Hello, everyone! I'm SO sorry to keep you waiting like this! My computer is back and running, so let's hurry to the story, shall we?

Thank you for waiting! I hope you enjoy it! :)

Chapter six

Ruby was not stupid and she knew when to admit defeat. However, it didn't mean that she couldn't be angry with the fact that, not only she literally lost her throne on the front seat, but also the preference. Emma would always drop her last so they could talk longer without Killian or MM, but now she was no longer the favorite.

She knew it was stupid and hopeless, but what could she do? She fell in love with her best friend, who was in love with the richest, snobbiest girl in Storybrooke, who had a fancy car and a driver with uniform available any time she needed and yet chose to ride on a 74' GTI. On her seat.

When she climbed the steps to her Grandma's diner, she didn't even bother waving goodbye. Emma was probably not even looking at her anymore because of Regina Mills, so.

Screw them.

XXX

"She's not very happy about the new arrangement, is she?" Regina asked, turning to the blonde behind the steering wheel once Ruby got inside the diner.

"Ruby's territorial about the front seat. She'll get used to that."

She had been saying that for a month, now.

Regina shook her head, and Emma wished she could just…

They bonded in the weirdest way, and now Emma was in love with the scar Regina had on her upper lip, and that pretty much was all she could think about when Regina spoke.

"She's not getting used to that. She… likes you, Emma."

And I like you, Mills.

"We're friends," Emma shrugged it off.

"Friends fall for each other all the time!"

Emma looked pointedly at the brunette. "Do they?"

Regina blushed and lowered her eyes to her lap. "I need to go home."

Emma sighed and hit the gas pedal. "Homework? It's weird how we're on the same class and only you have work to do after school."

"That's because you're an irresponsible."

"Don't break my heart, Mills," Emma chuckled.

"My mother hired a seamstress," Regina rolled her eyes, and the gesture made her look absurdly cute. "Prom's coming up, and she wants to make sure I'm dressed like the princess she thinks I am."

"She wants you to show off to that dillhole, so that you can get married and make dillhole babies."

Regina looked to the side and watched the streets passing by with a stupid, infatuated smile. She loved that jealous tone on Emma's voice, and she was afraid to ask herself why.

"I'm not going with Robin. I'm going with you."

Regina didn't look to the side, but she sensed Emma stiffening.

"You are?" the blonde asked almost under her breath.

"I know you didn't ask, but well, wouldn't it be fun to piss my mother a little bit more?" Regina said with a shrug.

Emma let out an awkward laugh. "Yeah. Let's get to Cora's ultimate nerves."

"And still, you haven't asked me."

"Dweeb," Emma grunted, a small smile of satisfaction gracing her lips. "I was going to ask you out first."

Regina held her breath almost imperceptibly. "What?"

"Cujo's coming out tonight, Mills! Don't tell me you forgot!"

The brunette grinned.

"Of course I didn't forget it."

"Wanna come with me, then?"

Emma was not even pretending that she wasn't nervous about the probable 'yes', and that only made Regina want to go even more.

"Of course I do."

The blonde let out a sigh of relief anyway. "Pick you up at seven?"

"Please don't honk."

"Why? I love to see that look on your mother's face. Like she could… rip out my heart and eat it."

Regina threw her head back, laughing. She never felt so light or free in her life. It felt like she could just be a girl named Regina around her favorite delinquents, getting to her mother's nerves like any normal girl of her age would. Her new friends were awful sometimes, but they accepted her for who she was, no judgments or anything, and she just reattributed the favor.

Regina was surprised at how natural it felt. She longed to see the GTI turn the corner every morning, now, and the butterflies on her stomach wouldn't give it a rest. She loved that combination of nicotine and spearmint that Emma reeked of. She loved the way the blonde smiled at her, and how she would look awkward when Regina caught her staring at the scar on her lip.

And she loved how her new friends were fully committed to find out who did the atrocious grafitting on the school desks – the number of sketches increased after Regina and Robin broke up, and that was suspicious to say the least…

She loved eating tater tots from a basket and drink Coke after school with Emma and the others. She even smoked once. She hated it, but at least she tried. She even enjoyed the way Emma called her Dweeb-o-rama when she choked after dragging it.

It felt like that stupid thing she saw on the movies.

She never felt that with her boyfriend, but with Emma…

It felt like falling in love.

XXX

Ingrid slammed the bathroom door for the third time.

"I'm late, kid! Get out!"

The noise of water falling ceased. She heard a low grumble and then Emma came out with a cloud of vapor the size of their house around her head.

"So it took a Regina Mills to have you showering like a regular person," she said to her daughter. "Interesting."

"You're so funny, mom!" Emma spat, hurrying to her small, messy bedroom. She looked at Jim Morrison's huge face on the wall, and then she looked down at her clothes on her bed. "Help me God."

Her heart was playing drum inside her chest, and her stomach was dancing with her brain. She didn't feel relaxed at all. Being in love sucked. She hated to feel so out of control.

Some nights she could not fall asleep. She would roll in bed, thinking about her, creating disgustingly romantic scenarios in her head. Regina was the first thought that crossed her mind when she woke up, every fucking day.

The rebel Emma Swan now felt compelled to brush her teeth every morning before school.

And yet, she loved how the scent of Regina's shampoo always lingered inside her car after she left in the afternoon.

Emma never allowed anyone to smoke inside the GTI again, to keep the scent a little longer.

Ingrid took a two minute shower, and within another minute she was putting on her earrings by the door to Emma's bedroom. She was wearing the red uniform to Granny's, looking at her with a smirk.

"Promise me you'll behave with the Mills' daughter. Promise."

"Mom."

"I didn't forget the incident with Ruby on Bed & Breakfast last year, kid. To piss off Granny is one thing, but this is Cora Mills we're talking about-"

"Mom!"

"Just keep it low profile-"

"Mom!"

Ingrid sighed and her lips cracked open into a familiar shit-eating grin. "Just wait until you have your own kids. You'll feel tempted to embarrass them."

Emma rolled her eyes. "And how exactly I'm gonna have a kid? By stealing one?"

The blonde woman shrugged. "I don't know, kid, I'm not a scientist. Maybe in twenty years they'll find a way, so that you and Regina can have babies tog- Okay, I'm joking! I need to go! Have fun, baby-"

Emma slumped down her bed when her mother left. It was already hard enough to be in love with Regina Mills; she didn't need her mother giving her ideas and hopes about things that would never happen.

Because they wouldn't.

Stop, she alerted her brain.

But Regina was a vir-

Stop!

You could be her first.

STOP.

She could fall for you after that…

Emma growled in frustration. That didn't turn out well for Ruby when they did it just to see what it was like. Emma was afraid of the outcome.

She stuck her head out of the bedroom and peeked at the clock on the kitchen wall. She would be late if she kept thinking about having sex with Regina instead of getting dressed.

And when she imagined things couldn't get any worse, the doorbell rang.

XXX

It was incredibly easy to endure an entire afternoon with her mother and the seamstress turning her around like a spinning top.

She didn't even hear the comments about her hips and breasts; her mind was miles away from Mifflin Street, and her mind was on a girl she used to hate. She had hated Emma Swan so much that now the smallest joke or compliment made her smile from ear to ear.

She had hated the engine sound of the GTI; it meant her reading was going to be interrupted by the arrival of the troublemakers, not to mention she would have to hear nasty comments about her existence.

Now she loved, longed for it. It meant Emma Swan was coming to save her, to look at her like she was special, like she would fight and smash faces of whoever hurt Regina.

She decided to wait outside of her house so that the blonde wasn't too tempted to honk and announce her presence to Cora. It had been a war to have her mother accepting Emma Swan driving Regina to school – a war that her father kindly fought for her.

"Cora, let her have some fun with her new friends, will you?"

"Friends," she scoffed. "She thinks Emma Swan is her friend just because she took her to the hospital. Emma Swan is the reason why she's got that horrible scar on her face-"

"That's enough now, Cora," Henry smacked his hand against the dinner table. "This conversation is over!"

"She needs a real man in her life, Henry," Cora spat. "A strong model to teach her, not a man that smacks the table when he has no argument!"

"Do you want your daughter to be with aman who cheats? Do you want Regina to learn this is normal and she should get used to that?" Henry frowned, and that was a landmark on the Mills family's history – it was the first time Cora had nothing to say to her husband.

"He is just a boy, now," she said to Regina instead. "He'll come around and you should consider forgiving him. He has potential to be a fine husband-"

"Regina, you can leave, sweetie," Henry said over his wife, dismissing his daughter from that primitive conversation. "She will decide who is fine for her, and not you," he said harshly to Cora. "Now if you will excuse me, I have work to do in my office-"

Cora left Regina alone about the daily rides, but she didn't want to push it – especially when Emma was coming to pick her up for their allegedly first date.

Regina had suspected, but now she was a hundred percent sure that Emma liked her. And what was scariest, she was a hundred percent sure that she felt the same. It had been so natural, so not shocking… So easy to say yes…

When she heard the familiar motor roar around the corner, she shifted her weight from one leg to another as she fixed her hair and smoothed her skirt the best she could. As the GTI approached 108, Regina let out a sigh of relief and smiled as it slowed down and parked.

Then she noticed Emma wasn't alone in the car.

Mary Margaret and Killian were smiling at her from the backseat. Emma looked like she wanted someone to shoot her.

Regina kept a neutral face. By the look on Emma's face, it wasn't what she had planned for their evening, and the brunette didn't want to make it worse by showing her disappointment. As she sat down next to the blonde, Killian squeezed himself between the front seats.

"Looking hot, Mills. No wonder Emma was having a nervous meltdown when we arrived-"

"I was not having-"

"Ignore him," Mary Margaret rolled her eyes and pulled him back to his seat. "We're just taking a ride downtown, right, Killian?"

"Yeah," he grinned, and he didn't sound convincing at all as he kept ogling Regina.

"I'm kicking you out of the car," Emma grunted, watching him from the rear view mirror.

"He's just messing with you," Mary said with a chuckle and then patted Emma's tensed shoulder softly. "Quit the meltdown already, Duckling. You're making a scene in front of Regina-"

Emma sighed as she ignited the car, noticing that Regina was grinning. You could always count on Killian and MM to fuck with her.