The very first thing Lori registered doing the next morning was throwing her alarm clock at the opposite wall from her bed with such force she was genuinely surprised it didn't break. Her eyes were barely open, a string of drool half dried on her chin, and she flopped onto her back with a long sigh. Even after being flung the clock continued to scream at her, so she was forced to get up to shut it off.

There was no point in going back to bed since all the warm trapped within her blanket was now wrapped around her, so she stumbled into the bathroom and went through her usual routine. When she finished, she slid down the stairs in her bundle of blankets on her back. She was around fifteen minutes behind schedule, but neither her aunt or cousin seemed irritated about it.

Lori had been trying to calm Colin down until  nearly 3AM and was truly feeling the exhaustion that was the aftermath, even if she'd never change a thing.

"Were you up late last night?" Her Aunt Karen asked her as she dropped into the empty seat at the table.

A plate of waffles was set down in front of her, along with two cups of coffee and her bottle of Adderall, let her grab a tablet and then put the bottle back up in its usual cupboard. Lori yawned as she reached for her coffee. "Yeah," she confirmed, took a swig from the mug, then continued. "But Colin needed me, so I'm not mad about it."

Aunt Karen nodded and didn't ask about it any further, though she did look worried for his sake. "If you need to take the day off, then I can go ahead and call—"

"—she doesn't," Mike yawned as he wandered into the kitchen. He started getting himself breakfast as he spoke, only glancing over his shoulder to see her. "She wants to see Alice Cullen so she'll feel all magical and happy and lesbian-y."

Lori narrowed her eyes at him, and the moment Aunt Karen turned her head to look from her niece to her son, she flipped her middle finger up at him.

"Doctor Cullen's kids?" Her Aunt asked, sitting down in the seat closes to the stove while Mike took the one on the other side. "Oh; Lor, Honey, I told him that you'd give them all a hand with picking out some camping gear when he stopped by the store to see what we had."

She didn't even miss a beat, eyes widening comically. "I'm sick that day."

As much as she did want to see Alice so she could fangirl over how cute and fairylike she was, being around the rest of them — Hercules, Rosalie, Penny head and goldilocks — all at once was a little bit intimidating. Even being as hot as she was, she was bound to feel inferior occasionally.

This occasion came in the form of the entire Cullen family.

"Honey," Aunt Karen hummed, hiding her growing smile behind her coffee mug. "I haven't even told you what day yet."

She blinked once, used her coffee to down her Adderall, then aggressively cleared her throat while saying, "I'm still sick that day."

Mike snickered quietly, so when Aunt Karen got up she flipped him off again before quickly eating the rest of her breakfast. Then she grabbed her coffee mug, kissed her Aunt on the cheek, and then went up to her room to get dressed.

The first thing she did when she was up there was put music on, Fuck You by Lily Allen on repeat for twenty minutes straight as she did her makeup and got dressed into skinny jeans, black boots, a hoodie and a flannel jacket to keep her warm through the undoubtedly cold day. Angela was waiting for her down stairs, chatting with Mike as she hopped down the stairs with her keys stuffed in her back pocket.

"Let's go, dick wads," she hummed, arms stretched upwards in the air with her right foot bent up to her hip.

Sighing quietly, Mike pulled the front door open for them and they went out to the car.

Immediately, the ground crunched underfoot and Lori stared at the white outdoors, eyes wide. "Okay when the fuck did that happen?"

Over a foot of snow had piled up on the front walkway, trees, driveway, and the roof of her car. She could barely see the door handles. The only proof that ground was actually there was the deep footprints across the lawn from her best friend, and even they were beginning to fill up with the dusting of snow that just began falling again as they stood there.

Mike groaned, while the look on Angela's face told them both she'd already walked to their house in that. "About two hours ago," she sighed grimly.

Squinting at the snow piled around them, Lori heaved out an over dramatic sigh. "Alright, you two grab the shovels while I grab the salt bag from the garage, and we collectively haul ass so we get to school on time and your parents don't deem me to be unfit at adulting and driving you all around like a chauffeur; sound good?"

•••

They wound up being half an hour late to school, but judging by the sheer number of names on the sign-in sheet, they weren't the only ones. As was always the case, the first snowfall never failed to cause day long chaos in their small town.

Every year the students decided they would be prepared for it, and every year they were so incredibly wrong it wasn't even funny. Lori walked across the parking lot between Mike and Angela with her arms out like wings, doing her best to keep from falling.

She failed.

The bruise on her ass and hip proved it better than she'd like it to. But they made it inside and accepted the cups of hot chocolate the secretary was handing out before kicking the snow off their boots and trudging out to class. The paper cup burned her cold fingers but she held onto it all the more tightly, gritting her teeth before nodding to Mike, who had PE, and then began walking Angela to class.

Neither of them said anything, too cold really speak, but when they reached the English room she gave her friend her own cup of hot chocolate as she was still shivering. Angela smiled through chattering teeth then ducked inside.

Still cold herself, Lori wandered back down the hall to the office so she could get another cup with her hands stuffed in her pockets. She hummed to herself, thoughts wandering as they often did. A cool gust of wind rattled the doors and windows in the hall and she shivered. Violently. So violently, she was briefly convinced something in her spine popped out of place but then decided that was just crazy. "Stupid fuckin' thing," Lori muttered to herself, squinting at the single paned glass.

She turned the corner toward the office only to slam into someone, the hardness of their body sending her stumbling back into a wall of lockers that rattled against her. "Oh, Lori!" She heard a soft bell-like voice say from a short distance away. "Are you alright?"

Immediately her cheeks flushed pink. Alice's voice was so gentle as her small hands fluttered kindly over her arms, nudging her way between Lori herself and the person she'd bumped into. Her golden eyes were more faded now than they had been in the last few days, but they were still wide and framed with long lashes.

"I'm so fucking sorry," Lori stammered out staring down at her before she glanced up at the figure she'd hit. Rosalie was glaring at her with hardened grey-gold eyes that made her uneasy for a moment until they seemed to swallow her up. Seeing her up close felt like Lori had been given the opportunity to view an ancient sculpture the artist hadn't been ready to show the world yet, and she was stunned.

Instead of sneering at her again like she'd been expecting, Rosalie simply curled her top lip in mild displeasure and nodded once. "I accept your apology."

Alice seemed to be mentally counting to ten, then smiled and opened her eyes again with a newfound level of patience. "Are you off to class?" She asked sweetly.

"No, I'm off to get another hot chocolate," Lori grinned awkwardly. "It's cold as shit in here, you know?"

Cheeks dimpling as she smiled, Alice nodded her head. "There's still some left in the office, you two should go and get some before the next class starts."

Going for a walk with a hot girl? Even if she doesn't like you?

Fuck yeah, man.

I'm not complaining.

Well I might be complaining a little bit if she snarks at me but no, hang on, snarky hot girl? Where's the problem with that? The fuck?

So contently, Lori lead the way. The blonde behind her was completely silent as they wandered through the halls. They only stopped as Lori narrowed her eyes at one of the guys on the football team with Mike, who'd been having an unapologetically crude conversation over the phone with someone about a hot girl he'd seen in Port Angeles.

Wisely, he changed the conversation topic and went somewhere else.

"Sometimes I can't fucking stand men, you know that?" She grumbled, knowing full well she wasn't going to get an answer. "Like, sometimes I would gladly get suspended or expelled if it meant I could smack some god damn brain cells into their heads, but no, that's considered fucking assault—"

"—Do you have to be so vulgar?" Rosalie cut her off in a demand, those beautiful golden eyes narrowed.

Lori blinked at her for a moment. "No," she hummed with a growing smile. "But I like to be." When Rosalie didn't bother to carry on the conversation, she explained herself further. "It makes men uncomfortable; they don't like loud women, you know? And being the hardcore lesbian I am, I feel like it's my duty — hehe I said duty but it is my duty wait I said it again two times oh my shit — to make men just as uncomfortable as they make women."

All she got was a slow, expressionless nod.

So she continued on to the office to get herself a hot chocolate, tapping her fingers against her thighs as she went.

Once in the office she got Rosalie a cup first, handing it to her with an easygoing smile. Even if her heart was ready to fall out of her ass with nervousness, she had to be chivalrous.

Just like the one lesbian character in medieval movies that everyone thought was a man at first glance, only to find out that she's so much better.

After a careful once over, Rosalie took the cup from her hand and waited with a tapping foot as she poured her own.

"Am I allowed to make an observation or two?" Lori asked with a low hum. She opened the office doors and held them as they left.

"I suppose."

"You're not a very patient person," she then said without a hint of judgment in the tone of her voice. "And you also hate men; on the topic of which, would you like to start a hating men club with me and get coffee once a week? You know, as a lesbian and a non-lesbian attractive woman who deal with gross comments from — excuse me I can't verbally sensor the word, though you have no idea how much I'd love to — men? As friends?"

For a long moment Rosalie stared at her, processing just what in the the fuck she had said. Which was fair. The majority of the time she couldn't comprehend what words left her mouth either.

But she truly hoped because if being friends with Rosalie meant not only would she have a man-hating buddy her own age, but that Angela would be free to make other friends because Lori knew she would be moving on from high school soon. She didn't want to be her only friend.

And now, after seeing Rosalie's muted terror over dealing with the men in her classes, Lori wanted nothing more than to give her a hug and just say I understand. I understand just how terrifying all of this is, and how healing after all of it feels like the world is ending.

But she wanted her to know that no matter how many nights the world tried to end, it always began again in the morning. Whether they wanted it to or not.

Lori could see the pain in her, no matter how well hidden it was, and she wanted to do something to help with that. She didn't have to be the person who pulled Rosalie out of the horror movie starring herself and was plotted around the worst experience of her life. She just wanted to be her friend, to have her know she wasn't alone in that horror. She wanted her to know she had options.

Slowly, with a brief flicker in those beautiful golden eyes, Rosalie nodded. "That could be nice," she hummed, still looking less than impressed. "Though I would rather go somewhere less public..."

"People are a no-go," Lori beamed at her, heart thumping excitedly. "Got it."