#cooperfeld

She almost made it.

Almost.

And if that - if almost - wasn’t just the perfect fucking story of her life, Lauren didn’t know what was.

She was almost a ‘regular’ girl (no fucking way, no fucking how was she ever going to say 'normal’.) She was almost enough to keep her father in Austin. She was almost enough to make Theo quit his stupid job and she was almost good enough in school to make valedictorian and she was almost friends with Shane and she was almost Farrah’s daughter.

She was almost enough for Amy.

Almost, Lauren had decided long ago, was almost enough. She could live with almost, she had lived with it over and over and over again and every time she did, it was… well… it was almost enough to break her, it was almost enough to make her stand up and say 'no’, it was almost enough to push her past enough. Every other time had almost been the time, the time when almost enough stopped being enough and she finally stopped letting it.

Lauren had thought… no… not thought ('thought’ was just another almost, almost a 'sure’, almost a 'know’ and that was one more almost than she could take)… Lauren had been certain that this time would be just like those other times. She'd known - for the entire weekend probably, for every moment she spent stalling her way home and for every minute she’d sat in Reagan’s apartment and for every second she spent behind the wheel, just prolonging the inevitable, definitely - that this would end the same.

She’d get home and she’d go to bed alone and she’d wake up the same and maybe there wouldn’t be a big blow out, maybe there wouldn’t be screams and tears (Lauren would be fucked if she let anyone see her shed a single one of those because of Karma) and maybe she and Amy would just drift back apart, back to their respective lanes and they’d just stay in those, forever and ever, amen.

“What happens?” Amy asked her once. “What happens to us, I mean, if this doesn’t work?”

Lauren had been glad that that night had been much like this one - dark and quiet - and she’d had her back to Amy in bed so that made it easier to pretend that she couldn’t hear the fear (terror) in her girlfriend’s voice and that she didn’t feel it herself.

“We’re family,” she said. “Maybe it would be a different kind, but that…” Lauren paused for a moment - just one - “but that will never change.”

After that first kiss and after 'mine’ and after… well… everything, Lauren had made herself promise. She'd sworn (out loud to the mirror) that she would never lie to Amy, not about anything. That night, Amy nodded and held her just a little tighter and Lauren spent the rest of that very very very long night listening to her slow and steady breathing and trying, so very hard, to convince herself that she hadn’t broken that vow and by morning, she was just so very sure that she hadn’t.

It was easier that way. It was easier to lie to herself.

Lauren was sure that this time was going to be no different. Soon she and Amy would be nothing more than they’d ever been. People who saw each other across the table in the morning and shared a ride to school sometimes and smiled when they passed each other in the halls and no, she wouldn’t miss sharing food (Amy always ate the good stuff anyway) and no, she wouldn’t miss being distracted from her homework (Calculus was more important than kisses) and no, she definitely would not miss the nights when they didn’t even do anything, when 'sleeping together’ was actually sleeping together.

This time would be no different and she’d known that all along because maybe this time wasn't her daddy leaving another woman (her, this time) and maybe it wasn't Theo proving that anything that seems too good to be true usually is, but it was something just as certain, just as constant, just as always.

How was it Shane had put it? Oh, right. “You know Amy and Karma are going to make up,” he said. “It’s written in the stars.”

Fucking stars.

And all the evidence Lauren needed was right fucking there. The truck in the street, the blankets and half eaten bowl of popcorn downstairs (and no, she hadn’t actually seen those but she didn't have to), the faint flickering light trickling out from under Amy’s bedroom door.

The stars had spoken.

Lauren snuck in as quietly as she could (almost silently, you might say) (and then she might punch you in the face) and she made her way up the stairs as cautiously and as carefully and as sneakily as she could manage, taking extra pains to avoid the squeaky step near the bottom and the wobbly railing in the middle. And she almost made it.

Almost, but not quite, and if 'not quite’ came in a very specific redheaded package standing at the top of the stairs, well, Lauren wasn’t really surprised.

It was Karma because of course it was Karma. It was always Karma and it was probably (no, not probably, more like almost definitely, yeah that fit) always going to be Karma and that, it seemed to Lauren, might just be the whole fucking problem.

Though, if Lauren was being honest (even though it seemed like recently she’d been almost anything but) it seemed like maybe Karma was mostly just her problem and not, you know, Amy’s.

And that (no might about it) was the problem.

Lauren sighed and leaned against the railing. She wouldn’t look, she steadfastly refused to meet Karma’s gaze, even in the dark (and see, she was right, it was full of terrors.) She knew this was all that inevitable she’d been prolonging and if that wasn’t so inevitably sad and ridiculous and perfectly fucking her, Lauren might have had to laugh.

Cause it was, you know, almost funny.

“Is it true?” Karma asked and Lauren winced, gripping the railing. She always thought Karma was loud - mostly in the bad fashion and desperate for approval and how does anyone have that much energy for that much ridiculousness kinda way - but it was so quiet (everywhere but in her head) that even the sound of those three little words (and what the fuck was 'it' anyway?) was like a knife slicing through the dark and Lauren flinched back, dodging a blow that never really came.

She didn’t need the blow though, she didn’t need an actual cut or actual blood. Lauren didn’t need a physical reminder or, really, she didn’t need another one cause she had one, standing right fucking there and God, had she actually really truly ever thought Karma was going to be gone?

Lauren sank down along the wall, settling on the next to last step from the top. “One weekend,” she muttered, mostly to herself, a sense of defeat washing over her. “Three fucking days.”

“What?”

Lauren didn’t look up even then. It wasn’t like she could see Karma anyway - she was just an amorphous blob of slightly less dark in the really dark of the hall - but it was a… pride… thing and, really, when it came right down to it, that was about all she had left, so no, Lauren didn’t look and she didn’t answer and she just… stared.

There wasn’t much to see, there wasn’t much she could see, even after her eyes had adjusted to the dark. There was her hand in front of her face and there was the railing she still clung to and there was the top step. That she could see, if only barely, just a tiny sliver of stair standing out in the dark. It was, in a way, all that divided her from Karma, all that stood between them (ah, irony, such a fucking bitch) and Lauren stared and stared and refused to look away.

It was unclaimed territory, a blank spot where no one had stuck their flag (red and yellow for Karmy and… well… Lauren didn’t know what Cooperfeld’s flag would look like cause, let’s face it, she’d been too busy getting busy with Amy to design a fucking flag.) That step was the last line in the sand, the last bit of ground Lauren could stand on before she stepped back into the world where Karma was there and she wasn’t.

And she wasn’t quite ready to concede that just yet. So she sat.

“What about three days?” Karma asked (again) and Lauren had almost forgotten how tenacious Karma could be, how she could just never fucking let something go even when (especially when) it was the most unimportant thing ever.

See: Booker, Liam.

Lauren sighed and let her head rest against the railing. “I was gone for one weekend,” she said, only because she knew if she didn’t speak, Karma would. “Three days… not even… and yet, here you are already, back, like you never even left.”

Like Amy never made you.

“I didn’t,” Karma snapped - and was she really even more defensive than usual? - “I didn’t leave and I never… ” She paused, but Lauren didn’t notice. “Amy's here,” she said. “And wherever Amy -”

“Yeah, I know,” Lauren cut her off. She didn’t want to hear it, thinking it had been quite enough, thank you. “Wherever she is and whoever…” She trailed off and reconsidered cause, really, that was a pointless road that just led to more… stuff… that Lauren had no desire to deal with, not right then and not with… her. “You're always there,” she said and she, well, you know.

She almost stopped.

But then she didn’t.

“Always there, even if you’re not always… wanted.”

Lauren had been so sure this one was going to end like all the other ones and she’d been almost… no, she hadn’t been almost OK with it, she’d been anything but fucking OK, but she could have dealt, she could have made it through, she could have lived.

Right up until she couldn’t. Right up until that fucking blob in the dark and maybe if she could have actually seen Karma, maybe it would have been different, maybe if she’d seen the little (not so fucking little, she was sure) glint of victory in Karma’s eyes it would have been just too much and she would have cracked and she would have run and she would have pushed the other girl aside and crashed into her room and buried herself under her duvet and that would have been that.

Except…

Except, she couldn't see Karma and she couldn't see that glint (and she couldn't know it wasn’t there) and - fuck all - the dark was full of terrors and Goddammit once upon a time there had been no bigger terror than Lauren Cooper and when the fuck did that change?

“Amy wants me,” Karma snapped. “And you know it.”

If Lauren had been a little less intent on… terror… and maybe a little less pissed and a little (lot) less hurt and if she’d known she still had something (someone) to lose, she might have paid more attention and she might have heard it in Karma’s voice, that little tremor (that fucking earthquake) of worry (or doubt) (or fear) (or loss) (take your pick) rolling just under her words.

“Of course she does, Karma,” Lauren said, like it was the most obvious thing ever cause it kinda was. “There are, really, very few absolute truths in this world. So many things, they just change, even when you least expect it.” Lauren stared at that top step, still refusing to look at the other girl, even as she spoke. “Sometimes up is down and sometimes right is left but, by God, Amy will always want you and you will always want to be wanted and those are truths you can live your fucking life by.”

Karma took a couple of shuffling steps forward in the dark. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” Her words were sharp and pointed and angry, but those steps… they were slow and they were hesitating and it seemed like Karma’s footing was… unsure.

Finally, Lauren thought, something we have in common.

Lauren’s eyes drifted and she caught sight of that glow from under Amy’s door. Across the hall, her own room was dark.

Nothing to see here, move it along, nothing to see…

“It means, I’m tired,” Lauren said, as she shut her eyes and let that little bit of light disappear into the dark. “I’m tired of trying to make her see and I’m tired of waiting around for you to make her blind again and I’m just… I’m tired, Karma. I’m fucking tired.”

Karma, as Karma did, ignored most of it and focused on the her part. “Make her see what?” she asked. “How horrible I am? How evil?” She was spitting now, practically snarling the words at Lauren. “All you want is for me to be the villain.”

That wasn't all Lauren wanted but it was a start. “If the ruby slippers fit…” she said.

“Fuck you, Lauren.” Karma took a few more steps, drawing to the edge of that top stair. “You were a bitch when you came here, you hated her and you tried to ruin us.”

True. True. And… wait for it… true.

“Yeah,” Lauren said. “I tried to tell everyone that you two were faking your sexual orientation and a relationship just to be popular.” She stared at the edge of that step like it was the edge of a cliff and she was barreling toward it at top fucking speed. “Oh, wait, it wasn't just to be popular, was it?”

Lauren pulled herself up, stood right against the back of that almost the top step, looking right at Karma (or, you know, the blob.)

“Tell me, Karma,” she said. “How was Liam? As a boyfriend, I mean, cause I’m sure he was just great at the sex part, what with all the practice, but really, was he as good a boyfriend as Amy was a best friend?”

Karma didn’t say a word - and maybe that should have told Lauren something - but she did take one step (a tiny one, but a definite one) back.

Lauren wasn’t done, though. “I mean, was he worth it?” she asked. “Was he worth breaking Amy’s heart?”

Karma held her ground, barely. “That… that wasn’t about him,” she said. And maybe (again) the way she choked out the words should have told Lauren something. “Even if there’d been no Liam I wouldn't… Amy and I… I'm not…”

“Yeah,” Lauren said, that one word sharpened like a fucking dagger. “You're not.”

That wasn’t all she wanted to say, it wasn’t even close. Lauren had other words, so many of them, so many more deadly little daggers she could let fly, every one of them just itching to be turned loose.

“And you are?”

“I am,” Lauren said, even if she didn’t know exactly which 'am’ they were talking about. “I am… unlike you, not straight. And I am sick of watching you break her and then put her back together so you can do it all over again. And I am… Goddamit… even now, even after all… this… I am going to stay, no matter how much it kills me cause I can’t leave her cause I am so fucking in love with her that I’d even put up with you.”

There was a sound - a sob - in the dark but Lauren was on a roll and she’d finally realized that she had to face it, that there was not getting around it - around her - even if really, Karma wasn’t in the way, she was across the hall from where Lauren was going. Not that that was where Lauren wanted to go, but what she wanted wasn’t what she needed.

What she needed was Amy, but also to finally fucking say it - all of it - even if technically it wouldn’t actually change anything. Because, technically, Lauren was about a mile and a fucking half past technicalities and niceties and all the courtesies that she paid Karma only because of Amy and, most of all - since, you know, she’d already lost the girl - Lauren was like halfway to fucking Mars past giving even one single teeny tiny fuck about Karma.

“Amy may… I may not be hers anymore,” Lauren said, hopping up onto that last step and claiming it, flag or no fucking flag. “And maybe she’s already over me and back onto you but I’m not over her and I may never be over her but I am so so so over you and your possessive ways and how only acknowledge that she has real feelings when they’re about you bullshit.”

Lauren took one more step, up onto the landing, standing there in the dark with Karma, between Amy’s room and her own. There were so many things she wanted to say, so many 'crimes’ she wanted to call Karma on the carpet for, so many slights (real and imagined), but in the end, only one really mattered.

“Maybe, ” Lauren said, “just fucking maybe, if you had just stayed… not gone… but… stayed over there, out of it, out of the damn way…” She shook her head and clenched her fists and refused, just simply refused to cry. “If you could’ve just let it happen,” she said, “maybe Amy could have loved me too.”

Karma’s voice was so quiet, and so drowning in tears Lauren couldn’t see, that the tiny blonde almost didn’t hear her. “She does.”

“What?”

“She said she does,” Amy’s voice cut through the dark and Lauren almost jumped out of her skin. “ And I do.” Amy said from behind her. “Love you, that is.”

Lauren turned, blinking her eyes against the light coming from her room, from the open door of her room, from behind Amy standing in her room.

“What?”

(It was almost all she could manage.)

And then Karma was off, darting down the steps in the dark and Lauren looked back, watching her run - and not understanding, like at all - and when she turned back, Amy was there and not just there, but right there, right in front of her and that… well… that couldn’t be right.

Right?

“You’re here,” Lauren said, barely managing to not make it a question. “I mean, obviously you're here but I mean you're… here and she's…” She looked back down the stairs in the direction Karma had gone, the front door slamming shut behind her. “Don’t you want to -”

And then Lauren knew she’d been wrong.

She’d been so wrong and Amy was reminding her - forcefully with lips and hands on cheeks and then arms around her, pulling Lauren close - that Calculus was nowhere near better than kisses and then when Amy took her hands and led her into the room - without breaking the much better than math kiss - and kicked the door shut behind them, Lauren had a sneaking suspicion that sleeping together wasn’t going to involve much actual sleeping at all.

But just before Amy pushed her down onto the bed, Lauren broke the kiss and stepped back, with confusion and worry (and just a bit of hope) flitting behind her eyes and she didn’t want to say it (cause saying meant less kissing and that was just wrong) but she had to ask.

“You… you love me?”

Amy smiled and she nodded and she moved closer again, her hands finding their way under Lauren’s shirt, her fingers dancing along the small of Lauren’s back as their lips danced along each other’s and then they were backing up with slow and unsteady steps until Lauren bumped against the bed and fell back. She grabbed for Amy and pulled her right down along with her, the two of them landing in a so not romantic heap, laughing as the bed shook.

Lauren curled onto her side, slipping one leg between Amy’s, her hand on the other girl’s hip, clutching at Amy’s sleep shorts like she was afraid she might disappear, her forehead resting against the other girl’s chest.

It was almost perfect.

And then Amy’s hand slid up, tracing the length of Lauren’s spine and up across her neck and Lauren shuddered as Amy’s fingers tangled in her hair and she bent down close, whispering in her ear.

“I love you.”

Fuck almost. It was.

It wasn’t Lauren.

It wasn’t her car, actually, the one Amy heard in the drive. And that meant she didn’t hear a key in the lock or footsteps in the hall and all that meant that it wasn’t Lauren coming in, excited and happy and relieved to see Amy there, in her room and her bed instead of across the hall with that other her.

Which left Amy sitting there, alone in the dark, for what seemed like forever.

It wasn't really forever (in the end it wasn’t even like twenty minutes) but it seemed so much longer. It seemed like forever, at least to Amy, what with Reagan’s voice still echoing in her ears and that look on Karma’s face still playing over and over again before her eyes and what with the feel of Lauren’s bed - so familiar and yet so different and new and yet so right (and just a little dirty) - underneath her. It felt like days or weeks, like she was waiting on the end of time and it just refused to fucking get there, and Amy tensed at every sound, flinched at every noise, damn near jumped out of her skin at every creak and moan of the house.

Not a one of which was actually Lauren.

It didn’t happen all at once, it didn’t even happen right away, but slowly (and so surely) that all got to be a bit too much. The anticipation turned to fear (what if she’d been in an accident?) and the nerves turned to panic (what if Amy was too late?) and the worry turned to hands clutching at Lauren’s duvet as Amy tried to get control of her breathing, tried to steady it before it went and took on a life of its own, before it got to be too much for the rest of her and Lauren - when she finally came home - ended up finding Amy passed out in her bed, hyperventilated right into unconsciousness.

That would not be good.

And it wasn’t like that was the only way for this to all go ‘not good’ (or not well or whatever) and seeing as how there were so many not goods, Amy didn’t really see a need to add another one to the list, so she took slow, deep breaths and counted to five and shut her eyes against the dark (and wondered why she hadn’t thought to turn on the damn light) and tried to focus, tried to steer her mind to what she was going to do when Lauren walked in, what she was going to say.

Amy tried - for once in her life - to not let herself get caught up in the moment, to not just react and to think and plan and actually be ready.

Yeah. Like that ever had a chance.

It might have, maybe, possibly (no, it fucking wouldn’t have) if that hadn’t been the moment, if that hadn’t been the instant when those creaks and groans of the house were - very clearly - not just creaks or groans but steps. Footsteps, in the hall, outside the door, tearing through the silence of the house and kickstarting the thwump-thwump-thwump of Amy’s racing heart in her ears. It was shock, she thought, that did it. It was just so sudden, the slamming realization that now was now and that now was here and oh… fuck… she had no plan and she had no clue what she was going to do and definitely no idea what she was going to say cause every word she knew had just fled her brain on a supersonic flight to fucking nowhere. It was all happening so fast.

And that was all just so much bullshit.

None of this was happening fast. None of it was quick and none of it was a shock, not if she really thought about it. If Amy did that, if she let herself replay it all in her head, she knew the truth. Nothing - not one single moment of… them… not since that first maybe accidental but not even close to a mistake first kiss - had been sudden. All of it, everything since that moment, had been building and building and building, scaffolding up and up on itself, sneaking up on her and slowly burrowing its way into her life and her bed and her heart and now…

Now it was here. And all Amy could think was that she wished she’d had more time.

Amy found herself wishing Lauren had stayed out later (really, that Lauren had never gone in the first place, but…) and that maybe she’d had the night to sleep on it (like she would have slept a fucking wink) just so she could make sure she knew exactly what she wanted to say because she didn’t want to say even one thing wrong (though it seemed like she probably already had) (and that most of those wrongs involved the word - the name - of the girl still sitting across the hall.)

Or, maybe, Amy thought, more likely, it wasn’t the things she'd said that were wrong.

It was the ones she hadn’t.

Amy heard those steps in the hall and she tensed - her fingers crushing the duvet - and she felt her heart go a-racing from the shock.

Or maybe, she thought, more likely (and yes, she was sensing a pattern) it wasn’t the shock that was doing it. Maybe, more likely, her heart was reacting to the girl and not to the sound. Maybe her heart hadn’t skipped a beat in fear, maybe it had just sped up in anticipation, the way it always did when she saw Lauren, when she saw her coming down the hall or brushing her teeth in the morning or whenever the tiny blonde snuck into her room in the morning for a quick kiss that never ended up being quick (or just one.)

Or maybe, Amy thought, her heart was actually slowing, it was calming and finding some peace and relief in knowing that Lauren was finally home and whatever reasons she’d had for taking so long to get there didn’t really matter anymore cause Lauren was home and Lauren was safe and now Amy could get her heart back under control and back to normal or - really - whatever the hell passed for normal now because Amy had finally realized that when it came to Lauren and her heart, there wasn’t a normal anymore and she had no control over that - or it - at all.

And now, thanks to Reagan, Amy had realized something else.

She probably should have told Lauren that.

She was about to get her chance.

It wasn’t Lauren.

The door creaked open and Amy had to blink against the sudden light - the flashes and flickers from her own room - that split the dark and haloed their way around the figure in the door like she was some sort of… angel.

A Karma shaped angel.

Well… fuck.

Someone, Amy decided - God or fate or the universe or all of the fucking above - had a truly sick sick sick sense of humor. Or just hated her.

Or, you know, both.

It wasn’t Lauren coming in, it was… the other one… and it killed Amy, at least a little, to think of Karma like that, but it killed her - like a lot - to even think of Karma at all right then and right there and if she hadn’t been panicked before, Amy was sure she was now, sure that yes, the night was indeed full of terrors, the kind it seemed there was no help for, the kind nothing could stand against.

Her hottie DJ couldn’t and a summer apart couldn’t and even the might of Liam Booker’s magic peen couldn’t.

Amy suddenly understood exactly what Lauren was so scared of. And she didn’t blame her in the slightest.

“Amy?” Karma asked, blinking her eyes to adjust, trying to spot the blonde somewhere out there in the dark. “Are you there?”

Of course she was there. She was always there.

Amy knew she shouldn’t have been surprised that it wasn’t Lauren (she hadn’t heard a car or a key) or that it was Karma because… well… of course it was. It had always been Karma. It had been Karma for Reagan and it had been Karma for every girl Amy had met or kissed or even talked to over the summer. But those weren’t the problem.

The problem was - always was - that it was always Karma for Amy.

“Yeah,” Amy said, wishing she hadn’t. “I’m here.”

She was sitting in the dark, but everything was suddenly so… light… for Amy. So clear. She saw it all just as Lauren did. It had always been Karma, it was Karma, it was always going to be her. Karma was why they kissed - that first time - and Karma was why Amy had outed them to everyone and Karma was why Amy said 'mine’ and Karma was why Amy had promised 'you run, I chase’ because Amy just couldn’t do or think or feel on her own. It was all just…

Karma.

It wasn’t, of course, it wasn’t her at all. Not for Amy.

Another thing she probably should have told Lauren.

“It is true?” Karma asked - whispered, like she was afraid to say it out loud - and even that soft, her voice carried in the silence of the house and Amy almost told her not to shout.

Amy didn’t answer her. She didn’t move and she didn’t speak but she did wonder if, maybe, if she didn’t do much of anything, if she didn’t even so much as breathe, if (like magic) (like some real Harry Potter level shit and not that David Blaine crap) she could just vanish, if she could just fade away into the dark, leaving Karma there just talking to herself.

She had to admit, it wasn’t the worst thought, vanishing before Lauren got back and saw Karma there - the truck in the drive and her shoes by the door and Karma herself, half in and half out of Amy’s room and, really, was there ever a more obvious metaphor - and she had to watch the equally inevitable shut down, watch the way Lauren’s eyes would slowly die right there in front of her, watch her girlfriend fold in on herself and…

“She’d be rude,” Amy whispered. “She’d be rude and she’d be mean and sarcastic and sassy and snippy and cut us both off at the knees.”

“What?” Karma asked, the whisper gone.

“Lauren,” Amy said, trying to get her fingers to relax, to release the duvet and the tension, but it wasn’t working. “If she saw you here and she thought… she’d go mean.”

Karma took a step into the room, the door shutting softly behind her and if it hadn’t been so dark she might have noticed the small scootch Amy made further away on the bed. “It’s Lauren we’re talking about,” she said. “She's always mean.”

“Not to me,” Amy said. Not anymore, she thought.

She was never quite sure when that happened, when it changed, but at some point Lauren had stopped being… Lauren. At least around her, at least when it was them. Amy had seen it, a little, had watched it happen long before the kiss.

At first it was just Lauren not tuning her out, Lauren actually listening. And that was one thing when it was because Amy was trying, because Amy trying was most often trying to talk about her, about how she was dealing with the Theo breakup (just fine, thanks) or her moment in the sun as the Savior of Hester (not nearly as much fun as the movies make it out to be.)

And when Amy’s texts and calls and Skypes over the summer were all for her (and none for Karma cause that would have kinda defeated the point) and it slowly became both of them trying and Lauren wasn’t just listening but she was talking and she was nice, it was impossible for Amy not to see it.

Or, if she was being honest, to fall for it. Hard.

“Yeah, well,” Karma said, “she's still like that. You saw how she made Brandi cry in gym class last week.”

And Brandi had spent most of the morning making snide comments about Narcs and people not being able to see people for who they really are and how some people were so desperate for love they’d do anything. Or be anything.

If Lauren hadn’t cut her with words, Amy might have just cut her.

“Maybe she’s nice to you,” Karma said, stressing the 'maybe’ just a little more than Amy was comfortable with. “But she’s still a bitch to other people.”

And that was just it, wasn’t it? Somewhere, somehow, sometime, Amy had stopped being other people. Even before the kiss and certainly after it (and, without a doubt by the time Lauren had run crying from Reagan’s apartment) Amy was anything but other.

“Unless… maybe… except as in… 'other' half.” Amy mumbled, her thoughts jumbling and stumbling and bumbling their way out of her mouth and she’d half forgotten Karma was even there.

But she was.

“What?” Karma asked. “Other half? As in… Lauren? As in yours?”

It wasn’t the words that got Amy’s attention, it was the tone, it was the sound, it was the way Karma’s voice knifed its way through the dark, the anger and the pain and the anger and the denial (and did she mention the anger?) that dripped off her voice like rain off a roof.

“Lauren is not your other half, Amy,” Karma snapped. She took three more steps into the room, putting herself front and fucking center, right where Amy would have been looking if she’d been looking anywhere but down at her hands. “I don’t know what the two of you are, but it’s not that.”

Because that was them and that had always been them and that would always be them.

“You’re right,” Amy said and she could hear the exhale of relief from her best friend. “Lauren isn’t my other half. That makes her sound… incomplete. Like she’s something less without me and there’s nothing… less… about her.”

Karma glared (not that Amy could see) (or was looking) into the dark. That wasn’t what she'd meant Not at all. Lauren wasn’t Amy’s other half cause Lauren couldn’t be Amy’s other half cause that job was already taken.

“You’re doing it again,” Karma said, not that Amy had the first fucking clue what it was. “This is Reagan all over again.”

That got Amy’s attention which, usually, was a good thing for Karma.

If she could have seen Amy’s face in the dark, she might have known. This?

Not usually.

“Reagan?” Amy asked, half intrigued, half confused, and already all annoyed (and about three-quarters pissed.)

“Yes,” Karma said. She took a half step toward the bed, but something (sixth sense, intuition, the tone of Amy’s voice forcing a slow but long overdue realization to start sinking in) made her think better of it. “You were just like this with Reagan,” she said. “Jumping in with both feet and gung fucking ho and not thinking about how much you didn’t know.”

“I didn’t know?” Amy’s hands twitched around the duvet. Later - much much much later - she’d actually be grateful to Karma for, at least, easing her nerves.

Karma nodded, the gesture just barely visible. “You two were so different and so wrong for each other in the end, but you didn’t know…” She took another halting step. “Did you even know her last name?”

The duvet dropped from Amy’s hands as they balled into fists in her lap. “And you’re telling me I don’t know Lauren? Is that it?”

“What I’m saying,” Karma said, “is that you’re going in blind. You’re not thinking clearly, you’re just so… so…”

“So what, Karma?” Amy asked, those fists pressing hard against her thighs. “I’m so what?”

“Desperate.”

The word fell from Karma’s lips before she had a chance to stop it, before she could realize that even if she was right (which she wasn’t) and even if she had a point (which she didn’t) that was probably not the best way to put it.

It wasn’t.

It so wasn’t.

“Desperate?” Amy asked, stressing the ’t’ at the end, practically spitting it out.

“Not like… well…” Karma realized the hole she’d dug herself and that the only way out that might work was straight on through. “Yes,” she said. “Desperate. You’re so desperate to get over me, again, and so desperate to prove it and so desperate to find someone that you’re latching onto the first thing that comes along.” She took those last couple steps and - intuition be damned - sat on the bed next to Amy. “That’s what Lauren is, Amy,” Karma said. “Not your other half or the love of your life or your soulmate. She’s just the first available option. That’s what she is for you and you are for her and I’m sorry to say it like that but you’re in too deep and I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

Amy sat there. Still and silent.

“It took you a long time to get over Reagan,” Karma said. “And we both know how long it’s taken you to… well… we know.” She laid a gentle hand atop Amy’s, trying not to be concerned at the tight tight tight fist her best friend was clenching. “I don’t want you to end up spending months trying to get over someone who’s never really even been under you.”

There was a moment - an evil, mean, nasty, Lauren at her worst moment - when Amy considered telling Karma (in great detail) exactly how under her Lauren had been. But instead…

“It did take me a long time to get over Reagan,” Amy said. “She was my first.” She felt Karma’s hand tense against hers. “And you’re right, it would take me months to get over Lauren. Maybe longer. Maybe never.”

Amy reached over and gently lifted Karma’s hand from hers, dropping it back in the other girl’s lap.

“But,” Amy said. “I can tell you this. I am, without a doubt, without any question or reservation or exception, one thousand percent over you.”

She stood, the sudden shift in the mattress toppling Karma over onto her back.

“Amy,” she said, “wait -”

“Waiting,” Amy said, “at least for you, is the last fucking thing I’m going to be doing.” She moved across the room, knowing it perfectly even in the dark, and swung open Lauren’s door. “It’s late, Karma,” she said. “And Lauren is going to be here soon and she and I have a lot to talk about.”

“Amy,” Karma tried again.

“I said it's late,” Amy snapped. “It’s late and I’m tired… tired of this. I wasn’t ready with Reagan and I wasn’t ready last summer but…” She gripped the doorknob tightly, surprised she wasn’t leaving finger grooves in the metal. “I’m tired of letting this be what everything in my life is about and it shouldn’t be because it isn’t what my life is about.”

Karma stood, a rising shadow. “And she is?”

Amy shook her head, wondering how she had never noticed it before, how she had never really seen how all or nothing Karma always was.

“She,” Amy said. “Is a part of it. A big part, a huge part, as big a part as anyone.”

She couldn’t see it, in the dark, but Amy could imagine the way Karma paled at that, the way that thought killed her.

“You think you’re in love with her, don’t you?”

“I don't think about how I feel, Karma,” Amy replied, trying to soften her tone, trying to keep things from going even further off the rails than they already had. “I know. But I’m not going to talk about that with you.”

“Why not?” Karma asked, her voice small and hurt and the words tasted just a touch bitter on her tongue. “We used to talk about everything.”

“And maybe we still can,” Amy said. “But if I’m going to say that, it’s not for you. It’s for her and it’s for me and maybe once upon a time everything that was for me was for us too but…” Amy sighed. She just wanted Karma to go and Lauren to come and for this all to be done. “But it’s not once upon a time anymore, Karma. And you?”

Karma crossed the room, coming to a stop right in front of Amy, just inside - still - the door. “Me what?” she whispered, her voice dropping as Amy slowly started to close the door, ushering her out into the dark hall. She heard Amy’s last words through the door. Through Lauren’s door.