I know this took awhile, but good lord I had a hard time with it. I'm crossing my fingers that it turned out well.

Thanks so much for the encouragement. It definitely keeps me writing!

Enjoy!

With a blueberry bagel still between her teeth, Alison stomped to Emily's car. The harsh click clack of her heels against the pavement accentuated her frustration. This is not how she wanted to start her day. Despite her tranquil slumber, the effects of last night weighed on her like a bad hangover. Since she couldn't counteract the nagging pounding with alcohol, she just needed to avoid the sun's harsh rays. At this moment, Emily's presence was about as welcome as blinding light.

When Alison reached the car, she spied Emily through the driver's side window sprawled out in the back seat. With a pillow tucked under her head and a blanket draped across most of her body, the brunette was dead to the world. Alison noticed bare feet poking out from underneath the teal crocheted throw blanket. She had a Rosewood Sharks baseball cap shielding her face. Apparently, she'd given this sleeping in the car thing a lot of thought.

After realizing she was just staring at the woman she desperately needed to hate right now, Alison pounded on the back window. Emily immediately jerked upward upsetting the ball cap and sending the blanket slipping onto the floorboard. Momentarily confused, she glanced around with her eyes rejecting the daylight and her entire body refusing to accept her awakened state until she caught sight of a frowning Alison outside her car.

Shifting around, the brunette ungracefully unlocked the back door and stumbled outside. Donning a faint smile, tousled hair, baggy sweatpants and chipped white painted toenails, Emily greeted, "Good morning."

Determined not to let the adorable state of the woman detract from her frustration, the blonde barked after snatching the bagel out of her mouth, "What are you doing here?"

"Good morning to you too, Emily," the brunette mocked in a poorly imitated Alison voice.

"I have somewhere to be."

Doing her best to tame her brown hair, Emily agreed, "Yup. Right here with me."

Impatiently, Alison reminded, "You said last night that this could wait."

With a smirk, Emily nodded, "And it has waited… until right now. Huh," she sarcastically observed, "This driveway looks way different when you're arguing in the daytime."

"Just move your car so I can leave." Although she snapped at Emily, her teeth were nothing but harmless nubs.

"No. I'm not gonna let you keep being angry or hurt or whatever else when we can deal with this right now." Fully awake, the stubborn brunette propped herself against her car with crossed arms.

"You really want to do this now? Right here?" the blonde's eyes quickly darted to her right and left.

Indifferent to the public setting, the leaning woman shrugged, "Your driveway worked just fine the other night."

Puffing out her chest and diving right into the issue, Alison said, "I haven't seen Cece since she walked out on me two years ago." The blonde absently picked off pieces of the bagel and dropped them at her feet. "Of course I knew that I would see her again, but not last night and not with you and definitely not as your date!" She was nearly yelling by the time she reached the end of the sentence. The image of the two of them hanging all over one another set her teeth on edge while simultaneously churning her stomach.

"I'm really sorry about that," Emily nodded in acknowledgment of Alison's shock and discomfort with last night's encounter. She tried to explain without sounding dismissive, "I didn't know that she was anything to you."

"What is she to you?" Alison queried throwing a hand in Emily's direction. The bagel in her hand compromised her serious tone.

"Alison. Your breakfast is in my face," the brunette inched forward and pulled the bread from the woman's hand. "Hold please."

The blonde stared with a clenched jaw as Emily opened her driver door and started sifting through the glove box. "What the hell are you doing? I'm trying to talk to you!"

When Emily emerged, she held out the bagel, now neatly wrapped in a napkin. Without a word concerning the abrupt interruption, she set the bagel on the top of her car and answered, "Nothing. She's nothing to me." Still a bit miffed by Emily's random interlude, Alison only managed to raise an eyebrow as the other woman clarified, "I mean. We're not in a relationship and we never have been."

Although her body instinctively started to shift with uneasiness, Alison intentionally focused on maintaining her composure and asked, "But you two have… what? And for how long?"

With a sigh, the brunette deflected, "Can we table this or something?" Her refusal to look at Alison confirmed her complete disinterest in sharing details. "Like put a pin in this topic?"

"Excuse me?" the blonde scoffed. "This is the whole reason we're having this conversation."

Emily's eyes returned to Alison and she insisted with a chuckle, "No it's not and you know it." A pause afforded the blonde the opportunity to deny the claim, but she simply held the gaze of brown eyes as Emily continued, "Is this about Cece? Sure, part of it is, but the other part is the fact that I brought a date and you didn't want me to." The woman squinted her eyes and playfully flicked a accusatory finger Alison's way. "You'd have been pissed if I walked in with anyone on my arm. And it's kinda cute and funny."

"Do I look amused to you?" Alison snipped with irritation etched into her features. The blonde's energy was split between constantly swatting away her body's reactions that would prove Emily's point and conjuring substantial reasons that Emily was wrong.

"No you don't," Emily shook her head as her humorous expression dissolved into a frown. "I'm here to make things better, not piss you off or hurt you or whatever else I've done to make you look at me like that."

"Like what?" Alison jerked.

Emily raised her arm, but dropped her hand and admitted, "Well. You stopped making the face, so I can't point at it anymore." The brunette fell silent waiting for the other woman to speak.

With the Cece topic officially postponed for another time, the blonde knew she held a vital piece of information related to this discussion, she sighed, "Look. I need to tell you something I was going to tell you last night."

"Me first."

"You've already talked," Alison stated unimpressed with Emily's newly resurfaced casual address. Although she hated to admit it, the brunette seemed to be mastering a method of keeping their arguments even keel rather than trekking around in the muck slinging mud at one another.

After pushing her lips together and shrugging, Emily replied, "Well, me again. Please?" The blonde rolled her eyes to keep from seeing the adorable look on the other woman's face before she revealed, "I know you broke up with Duncan."

The blonde twitched. "Who told you?"

"A weepy Duncan in a voicemail last night," Emily replied blandly. While Alison mourned the fact that she didn't tell Emily herself, the other woman powered forward with her theories, "So. When I heard that, I knew that there were two things going on last night. First, I brought your ex. Yikes."

"Yikes?" Alison bristled at the flippant word.

Holding up a hand for silence, Emily said, "I have the metaphorical talking stick." Submitting to the rules of the talking stick, Alison stewed silently in her irritation. "So. Cece was there. Yikes. Secondly, I brought a woman. I knew I recognized that look you gave me for a second last night. You were jealous." Although the blonde remained unmoved, Emily rambled with an inflated sense of confidence, "Hilariously, you felt justified in being jealous because you're newly single and you think that I'm hung up on you so how dare I show up with someone else and send mixed signals and ruin your plans to flirt with me and keep me to yourself." Emily paused. "That was a run-on sentence, but still valid."

Refusing to admit to anything, Alison queried, "Have you been out with anyone else since we met?"

"Yeah. I have. Jealous?" Emily took one step forward leaving only three between them.

"Does it matter?" The blonde's eyes stared straight down at the pavement wondering if Emily's feet might come into view.

"Alison. Really? You always have something to say."

"Not today," Alison's eyes floated upward at the oncoming woman now only two steps away.

"I don't believe you. I think you're scared." Although she maintained her distance, Emily searched the other woman's eyes for any indication of denial. When she found none, she offered with a smile, "I can either fix that or make it a whole lot worse."

"I just got out of a relationship, Emily." It was the blonde who took a step forward. She balled her fingers into a fist when she felt her hands begin to tremble.

"Good," the brunette replied happily. Alison was flabbergasted that this entire time, Emily only momentarily strayed from her somewhat inappropriate levity only to return again to her jovial attitude. "Now I can say the thing that I want to say that could totally blow up in my face."

"Get it over with then," Alison swallowed hard.

"I want to be with you," Emily breathed out. "Right now. I don't give a crap if you're supposed to wait an appropriate amount of time after getting out of a relationship. I don't want to ever again give you a reason to look at me the way you did last night. I slept in my car for you, Alison. You wanna know how many times I've done that to apologize to a girl? Zero. I've slept in it after getting wasted more times than I can count, but that's beside the point. The point is—"

"Emily," the blonde settled a hand on the brunette's right arm. She felt her shudder beneath her touch.

"Alison." the brunette kept her voice steady.

Her anger long since abandoned, Alison pressed forward with the hard truth, "There is too much to deal with right now. You know that."

Emily smirked and gently grabbed the hand on her arm. Cradling it in her palm near her chest and tracing the pale fingers with her thumb, she reminisced fondly, "It took me three meetings to talk myself into walking up to you. Three." She stared at the hand in hers.

"You know that," Alison repeated her previous statement with her eyes glued to their hands. As Emily softly squeezed her hand, the sensation shot dangerously sharp arrows and punctured her good sense.

The brunette continued, "That dress looked so good on you that night so I was like, 'Fuck it, I'm gonna talk to her'."

"Emily," the blonde retracted her hand, fighting off an urge that ordered her to fling caution into the winds of want and fall into Emily's embrace.

"And then you spilled your coffee and looked up at me so pissed off I thought you were going to rip my head off." Emily finally raised her head and offered Alison a look drenched in hope and anticipation. She hesitantly reached a hand out and tucked a stray lock of hair behind the woman's ear.

Doing her best not to turn her cheek into the welcoming palm, Alison asked, "Do you want me to make a list of all the complications?"

Taking a step back and gesturing to herself from head to toe with a chuckle, the brunette said, "I'm standing here with no shoes and bed hair because I pissed you off last night. That's literally a stone's throw away from you making me sleep on the couch because I did…" she snapped her fingers together in the air trying to think of something, but quickly gave up, "something that's 'banished to the couch' worthy."

"I was engaged just a few days ago," the blonde dragged a hand through her blonde hair raking her frustration into her scalp.

"I'm only gonna let you beat that horse until our third date, then we'll bury it. Really, really deep in the ground."

Shaking her head in complete confusion, Alison asked, "How can you possibly be okay with this?"

Setting her jaw and teetering on the line of solemn sincerity, Emily replied, "I've already made the biggest mistake of my life, so this can't be that bad of an idea." It wasn't particularly sweet, but Alison could no longer hold back a smile. She shoved aside every doubt and basked in the thought of actually being with this woman. Emily's eyes softened in blissful disbelief, "God, you're so beautiful when you smile. I'm going to melt into a puddle one day."

"You? Melt into a puddle?"

"I have soft spots. Somewhere."

"I'm sure you do," Alison agreed reaching for the woman's hand.

Once again enamored with the soft skin, Emily suggested playfully, "Now you have to tell me why you like me."

"Really?"

"We can go middle school style and I can give you a note that says 'Do you like me?' and you can check yes or no."

"You sold your car, didn't you?" Alison raised a finger to tip the other woman's head upward.

"What? What are you talking about?" the brunette feigned ignorance.

"I saw the check at the fundraiser."

"Oh. It wasn't a big deal," Emily answered clearly hoping her generosity had gone unnoticed.

Alison shook her head to negate the idea and instead admitted, "I like you because you sold your car. I like you because you pulled me into a pool. I like you because you know when to back down and when not to. I like you because—"

"Okay, okay. I get it," the brunette waved a hand near Alison's face, clearly uncomfortable with the compliments.

Catching the hand in the air and grasping tightly, the blonde added, "But. I'm absolutely terrified because you're hiding something behind all of that and I have no idea what it is."

Emily's jaw clenched and the beginning of tears pooled in her eyes. Alison nicked a pressure point that the brunette forgot existed. She could see Emily rolling her tongue between her teeth and biting down through her closed lips trying to fight off the whirlwind of emotions. With a voice full of fear, she finally said, "Please don't be afraid of me." After she spoke, she somehow sucked the salty tears forming in her eyes back up her tear ducts and flushed the discomfort from her features.

Grateful for a glimpse of Emily's fragility behind her meticulously constructed walls, Alison assured, "I'm not, but I think you're afraid of you."

"Be with me," Emily brushed off the observation and said, "I'll beg you if I have to."

"You'll beg me?"

"Mhmm," Emily lapsed back into her confident tone once again concealing all traces of sensitivity. "I'll even sleep in my car again, after I deal with that cow woman and her ankle today."

"Do you really want to deal everything?" Alison asked directly still holding Emily's hand.

"Yeah. I'm totally down with it."

"Did you just say 'down with it'?" the blonde cocked an eyebrow.

Continuing on the same ridiculous vein, the woman said with a smirk, "Gurl, I'm so down wit dis sh—"

Alison's muffled the last word, "Stop talking." She could feel Emily smiling against her hand. "Give me your phone."

Emily asked when the blonde's hand dropped from her face, "Why?" She swung open her back door and strained for the phone on the floorboard.

When Emily plopped the device in her hand with the screen already unlocked, Alison replied sweetly, "You're gonna need my number from now on."

"Am I?" the brunette smiled. As Alison focused on the screen, Emily tapped a finger on Alison's chin and said, "Seriously. How am I going to deal with the cuteness of this chin all the time?"

Swatting the hand away, the blonde replied with a tiny giggle, "Stop. I'm trying to type."

"C'mon, Ali. Have you seen your chin?" Alison's eyes darted to Emily's at the sound of her shortened name. She'd never heard it come out of Emily's mouth. Apparently, her face reflected her inner squeals. Emily said, "Yes. That's the first time I've said it. Get that goofy grin off your face."

"Are you sure about this?" Alison felt compelled to ask one final time as she handed the phone back to its owner.

"Ask me that when I really am sleeping on the couch because I pissed you off." Emily leaned backward against her car and pulled Alison close as she asked, "Are you sure?"

Settling her hands on Emily's hips, the woman admitted, "It could be difficult for awhile."

"I can do difficult," Emily assured. Sensing the lingering hesitance, she added, "Look. Just say this is what you want and we'll make it work."

"I do, but there's—"

"If we wait until things are all neat, organized and wrapped up with a big ass bow, we'll be shuffling around with walkers in a nursing home. And I'm not sure if I'll be interested in you at that point. Oww!" Emily exclaimed when Ali jabbed a finger into her side playfully. "I bruise easily!"

Alison merely smiled into Emily's beautiful chocolate brown eyes that seemed to swallow her whole. They drew her into a fantasy world that couldn't possibly exist—one without Duncan or Cece or their mutual struggle with addiction. She stood on a cliff. Although she couldn't see the ground below, it smelled like a field of flowers after a rain. A haze floated twenty feet below, ebbing like the Northern Lights. There were huge boxes chained to her ankles. If she jumped, she'd be plunging to the unknown with pounds of baggage that could eventually drown her and maybe drag Emily into the depths with her. She glanced behind her at the soggy terrain wet with tears and regrets with only small patches of vegetation of her small happinesses. She looked down once more into the abyss; she stared for one more second into Emily's eyes. She threw herself off the edge. Eagerly, she said, "I do want this."

"I knew it!" Emily smashed her lips onto the blonde's right cheek as if claiming her prize.

"What have I gotten myself into?"

The brunette rested her forehead against Alison's and whispered, "Thank you."

"For letting you win?" the blonde teased.

Alison could hear Emily's mouth stretch into a smile, "Yeah."

"When will I see you next?" Ali asked quietly.

Pulling back, Emily suggested, "Come to lunch tomorrow."

"Your lunch with Spencer?"

"Yeah, I'll invite Hanna and Aria too. It'll be a fivesome," she grabbed both of the blonde's hands and swung them side to side between them playfully.

"That sounds like an accident waiting to happen," Alison laughed at the large semi circles Emily created with their hands.

"C'mon. Hanna told me you two had a civil conversation last week. If the five of us can't stand each other long enough to eat a meal, we've got a serious problem," Emily stilled their hands and dropped them between them.

"I agree with that."

Emily commented randomly, "You look really pretty today."

"I wish I could say the same to you," Alison smirked eyeing the woman's attire and general dishevelment.

"Watch it," Emily warned.

"You like it," Ali pressed her lips to Emily's cheek and lingered long enough for the kiss to be more than a casual sign of affection. "I really do have to go and you should probably shower because you might smell a bit."

Raising two fingers, Emily noted, "That's two insults in less than a minute. Maybe you are still a little mean." She nudged the blonde away with two hands planted on her hips and joked, "Go away. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah. You will," Alison backed up keeping her eyes on the beautiful brunette before turning and strutting to her car parked in the garage. Only minutes ago, she jumped out of her car and stormed toward the brunette filled with rage and a goal of sending Emily packing. Now, her heart felt light in her chest and her mind was filled only with thoughts of hope.

A loud rap on her window elicited a curse. She glared at the grinning brunette waving her forgotten bagel.

Alison rolled down the window and Emily said, "I forgot to say goodbye." Without warning she maneuvered her head and right hand through the window. As the blonde's heart banged against her rib cage and her mouth went dry, the brunette stared at her lips as her hand settled gently against her cheek.

"I promise you we'll deal with everything," Emily whispered. "I'm not an idiot, but I can't walk away from you not having you." Alison unconsciously licked her lips with her eyes locked on Emily's entrancing moving mouth. "Look at me," the woman urged. When blue eyes melded with brown, she said, "I know I don't always seem to take things seriously, but I'm not kidding about this. I'm not going to mess around with you. I'm going to make you happy."

"Confident are we?" Alison replied faintly. Emily's words floated through her ears and soaked her heart with reassurance.

"Alison DiLaurentis," Emily shook her head at the joke and said, "You're going to love me one day."

Not a second passed before the blonde dove forward and pressed her quivering lips to Emily's. She couldn't bare to not kiss this woman for a single moment more. Emily's beautiful words echoed as the brunette parted her lips to snag Alison's rosy bottom lip before she released it and suckled on the other soft warm lip. Although complete strangers, their mouths moved in tandem as if they knew one another intimately. They both basked in the small sounds of each kiss and eagerly chased after the next sensation, the next feeling, the next desire. They were completely wrapped up in one another although connected only by their lips.

"Dear god, Em," Alison breathed quietly. "What have you done to me?"

Emily leaned back with her eyes still closed. Alison smiled as the woman's eyes fluttered open and Emily whispered, "Yeah. I'm going to melt into a puddle eventually." She ducked out of the car window and offered the bagel with a small smile. "Oh and here's this."

Taking the offered bagel, Alison replied sweetly, "Bye, Em."

"Bye, Ali."

Alison's eyes stared into her rearview mirror as she steadied her breathing and watched Emily meander to her car. That barefooted, stubborn, breathtaking woman had completely ruined her for anyone else with a few sensual moments. Emily was right. She was definitely going to love her one day.

Don't be too disappointed, but you're probably not going to see an update for a week or so. I'll be out of town with not very much time to write. At least I didn't leave you guys with a cliffhanger :)