With the final bell the next day, Taylor found herself staring into the mirror again, wondering how she was going to go through with the date-date she was set to go on.

While the prospect of a nice dinner, and some time spent with the dork in a casual, adult setting certainly had made her feel mildly fuzzy on the inside, there was the very real, terrifying prospect that, once they were outside, together, in a date-date setting, that if she was seen by anyone she knew, there wouldn't be any excuses she could make to say why she was there with him.

And beginning with that, there was a very real threat of social suicide that came with getting off the bus at the same stop as Lincoln Loud.

When she had realised the night before that it was not just a possibility, but an inevitability with how Lincoln had asked her, she of course spent several hours sleeplessly staring at her ceiling, trying to figure out how to weasel out of it. She had thought about asking for the address and meeting up with him there, but the shopping from the day previous had left her broke, and also left her with a desire to change into the new duds before she got there, something that would probably be impossible to do if she tried to walk there.

There was, of course, another, obvious solution, which was to blow off the date for another time entirely. She'd be able to avoid any messy questions from possible bystanders, and maybe set things up to be more agreeable to her.

But she didn't want to blow it off. Not only was backing out an act of complete cowardice (and possibly even chicken-wardice), which was a disgusting enough factor to even consider for Taylor, but also, the even more dreaded outcome that…

Lincoln wouldn't want to give her another chance.

That a nice guy, (even if he was a little wiener dweeb that she felt like putting in a headlock whenever she saw him) who was interested in her… Wouldn't want to hang around her anymore because she flaked out, was enough to make her want to lose it.

She splashed her face from the faucet she was stuck in front of, to get herself back into focus.

She was the baddest girl in Royal Woods Middle-School, and possibly the entire Woods County, who could flatten whatever dork came her way as easily as she breathed air. She willed herself, defiantly, that she was not going to get psyched out.

Taylor kept on telling herself that for another five minutes, until she realized the time, and dashed out of the bathroom so she wouldn't miss the school bus.

She made a running jump onto the bus, managing to cram herself in the half-closed doorway, giving Ernie the stink-eye as she clambered up the steps.

As she rose, the whole bus seemed to go quiet, as balls went unchucked across the aisles, phones were dipped to mute, and conversations immediately died.

She was, very apparently, the last one on.

While she gave her best murderous leer to anyone who looked like they were about to crack a smile at her expense, while she simultaneously scanned the vehicle for a seat, whilst simultaneously keeping an eye out for Lincoln.

It looked virtually full to bursting. And it seemed for whatever reason, a bunch of kids had kites with them, which obscured her vision. She didn't want to have to stand in the aisle and be gawked at for the entirety of her trip, however long it took, but was close to accepting that it was inevitable.

Suddenly, she spied an empty space, and rushed to claim it. In the off-chance somebody was keeping their bag (or kite, she added internally) on it, Taylor wasn't above using it to smashing the stuffing out of them—

As she was a couple of seats away, she saw that the seat behind the one with an empty space sat Pablo and Anderson.

She hadn't talked to them since the day before, and had even taken a ride with her mom that morning and gotten to school early just to make sure she didn't have to deal with them complicating things.

But, at that point, even if there were another seat for her to sit down at, she wasn't going to back down, just because of a little cringey interaction with her old friends. She'd outgrown them, and there wasn't anything they could do to make her back down or live her life the way she wanted to.

Then, as she suddenly reached the free seat, about to kick off the green backpack on the free space, that she saw who the backpack belonged to.

Lincoln. Who looked as surprised as she was.

The deal she'd worked out with him had been for him to send her a text at the stop he'd get off at, and then she'd walk out before him, making a show of walking away until the bus was out of sight. While the basics of that plan were still in play, the intricacies of it were certainly going to have to change in case anyone got suspicious.

Taylor watched stone-faced as Lincoln hesitantly pulled the bag to the side. She gritted her teeth as she saw him make multiple, obvious nervous looks between her, Pablo and Anderson, and the seats in front of him, which held a red-headed kid with bad skin, and a kid with soda-bottle glasses, who she recognised were part of Lincoln's nerd friends.

She sat, keeping a few good inches of space between them, and staring straight ahead without the slightest expression crossing her face.

She thought she heard a contemptuous snort from behind her. Pablo, most likely, based on its nasally quality. She didn't even feel the shadow of a flinch at the gesture, though, ready to take whatever they could throw at her—

Taylor jumped as she felt a gentle poke to her side. She turned, her expression curdling into rage, as she looked over to Lincoln, who's hand crept awkwardly back towards his own body like a slug trying to crawl out of the sun.

"What are we going to do?" Lincoln mouthed, gesturing behind him with his head with a franticness that almost looked like he was having a fit.

"Calm down, you idiot!" Taylor said in an anguished whisper.

"What was that, Tay? Something you want to say?" A voice came from behind her.

It was Anderson. His normally surly expression was buttressed with a legitimate anger. His eyebrows sunk into a frown deep enough to drag a fleet of crab-trawlers to their deaths.

"Yeah, actually." Taylor said, turning her head, thinking on the fly. "I was talking to myself. Telling myself what crappy luck I have to be sitting in front of you two."

"Why're you worried, Tay, worried we'll stick gum in your hair or something?" Pablo jeered from behind Lincoln.

Anderson's head jerked towards Pablo and he gave a piercing glare to his shorter friend, before giving a weighty shake of his head. He then turned back to talk to Taylor.

"Don't be worried. Pablo might not get it, but since you're so dang set on having a clean break from us, you don't have to worry about us bugging you anymore." He said, surly, but sternly.

"…Thanks." Taylor said, turning back around, but keenly aware that the eyes of her two former friends were still on her.

"…We'll enjoy being awesome, and you can enjoy your life being a girl-scout dweeb queen." He added.

"I will." Taylor said, growling.

Taylor turned back to staring to the front. A deep scowl on her face. Dumb, stupid idiots. The whole situation after getting away from the two of them wouldn't have been so bad if there was actually some way to stay away from them. But they had the same classes, breaks, and the same ride home most days.

She kicked the seat in front of her in frustration. This inadvertently caused the person who was in front of her to turn around.

"Linc, buddy. I know you're sore about missing out on Kitefest, but if you'll just let me finish sharing this sick tune I found for Clyde, we can—"

The whiny, pre-pubescent voice halted when its owner popped an ear-bud, as he stared gormlessly at Taylor for a moment, before quickly turning back over to the side where Lincoln was. From the corner of her eye, she saw Lincoln give a fleeting, sheepish stared from her to the red-haired kid, his face paling.

The red-head nudged the bespectacled kid beside him, gesturing for him to remove the ear-plug in his own ear, before the boy with glasses turned, yelped, and hid back down behind his seat. A muffled argument between the two began. Taylor focused back on Lincoln, whose face began to flush from his friend's pathetic attempts at subtlety.

After an agonising few moments of silence, the sound of a tinny ring-tone rendition of "Ooh, Girl" came from beside Taylor, from Lincoln's pocket. It took every atom of discipline from Taylor not to turn around, and shoot Lincoln a look of embarrassed contempt.

Lincoln fumbled with his phone for a moment before answering.

"Lincoln speaking." He squeaked.

Any distant form of curiousity that Taylor had about who was calling was immediately dashed, when she heard the whispered words of the lanky red-head in front of her.

"Linc! Dude! That bully chick who's been stomping you down is sitting right next to you!" He said worriedly.

"Iknow, Rusty." Lincoln said, wearily. "Wait, hang on, I'm getting another call… Hello?"

"Lincoln! Code Midnight! Taylor's right next to you!" A voice sounded from both Lincoln's phone and the seat in front of him simultaneously.

"I know, Clyde." He said, with a groan. "Look, just… Please talk to me through Rusty's phone so I don't have to switch between you two."

A short-whispered conversation happened between the two in front of Taylor and Lincoln, before Rusty continued talking to Lincoln.

"And you're okay with that, dawg?" Rusty whispered loudly into his phone. "You know, I don't mind switching to sit next to a hottie, even she plays a little rough."

Taylor felt herself about to rise to her feet to start clobbering the like puke-head slouching in his seat in front of her, when she felt Lincoln's hand quickly barked out a response to both her and Rusty.

"NO!" He said, glancing at Taylor before he huddled closer to the window before whispering back into his phone. "I'm fine, guys. You just enjoy the contest, and get some footage for Action News Team. I'm almost at my stop, anyway."

Taylor looked around, and realised they were almost at his stop. She took out her own phone to look at the time. They'd been sitting down for fifteen minutes, somehow. The anxiety from having to sit together, must've distracted them, or something. Maybe there was a different, scientific explanation to everything, but if there was, Taylor hadn't heard anything about it. For all she knew, they might've said something about it between the lessons where she and the other guys clogged up the Bunsen burners so they exploded.

The bus slowed to a crawl as Lincoln rose to his feet. He stood for a moment, hesitation on his face, before he spoke to Taylor.

"Umm… Excuse me, but could I please go past?"

Suddenly, any idea that Lincoln was accidentally going to blow it seemed ridiculous. He had it all down tight: The stammer in his voice, the way he didn't look her in the eyes, the fact that he looked like he was about to pee himself with each syllable… Hell, she knew what he was up to, and even she was momentarily caught off-guard by his performance.

The fact that he could be so… Underhanded, made her feel a confusing flutter between her brain and her heart.

"Get past yourself." She spat back, perhaps a little too aggressively.

Lincoln meekly squeezed past her legs as the bus finally stopped. As he turned the go down the aisle though, he suddenly yelped, falling forwards.

Taylor's eyes flickered down from Lincoln's groaning form, to see a foot hooked out from around the seat behind her. She turned to see Anderson smirking directly at her.

"Just because you've had your fill with him, doesn't mean some of us can't cut in on the action." He said, his voice sounding uncharacteristically venomous to her.

He had her there. If she wanted to keep things secret, it wasn't like she could defend him at all.

She looked back at Lincoln as he picked himself up. He'd fallen flat on his face, and a small flow of blood was spilling from his nose. He raised a hand over to Rusty and Clyde, who'd scrambled over the red-head's kite, as they both reacted, possibly about to spring up to his defence. Meanwhile, she felt her jaw tense to the point of pain as she resisted from doing anything.

It was dumb. She should've turned around and slugged Anderson for doing that to Lincoln (and Pablo, for generally just being Pablo). But she couldn't. Even though she wasn't friends with them anymore, there was some part of her that didn't have it in her to give them a taste of Lady Pain.

She suddenly felt terribly, horribly weak.

Feeling miserable, powerless and sorry for herself, she gazed at Lincoln trudging off to the front behind some other kid, taking the final steps, before heading off the bus.

As the bus started off again, she grabbed her bag, and stood up. She shot her former friends a stink-eye each, and passed down the aisle. She briefly saw Lincoln's two friends staring at her. While Rusty stared at her with terror, the other glared at her hatefully. She turned to stare straight ahead, not wanting to see if anyone else looked at her the same way, or whether she deserved it.

As she got to the front, she hung onto the front rail, and called to the driver.

"Hey, lemme off at the next one."

The bus driver simply stared at her from the mirror wordlessly.

The bus eventually rolled to a stop, and Taylor, and another couple of kids, all got off together. She stood on the curb, refusing to look back up at the windows that would doubtlessly be filled with contemptuous stares directed at her.

She stayed where she was, as the other kids wandered off to their homes or wherever it was they were supposed to go. Taylor just stood on the sidewalk, paralysed from being able to move.

The plan was for her to go to his stop, but after she froze up on the bus, she was sure that he definitely wouldn't want a bar of her. He wouldn't want to waste a fancy, romantic dinner-date on her. He'd probably never talk to her again, even if she dropped to her knees and begged him to give her a second chance—

"Hey! Taylor! Over here!"

She was woken from her pity-party by Lincoln's voice, as he came running from around the block where the bus had pulled up from. Taylor stared dumbly, as he ran, blood still running from his nose, as he slowed on his approach to her.

"I thought I was supposed to go to you…?" She said, as he sopped, puffing for breath.

"I… Just… Didn't… Want you… To get lost." Lincoln said, kneeling.

"I'm not a baby." Taylor said, annoyance flickering in her mind before she snuffed it out. "… Thanks anyway, I guess."

She gave him a moment to recover his breath, before he ushered her back from the direction he came. They both fell into a lazy pace, his from needing to recover from his dash, and her from her previous case of spacing out.

It was a few moments before they talked, and it was Lincoln wiping at the slowly dripping nose, that was still leaving little drops of red on the grey cement trailed behind him.

"Do you have a bleeding thing or something?" Taylor asked, nodding at his face.

"I'm fine. It was just a bit of a hard knock before. I've had way worse with Lynn and the rest of my sisters." He answered casually.

Knowing what little she knew of them, she believed him.

"Still, it shouldn't still be bleeding like that." She said, as she opened her bag. She fumbled for a moment, annoyed that she could find the pack of make-up wipes she normally had in there. Her hand brushed against something square and plastic, and she senselessly pulled it out to throw it to him.

"Here, use these." She said, as he caught the package.

He looked down at them for a moment, before he sheepishly passed it back to her.

"Er… Thanks. But I think I'll just let it stop on its own."

Taylor gave him an irritated glance before she looked back down at the package in her hands. Her face began to glow red-hot as she saw that she had passed him a package of tampons.

"I didn't mean to—!" She started to say, before Lincoln cut her off.

"It's alright. I get it. Just a little mistake. Besides, I've seen that sort of stuff before. It's normal." He replied.

Taylor was honestly expecting to see even the smallest trace of disgust in his eyes, but was more than a little stunned to see that there wasn't even a trace of it for her to see. While there was the possibility that he was just hiding it well, that in and of itself was still a little impressive. It had taken both Pablo and Anderson dating her to get over the ick of her having her time of the month, and they still ribbed her about it endlessly afterwards as well.

"Anyway, I think I was just bleeding a lot because I immediately started running afterwards." He said, pointing towards his face. "See? It's almost stopped any… Ahh…CHOO!"

Lincoln's nose shot a veritable geyser of blood and mucus out of it, forcing him to slap his hand immediately back over it.

"Oh, dang… Maybe not…" He said. "Actually, I might take you up on… Taylor!"

Lincoln stopped to see Taylor, bug-eyed from revulsion, as a fine spray of the blood and snot covered her face and upper shirt from his sneeze. The droplets were so evenly dispersed across her, that it almost looked like someone had passed by and marked her with a spray-can.

She stood, paralysed, uncertain what she was supposed to feel outside of the understandable disgust and horror that such a situation made her feel. However, Lincoln's shocked, earnest face, partially covered by a bloody hand, made her mind creak back into some form of activity.

"It's… Fine." She said, in a tone that expressed that it certainly wasn't fine, but would be even less so if he tried to make a big deal out of it. "I'll just have to clean up a little before dinner."

"But, your shirt—" Lincoln tried to sputter something out, though it was hard to tell with his hand in the way of his mouth.

"It's no biggie." Taylor said, dragging a hand down her face to wipe it. "I brought a change of clothes for the dinner anyway."

"You, brought a change of clothes for dinner?" Lincoln asked, tilting his head back as he repeated her words back at her.

Taylor blushed slightly.

"Yeah? So what?" She said, her tone defensive. "Sometimes girls like to dress up a bit before they go out to eat? Is that news to you?"

Lincoln shook his head. Or at least, attempted to while his head was tilted up to almost pointing directly at the sky.

"Well, no… I guess I just thought… Never mind." He finished awkwardly.

"You might know one or two things about girls, kid. But you still don't know squat when it comes to dating." Taylor said, as they ambled onwards. "You're pretty much hopeless, there."

"…I guess I am." Lincoln said, and from the way he said it, it was filled with as much misery as Taylor had been feeling a short time earlier.

"Well, I mean…" Taylor said, trying, very poorly from a lack of experience, to back-track and provide some form of support. "…It's to be expected with how much of a dingus you are."

Taylor felt like slapping herself as soon as she'd spoken the words. About as smooth as a dirt road.

"I just can't seem to…" Lincoln said, frustration mounting in his voice. "I feel like I'm always either thinking ahead of what's going to happen, or else I'm stuck thinking about things that have happen before, that I can never get it right, you know?"

Taylor did not know. In the past when she'd went out with either Pablo or Anderson, she tried to keep her expectations low, and her head as empty as possible. It generally meant she wouldn't mind about how bad it sucked until later. But…

She'd be lying if she hadn't been spending more time thinking about things while they were on their 'practice dates' while she was around Lincoln. His obsession with plans, and the fact that he was always in between things meant that he couldn't sit still on things for long, before leaping to something else. It was freaking exhausting. Yet somehow, she also felt that the longer she stuck around, the more she began to fall into some of his rhythms, and the constant new misadventure that seemed to happen, started to feel less exhausting…

"Look. You've had like… Two, or whatever, dates that were real? You'll get there. Just… Try to stay in the moment while it's happening."

"Thanks, Taylor." Lincoln said, finally untilting his head. The bleeding appeared to have stopped. "I know I haven't said it enough before, but I can't even begin to know how to thank you for helping me out like this."

Taylor had to stop herself from popping a small smirk.

"Well… Just get me something nice while we're at dinner later, maybe."

"Oh, well… I don't exactly know what's being served yet…" He said, sounding uncertain.

Taylor nodded along. It was probably one of those ritzy joints that had daily specials decided by the head chefs.

"Oh, hey, we're here!" Lincoln said suddenly, stopping in place without any warning.

Taylor followed his movements, and stared where he did. For a moment she confusedly thought that he'd meant the place where they were eating, but that was clearly wrong, as she saw that he was staring at a large, if plain, house, not particularly different from any of the others on the street they were walking down.

"My house." Lincoln said, cheerfully clarifying the reason they'd stopped. "Come on, you can get changed."

Taylor made a few steps with him, before hesitation made her slow.

"And you're sure nobody's here?" She asked. She knew he had assured her it was fine, but she knew she'd feel better with a sturdier guarantee that one or more of his siblings wasn't going to muscle in and make the brief time they were at his place.

"I'm sure." He said confidently, before listing off where everyone was. "Mom and Dad both have work. So does Leni. Luna's got practice with her band. Luan's performing at a party, Lynn has polo practice. Lucy's hosting a walking tour of the cemetery. Lola and Lana are doing Blue Belle stuff, and Lisa's doing a symposium on… Matter disruption fields, I think. Oh. And Lily's still at day care."

That sounded like too many people to live in a house, but it also seemed to be extremely thorough to Taylor as well.

"And there's nobody else that lives there with you that I should worry about?" She added sarcastically.

"Well… There are the pets. The ones that belong to the house, and the ones that belong to Lana. And I guess there's the robots…"

"Wait, you're being serious?" Taylor said, as they mounted the steps to the porch.

"Yeah, Lisa made them." He said, matter-of-factly. "They have sentience, but they're usually charging in the bunker unless Lis needs them for something."

"Jeez Louise. How the heck do you even have the space to walk around while everyone's there?" Taylor said, bewildered.

"You learn to manage." He said, sliding a key into the front door.

The door opened to… A completely normal looking living room. The room was clear, but not clean, with miscellaneous stains peppering the green carpet. To Taylor's right, was a dining room with a table that must've folded out to fit the whole family. Between the two rooms, she saw a small hallway that looked like it went into the kitchen, as well as a set of steps that went up to another hallway.

"Uh, the bathroom's upstairs. At the end of the hallway on your left." Lincoln awkwardly instructed. "I'll just be in my room until you're done. It's at the end of the hallway on the right."

Taylor absently nodded. Looking at the strings of family photographs that were clad on the wall to the photos that hung there, of each of the Loud children, happily smiling to the camera, or else in scenes of play with one another.

The only photos that Taylor had in her mom's house were from when she was too small to really remember them being taken. After her dad moved out, her brothers stopped spending much time out of the house, and her mom had to start working all the time to keep things running…

"Taylor?" Lincoln said, concerned. "Are you okay?"

Taylor shook off his cloying need to help.

"Perfect. I'm not the one who was bleeding out of his face a minute ago." She said, shaking her head, mounting the steps, while keeping her eyes to the floor, not wanting to see the smiling faces all along the wall.

She made her way to the bathroom, and locked herself in, before she took a long deep breath outward in relief.

She looked at herself in the mirror in front of the sink again. It was almost like she'd never left the bathroom in the school. Or the one at home. Or at the store the day before.

What the hell was she looking for that she thought she could find here? She thought, as she wiped her face clear of miscellaneous blood, gunk and make-up.

She was in the white-haired kid's house, and nothing about it felt comfy at all. Like she'd sat on a Playgo brick, but as a feeling.

It took until she'd applied a new coat of make-up where she began to focus in on exactly was uncomfy about it, and she thought she'd narrowed in on it once she realised that it was all so unfair.

She didn't fit with Lincoln. That was evident from the start, to the point where she would've been right to outright reject him and go about her life. And yet it didn't go that way.

She needed someone who she wasn't so embarrassed enough to be with, that she didn't feel like wedgieing herself whenever she was seen in public with them. And Lincoln probably deserved someone who wanted to be seen with him. Who wouldn't be afraid to stand by him when he got knocked down by bullies, or the world, alike.

He was going to land another little wiener girl like him who'd play along with his family, who wouldn't space out at seeing a happy family, and could give him all the public TLC he could want.

And she… She'd be alone forever. She'd live in a house (if the dang market allowed it,) with forty cats, and keep the TV on to pretend there was another human being in the house. She'd go to bingo nights to have fun. She'd start reading romance novels just to feel something—

NO.

Taylor's fists balled up, as she defiantly fought the future that her own mid had conjured up.

She wasn't a wimp. She was a fighter. She bared her teeth and jeered at principals and mall security alike. She'd rather die that fade away into some ho-hum life as a sad loner.

She'd take what she wanted, when she wanted, no matter what stood in her way.

If she wanted to be romanced, and feel hot, and have the good life, she would. She wouldn't let discomfort, or awkwardness, or anything else, stand in her way of that.

She slipped on the final part of her outfit as her cathartic inner-monologue reached its climax. She looked back, and she didn't see a frightened girl who was out of her depth. She saw a tigress. Ready to kill, and maim and claim everything in the whole damn world.

And to start it off, she was going to do what a confident, commanding woman would do with someone that she liked, when she was in their house, knew they were in their room, and also that their parents weren't home.

She opened the bathroom door, and trod out, shaking momentarily when her creepers hit the carpet of the hallway, before she recovered. She strode down to the opposite end of the hallway.

Taking a breath, Taylor opened the door to his room, to see him on his bed, slipping off his shirt, assumedly to replace it with a clean one. His eyes focused on her, and suddenly began to bug out of his skull.

"T-Taylor… Y-you're… You're…" He said, apparently lost for words.

Taylor smiled.

As she prepared to walk towards him though, the sound of a car pulling up down the stairs seemed to stir Lincoln out of the spell Taylor had momentarily placed on him.

"They're back!" He said, excitedly, slipping on a new t-shirt, and squeezing his way past Taylor to begin heading into the hallway.

"Come on down with me! You can meet everyone while I go and help get dinner started." Lincoln continued excitedly.

Taylor's stomach dropped like it had been filled with stones and dropped into the open ocean.

"Do you… Need to do that before we go out to the restaurant?" Taylor asked, desperately clinging to the hope that they'd be gone withing a few minutes.

Lincoln looked at her as though she'd just told him the sky was purple.

"…We're not going to a restaurant, though. We're having dinner here."

Taylor attempted to say something in response to the horrifying revelation she had just experienced. But all her mouth could do was hang open in a mute scream.