided all this heartbreak.

"That's all I gotta say," she finishes, feeling clumsy and ineloquent. "Just stew in your juice, and then, uh, yeah, do the right thing."

And it hurts. It hurts hearing that silence on the other end of the telephone line, and it hurts thinking about Vinnie next to Lorna's hospital bed, smiling down at her while she holds their newborn baby. But Nicky tries to just accept the pain instead of channeling it into self-destructiveness the way she usually does. At least this way, Lorna will be happy.

Then Vinnie's voice is back, crackling over the line as he clears his throat, sounding choked-up.

"I can't." His voice breaks, and Nicky feels like she should feel bad for him. She doesn't. "Tell Lorn I'm sorry."

Nicky doesn't have time to break it to her gently. Twenty-four hours ago, it had seemed like they had all the time in the world, but now everything is suddenly urgent. The riot is crumbling around them, and if they don't move quickly, they'll both be trapped in the rubble.

Lorna looks up at her with those big, teary eyes as Nicky rushes back into the pharmacy, gesturing for her to sit down beside her. Nicky knows she doesn't have time for that, but she doesn't hesitate to tuck herself in beside Lorna, letting the brunette rest her head on her shoulder. She feels the two of them breathing in the same rhythm, in and out like the waves of a calm ocean, and savors the moment for one, two, three seconds before she says it:

"Vinnie's not coming back."

Instantly, Lorna's body tenses as she pulls away from Nicky, her head leaving Nicky's shoulders as she curls in on herself. Nicky reaches out to place a comforting hand on her shoulder, but there's no response. Lorna is so still, so quiet, cold like stone.

"Lorna. Kid, look at me."

It takes a moment, but Lorna releases her breath in a shuddering sigh and looks up to meet Nicky's eyes. Her face glows, pale and hopeless in the dim light, almost like a ghost. Her hair is tousled and dirty, her makeup streaming down her cheeks. She doesn't look beautiful, just haunted.

"I meant it," Nicky says, reaching for her hand. Lorna lets her take it, although her grasp is limp. "We'll be okay, alright? We'll get through this together."

Lorna sniffs. "Promise?"

"Promise."

Truth be told, she doesn't know if that's a promise she can keep. Lord only knows what's going to happen to both of them after the riot is over, but Nicky won't let herself think about it. Right now, this is what Lorna needs to hear. She needs to think she's gonna be okay after all this blows over.

"We're gonna go right back to shitty normal," Nicky says, and is pleased when her words elicit a choked laugh from Lorna.

Maybe it's not true, but shitty normal is better than the unknown. It's better than thinking about what might happen when Piscatella's guards storm the prison and tear them apart, maybe for the last time. For a moment, Nicky wishes she could be like Lorna. Her world may be a fantasy, but it brings with it a resolute sense of optimism, the unwavering belief that everything will turn out okay in the end. Fantasy is dangerous, but Nicky thinks it might be easier than the cold fear coiling its way into her chest as she takes Lorna in her arms one last time. She kisses the top of Lorna's brown hair, wishing it were her lips instead.

"Just hang in there, kid," she murmurs. If fantasy can spare Lorna some heartache, maybe it's for the best this time.