#secretmonkey

The knock comes a few years after Theo expected it would (he thought he was safe), and the face on the other side of the door? Yeah, she’s not the one he planned on - he was expecting the FedEx guy and Steve (that’s his name) (Theo knows him well) (Mrs. Theo orders a lot) (like a lot) doesn’t look a thing like Lauren, but it’s not like he knew it was gonna be her when he got to the door.

If he had… well… he wonders, briefly, if it would make him somewhat less of a man if, instead of answering, he ran and hid, like maybe under the bed - he’s assuming that the very very very last place Lauren would want to go is anywhere near his bed - though, if he’s logical about it, he’d be better off choosing a place just a bit higher up.

Cause, you know, tiny Lauren.

Tiny in height only and it takes all of three seconds and one glare and the sight of both her fists clenched at her side for Theo to remember that height ain’t everything.

With her? It ain't anything.

So, he wonders (briefly) if it would make him less of a man and then, even more briefly (cause easy answer) if he cares that it would.

It takes all of two seconds and the sight of both those fists for him to answer.

Oh. Fuck. No.

Which is, ironically, the very first thought that runs through his mind when he opens the door to see her standing there (lie) (the first thought: damn, she’s aged well) (which is fucking ridiculous cause it’s been like a few years, not a decade or some shit, so he’s being totally sexist, but also, she has aged well, as in almost not at all and Theo is suddenly very self-conscious of the grays dotting his head, sorta like Obama halfway through his first term except, you know, not remotely as distinguished.)

So, first thought: hot (basically). Second thought: the aforementioned Oh. Fuck. No. Third thought: I hope she’s not armed.

Fourth thought: Actually, I hope she is, cause it’ll be a quicker death and maybe there’ll be a bit of evidence and my murder - my totally justified murder - won’t go unsolved.

And then comes the fifth thought which, not surprisingly, circles back around to oh and fuck and no before Lauren finally puts him out of his misery, though not in the way he’d have expected.

“Can I come in?”

Um… well…

Theo’s a bit too dumbstruck (and still stuck on vacillating back and forth between hot and that other thing) to really use his words, so he just steps back, making room for her to pass.

He considers not shutting the door, so at least there might be witnesses, but then there might be witnesses and Theo thinks he’d prefer the whole neighborhood remember him as the strapping and studly dad down the block, not the quivering mass of ’I’m sorry’ that he’s sure he’s about to become.

Lauren takes a look around the foyer, her glance lingering just a bit too long on the one painting by the stairs and yeah, Theo knew buying that and hanging it there (her favorite and in the spot she’d always imagined it going, someday) was probably not his best choice but, in his defense, he didn’t think she’d ever actually see it. Hell, he’s still not sure she actually is.

He was out by the pool. And the deck was wet and slippery. And he totally could’ve slipped and fell, banging his head and, right now, he’s slowly drowning and all of this is a weird death-lusion and soon he’ll wake up somewhere very warm and perfectly deserved.

He’s not sure that wouldn’t be better.

“I’d guess you weren’t really expecting me,” Lauren says and, try as he might, Theo can’t find even a hint of snark in her voice - she sounds almost plaintive - and that’s actually worrisome, and so not her.

Not that he knows what's not her anymore. He hasn’t in a while. Like five years kind of a while and it’s so fucking odd how it feels like just yesterday.

He can only hope it doesn’t feel that way for her cause, you know, fresh pain and all.

Theo shrugs, which seems to be about the best he can manage. He wasn’t expecting her. He wasn’t (as noted) expecting anyone except, maybe, Steve. He thought that knock knock knock might have been a(nother) delivery. Maybe some (more) clothes or, perhaps, that blender she’s been raving about (and yes, ’she’ is how he thinks of his wife right now, like he can’t remember her name.) Or maybe it was some more of those toys she’s been ordering.

And, it should also be noted, that by ‘toys’, he means toys. Like for a kid. Not, you know… toys.

She (Lisa) (her name is Lisa) doesn’t order those and no, that’s totally not one of the things he’s missed over the years. (Lie) (again.) Not that, you know, Lauren ever ordered toys. She would just borrow them from Reagan and yes, that is as extra dirty as it sounds but now, with all of that hindsight that comes with age and time and living with a wife (Lisa) (for fuck’s sake) whose idea of kinky is doing it with the lights on, Theo’s come to think of a little bit of… dirt… as a good thing.

It’s just a thing he tries not to think about too often and, by 'too often’, he means like at all, cause there are some things better off left in the past. Choices and memories and choices and people and did he mention choices cause he should have, especially since he knows that he’s the one who made all of those and he’s OK with that, really he is.

As long as he doesn’t think about it too much.

Which, you know, is usually kinda easy. But then, usually, one of those choices - the only one that fucking matters - isn’t staring at him like she’s trying to see right into his soul and OK, he’s probably exaggerating that a bit.

A tiny bit.

“I didn’t think… I never planned…” Lauren shakes her head and turns away, her eyes finding that painting again. “Is that the original?” she asks and he nods. “Thought so. The colors are brighter than the one… we had.”

We. They. Had, as in together, as in their home, as in the place that was theirs. So, you know, that one.

It hung in their hall. Upstairs. On the way from the half bath to the master bedroom and Lauren always swore that when (never if) she found the original - and not some very good but not quite right copy - she’d hang it right downstairs, right by the door.

“Where everyone can see it,” she said.

Theo tries not to think about what she did with it - that very good but not quite right, all kinds of wrong, in fact, copy - on her way out that last day. It’s best, he’s come to think, not to dwell on the flames (and yes, that's literal) (as in up in them) (as in right out on the front fucking yard.) In fact, he tries not to think of that day much at all.

And yes, tries is the operative word.

“It looks good,” she says, somehow without a hint of bitterness or anger and oh, this is so going to end badly, isn’t it? “So do you,” she lies, but he still feels a swell of pride and yeah, he sucks in his gut (a four pack now instead of his usual six) just a little bit. “I’m sorry,” Lauren says - and isn’t that supposed to be his line? - it all suddenly clicking with her just how ridiculously awkward and weird and insane it is for them to be standing here like this. “This is… I don’t know why… I should go.”

She probably should cause, well, this is weird to the weirdest, but she doesn’t move and Theo doesn’t either, but he does finally find his voice, so that’s a step.

“Want a drink?”

For a second (the second longest second of his life), he thinks she’s gonna say no, but then she nods, quickly, and follows him into the kitchen. He gets to fishing for beer in the fridge - it’s way in the back cause Lisa doesn’t drink - and Lauren just stands there, awkwardly, leaning against the island, her hands resting on top of it and then down at her sides and then back on top again and Theo thinks he should be relieved that she is, apparently, as nervous as he is.

Somehow, it’s less than reassuring.

Even less reassuring is the way she downs the beer he hands her in one fell swoop (all that’s missing is her sister and Reagan - mostly Reagan - chanting 'chug, chug chug’) and lets out a long breath when she’s done.

He thinks about offering her another one. But not very hard. He remembers drunk Lauren - the angry version, not the horny one (not that either would be good right now) - just a bit too well.

“He loves me,” she says and talk about your non sequiturs and your out of nowheres and your 'I seriously thought they’d have had this all settled by nows’. “Glenn,” she adds, as if Theo didn't know. “He loves me and I…” She shakes her head and taps her fingers against the side of the bottle, hunting for the words. “And I blame you,” she finally says and, well…

Talk about your 'what the fucks’.

And your 'not surprising at alls’.

Theo’s pretty sure she’s not saying that she blames him for Glenn loving her, cause, well, if that’s anyone's fault, it’s totally hers. And, you know, Glenn’s. And definitely not his. Not at

all.

How could it be? It’s not like he did anything to push them together. Or to make it so that a 'them’ is even a possibility. Or expect that anything would happen after the divorce.

I think we both know the last thing Lauren’s going to be is alone.

OK, so maybe it’s a little bit on him, but Glenn was already in love with her and it isn’t like Theo told him he should be or that he was OK with it or gave him permission or some shit like that.

Not really. Not in those words. And he certainly didn't hope they’d find their way to each other cause he didn’t want Lauren to be alone for the rest of her life just because he'd… changed.

His mind.

He’d changed his mind and yeah, it sucked and yeah, it hurt her and yeah, the whole catch me cheating cause it will hurt less plan was somewhat… ill-advised (to put it mildly) but he meant well and yes, he knows all about the road to hell and exactly what it’s paved with.

Stones. A whole fucking bunch of them and every single one reads 'he meant well’ but, in the end, it worked out, right? For all of them?

Right?

Stupid fucking question, Theo, cause if it all worked out for all of them, would Lauren be here, in your kitchen, drinking your beer, and staring at you like she’s not sure if she wishes you dead or naked?

(Oh, and cut the wishful thinking cause, really, it’s more like 'dead’ or 'slightly less than dead but, at least, in massive amounts of pain and, if there’s any naked involved, it’s just so she can get a better shot when she kicks you in the balls.’)

(Just so we're clear.)

“He’s waiting for me,” Lauren says, snapping Theo back to now - and out of the dead and just a bit less than dead and absolutely not naked - and then she pauses, her fingers slowing against the glass of the bottle. “No… he’s not waiting,” she says. “He’s been waiting for me. And he’s waited. And waited.”

Theo knows. Oh, how he knows. He wonders if Lauren even realizes just how long Glenn’s waited.

Did she see it, he wonders. When she was still… his (and don’t get started on any of that love isn’t ownership bullshit cause you know what the fuck he means) did she notice Glenn, lingering in the background (copyright K. Ashcroft.) Theo likes to think that their marriage and her love for him was enough to blind her. He likes to think that, back then, both Lauren’s heart and her mind were so otherwise occupied that Glenn was never anything more than Reagan’s bro, a guy she knew - tangentially, sorta, a family member with a dashed line on the tree - and that even when, eventually, he was more than that, when he became her friend and her confidant and they had to work together, spending hour upon hour upon weeks in such close quarters…

Oh, who is he kidding?

He likes to think Lauren didn’t realize Glenn was falling and then had fallen and then was so hopelessly in that it was impossible not to see it, and that she never thought - not once - that maybe she had some of those same feelings. He likes to think that, he fucking loves to.

But, he doesn’t. Cause if there’s one thing Theo’s not?

It’s stupid.

Or blind. Or deaf. Or so oblivious he could give high school Karma a run for her money.

So, you know four things. All of which his not being means he knows all too well that Lauren’s been aware, right from the start.

“I don’t know if I’d call it waiting,” he says, so very casually ignoring the whole blaming him bit, cause he’s sure they’ll get back to it (he’s not wrong.) “It’s not like Glenn always expected we would go belly up if he just waited long enough.”

Sometimes - most times - when he thinks back on it, Theo wishes it had been something like that. It might make him feel a little bit better about all of it, like maybe he was less to blame.

And sometimes? Like all the times?

He knows that’s utter bullshit. He's completely to blame.

“I know that,” Lauren says. There’s just a hint (like the tiniest one) of 'duh’, of 'no shit’, of 'of course he wasn’t cause he’s not an asshole’ running under her words. Or maybe that’s just Theo’s imagination. “Glenn’s not that kind of man.”

Yeah. Not his imagination.

You might think that years of practice in dealing with every conceivable variation of the Lauren Cooper 'just about to be pissed’ formula might have taught Theo something about changing the equation. And you’d be right. Totally. There was a time, in fact, when no one could defuse an L.C. Anger Bomb (patent pending) like Theo could. Not Amy (cause she was, more often than not, the cause) and not Reagan (cause she was, more often than not, too amused by it) and not even Bruce (cause he was, or pretended he was, totally oblivious in that way that only someone who’s so used to it that they’re immune - or Karma - could be.)

But that time was then and this is now and, even if he wanted to, Theo’s not sure he’s still got the skills. Plus, there’s that want to. Or, in his case, a lack of it. Call him masochistic or guilty or just plain fucking dumb, but Theo kinda thinks that maybe he’s got a detonation coming.

Again, he’s not wrong.

So, he does nothing and just lets her talk which, now that the seal’s been broken, is surprisingly easy.

“Right now,” Lauren says, “he’s the kind of man who, even though I’ve been an utter fucking bitch, is still waiting for me.” She stares down at the bottle in her hand and there’s a moment when Theo thinks maybe he should have given more consideration to defusing her.

You know, since she's armed.

“He’s sitting in a hotel, probably at the bar,” she says and no, she’s totally not imagining him bellied up to the bar, his usual Jack and Coke in one hand and his cell in the other, wait wait waiting on her call. “Just waiting for me.” Lauren thinks about what she said and laughs, a short 'I’m so stupid’ snort of a thing. “Not like that,” she adds though, Lord knows, if he was waiting like that, it wouldn’t be the first time. “I’m supposed to meet him, so we can go over

last minute details for the rehearsal dinner,” she says. Last minute details that were worked

out so not last minute, but Glenn humors her and he’ll double and thruple check everything

with her. “Tomorrow is my sister’s wedding.”

Theo hears the words - 'my sister’s wedding’ - and his brain hiccups just a bit. Nope, that doesn’t bring back any memories. Not at all.

Tyson: “This is my sister’s wedding, we’re talking about. If it’s not beyond perfect, I will kill someone. All the someones. Every one of you someones. This is Lauren’s day and she’s

only having the one and so it needs to be perfect.”

Holyfield: “What she said. Except replace sister with best friend and kill with… maim, I guess. But all the rest? What she said.”

For three weeks after the broke up, Theo flinched every time he heard a woman’s voice or steps behind him or saw a swish of blonde hair swirling in the distance; he was so convinced he’d end up just like Liam.

Party Liam. Punched in the face and unconscious on the ground and everyone laughing at his humiliation Liam. Not, you know, dead Liam.

“Amy and Reagan?” Theo asks, going all innocent, pretending like he hadn’t seen the full-page wedding announcement Farrah put in the paper. Or the one she posted on her website. Or on Facebook. Or on Twitter. Or the YouTube vlog she did for the station or the other YouTube vlog she did just for her. “About time,” he says when Lauren nods. He says it with a laugh which he immediately reconsiders. “I mean, it’s -”

“About time,” Lauren cuts in and they both laugh and it’s the closest either of them have come to actually breathing since she knocked on the door. It’s a nice moment, the kind they haven’t had in years and that includes the one before the divorce, the entire three-sixty-five when Lauren felt like he was slipping away from her and Theo knew she felt it.

And knew, even then, that he actually was.

But the harder she fought to hold on, the more he squirmed and fussed and worked his way loose. It was his choice and he made it and every time - every single time - he sees his son, Theo knows it was the right choice. But still…

Oh, it’s that 'still’ that gets him, every time, and it’s that 'still’ that makes him think that maybe, just maybe, this is his chance, his opportunity, his one shining moment that the universe has decided to hand him and so, as he does, he takes it.

“I’ve missed you.”

Theo squeezes his eyes shut (the way he should have done with his lips) even before the words are out and oh, if he was thinking that was the universe’s silver platter, the look on her face says it was more likely a fuse for that KABOOM he was so sure he deserved and now he’s gone and lit the damn thing and it’s burning.

Burning fast.

He’s hit a nerve and that’s what she does. But now, seeing as how there’s no un-lighting that fuse or un-hitting that nerve, Theo doesn’t see much sense in quitting while he’s ahead even

if, probably, he ought to reassess his definition of 'ahead’.

“Most of the time,” he says, not even bothering to acknowledge that they’re so not talking about Glenn anymore or the look on Lauren’s face or the fact that all of this might have been so better said five fucking years ago. “I do a pretty good job of not thinking about it.”

And yes, by 'it’, he 100% (or, you know, 1,000,000,000,000%) means ’her’. He does a pretty good job of not thinking about her. There are times, he’ll admit, when that’s just a little easier than others. Times just like earlier this afternoon, out in the backyard, watching his boy hit a

tiny ball off a tiny tee (or, you know try to, cause he’s only two and not a prodigy. Yet.) Times just like last night, when he and Lisa and Anthony snuggle on the couch, like an actual family, watching some animated movie about talking animals Theo doesn’t even understand, but he does understand the sound of his son’s laughter and, really, that’s all he needs to get.

Those are the times. But then… well… then there’s the other times.

Times like when Lauren’s candidate won the election and there she was, in the background of every fucking picture in the news. Times like when he passes that coffee shop, the one on the corner of Dolls and Holliday, the only place in all of Austin that made those miniature chocolate stuffed croissants she loved so much but refused to eat when anyone was looking.

Anyone except him.

Or, times like those nights when the wife’s not feeling kinky and so the lights stay off and it’s so damn easy for him to get lost in the dark, in the idea (the memory) that she’s considerably tinier and a whole lot blonder and not whispering sweet nothings in his ear about putting another baby in her belly.

“But then,’ Theo says (and no, he's not looking at her cause, well, he doesn’t want to die just yet), "I see something or I hear something or I just find myself with five seconds of peace and there’s no one else around and then…”

And then, she's all he can think about. And that day, whichever day it might be, is pretty much just fucking shot cause once he slips down into that hole, there’s no digging out. He lets those words hang there (the trail off strikes again) and yeah, he knows exactly what he’s doing.

He's waiting.

Maybe, he thinks (dreams) (fantasizes) (wishes but not really) Lauren’ll say something like 'me too.’ Or 'I know what you mean.’ Or 'and then you start up with the thinking about me and, you know what? Somewhere, out there, I'm thinking about you and why, exactly are we doing all this thinking and not doing any… doing?’

Maybe.

Or, you know… maybe not. Maybe not at all. Cause maybe, right now, even though Theo’s waiting? He’s realizing one simple truth he should have already known.

Maybe (not maybe) he waited just a little too long. Like five years too long. Or, really, six years, counting that one when he was trying to figure everything out and while he was figuring, he was also shutting - as in her, as in out - and no, he doesn’t need to see the look on her face to know that, he doesn’t need to see the… something… in her eyes to feel that last final nail just getting hammered home in that coffin that he stuffed their marriage (them) into.

Except… well… come to think of it - and, honestly, it’s about the last thing he ever thought he’d come to think of - maybe he does. Maybe, if he wants to be a family and not just ’like an actual family’, this is what he needs. His counselor - who was, at one point, their counselor, a tiny fact Theo knew Lauren had never shared with Amy or with Reagan or with anyone except, he’s sure, Glenn - would call it closure.

Theo doesn’t really need a word for it. No fancy name or psychobabble term. That’s just a bit too concrete, too much of a thing, too definite. It’s more of a feeling, really, more like a release, like someone tripped a pressure valve in his chest, five years worth of breaths he never took all just slipping away.

It should leave him feeling empty. He thinks it should. He's sure of it.

Except… again… he's wrong cause, in his entire life, Theo can’t ever remember feeling this full.

He gets it now. He gets what he’s needed all this time. And what she needs that brought her to his doorstep after all these years. He walks to the end of the island, mildly surprised that Lauren isn’t squirrelling away from him, and takes her hand. “Come with me?”

It’s a question, not a demand and maybe that’s why Lauren does, letting him lead her out of the kitchen and up the stairs and he feels her tense as they pass his door - it’s not the same door or the same room or the same house, but some shit just never leaves - but then she stills again as they move right on by, down the hall, to the last door on the right.

Theo cracks the door, just a little. Just enough. He steps back and lets Lauren see, watching as her eyes adjust to the darkened room and her hand finds its way to her mouth to stifle the lightest of gasps that slips from her lips.

“His name’s Anthony,” Theo says. “We named him after my dad. He’s two.”

She’s doing the math in her head - Theo can almost see the numbers rolling around - and it doesn’t take her long to connect the dots that, no, he’s not from… you know… then.

“I met his mother about a year after we…” Theo shakes his head, not quite able to say the ’d’ word, not even now, no matter how full he might be. “She’s a cardiac care nurse and both her parents are dead and…” He shakes his head again, wondering what part of him thought telling her about her was even sort of a good idea. “I work from home most days,” he says, “so I can spend as much time with him as I can.”

Lauren leans against the door, blinking her eyes against the dark (yup) (the dark) (that's totes why she’s blinking.) “He looks just like you,” she says and oh, that’s what does it, finally, that’s what slaps her right across the face and shakes her in her shoes, practically fucking screaming at her.

This… he… is why.

The one thing she couldn’t give him. The one thing that Theo swore up and down he didn’t need, the very thing he promised her didn't matter.

Until he changed his mind.

Any wonder she blames him?

“You tell them all it’s about the cheating, don’t you?” he asks and God, she’s never heard his voice so soft, so quiet, a level of a whisper that only a father could manage. “That’s why you haven’t been with anyone else, why you’ve never remarried. Why you make Glenn wait.”

She flinches slightly, her hand on the door - not so much that anyone else might even notice, but he’s not anyone - and he knows she wants to argue, to point out that she doesn't make him wait and if he chooses to wait, well, that’s not on her. She’s not responsible.

And maybe if she just believed that.

“It’s the simple explanation,” Theo says, “I know. That’s why I did it. Because it was easier and cleaner and yes, dumber.” He beats her to it, calls himself out for his own stupidity, regardless of how well-intentioned it was. “And you can use it, remind them all how you found me, in your bed, with another woman and it all makes sense and it gives you the best reason ever not to…”

Not to love.

He can't say it and, really, neither can she but the problem isn’t so much that she can't say it. It’s that she can't feel it. And not 'can’t’ like she’s unable, or 'can’t’ like he killed it in her, so she can never love another man.

Can’t like won’t, like not again, like… like she knows, the logic of it is so right there, so obvious, and her brain is well fucking aware that she loves Glenn - loves him like she’s never loved any other - but there’s always that fucking can’t.

It’s like a wall.

No… not a wall. A wall you can climb, a wall you can go around, a wall can have a door and a wall can have a way through. It’s not a wall, it’s a hole and Lauren’s been falling down it for five fucking years and Goddammit, it’s just bottomless.

But fuck all, she wants to climb.

“I want him,” Lauren whispers. “I don’t want to make him wait and I want…” Her gaze rolls over Anthony, this tiny little man, a perfect little bit of what she just can’t ever have. “I want it all,” she says, “and I want it with Glenn and he says he’s fine with it and he swears it doesn’t matter, and I want to believe him.”

Almost as much as she wants to love him. But the two kind of go together and it’s like the one’s a cork, stuck in the end of the bottle and no matter how hard she pulls, no matter how much she fights, she can’t ever get it loose.

“He promises,” she says. “When he thinks I’m not listening, when I can’t hear, when I’m in his arms in the middle of the night, he promises me that we can have it all.” She turns, and she’s not even pretending not to cry anymore. “But so did you.”

Yeah. He did.

And if there’s anything Theo regrets even close to as much as how it ended? It's that.

It’s how it began.

“I was sixteen,” he says, and even to his ears that sounds like some weak fucking sauce of an excuse. “Sixteen and in love. And then I was eighteen and in love and then twenty and in love and… and you had it all figured out,” he says, leaning against the wall. “Adoption had been the reality for you since you were twelve. You knew from fifteen that a surrogate was out, that you couldn’t handle a baby that was half your husbands and none of yours.”

Fourteen. She knew at fourteen.

But that’s kinda not the point.

“I thought it didn’t matter,” Theo says and it wasn’t just that he thought it. It didn’t matter, not to sixteen or eighteen or twenty year old him. And even the… next… him, the one who made all those well-intentioned stupid choices, even he didn't want it to matter.

But want isn’t the same as does. And in the end, it did matter, it does. All the proof either of them might need is sleeping right behind that door.

“I didn’t want it to matter and I honestly believed that it didn’t” he says. They’re words he’s only ever said in his own head, only to himself. And, you know, to Glenn, on that one day, so many years ago. “Right up until the moment when I realized that it did. And by then…”

It was too late. There was a finger and a ring on it and a house and a home and… fuck all… he loved her. So much. So very very much.

So very very very close to enough.

“I didn’t know how to tell you,” Theo says and his hand is on her cheek and he’s got no idea how that happened. “I didn’t know how to break your heart without breaking you, without making you feel like you would always be something less. Because you were never… are never… that.”

“So, cheating on me with some whore you barely knew was your way of not making me feel less?”

And there’s that fuse. Again.

“It was stupid,” he says (yeah, it was.) “It was a plan, not a good plan, more like a dumb plan, such a ridiculous plan.” He tries smiling, making light, tweaking the moment just a bit, enough that it’s not a moment. “It was like Karma and Amy faking it level dumb,” he says, “I get that.”

But it made sense at the time. Cheating, she could accept. Hell… cheating she would expect, it would just be her father and every woman between her mother and Farrah all over again. If he’d done that - if he was that - then it was on him, it was about him.

And not about her.

“It was a no win,” he says. “No matter what I did, you’d hurt. And I hope you know that I never wanted that, that it killed me to give you even one moment of pain.”

Lauren says nothing cause, really, what is there for her to say? Yeah, she knows that - she knew that, even then - and that was what made it all so fucking hard to deal with, to accept.

Even after she found out the truth.

“You knew he’d tell me,” she says softly, even though she wants to scream at him, wants to ball up her tiny fists and pound on his chest until his heart shatters the way hers did. “When Glenn confronted you, when he figured it all out, you knew he wouldn’t keep it a secret and you still told him.”

Of course Glenn wouldn’t. He couldn’t. Just imagine if she had finally given in, if she’d stopped making him wait and just been with him, instead of just 'being’ with him, and then she found out that he knew the truth and never told her.

She’d have killed him.

If, you know, the guilt hadn’t done it first.

“Is that why you did it?” she asks him and Theo doesn’t understand the question. “Is that why you told him, so I’d find out, so I’d know what a bunch of noble sacrificing, I love you so much

that I’ll rip your heart out this way instead of that way bullshit you’d been up to?”

Is it?

Theo would like to say no. But he doesn’t want to lie. And saying that wasn’t a part of it would be nothing but a lie.

“Or did you have buyer’s remorse?” Lauren asks. She moves a step back, gently shutting the door to Anthony’s room and oh, that’s probably not a good sign. “You have an epiphany about how good you had it and how bad you fucked it all up?” (Again, truth in part.) “Did you go and figure that, maybe, if I knew the truth, I’d come back? If, maybe, I knew that you weren’t really

a cheating asshole, I’d crawl on back? Maybe I’d even beg you to forgive me, maybe I’d plead with you to take back your something… less than a woman?”

Did modern medicine finally turn you into a real girl? Or are you still the same fucked up science project you’ve always been?

What was that about some shit that never leaves?

“Or, maybe,” Lauren says, “it was your fucking ego. Maybe, you just couldn’t live with the idea of me thinking that way about you. Lumping you in with my dad and Liam, one more dick who thought with his dick.” She presses one hand against the door, steadying herself and doing her best (not nearly good enough) not to think about what (who) is right on the other side cause that is just one bridge too fucking far.

There are, in truth, about a million things Theo could say. He’s had years, after all. Years to think of excuses, of rationales for everything he did, everything he said. But even back then, even when he’d fessed up to Glenn and thought for sure she’d be busting down his door at any moment, he’s never really settled on any one of them, he’s never known - not for sure - what he would say to her, in this moment.

Oh, he’s always known it would come, always expected that he’d bump into her on the street, stumble across her in the grocery store or sitting in some coffee shop, always when he’d least expect it (and, at least, he got that part right) but he knew he’d never be prepared. He would never know what to say. And now, standing right here, staring at her, he knows what he only suspected for all those years.

It doesn’t matter.

“I did it,” he says, and they’re wrong about confession and the soul. “I lied. I cheated. I broke your heart and I was a lousy fucking excuse for a husband for far longer than you should have put up with.” If he’s thinking he’s gonna win points for honesty, he’s mistaken. “And I changed my mind. The one promise I always should’ve kept, is the one I broke the worst.”

It wasn’t the words. It wasn’t telling her that no, he didn’t care about kids, it wasn’t some vow he made in front of God and her sister and all the rest of them. It was never that.

It was ten years ago, a night spent outside her room. She wouldn’t let him in, but he wouldn't leave. And that? That was the moment, that was the promise.

He fucking waited.

It hits her then, like that wall it isn’t, like a fucking tidal wave of everything, crashing down onto her and Lauren gets it. He made the same promise, the same one Glenn has made night after night after 'night together’ and 'day apart’ for the last four fucking years. And she believed him, but she can’t (won’t) believe him, cause, what’s that saying?

Once bitten, twice no fucking chance I’m letting it happen again.

(Or, you know, something like that.)

“He’s not me,” Theo says and oh, how she hates that he can still see right through her. It’s not fucking fair, not even a little. “Glenn,” he says. “isn’t me. He’s not a sixteen year old dumbass who didn’t care what intersex meant because whatever else it meant, it meant you.” It sounds bad, makes him sound so stupid but, back then, it was just that simple. “And he’s certainly not an eighteen year old idiot who can’t stop thinking that the 'long’ part of 'long distance’ is what’s gonna be the death of him and, maybe, the best way around that is a ring and a promise that’s even longer. So much longer than he can even see, let alone think.”

There’s a part of Lauren - a smallish one - that wants to yell at him (more) and swear at him (a lot) and punch him (hard) and tell him that she knows (so fucking well) that Glenn’s not him.

Except, apparently, that wouldn’t be entirely the truth, now would it?

“You know why Glenn and I got to be such good friends?” Theo asks and Lauren shakes her head. She’d always assumed it had something to do with being the only two straight guys in their little crew. “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer,” he says. “From day one, the first moment I met him, the second I saw how he looked at you… I knew. I knew that man loved you the way I wanted to,”

So… not the whole straight guy thing. Gotcha.

“Some people, Lauren, they just come into your life, you know?” Theo drops his head, trying his best (and his isn’t nearly good enough either) to hide the tears he can’t blink away. “They show up and you never see them coming but then… there they are. And once they are, well, you can’t understand how you ever lived without them.”

Yeah. Lauren knows about them. She’s got a few. Amy. Reagan. Farrah.

And Lucy and Shane and (God help her) Karma and even, kinda, Jack and, once upon a time, Martin and Liam (ugh) and…

Them.

Her men. Her boys. The loves of her life. And, yeah, that’s fucking plural.

“But sometimes,” Theo says, “they’re not there for… always, you know? It’s a moment, a thing you need right then. And maybe that then, maybe it lasts a while. Maybe it’s a few months or maybe it’s two years.”

Maybe that then gives you something you need, something that carries you through, maybe it’s even a happiness you’ve never known. But then… maybe it ends. And maybe that end…

No. Not maybe. It does. It hurts.

And maybe that lasts a while too.

Theo reaches out, taking her hand and looking at her, right at her, and it’s like it’s some kind of magic. The gray’s all gone, the four pack’s a sixer again, the ring on his finger is her’s and not her’s and he’s there again, right outside her door instead of his. Like he never left.

But he did.

“And when it ends,” he says - and it's him again, the other him, the one that belongs to that life behind the door - “when it really ends? Maybe it’s because it’s time. Because you don’t need that anymore. Maybe because you’ve found something that’s … not better… something that’s right, something that’s a fit, something that’s just for you. And maybe it takes a while, maybe it takes forever to get there.”

He leans over, pressing one chaste kiss to her cheek.

Seven years from now

What if?

Well, that’s just a loaded fucker of a question isn’t it? The kind most people know better than to ask, but knowing better and doing better… well… those are two very different things. Especially for Amy.

As we’ve established. More than once.

But that was all younger Amy and this is older Amy (though not that much older, and still looking good for her age, or any age, or so Reagan says), but, honestly, it’ll probably still take years or maybe decades for that particular lesson to really sink in and, clearly, it hasn’t just yet.

If it had… well…

Her sister would be speaking to her right now, now wouldn’t she?

There are more than a few things she’s done in her life that Amy’s second guessed. Or triple guessed (thruple guessed?) or quadruple or… ‘whatever the fuck five is’ guessed. It’s part of who she is, in her nature - right down to her DNA, and thank you very fucking much Jack and Farrah - and her nurture. Her mother (and Karma) and her disappearing father (and Karma) and, basically, the entirety of her high school existence (and Karma), at least the parts before Reagan, had her questioning everything, even her gayness and, even now, she still spends far too much time doubting her choices.

Not about her gayness, though. But, you know, about things like using (or even thinking) the word 'gayness’. And not about Reagan - who, sometimes (read: all the times) Amy’s so very exceptionally glad is fluent in speaking Amy - or her choice to forgive Jack or being OK with Karma and Lucy (or OK-ish, it’s a work in progress) or her choice to let Reagan name Katie cause, let’s face facts.

Katharine is a far better name than 'little ball of snot and poop that never lets me sleep’ even if that one might still be more accurate.

But, of all those things, this one, this very specific and very definitive and very 'how can you be so fucking stupid, don’t you remember what he did, and oh… I just called you 'stupid’ and that’s why you’re giving me that look right now, isn’t it, well… tough titty, cause I'm right’ one is so not among those things she’s second or third or fourth or infinity and fucking beyond guessed cause this one is her sister and this one is Theo and this one is so clear cut and so obvious that there’s no way even she can have gotten it wrong.

Except… you know… what if?

He cheated on her, she says. Except 'says’ was kinda only in her head and so… “He cheated on her,” she says, again and out loud this time and, apparently, much to the surprise of her wife and her brother-in-law who’s, now, her brother-in-law twice (bro in law squared?) and yeah, she knows that he knows that Theo cheated, maybe better than all of them, so “Why do you look so fucking surprised?”

Glenn shrugs and Amy steams cause that’s his default answer to everything. You want another beer? Shrug. You think the Stars will make the playoffs this year? Shrug. Is Lauren 100% the best thing to ever happen to you? Shrug.

He slept on the couch for a week after that one and, if baby Martin hadn’t developed a wicked case of 'oh, if I can’t sleep, then no one can colic’, Amy suspects - quite rightly - that Glenn’s banishment might have been longer.

Like, you know, until forever.

But, really, a shrug? For this?

“She’s going to invite him,” Amy says - and she makes sure to say it out loud the first time, this time - and then she corrects herself. “She’s going to invite them.”

Reagan eyes her across the counter, pausing in mid-sip of her way too fucking hot coffee (Amy doesn’t know how to make it any other way and her wife wishes, like with all her heart, that that might be one of those things she’d second guess), one brow lifting off just slightly at the way she said 'them’, hushed, in a whisper, like it’s a state secret she’s gotta hide away or some tiny bit of profanity she doesn’t want the baby to hear, or as if, by saying out loud, she might just magically conjure 'them’ up and make 'them’ appear.

No matter what she says or does, Reagan can never quite convince Amy that Harry Potter isn’t secretly real. It’s like a fucking religion with her, which she supposes - all religions considered - could be worse.

“Them,” Amy says, again, a bit louder this time as Glenn, apparently, didn’t reply fast enough and, Reagan knows, in the language of 'Amy’, speed often equals volume, which is annoying in conversation, but can be kinda… fun… in certain other ways. But this is not one of those ways and when Glenn shrugs - again - Amy wishes (almost out loud) that she could put him on the fucking couch.

(Not the fucking couch, as in the place of the fucking, but the other kind of fucking couch and no, she doesn’t really know how to explain the difference but see, this is what happens when that damn man gets her all worked up like this.)

(And not worked up like that and oh, that all sounded less dirty before she said it so, fortunately, she only said it to herself.)

(This time.)

What kind of couch doesn’t matter (much) cause what does matter is that “She’s going to invite her ex-husband and his wife and their kid to your son’s baptism.” Amy’s damn near yelling now and Reagan hopes Lolo stays upstairs with the baby cause, really, the silent fucking War of the Roses thing she and Amy have going on now is bad enough without Amy finding a way to make it worse.

You know, like Amy does.

“He’s her son, too, you know,” Glenn says, without so much as even a hint of a shrug and Amy immediately misses it, though she doesn’t miss the smirk on her wife’s face - Reagan loves the way her brother can get under her wife’s skin - and oh, someone’s definitely gonna be couching it tonight. “And,” Glenn adds, much to Amy’s even further annoyance, “she can invite whoever she’d like. What do you want me to do? Forbid her?” He shakes his head. “I’m not Lauren’s boss, Amy.”

That, it should be noted, was in their wedding vows.

I, Glenn Ramon Solis, promise to love, honor, and cherish you, Lauren Elizabeth Cooper, and to always remember that I am your partner and that you are not the boss of me, usually, just as I am not the boss of you.

Ever.

Amy remembers the words (almost as clearly as she remembers trying not to snort out loud at the ceremony) and she knows Glenn takes his vows seriously, like they were, you know, vows and that that isn't just because he’s (rightfully) terrified of his wife.

It’s also (read: mostly) (read: like sickeningly, worshipfully, damn near painfully) cause he loves his wife, in a way Amy didn’t know anyone could love anyone else - at least anyone that wasn’t her and Reagan - and in a way that makes her almost grateful Theo was (is) such a dirty, rotten cheating fuckwit.

If she could have chosen a man for her sister, Amy knows that man would have been a lot like Glenn.

Just, you know, a little less shrug-y and a lot more listening to her-y.

Amy hangs her head - sensing defeat, already - and curses under her breath, dropping a nearly inaudible 'mierda’ (with an almost passable accent), and Reagan smiles at the way her wife’s still stuck in the habit of swearing in Spanish, the little trick they picked up when Katie was still a tiny tiny and they were trying not to expose her to 'all the Goddamned profanity you two use’, as Farrah put it (without a single drop of irony.) Spanish - and a bit of French and a couple of really useful all purpose Portuguese cusses Karma taught them - was their compromise when going cold turkey just didn’t work.

After all, asking them to cut the four letter words out of their vocabulary was like asking Amy to cut bacon out of her diet or asking Karma to cut plans out of her… plans… or asking Lauren to stop hating Theo and… oh…

Yeah. Maybe, apparently, not the best example.

Amy knows she’s not going to convince Glenn to put his foot down and knows even better that it would only result in a foot up his ass if he did, so she tries another angle. “So, you’re telling me that you're OK with this?” she asks and Glenn doesn’t shrug (so Amy doesn't punch) but he also doesn’t say 'yes’ or 'no’ or 'not exactly’ or, even, 'Lauren’s OK with it and since I’d like to sleep in my bed sometime before my son gets to high school, yes, I’m just fucking fine with it and thank you for asking’ so, clearly, he’s somewhat less than OK and while that probably doesn’t matter, it’s still something.

Something, Reagan knows, Amy’s going to seize on and not let go and while there are certain times (read: in bed) (read: or the shower or the beach or that one time in the Planter’s parking lot) when she’s so very grateful for her wife's… determination… this doesn’t strike her as one of those times. “Shrimps, baby, maybe this is something you should leave for Lolo and -”

Remember that question? What if?

What if, in that moment, Amy doesn’t hold up a hand to shush her wife? Or, what if, she doesn’t shush her and walk right past her - like she’s not even there - crossing the kitchen to stand just a bit closer to Glenn? Or, what if, she doesn't ignore Reagan’s warning and doesn't keep right on pushing the issue and doesn’t, as only Amy can, make it even worse by not noticing Lauren standing in the kitchen door?

Well, if Amy hadn’t done any of that, then maybe she wouldn’t have had to spend an hour that night trying to find a comfortable position to sleep in on the recliner in her office cause she sure as fuck wasn’t sleeping in the bed and oh, funny thing, Reagan just happened to… suggest to Katie (the kid) and Lucky (the lab) and Ruby (the beagle) that they have a 'camping out night’ on the couch.

And oh, if only that had been her only problem. But it wasn’t - it so wasn’t - cause, see, as little as Amy’s learned about not second guessing herself, she’s learned even less about recognizing signs, like when someone knows something but, really, that something is none of your business or when, maybe, there’s a secret that someone - or a couple someones, or maybe a thruple of someones - is keeping and you ought to just fucking trust them that keeping it from you is for your own good.

Or, you know, theirs.

“He fucking cheated on her, Glenn,” Amy says, still ignoring Reagan’s frantic and almost pained and pleading 'Shrimps’. “Theo cheated on her in her bed and he broke her heart and he ruined her damn life.”

The words leave her mouth and she hears them but she doesn’t quite believe them or, at least, believe that they came from her - or that the gasp she hears behind her comes from her wife or that the 'what the fuck, Amy’ from the door comes from her sister - and Amy wants to say she’s sorry, she wants to say she didn’t mean it (she didn’t, at least not like that) and she wants Glenn to shrug, to just blow it all of cause, you know, that’s what he does, except that he doesn’t.

He doesn’t even look at her and if there was a couch nearby right then and there, Amy would exile herself to it immediately but then Glenn does look up - at his wife - and she nods, slowly and he turns back to Amy and, funnily enough, we’re back to where we started.

Back to that question.

“But what if,” Glenn says. “What if he didn’t?”

Five Years Ago

The knock comes a few days after Theo expected it would and the face on the other side of the door… well… it’s not the one (or the pair) he planned on, but he knows that he shouldn’t be at all surprised.

But he is.

(Also: he’s grateful, for more than one reason, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)

“I thought for sure she’d send Tyson and Holyfield,” he says, stepping to one side so Glenn can come in. In truth, he’s a more than a little bit relieved Lauren didn’t send her sister and her best friend. That might have gotten ugly and painful.

For, you know, him. And, you know, more ugly and painful than this already is cause it’s plenty ugly - getting caught with your pants down is usually like that - and it's more than plenty painful cause, you know, getting caught with your pants down by your wife with someone who is so not your wife gives said wife one hell of an easy target for her very very so fucking very pointy toed shoes.

Theo walked with a limp for a week and even he knows that was the least of what he deserved.

Glenn steps into the house and it feels fucking weird, kinda like he hasn’t done it a million times before, but, of course, back then it was Theo and Lauren’s and now… it's not. Maybe it’s still the same house, with all the same rooms and all the same furniture and the same everything, but it’s not the same, not at all, and he can’t help wondering if Theo feels it too. “You do still remember I was a soldier, right?”

He doesn’t even look at Theo - he’s not entirely sure he’s going to be able to, not without getting a bit… upset or, truthfully, more upset - but he does hold up one hand, wiggling his pinky finger in the other man’s direction and he feels it, the shift in the air, as Theo leans up against the door, fidgeting just slightly further away, out of 'I can kill you with a finger’ (and would) (he absolutely fucking would, if Lauren would just let him) range and yeah…

Message received.

Reagan and Amy might have punched him (not might) and it might have hurt (oh, it so fucking would), but Theo knows he would’ve gotten back up from that - Liam and Jack did and, face it, he’s bigger and stronger than either of them though, apparently he’s also more of a fucking shit, which no one would have thought possible - but if Glenn decided to get physical?

All he’d need was someone to tell him where to hide the body. And Theo's got a pretty good inkling that Lauren would have all kinds of good ideas about that.

“Everything you’re here for is over there,” Theo says with a nod, careful to keep himself just out of reach - like that would really help - indicating the three stacks, a trio of cardboard mountains, box upon box, packing tape begetting packing tape and even though all the stacks are so very clearly - like in big bold permanent black marker letters clearly - marked 'Lauren’, Glenn can’t resist playing the asshole, just a little.

“Which ones?” he asks with a smirk that shifts to a grin - and not the 'yo, man, s'up?’ grin the two men usually shared - as he hears Theo sigh behind him. It’s settling in, Glenn knows, the slow realization that nope, he’s not going to make this any easier - though a bit potentially less physically painful - than his sister and her wife would have.

Theo points, risking his putting his arm in striking distance. “To the left,” he says.

He shouldn’t. Glenn knows he shouldn’t. He knows there’s nothing funny about this - and if he thought there ever was, the memory of Lauren sobbing herself to sleep on his couch every night for the last three weeks has easily disabused him of that - and he knows all too very fucking well that this Theo is not the same Theo he shared beers with and watched basketball with and hung out with while they both did everything they could (which wasn’t always enough or even close to it) to ignore that they were both in love with the same woman.

This, he knows, is no time for jokes. But, come on. 'To the left?’

It comes out without warning and - he’ll claim till the day he dies - without him even choosing to say it. It’s a blurt, an impulse that skips the brain and goes straight to the tongue and, before he can stop himself, Glenn’s singing (or what passes for singing with him.) “To the left, to the left,” he croons. “Everything you own in a box to the left…”

Theo snorts behind him and, for just a second, they're… them… again and, for just that same second, they both forget that they’re never going to be 'them’ again. They’ve always made an odd pair, shoved together by being the only 'boys’ in their little family and no, Liam didn’t count cause he was always on the outside looking in and Lauren may have forgiven but Theo never ever did, or would and Shane was a guy, but… well…

Shane’s a guy and a good one at that and they both love him but he's Shane.

They were brothers, of a sort, not like legally or anything - the brother in law of a sister in law doesn’t have an exact term, like an in law twice removed or some such shit - but, if you asked anyone, they’d be hard pressed to think of a Raudenfeld or Solis family gathering that hadn’t seen Theo and Glenn holed up somewhere, usually with Bruce, talking basketball and football and whatever other balls came up.

And ignoring the fuck out of the tiny blonde elephant in the room.

Theo hums a few bars and then he catches himself, realizing a few notes too late that he’s not meant to be enjoying this moment, like not at all. It feels, to him, kinda like he’s cheating all over again.

Sort of.

(Getting ahead again. Just wait.)

“Didn’t know you knew Beyonce,” he says which is, clearly, among the most ridiculous things he’s ever said cause who doesn’t know Bey?

Glenn shrugs. “Not like I’m a card carrying Beyhive member,” he says, eyeing the stacks of boxes. “But she was clearly the best of Destiny’s children, you know?”

He glances back at Theo and, not for the first time, there’s a rush of anger, of crippling sadness, of blood burning anger that comes over him and he has to look away, lest he find himself doing something about it. He wonders if Theo really gets what he’s done, if he understands just how far and how wide and how deep the damage he’s done reaches. The Theo he knew would’ve, he’d have totally gotten it.

But then, Glenn figures, the Theo he knew wouldn’t have done it in the first place. That Theo never would have brought home some skanky little… skank and he sure as hell wouldn’t have touched her or kissed her or…

Glenn focuses on the boxes, on the neatly stacked,secured, and packed away remnants of Lauren’s former life - and it is her life, that Glenn’s thinking about (mostly) - and tries not to wonder how he could have ever misjudged someone so badly.

And ignore that nagging little tug at the back of his head that just says no fucking way cause, obviously, fucking way. Lauren saw.

She saw.

Theo speaks up and brings Glenn back to reality. “I’m…” He shakes his head at the crack, the tiniest little hiccup of a thing, in his voice and God, how he’s wishing it really had been Amy and Reagan on the other side of the door cause at least maybe he’d be unconscious for this. “I’m, um, gonna grab a beer and hang out on the porch,” he says. “Better to be out of the way like that.”

Glenn nods like it’s the most logical thing he’s ever heard - and it does make sense - and keeps right on staring at those boxes as Theo slips past him and on down the hall and then, and only then, does he steal a glance at the stairs, a move he immediately (is there something sooner?) regrets..

Lauren, maybe you should wait…

What if, he wonders - for about the one zillionth time - she’d listened to him. What if she hadn’t charged up those stairs and down the short hall and through her bedroom door (for what would be the last time) and found… well…

The end. That’s what she found. The fucking end. Kinda literally.

Glenn’s tried so very hard to not blame himself, mostly cause he knows that’s just stupid - he wasn’t the one who hadn’t managed to keep it in his pants, after all - but it’s hard (absolutely

no pun intended) not to feel at least a little responsible. He’d seen the car in the drive, the car that wasn’t Theo’s, same as Lauren had. He’d heard the noises, the laughter and the moans and the voices that weren’t supposed to be there, same as Lauren had. He’d felt that sinking feeling in his gut, that sudden drop, like the world stopped turning and the gravity just fucking quit and he was left adrift, nothing to anchor him, all those things that had moored his life to normal just ripped away, even before he’d seen a thing.

Same as Lauren.

Or, you know, maybe not exactly the same, but close enough, it had all been close enough, they’d been two peas in a pod (they were 'twinning’, as his niece might say) right until that moment, right up until they weren’t. When he froze.

And Lauren didn’t.

Glenn’s tortured himself about it ever since. He’s laid awake so many nights, asking himself that same fucking question.

No. Not 'what if’.

Oh, he’s asked that too. What if he hadn’t froze, what if he’d done something - anything - other than calling out to her, so weakly, so meekly, so… so like he didn’t mean it, like he didn’t really want her to stop. And there it is, there’s the question Glenn’s been beating himself to a mental and emotional pulp with.

Why?

Why didn’t he stop her? Why didn’t he try harder? Why didn’t he do something to try and, at least, shield her from some of it? He loves her, or so he claims (in his head, only to himself, never once out loud except that one time to Katie, but who is she gonna tell?) and yet…

And yet he let her charge up those stairs - alone - and walk in on her husband with his pants gone and his mistress very much not gone and his hands on her hips and his lips on hers and

Glenn heard the muffled moan of a kiss interrupted by a scream (he’s never known if it was her or Lauren and he thinks, maybe, that’s better) and then…

It’s Lauren. You can imagine the 'and then’. Though, maybe, you might not want to.

He could have stopped her. OK… he could have tried and then, maybe, his conscience would be a bit clearer, maybe there’d be a bit less guilt and a bit less doubt and a lot more room in his head and heart for doing what he’s supposed to be doing, which is being Lauren’s friend, being supportive, and being the one (or, really, one of the ones) hating the fuck out of Theo for hurting her.

Except…

Except instead of doing what he’s supposed to be doing - literally, in this case, since he’s not walking those boxes out to his sister’s truck in the driveway - Glenn’s doing the exact opposite, instead of leaving, like he knows he should, he’s turning and walking into the house, through the kitchen, down the four stairs to the back, and out onto the porch and if Theo’s at all surprised to see him there, he doesn’t show it.

He probably expected it. A Solis staying when they should be going?

Must be in the DNA.

Glenn settles in the chair closest to the door, the one he always sits in, the only one that doesn’t have it’s back to the door and no, nobody ever asks why or what happened… over there… that left him with the unshakable need to limit the exposure cause, well, nobody ever asks anything about over there and he never talks about it.

Except to Katie on those nights when she was a tiny tiny and he babysat to give his sister and Amy a little break and he said a whole bunch of things he never should have said but, again, who is she going to tell?

(Besides, you know, her shrink when she’s older.)

“It doesn’t make sense,” he says and Theo doesn’t look at him or ask what 'it is’, though there’s a list of possible 'it’s’ a mile long. “I’ve gone over it and over it,” Glenn says, trying not to get a bit… bothered when Theo still just slowly sips his beer. “And all I ever come up with is that either you’re the stupidest fuck alive or…”

He trails off (yeah, cause the trail off ever ends well) and lets it dangle there, hanging between them, and if he’s waiting for a reaction?

He’s gonna be there a while.

'You remember the day she caught you?“ Glenn asks and yes, it is mostly a rhetorical question cause, duh, Theo’s probably got a vague recollection. "You remember where she was?”

The words 'with you’ trip off Theo’s tongue with the kind of ease reserved for basic facts of the universe: water’s wet, the sky’s blue, Liam Booker was a manwhore of epic proportions, you know, the obvious stuff.

Glenn’s surprised - just a bit - by the way it stings, by the sudden sharp pang of guilt he feels in his gut, like he’s the one in the wrong here, like he did something bad. He didn’t, not really, but he remembers enough Sunday school to remember there’s some sort of rule about not coveting another man’s wife, but coveting ain't cheating.

And rules? Don’t get Glenn started on rules.

Rule #1: Do the right thing, always, and you don’t need any more fucking rules.

Though, technically, coveting is probably not the right thing, but he’s just going to ignore that, OK?

“We had that conference,” he says, ignoring the insinuation he isn’t totally sure Theo meant to make cause, well, it’s easier that way. “The one for the mayor, to kick start his campaign for governor,” he says. “And it was supposed to run all day, remember? Till like five or six, at least.”

Theo takes another sip of his beer. A bit slower this time.

“We weren't supposed to be back,” Glenn says. His fingers are digging into the armrest of the chair, his nails chipping the wood, not that he notices. “We were supposed to be gone all day and then go to dinner after and we weren't supposed to be here then.”

'But you were’. That’s what Theo’s supposed to say. If there was a script for this -like the whole thing was some crazy ass plot twist cooked up by some whackadoo writer typing away at a tiny little computer at a tiny little desk and oh, then it would make so much more sense - then Theo’s next line would be 'but you were’ and he’d say it all bitter and angry like, as if it was Glenn’s fault that he and Lauren showed up when they did, like he was blaming everyone but himself like all the cheating asshats, like him, do.

Theo says nothing. Not a thing. Not a single fucking word and so, no, he’s not following the script, like not at all.

“She’s always figured that was it,” Glenn says, like 'always’ is 'forever’ or 'for so very long’ and not just for three tear filled weeks. “That was what made you think you could get away with it, why you thought… why you dared to bring her here.”

A schedule. A plan. A Lauren Cooper devised and laid out event (that went off without a hitch, that went off perfectly) that had a set start and end time and Theo had to know, he had to be so sure off all the timing cause, come on, it was 'Campaign by Lauren’.

Who could blame him for thinking it was safe?

Glenn stands, tugging his phone out of his pocket, scrolling through his messages. It takes him a minute - his phone’s been bombarded by texts recently, the 'I’m crying and alone at two in the fucking morning’ kind in particular - but he finds the one he’s looking for and reads it and then he reads it again.

Just to be sure.

T-Money: How’s it going? Everything on track?

He tosses the phone down on the table in front of Theo, and he’s not surprised - much - when he doesn’t even look at it, doesn’t even check the reply.

Or, you know, the evidence.

“I texted you back,” Glenn says, settling back down into 'his’ chair, hands on his knees. “I told you it was all going great, so great, better than even Lauren could have planned and we both know that’s gotta be pretty fucking awesome.”

Theo sips his beer and stares straight ahead. He says nothing, still.

But yeah, he knows.

Glenn runs one hand through his hair, which is kinda pointless since he still keeps it buzzed to his damn scalp and there’s nothing to run through, but it’s a nervous habit, a tic, the sort of thing he did when he was younger and he was asking Amanda King to the prom. He’s worried… no, not worried.

He's scared.

He’s fucking terrified, worried that he’s right and maybe a little more worried that he's not and he doesn’t know what he’s going to do with either, but he’s still gotta try, he’s gotta push on cause, you know, he froze.

He owes her this much.

“I told you,” Glenn says. “I told you things were going to finish up early and we were going to stop home before the dinner.” He watches Theo’s fingers close tighter around the beer. “I told you we’d be here. You knew. You knew and you brought… her… here anyway.”

'What can I say’ and 'thrill of danger, the risk of getting caught’ and 'she got off on it’ all come spilling out of Theo in a jumble, a mess of words that run together and if that didn’t make them sound rehearsed - like he’s been waiting for this - the fact that he can’t even look at Glenn, that he pushes the beer and the phone away and lets his head fall into his hands…

Yeah, Glenn can read that tell. Hell… Karma could.

“You wanted to get caught.” Glenn says - fuck 'says’, he snarls - his hands balling into fists in his lap. “You wanted Lauren to see you with her, you wanted to hurt her -”

“It was the lesser pain,” Theo blurts and then cusses himself under his breath. He didn’t mean to say it, he’d sworn to himself that he wouldn’t. “This is why,” he mutters, “this is why I wished she’d send them.”

Amy and Reagan wouldn’t have pushed because they wouldn’t have known and, more to the point, neither of them would have cared. They’d have punched first, not asked questions at all, loaded all the boxes second and, probably, punched again.

And he’d have deserved them. That would probably be the only thing Theo might think that they’d agree with.

“What the fuck does that mean?” Glenn snaps. He’s forcing himself to stay in the chair - not that he’d actually, you know, use his pinky (probably) - trying to give Theo a chance to explain, even if he can’t, for the fucking life of him, think of anything that could explain any of this. “You think finding you and her was somehow 'lesser’?” His fingers curl the air quotes around the word as it burns its way off his tongue.

“There’s degrees, Glenn,” Theo says. “Degrees of everything. Love and hate and… pain. And yeah, as much as it killed her, Lauren finding us that way was the lesser pain, like a thousand degree burn compared to falling into the sun. I know it sucks and it’s ripping her up, but she’ll get through it.”

He says it like there’s another option and not just some other, fucking mythical pain that Lauren couldn’t get through. There’s no such thing, no such pain or challenge or obstacle she just can’t overcome. Glenn knows that. He’s sure of very little in this world, but he's positive of that.

“She’ll get through it by hating you,” he says. “By despising you and cursing you and regretting the day she ever met you.” All of which, he doesn’t mention, Lauren’s already doing in fucking spades. “And that, all of that anger and hate, it will burn like the sun, but it’ll never last. It just can’t. Sooner or later, it’s going to burn itself out and then? Lauren will be empty. You’ll have your little whore, but she’ll be alone and that’s what’s going to fill in those hollow, empty, burned out places you left in her.”

Theo snorts - a bitter and angry grunt of a thing and, really, where the fuck does he get off with that - and shakes his head, ignoring the bits about the damage he did (he doesn’t need Glenn to remind him, the ring still on his finger does that just fine) and focusing, instead, on the one thing that he can even kinda get upset about.

“I think we both know the last thing Lauren’s going to be is alone.”

And there it is. The heart of the matter. The elephant in the room who isn’t even there but can’t be ignored any more.

“Fuck you,” Glenn says - and so much for 'brothers’ - pushing his way up and out of his chair and now he’s the one with the burning suns scorching just beneath his skin. “If you think I would ever use this to -”

“I don’t,” Theo says and the edge has slipped from his voice, the knife edged words sheathed again. He slumps back over the table and Glenn doesn’t know what to make of it, or how to process the way this guy he thought he knew so well is shifting gears right in front of him. “I’d never think that. Not of you and not of her.” He laughs again and this time it’s almost genuine and not at all bitter of angry. “Hell, if you even tried, I’m pretty sure your sister would fuck your shit up, family or not.”

He’s not wrong.

“But you’ll be there,” he says. “Like you’re always there. Like you’ve stayed all along, when you knew her heart was somewhere else and you didn’t care.” Theo looks at him, finally, and it’s all right there in his eyes. “You love her. You love her the way that I did… the way I do… and that means you’ll stay.” He looks away, biting at his lip, the pain keeping the tears at bay. “Always.”

There’s an obvious retort, a clear comeback just teed up for him and Glenn sees it, right there, just waiting. But that’s just it, isn’t it? It's obvious, it's clear, it's easy and all of this, from them walking in on Theo and her to Lauren having his shoulder to cry on to Theo not even fighting the divorce at all - he offered her the house, for fuck’s sake (she said no) (for, again, all the obvious reasons) has been like that.

Obvious. Easy. Clear.

He’s the bad guy, the cheating dick, the loser who threw away years - his entire life since high school - for a cheap side piece.

Yeah. Obvious. Easy.

And, suddenly, it’s all a lot more clear.

“What’s her name?” Glenn asks and Theo’s head snaps up. “Your mistress. What’s her name?”

“What?”

Glenn bites back the 'did I stutter?’, trying to keep his temper in check. “What’s her name?” he asks, again. “Where did you meet? How long was it going on? You gonna marry her, now? Is she even interested in that, or was this just about fucking a married man?” He takes a step to the table, leans over it, looming - as much as someone a good foot fucking shorter can - over Theo. “What’s. Her. Name?”

Theo scoots back, just a little. “What’s. Your. Point?”

Well… fuck. Just… total and absolute fuck. Like all the fucks all in one place and that place?

Right smack between Glenn and Lauren. Because now, he knows. Maybe not all of it, maybe not exactly why - but just wait, he’ll get there - but he knows enough.

“You threw it away on purpose,” he says and Theo doesn’t argue the point so, yeah, fuck. “You made sure you did the one thing she’d never forgive and no, that’s not the cheating. It’s being made to look a fool. And you made sure… with my help… that she caught you.”

Glenn staggers back and falls down into his chair. His brain… it doesn’t work this way, it doesn’t think like his sister’s or Amy’s or even Karma’s (especially not Karma’s.) He sees everything in all it’s simplest of terms, in kill or be killed, be happy or not, love or don’t. The messes Reagan told him about from back when she and Amy first got together? They’re as foreign and as weird to Glenn as carrying an M-16 through a fucking desert would be to his sister or to her wife or to Karma (yes, especially Karma, again.)

So, this?

Yeah… this is some Star Wars live long and prosper world of wizarding he who shall not be named shit.

(And yes, he knows those are all different. He’s spent far too fucking long around Amy not to.)

“You had it all,” Glenn says and he’s incredibly proud that he keeps the judgement out of his voice. “Everything. You’ve been in love with her since high school, you survived four years apart in college, you had the most sickeningly fairy tale wedding that I’ve ever seen, and you threw it all away, on purpose, when you had everything you ever wanted.”

Ten Years Ago

The first time Amy says those three little words, Reagan’s right there with her.

“I hate you.”

She isn’t actually next to Amy, at the time, or even near her, really. She’s in the back, by the pots of coffee - regular and decaf and something called half-caf that she’s not really sure she understands or wants to as, really, she prefers her coffee like her women: strong and rich and able to rev her engine with a single taste - but, for once, she doesn’t mind a little distance from Amy. She doesn’t even mind (much) that it's Karma next to Amy or even that it’s Karma who's holding Amy’s hand.

(OK, maybe that part bugs.) (A little.) (If, by ‘a little’, you mean a lot.) (Like all.)

But still, it's… OK. (And yes, OK is absolutely as far as she’s gonna go.) This is what Amy needs right now. Karma is what Amy needs right now and yes, Reagan’s sure that 'right now’ really means 'in this one very specific time and place’ and is not code for 'has secretly always wanted all along and will dump you and go running back to Karma as soon as she makes a pit stop at her house and pulls out the I Heart Karmy tee shirt she’s got hidden way in the back, under her suitcase.’

At least she thinks she’s sure and, really, she knows that means she’s not sure, like at all, but Amy told her and if there’s anyone’s word Reagan would take on how Amy feels?

It's not Amy.

But Lolo said it too, and she’s standing right there with her (her being Reagan) and that is good enough, or at least close enough to good enough - like good enough adjacent - to get the job done.

And, as she keeps reminding herself - and may soon resort to having Lolo remind her too - this whole mess was a mess long before her and long before Lolo and long before any thought of liking girls (or anyone, really) had even started to cross Amy’s mind. This is a mess, a fight, with history.

History, when it comes to Amy, equals Karma. At least, Reagan keeps reminding herself, for now.

So there she stands, in the back (said that), by the coffee (said that too), close by Lauren, which means close by Theo (which Reagan doesn’t really mind) and close by Shane (all good there) and that means close by Liam.

Wait. What now?

Yes, Liam. As in Booker. As in Asshat A#1, Duke of the Dicks, Sultan of Shit, King of the Fuckboys.

(She couldn’t come up with an insult that started with 'K’, though she tried, but that took more than like thirty seconds and that was far more time than Reagan was willing to give… him.)

She wasn’t sure why Liam was there, except that the new girl - the one she’d seen him and Karma with, right before Karma had gone all Mike Tyson on Jack’s face - was there and, it seemed, wherever she went, Liam was sure to follow. He was like a puppy.

It would’ve been cute if it had been, well… anyone else.

And so, yes, new girl was there too and yes, she did seem sort of, kind of, in ways Reagan didn’t really want to think about, less than new.

Reagan couldn’t remember the new girl’s name (liar) even though she knew she’d heard it, once, from Liam, and so, yeah, you might understand why she wouldn't want to remember,

why she’d be willing to do damn near anything to forget it, even though she knew she never ever would. New girl was a permanent fixture in Reagan’s brain already, she had herself a cute little cubbie, right in the center of brain town, just off to the left of the four story office building that was Amy and the slightly shorter tower that was Lauren, somewhere just behind the little collection of bungalows that were Shane and Theo and, God help her, Karma.

And if she was going to keep thinking in real estate metaphors, Reagan was going to need something a lot fucking stronger than coffee.

It wasn't just her name that Reagan remembered, even if she said she didn’t. It was her face. Reagan knew, from like the very first moment she saw her, she was never going to forget that face. How could she?

It was just like Amy’s.

Karma said once that the first time she saw new girl (oh, for fuck’s sake, Lucy) that she looked sorta familiar. Reagan said once that Karma was in fucking denial, cause saying Lucy looked familiar was like saying Lolo looked kinda like the girl from Bunheads and sure, she was probably like one of six people who ever even watched that, but come on.

It’s called Google. And IMDB. Look it up.

The point (she did have one) was that Lucy looked a lot like Amy. Like Amy, if Amy had Karma’s hair (the style, not the color, though Reagan had to admit, Lucy’s strawberry blonde dye work was on fucking point.) Like Amy, if Amy had a splash of Lauren’s cheekbones and like even one one-hundredth of Lauren’s skill with blush and shading. Like Amy, if Amy had just a bit of that impish smirk of Shane’s.

Assuming that imps were constantly looking at everyone they talked to like they were imagining them naked. And yes, she meant everyone.

It was all of that - the Karma hair and the Lauren cheeks and the Shane smirk - that unnerved the shit out of Reagan the moment she saw Lucy, all up close and personal and not just on a street corner. But she could get past that, even if she couldn't forget it. It was the just like Amy part she was having some trouble with.

Lucy looked just like Amy, or close enough. 'Just like’ adjacent. (Hey, it was a good line the first time, right?) Maybe close enough that you could tell they were related, that maybe you might think, at first glance, that Lucy was a slightly younger (six months and three days), a bit less infatuated with doughnuts (she prefers crullers) (whatever the fuck those are), and so much less weight of the world (read: weight of Karma) balancing on her shoulders version of Amy. But that was just it.

She was just a version. Amy was the original, the one and only, accept no substitutes.

Unless, of course, you were Jack. In which case, it would seem, you would just accept right the fuck away. Which was, obviously, the entire reason for those three little words.

“I hate you.”

(Remember those? We’re getting there. Promise.)

But still, Reagan couldn’t get past it. Her eyes kept drifting to Lucy. Not because she liked her or wanted to like her or was even thinking of liking her. No, it was because as just like Amy as she was… it was the differences that were like a fucking tractor beam, pulling Reagan’s eyes to her. Lucy seemed - right up until the moment Amy dropped those three little words - like she was happy. Relaxed. Easy going and carefree and untouched by anything. Except, you know, maybe, Liam.

Reagan refused to think about how that might make her even more just like Amy than she already seemed.

In general, she was trying - and mostly failing - to refuse to think about Lucy at all. She didn’t want to think about Lucy, cause that would mean thinking about Lucy and Jack and that would mean thinking about years.

Nine of them to be precise.

Nine long years when Amy had been with Farrah and failed marriages numbers one through Bruce. Nine long years when the closest thing Amy had had to a father was Lucas Ashcroft and, no offense meant to Karma’s dad but… well… he was Karma’s dad.

Not to suggest that his daughter’s shortcomings painted a failing picture of him as a dad but…

Where was she? Oh. Right. Nine years.

Nine years of Amy being alone in ways no one else could ever understand. Nine years of her trying to remember only the good times she and Jack and her mother had had - Farrah had assured Reagan that there actually were some - but all of those memories being drowned out, shouted down, buried every single time by that other memory.

Because of you. I’m leaving because of you.

The first time she met Jack, a week ago yesterday, Reagan punched him in the face. She spent the rest of that night wondering if maybe, just maybe, she was getting a bit too used to resorting to violence to solve her problems. First Liam, now Jack. And then she remembered that, she imagined a younger, weaker, more heartbroken and not tough enough to hide it version of Amy, sitting alone in her room, those words running over and over and over in her head.

And then, she thought, maybe she hadn’t been quite violent enough.

That’s the other reason, besides the whole history thing (and the fact that Karma nearly pushed her out of the way to be by Amy and Amy didn’t seem to be bothered by that) she’s back here, by the coffee. She’s afraid - like genuinely concerned - that she might punch the fucker again, the moment he opens his mouth.

Of course, had she realized what Amy was planning, Reagan might not have been so worried about that.

“I hate you,” Amy says. (Told you we’d get back to it.) “I don’t know why you’re here and I don’t really care, I don't want to know.” Reagan resists the urge to mutter a 'you go, girl’ (it’s not still 2003, after all) but she can see the Lauren’s blonde mane bobbleheading up and down, silently cheering her sister (and fuck DNA and biology and blood, she’s Amy’s sister) on. “Whatever it is that you think you came back here for? You can forget it. You can forget me.” Amy turns to go, but pauses, and turns back. “You did that for nine years. I’m sure you can remember how.”

Reagan’s impressed and she doesn’t impress easy and, yes, she knows that’s bullshit because when it comes to Amy she impresses oh so very easy, but you get the point. It (her speech) was short and sweet and to the point and didn’t give Jack any time or any chance to even say a single word -

Words he would, apparently, have to be saying through another bloody lip cause Amy takes all of two steps before pausing - again - then turning and delivering a right hook to her father’s face that makes even Reagan wince and, she’s pretty sure, draws a very not manly whimper of pain from Liam.

It’s all she can do not to laugh.

And then they’re off. Amy and Karma and Lauren and Theo and Shane, across the shop and out the door, the other customers parting like the sea. Lucy’s already by her father’s side and Liam… well… he’s just… there. He looks to the door like he wants to follow the others, but he knows he really can’t, and he looks to Lucy and Jack like he’ll stay there but there’s already a wall of sorts up around them, a circling of the Raudenfeld Lee wagons and he’s on the wrong side of that too. He’s stuck there, for a moment, lost and confused, until he finally just shakes his head and drifts off, seemingly headed to parts unknown and Reagan can only hope maybe he’ll stay there.

She almost feels sorry for him. Almost. After all, she’s still there too. She didn’t follow the train out of the station with all her friends. (And, you know, Karma.) But unlike Liam, that’s got next to nothing to do with her not knowing where she belongs. Quite the contrary, really.

She knows this is exactly where she needs to be.

Lucy glances back over her shoulder at her as Reagan slips down into the booth across from Jack, but Reagan pays her no mind. She’s not about to let herself get distracted by little Miss Almost-Amy, not right now. There’s a napkin and some silverware on the table and she - very nonchalantly - twirls the knife on the tabletop, spinning it with a finger.

“Round and round it goes,” she mutters, barely holding back a smirk at the way Jack flinches at the sight of the spinning metal, or at the way Lucy suddenly reaches out - far quicker than Amy ever could - and snatches the knife from the wood. Reagan looks up, locking eyes with Jack before she speaks again. “She doesn’t mean it, you know.”

“What?” It’s Lucy who asks and it’s Lucy who Reagan ignores, again.

Reagan repeats the knife act with a spoon, but that doesn’t elicit quite the same reaction as the knife. “You probably don’t know this since, you know, you don’t really know her, but Amy didn’t mean that. Any of it.”

“It sure looked like she meant it.” Lucy again. Reagan’s tempted to tell her to go chase after Booker and let the grown ups talk, but Jack beats her to it, resting one hand on Lucy’s, a silent father to daughter moment.

Nine years. They’ve had nine years to learn that. Nine years they stole from Amy.

Reagan sort of wishes she had the knife back.

“She wants to,” Reagan says. “She wants to hate you. Actually, she really wants to not give a fuck about you one way or the other. She wants your presence or, more likely, your absence, to not mean a thing to her.”

The 'but it does’, she leaves unsaid. Jack gets it, she knows that. But him, actually hearing the words… well, that might be just a bridge too far for Reagan right about now.

“But see, that’s the thing about Amy,” she says and even Jack, who doesn’t know Reagan from fucking Adam, can see the look in her eyes, can tell how much this 'thing’ makes her love and hate her girlfriend all at once. “She forgives. Always. Eventually.”

There’s a moment when Jack’s tempted to ask if this is about him or about that girl, the one he remembers all too well, the one that was holding his daughter’s hand. But he doesn’t ask cause he already knows.

And he’s not stupid.

Reagan drops a hand down on the spoon, stilling it in mid-spin. “She wants to forgive,” she says. “She needs to. It’s in her nature. Maybe not her DNA, but in her.”

Forgiveness is Amy. Even Farrah knew that.

Someday, Karma Ashcroft is going to come walking up to my front door…

It isn’t that Reagan doesn’t understand, cause she does. She gets it all too well. Amy’s spent years hating - or trying to hate - Jack. Hate him for what he did before he left and the way he left and for staying gone for all this time. She’s spent so very long trying to hate him for all of that and yeah, Reagan gets that, she knows a thing or two about how that feels.

“It feels exhausting,” she says, not realizing or caring how out of nowhere that might sound. “It wears you down, carrying that with you. That’s why people always say that forgiveness is really for you, not for those you forgive.”

Jack nods and Reagan wonders if there’s a step for that, if one of the twelve he’s supposedly on speaks about forgiveness.

Even for those who don’t deserve a lick of it.

“She wants to hate you,” Reagan repeats, you know, for emphasis. “And I do. And that is never going to change. There is nothing you can ever do that will make me…” she slowly shakes her head and pushes herself out of the booth. “Way I see it, Jack, you’ve got two choices. You can do what you do best, what you taught her to do. You can run. You can pack up you and your… Lucy… and leave the same way you came in, slipping out in the dark where no one can see.”

Jack nods again, finally speaking, his tongue slipping out between words to swipe at the blood pooling on his lip. “And my other choice?”

Reagan shrugs. “You can start giving her reasons to do what she already wants to do,” she says. “And maybe, one day, like ten years from now, you’ll wake up one morning to discover you’ve got an actual relationship with your daughter.”

The 'but I’ll be there, right there, watching every move and waiting, just waiting, for the inevitable slip’ she leaves unsaid too.

They both already know that.

“Amy came here today because she thinks, somehow, that you’re still worth a chance,” Reagan says, leaning against the edge of the booth and hating every word of it, even though she knows it’s all true. “If she didn’t, she would have just ignored you, kept right on pretending that you just don’t exist. She’s pretty good at that, you know. Must be in the genes.”

Jack doesn’t reply cause, really, what could he say?

Reagan runs a hand through her hair and she wonders, not for the first time, what might have happened if she’d just listened to the fucking GPS. “Amy thinks you’re going to stay,” she says, and a deaf man could hear the doubt ringing in her voice. “She’d never say it out loud, but she’s got just enough Karma in her that somewhere, way deep down, Amy honestly still truly believes in happy endings and that the good guys always win and that people… all people… they’re just inherently good.”

It is, in fact, one of the things Reagan secretly loves so very much about Amy. One day, like ten years from now or so, she might even tell her that.

It is, though, one of the things she and Amy don’t have in common and Jack has already picked up on that. “And what about you, Reagan?” he asks. “What do you think?”

It’s a loaded question and he knows it and she knows it and Lucy knows it, even if that’s just about the only thing she knows about any of this. Reagan sort of envies her for that. “I think that you and I both know better,” she says. “People aren’t inherently good or bad. They’re just people. And people do good things and people do bad things. And some people you can count on and others…”

She shrugs. Others, it says (screams) you can count on too. To let you down. Every. Fucking. Time.

“You don’t think Amy can count on me?” Jack asks her.

Reagan laughs. Like a legit laugh. “She counted on you to stay gone and you couldn’t even manage that,” she says. Her phone buzzes in her pocket and she doesn’t have to check to know it’s Amy or Lolo (she’d prefer the former but figures it’s more likely the latter) wondering where the fuck she went. “In the end, Jack, I think you’re just sober enough, just guilt ridden enough that you’ll try. You’ll do everything you can to make yourself believe that she’s actually right about you.” She leans down, pressing her palms flat against the table, so she can look him in the eye. “But in the end, I know she’s not.” She laughs again, before straightening back up to walk away. “Ten bucks says you don’t even make it to graduation.”

It’s not Jack, but Lucy who calls after her as she crosses the shop. “Ten bucks? That’s it? Not so sure of yourself after all, are you?”

Reagan pauses by the door. There’s a witty comeback, a razor-sharp line already poised and set, ready for her to let it fly. But that would keep her there, that would make her linger. Another second to turn, another three or four to say the words, another five or six to watch them land, to see if, maybe, Jack’s ego is as fragile as his face.

But see, her phone? It’s buzzing again. And this time, she does check, slipping it from her pocket even as she walks.

Shrimps: Where are you? I sent Karma and everyone else home. I need you.

And when Amy calls? When Amy needs her? Well, that math is the simplest there is. See, that ten bucks? It’s just like that one or two or six more seconds here instead of with her.

It’s all more than Jack’s worth.

Eight days after the fire

She’s drunk.

He doesn't need to be an expert on the subject to be able to tell that - not so long as he can see the way she’s staggering around and slurring her words, or the sounds he thinks are trying to be her words - but, it just so happens that, when it comes to being full on, sloppy as all fuck, you’d best be praying to whatever God you believe in that you don’t remember this tomorrow morning drunk?

Jack’s got a fucking Ph.D.

He supposes that’s why Amy called him. Or, rather, why she settled for him, why she realized maybe - for like the first time ever - he was her best choice. That, he knows, was just plain old dumb luck. Amy had called Lucy trying to find Karma and she did find Karma, she found the both of them, together - though Jack is pretty sure they aren't really together, not like that - with him, in his living room in his house, even if he was almost never there anymore and especially even if Karma had sworn never to take even one step over the threshold.

“I’ve spent enough time in your house over the years,” she said. “More than you have so, I’ll just stay on this side of your new door, thank you very much.”

Jack could be forgiven if he heard that as ’fuck you very much’. It was, after all, what she'd meant.

She’d stuck to it, even then, showing a bit of that famous Ashcroft stubborn streak, refusing at first to come inside. But after the fire and after the doctors finally let Lucy come home from the hospital, Jack refused to let Lucy out of his sight and, apparently, Karma did as well and, when neither one of them seemed inclined to back down in the slightest, Lucy sighed, walked over, and took Karma’s hand and led her inside and that was just the end of that.

And that was yesterday.

Still, twenty-four hours of house guests, is just that. Twenty-four hours and maybe he’s lost a few (or more than a few) brain cells along the way, but Jack’s not so stupid that he’s letting any of this make him think anything has really changed. Karma’s at his house and Amy’s asked him for a favor (and it was actually an ’ask’ and not a ’tell’ and yes, that was different) and that’s all well and good and progress and he knows the mantra: one step at a time.

But his next step? Yeah, that’s the tricky one. The one he’s stumbled on pretty much every day for the last seven years, the one that’s always there to remind him that progress or no progress he’s still him.

That next step is Reagan.

Once she, you know, notices him standing there and all. She’s still a bit too stagger-y and yell-y and clutching that bottle in her hand like it’s her life-y to have spotted him.

So, no, Jack’s got no illusions about anything. He knows this isn’t a total sea change, it’s not some seismic shift in his life, a massive one-stop-shop fix for his relationships with just about everyone (read: everyone who isn’t his daughter) (the daughter he came with, not the one he left) and he knows that none of this is about him or about him and Amy or about putting a few more planks into the bridge over the chasm between them (the one he made, the one nine years pretty much dynamited into permanence.)

Hell, this isn’t even about Reagan, not really. It’s not about who she is or what she’s doing or what she’s lost, even if all that is what got Amy on the phone and why she sucked up her pride and tucked away her resentment and anger and sadness and anger and frustration - and did he mention anger - and actually asked him for help.

“She hasn’t even cried,” Amy said. “Not since the funeral and I think she cried more at Liam’s than at…” Jack could hear it over the line, the ache and the empty and the powerlessness, the total inability to help the one you love.

He’d hoped to never hear that again. Not from her, not from Amy.

Hearing it from her mother - about him - had been enough of that for one lifetime.

Jack spares a moment to look away from Reagan - she’s less staggering and more leaning now, on a tree that doesn’t seem likely to let her fall any time soon - and glance up at what used to be his daughter’s home away from home, at least in the physical sense. He understands, so much more than anyone gives him credit for, that Amy’s real home stopped being a place a long damn time ago. It turned from a where to a who (Karma, at least at first) right about the time her other home - the real one every kid is supposed to have - disappeared into the Austin night, never to be heard from again.

Except here he is - that disappearing home - and never, apparently, is a fuckload shorter than the word suggests.

But now, that home - Amy’s home - isn't the girl sitting who spent all those years in the house Jack built and abandoned. It’s not the woman she's become either, the one silently watching over Amy's sister, much the way she used to watch over Amy, standing guard as Lucy sleeps fitfully, tossing and turning and crying out in fear as nightmares of flame and smoke and Liam’s ash and soot covered face dance inside her mind.

Amy loves Karma and everyone knows that and everyone knows she always will. But Amy's home is five feet in front of him, leaning against a tree, muttering under her breath, clutching to a bottle in way Jack finds both terrifying and oddly familiar - and yes, he’ll grasp at any straw of similarity when it comes to him and Reagan - and he knows he can’t ever undo the last sixteen years and, if the fire has taught them all anything, there’s not a single shred of a guarantee that there will be sixteen more.

But the here and the now? Maybe he can do something about that.

Besides, you know, fucking it up.

The building, such as it is, well… it’s not really a building anymore. There’s walls still standing, sure, and some of the roof and the insurance guy, the one Amy dealt with while Reagan lurked in the background, giving him a glare Jack had once thought was reserved for him, did say that it wasn’t a total loss.

Insurance guys, Jack thought (then and now) probably out to sit down and redefine 'total’, cause he was pretty sure no one he knew agreed with Mr. Insurance’s assessment in the slightest.

There was a booth left. One, from the back, as far removed from ground fucking zero as it could have been and still been in the building. It was… salvageable. A couple of semi-standing chairs, a light fixture or two. A stance of menus that had somehow been protected beneath the melted glass of the front display case.

“If you’re going to rebuild,” insurance guy had said, “it’s not much, but it’s a start.”

It had been all Amy could do to keep Reagan from punching him, a habit Jack had thought she’d finally outgrown. But tragedy, he knew, could make anyone backslide.

Anyone.

He thought about it now, about that word. Start. A start from an end. Two of them, really, and it was almost four. Jack doesn’t like to think about it, he’s spent almost every single minute of the last eight days actively trying to think about anything else. Trying not to think how close Jana came to not making it - it’ll be another week, minimum, before they send her home - and trying even harder not to think…

He’d almost lost her.

Sometimes, Jack knows, he focuses so much on Amy, on fixing or at least not worsening, things between them that he almost forgets Lucy. She says that she doesn’t mind, she says that she understands and she and Jack both let that be true.

He has a feeling that might not hold up anymore.

She almost died. Another minute, another two, maybe three, another two or three or four more breaths and she wouldn’t have taken any more. A little more smoke, a little more flame and those thoughts make Jack shut his eyes and try not to think about it and yeah, if that actually ever works, he’ll be sure to let you know.

In the end, Lucy escaped. And no, that’s not quite right. She didn't escape, she was saved, she was pulled, dragged, somehow carried to safety by a young man Jack had sort of come to think of as a son. And that, he knew was just more of his usual bullshit. It wasn’t 'sort of’ or 'kind of’ or a 'little bit’. Liam had been the first real friend Jack had made in years and yes, thinking of it, of him, in sort of’s and kinda’s and the like, it does help to stave off the grief and the guilt, at least for a moment or two.

And then it all comes roaring back and Jack remembers that he’s not supposed to be free of the grief or the guilt (especially not that) but just because he has to live with it… well…

That doesn’t mean she does.

He takes one step closer and thinks - remembering how Reagan hasn’t outgrown punching after all - that maybe that’s close enough. He stuffs both his hands in the pockets of his jacket, it’s unseasonably cool for a Texas night, and stares up at the not-a-building anymore.

“Karma’s acting like it’s all… I don’t know,” he says and yes, he knows how stupid it is to begin any conversation with Reagan by making it about Karma. But he’s much like his daughter, not in an obsessed with Karma way. He’s just a bit of a… round the way kinda talker. He’ll get there, he’ll settle on the point, eventually. You just gotta hang on for the ride.

“I’d forgotten how 'glass half full’ she could be,” he says. “She’s acting like it’s all going to be just fine, like Liam’s just popped on down to the corner store and he’s gonna be back any minute now.”

Karma and Liam. If he's looking to get punched, he’s on the right track.

Reagan doesn’t turn or look or otherwise acknowledge that she even hears him, if she’s at all surprised that he’s there. If she’s shocked that it’s him or that he’s talking about Karma and Liam instead of her father or the bottle in her hand, Jack can’t tell.

Spoiler Alert: she's not. Reagan knew someone would come and she knew it wouldn’t be Amy and - honestly - that it shouldn’t be. Not yet. And as for Jack talking about anything other than the giant fucking elephant in the room..

She’s been with Amy for seven years. She knows the drill.

“In some ways, Karma’s really grown up,” Jack says and he’s right, too, even if Reagan might not be at a point to admit that just yet. Karma has grown. She’s less all about her and more about others, less flighty, less prone to insane plans (future Harcroft spawn notwithstanding) and, in most ways, she’s got both feet planted firmly in the real world.

In most ways.

“Sometimes though,” he says, with a slow shake of his head. “She still slips back, you know? Back to her little house on the corner of Denial Ave and Fantasy Lane.” He leans up against a tree and turns, looking at her for the first time since he got there. “Must be nice,” he says, “but it doesn’t work for everyone, does it?”

“Fuck!”

It’s more of a scream than a yell, something guttural, something past pain, more bordering on desperation and it breaks Jack’s heart. Despite what Reagan thinks, he has come to love her and even if he didn't… no one would wish that kind of agony on anyone.

She hurls the bottle (a bottle) (she’s got another one in her hands already and he’s got no idea where the hell she had that hidden) across the caution tape border surrounding what’s left of what used to be her place, listening with something akin to satisfaction - or whatever’s close enough to that that could actually break through - as it shatters on the remnants of the front steps.

No. Denial doesn’t work for everyone.

She staggers a couple steps back and leans against another tree. It’s the first of the ones that aren’t scorched or burnt or still covered in a layer of soot and smoke. It hasn’t rained since the fire - the forecast calls for thunderstorms over the weekend, but Jack isn’t naive enough to think anything short of another Noah is gonna wash any of this away - and this is as close as she can get without getting into ash and soot and tangled in that tape and, he thinks, it’s funny the things you never realize about fire.

The distance, for one. The way it reaches out, its flickering fingers of flame touching everything, scratching and clawing and digging in, desperate for purchase, fighting to stay alive till their very last breath. Jack’s eyes wander over the wreckage and that’s another one: the remnants. You always think of the damage it does, of the things it burns and melts and destroys.

You don’t often think of what it leaves behind.

Jack’s surprised at that. He’d have thought himself an expert on things left behind.

Fire is those burned out husks, the buildings gutted, the belongings - the possessions - charred to ash. But it’s so much more. It’s the trees gone black, likely to be removed, maybe replaced and they’re not the only thing, but they’re the easiest, the least painful, one tree is the same as the next and oh, if that were only true for everything. And it’s the grass - right down to the tips of each blade - burnt like marshmallows sizzling at the end of a stick. It’s the coughs that linger for days, the dark grime under your nails that you can’t get out. The way your breaths catch in your throat and you’re not sure another one is ever going to come.

It’s the eyes of a woman who looks, for all the world, like she’s not sure she wants it to.

Not that he’d say it to Amy, but Jack would be more surprised if Reagan wasn’t drinking. She lost so much. A father. A friend - and Liam was that, in the end, Jack’s sure - and a building, a business, a home. Even if that had been all of it, the sum total of everything Reagan lost that night, it would still be enough to drive almost anyone into a bottle.

She still hasn’t acknowledged him, which is good, in a way. After all, that means the bottle is still in her hand and not yet flying by his head. It’s dark, too dark for him to see the label, to recognize her choice in poison, but, he supposes, what it is is considerably less important than that it is. It is what it is, Lucy would say. And what it is, right now, no matter the vintage or the malt or the label, is an escape. Trouble is, Jack knows all too well how easily, how quickly, how without warning, that escape from something can turn into a far more permanent trap. Not that he, or anyone else, thinks Reagan’s going to follow down his path. No, for him, that bottle was a life.

For her, it’s an excuse. A high proof, finely aged, burn the inside of your throat until it matches the scorched outside of your world, reason why she isn't picking herself up off the mat, why she hasn’t even started to get on with the getting on. But it’s only been eight days and she doesn't need an excuse. No one - least of all the woman she loves - expects her to be the old Reagan just yet, not now, maybe not ever. But Jack knows better. The excuse isn’t for all of them.

It’s for her.

“She send you?”

That Reagan gets the words out clearly and smoothly and correctly tells Jack that she’s either not drunk enough, or that she passed 'enough’ an hour or so ago and now she’s fully on the downward slope to a sober that will end up tipping that new bottle right down her throat, in a desperate attempt to stave reality off, even if just for five more minutes. Trouble is, that five is never enough. There’s always another five, another ten, another hour, another day.

Another nine years. Give or take.

“She sent you, didn’t she?” Reagan asks again, this time glancing at him over her shoulder, as she points and jabs at the air with one finger from the hand still death-gripping that bottle.

It’s Jack. The bottle.

The irony is strong with this one.

“Well, you can just go right back to her and tell her that I am just A-O-fucking-K,” Reagan says, turning her back to him and staring off into the dark. It’s a moonless night and Jack knows she can’t actually see the details, just the outlines, the shape of things. He also knows that matters very little, as in not at all. “I don’t need her sending babysitters after me. And, you know what? You tell her I’m a little hurt. I didn’t even rate Lolo? I had to get you?”

He could remind her that Lauren is still out of town, that she has been since the night before the fire, that she was the one who talked to her on the phone and told her it was 'fine’ and there was nothing 'she could do’ and she should finish up with everything with Theo’s sister’s wedding and then come home and that would be just 'soon enough’.

He could. But he’d prefer to not get bottle bombed just yet.

“She think you’re gonna scare me straight?” she asks. “That it? You hear to remind me of the dangers of alcohol? Show me what I might become?”

Jack shakes his head, not that she’s looking. “You won’t become me,” he says, silently leaving off the 'you’re far too strong for that’. “I think Amy just… she thinks maybe there’s something I can do for you that she can’t.”

Reagan wheels on him - as best she can - and Jack braces for impact but it doesn’t come, at least not physically.

“In the history of the world,” she says, “there is nothing… nothing… that you could ever do for me.”

She slumps back against the tree and, if he could see that well in the dark, Jack would know her knuckles have gone white around the bottle neck. Her legs give out beneath her and Reagan slides down the trunk till she’s on the ground, her head tipped back against the tree, her eyes squeezed shut against the dark.

“OK,” she mutters. “Maybe there is one thing.” She fumbles in her pocket, dragging her keys out and flinging them in Jack’s general direction. “I don’t want to be here anymore,” she says and yeah, Jack’s going to just go right ahead and assume she just means here, like the literal place and not the more… global here.

Reagan doesn’t strike him as the suicide type. No matter the hell she’s living in.

“I hate you, you know,” she says and yeah, he knows. But he still scoops her keys up off the ground, wondering which will piss her off more. Him driving her truck or her riding in his car. In the end, it’s six of one and a half dozen of the other and, he knows, by the time he’s done, she’s gonna hate him more anyway.

So they’ll take the truck. At least the windows all work.

They don’t go home.

“This isn’t home,” Reagan says and, clearly, being three sheets to the wind - though Jack suspects the cool night breeze and the lack of any further imbibing has made it a little closer to one and a half sheets by now - hasn’t impacted her firm grasp of the obvious. “This,” she says, staring out the open window, “is so not home.”

Jack slips the truck into park and stares at the wheel, collecting himself. This was his idea, and he still thinks it’s the right one - even if it maybe isn’t all that good a one - but that was, you know, before.

Before they got here and before he remembered and, in this case, remembering isn’t just a river in Egypt or a vague sense of recollection tickling at the back of his brain. It’s more like an ice cold hand, reaching up and squeezing his heart, slowly wringing the life out of it like water out of a sponge and he wonders, just for a second, if Reagan would give him that bottle if he asked.

It’s only a moment, but it feels like… well… it doesn’t feel like forever.

It feels a lot - like exactly - like a thousand and one moments he had over a thousand and one nights and Jack cringes, pinching the bridge of his nose and taking a long deep breath, at the thought of how many of those nights ended here, instead of at home. How many of them ended with him on the ground - his own holy ground, but still the fucking dirt - instead of safely tucked away in his bed, in the loving embrace of his wife.

“Do you know how many nights Amy’s crawled into bed with me?” Farrah asked him once, after he’d been gone for two full days. “How many nights she’s taken your place because she heard me crying and wanted to make it better?”

Jack didn’t know then and he still doesn’t know now, but he’s got the feeling she wouldn’t have asked if it had just been once, even if once was already more than too many.

He pulls his phone out and taps away as he kills the engine and yes, kills is probably a poor choice of words, all things considered, but if he’s lucky, nothing else will die tonight. Not him. Not his relationship with Amy, the one dancing on the thinnest of ices.

That’s the hope, but then hope doesn’t just spring eternal for people who make good choices and do the right thing.

It’s there for fuckups like him too.

“Why are we here?” Reagan asks and yeah, that is the million dollar question, but Jack’s got no good answer, at least not a good one he can say.

This, he knows, is more of a show than a tell kinda situation, so he says nothing as he taps out the last letter of his text message - like he’d have ever guessed that learning to do that would actually come in handy - and presses send before tucking Reagan’s keys into his pocket, a move she doesn’t miss.

“Making sure I can’t run?” she asks and Jack thinks - for like a hot minute - of pointing out that even only one and a half sheets pretty much guarantees she can’t actually run, but he’s not drunk (or stupid), so he just slips out from behind the wheel without saying anything, making his way around to the passenger side of the truck, tugging Reagan’s door open.

It sticks a little. Still.

Jack gets it on the second pull and Reagan’s still too confused - and she’s hurtling right past confused and straight on to pissed as fast as her soused brain can get her there - to actually notice, so at least he’s spared a bit of mockery.

“Come on,” he says, offering her a hand out (that he knows she’ll refuse.) “I want to show you something.”

She does refuse his hand - like that’s a shock - but she eyes it for a moment, in that way most people might eye a hissing cobra, her eyes tracking it’s every move (Jack’s holding perfectly still but Reagan’s a bit of a weeble at the moment), mesmerized but wary, before she finally slides out of her seat, stumbling slightly when her feel hit the ground.

“Lead the way,” she says, waving ahead of them and Jack knows full well she just doesn’t want him to watch her weaving and wobbling as she walks and, having been on her end of that deal more than… well… a lot… in his life, he politely nods and turns, walking ahead without waiting for her. She’ll follow, he’s sure enough of that.

He’s still got her keys after all.

She’s on his heels soon enough, as he crosses the small lot and through the old gate that creaks like bones as he pushes it open and God, could this get any more cliche?

Reagan pauses just on the other side of the gate, looking at the rusted plaque hanging to the left. “A cemetery,” she says, her eyes darting from the plaque to Jack’s back and then to the plaque again. “You brought me to a cemetery,” she says. “And it isn’t even the right one.”

Jack’s phone shakes in his hand, but he doesn’t look down, turning instead to face Reagan, still on the other side of the invisible line, the last barrier between the living and the dead, assuming you don’t count six feet of earth and pine boxes of varying quality and age. He knows what she means, knows full well that the 'right one’ - the one they buried her father in three days ago - is on the other side of town.

But it’s not her ghosts they’re here for.

“It’s just over there,” he says, nodding toward the back corner of the small lot before turning and walking ahead again, not giving her a chance to argue with him. He takes the chance to sneak a peek at his phone, the three words blinking back up at him giving him a sense of relief that’s wrapped up in an eggroll of dread.

On my way

Well, he’s all in now.

Reagan doesn’t move, not right away, but eventually the creepy of standing in a dark graveyard by herself outweighs (barely) the creepy of following Amy’s father through said dark graveyard and soon she’s right behind him again, so close he could reach out and take her hand before she’d even be able to stop him.

But he doesn’t. Jack’s got no interest in getting buried alongside his memories here tonight.

He comes to a stop at the far end of the cemetery, the most sparsely… populated… area, only two or three headstones within reach, nothing there but a tree. And, really, calling it a 'tree’ is sort of like calling him a 'drunk.’

The word’s right, by definition, but it somehow misses the scope by like a country fucking mile, if a country mile was the distance between here and the molten core of the sun.

More or less.

It’s huge and Jack swears it’s grown, even if logically he knows that’s not possible. It was old when he was last here - the day he left, the hour after he told Amy it was because of her - and he’s actually a bit amazed it’s even still here.

But of course it is. Some things - some pains - will outlive us all.

“Who?” Reagan asks, stumbling to a stop beside him. “Who’s buried here?”

Jack shakes his head slowly, not quite trusting his voice just yet.

“Come on, Jack,” she says, the drunk edge to her words fading and the old bitter blade he’s used to slicing through the air between them coming slowly back. “You brought me here for a reason, right? What is it? Who is it? What’d you do? Drink and drive and kill someone?”

He lets out a shuddering breath and, for a moment, Reagan thinks that might actually be it and oh, that's… well…

Fuck.

“No one’s buried here,” he says, not even noticing as he takes a couple slow steps back and leans gently against one of the few gravestones. It could be seen as rude or disrespectful but Reagan’s the only other living one here and her opinion of him can’t get any lower. He nods at the tree. “There,” he says, nodding again at a spot low on the trunk.

She looks between him and the tree for a second before, slowly, stepping closer, and kneeling next to it in the dark. She fumbles in her pocket for her cell phone, bringing the screen to life and shining the dim light on the trunk, the jaggedly carved letters highlighted in the faint glow.

KJR

Reagan looks back at Jack, the question written all over face, even as the light of her screen fades to black.

“Did Farrah ever tell you why I started drinking?” he asks. Reagan shakes her head no. She and Amy’s mother talked about him - more than she and Amy ever did - but that was the one subject she doesn't remember them talking about. Like at all. “Didn’t figure,” Jack says, “not that it matters. The 'why’ doesn’t excuse the 'what’ of it all. But…”

He runs a hand through his hair and then crosses his arms over his chest. For once, Reagan isn’t pushing - she’s not doing much of anything - and Jack’s grateful. This is hard enough at his own pace.

“I was always a bit of drinker,” he says. “And maybe 'a bit’ is underselling it, but it wasn't… I wasn’t a drunk, not at first, not in the beginning.”

Everything’s got a beginning, everything’s got a trigger.

“When Amy was two, Farrah discovered…” he trails off and laughs, a harsh bark of a thing, ripping through the quiet of the dark night. “Discovered makes it sound like she found it while exploring new trade routes to India or some shit,” he says. “When Amy was two, Farrah got pregnant. We got pregnant.”

Reagan’s eyes flick back to the tree and she wishes it was just the booze making her stomach roll.

“We never even told Amy,” Jack says. “We wanted it to be a surprise. We were going to tell her at her birthday party. Like it… she… was a present.”

If Jack thought that was going to slip past Reagan unnoticed… “She?” Reagan slumps back against the tree, her subconscious somehow, even drunk, making sure she doesn’t cover the letters. “Another girl?”

Jack nods. “Katharine Josephina Raudenfeld. After Farrah’s mother… Nana… and my gram.”

KJR.

Reagan pulls her knees to her chest and drops her eyes to the ground. She can’t - she won’t - look at him right now.

Jack stands, pushing off the gravestone, but he doesn’t otherwise move. “Farrah was three and a half months along when it happened,” he says. “Doctor said it was just a freak thing, was just nature. We didn’t do anything wrong, we didn't make it happen, it just… did.”

He takes a couple hesitant steps forward, kneeling near her and he wouldn’t even have noticed if she pulled away, but Reagan doesn’t move an inch. She watches his hand running along the trunk, so close but yet so far from those letters.

“There was nothing… we didn’t have a body to bury,” he says. “Couldn’t have a funeral, I mean, who does that for someone who was never really a someone, right?” His fingers shake as they drift ever closer. “She was never Katharine, she was never really real.” If he sounded any less like he believed that… “They say that you’ve lost the baby, but how do you lose something you never had, that you never held or touched or…”

Jack presses his palm against the aged bark of the tree, feeling the cracked and worn wood digging into his skin.

He was going to say 'or loved’. That you never loved.

But that would have been one lie too many, even for a Raudenfeld.

“I’m not surprised Farrah never told you when I started drinking,” he says and Reagan notices, not for the first time, the way her name sounds on his lips and it hits her then - and she doesn’t know how she’s missed it all these years - the simplest of truths about Farrah and Jack.

He left her. But she never left him.

“I imagine,” he says, “that thinking about that… it probably hurts her more than anything. That one day, it cost her so much.” She can’t see him clearly in the dark, but Reagan can feel his tears dripping down his cheek. “Fate took Katharine from her. And then I took the rest.”

Reagan hears the soft sounds of footsteps crossing the lot before he does, but she doesn’t look, an odd sense of… duty?… to Jack - or maybe to Farrah or the baby she never knew - keeping her there, in that moment.

With him.

Just when she thought her life couldn’t get any weirder.

“I’m not here to scare you straight,” Jack says, his hand still pressed… no… still clutching to the tree. “No one thinks you’re going to be me, Reagan, no one’s worried you’ll fall into a bottle and never be able… never want… to climb back out.”

The steps grow still, just behind them and Jack’s eyes flick that way in the dark. He can’t see her there, she’s swallowed up by the night, but then again, he’s never needed to see her, now has he?

“Everyone’s got it wrong, you know,” he says to Reagan - and yes, to her, too - slumping down, his head coming to rest against the rough bark of the trunk. “Everyone thinks my sin… that my addiction was the booze. That I got lost in the drink. And that’s just not right.”

Not entirely, at least.

He turns slightly, eyes seeking out Reagan’s face in the shadows. “Do you know why Amy’s not here?” he asks her, not surprised when the darkness shifts, swirling in space as she shakes her head. “It’s because Amy knows,” he says. “She knows my sin was never the drinking and that’s what scares her, Reagan. That's how she thinks you just might be me, after all.”

Jack tenses, stiffening even as the words tumble out of him. Comparing her to him, well, that’s a much deserved one way ticket to punch town, but Reagan doesn’t move and she doesn’t say a word and maybe, he thinks, that’s why she'll never be him.

“Amnesia,” he says. It’s almost a whisper, but it might well be the loudest thing he’s ever said to anyone. “That was my sin, my addiction. Forgetting. Forgetting her,” his hand slips down the trunk, tracing a slow path over the border of those letters he carved so many years ago. “Trying to, at least. But I never did. I never…”

Those steps again. Closer. But halting, holding their distance. But just barely.

Jack turns again, facing Reagan in the dark. “I never forgot her,” he says, “it didn’t matter how much liquor I tried to bury her under. And I know you’ll never forget him either, your father.” He reaches out, his hand finding hers and maybe it’s just because she can’t see it or maybe it’s, oh, who knows why, but she lets him take it. “But I did forget, Reagan. I forgot what… who I had. I forgot I wasn’t alone.”

Those steps again, not stopping this time. And why would they… why would she? Jack called her here.

Your daughter needs you. The one you chose. She’s with me.

With the one you lost.

“Amy’s not here,” Jack says, “because you know you have her. You know she’ll never go, that wherever you are, she’s…” He trails off, he doesn’t actually say it, but then he doesn’t have to.

Reagan hears it anyway. She hears it every day.

Jack squeezes her hand and then, slowly, deliberately, he lets go. “Amy needs for you to remember,” he says. “That it’s not just her. You lost a father and that sucks beyond sucking and there’s nothing that can ever bring him back. But you…”

“You still have a family.”

Reagan turns to those words, spinning in the dark, those steps finally breaking through, and she doesn’t need to see to know Farrah’s there, right where she always is. Waiting for her to slip out of the dark, to find her way.

Her way home.

It’s only three steps but it feels like three million before Reagan’s tipping and toppling into her arms… her mother’s arms… and maybe it’s the feel of those arms around her or the way she instinctively just knows they’ll never let her go, but whatever it is - and the what doesn’t really matter, not in the end - that’s when the dam breaks, when the rush of everything she’s tried to bury, just the way they buried him, comes hurtling out of her in sobs and heaves and, for just those few minutes, Reagan’s not sure it’ll ever stop.

But she’s sure - she remembers - that even if it doesn’t?

Her family is never far.

Three years from now

The last time Reagan ever says those three little words, Amy’s nowhere near.

It’s still so weird to her, being here - Farrah’s house - with him, with Jack. It doesn’t matter, not a whit, that Farrah is OK with it. And it somehow matters even less that Bruce says he’s just fine with it.

Fine. Fuck that. Reagan may not have invented 'just fine’, but she’s Goddamned perfected it and if you don’t believe that, well, you can go right ahead and ask Amy.

But probably do it… later. Amy’s time is something of a precious commodity just now.

“It feels like a betrayal,” she says, leaning against the kitchen counter next to her father-in-law, well, one of them, anyway. “Him being here. Him staying here. I mean, yeah, I know this was his house first -”

“And thanks for the reminder of that,” Bruce mutters and for a moment Reagan thinks she’s said the exact wrong thing and oh, like that would be a first. But then Bruce gives her a grin, that old goofy 'I'ma fuckin’ with you’ good old boy grin of his - the one she’s never quite squared with the man who spawned Lauren 'Satan’s ninja’ Cooper - and nudges her with his shoulder. “I get the sentiment, Rea,” he says, “and I certainly appreciate it, but…”

He shrugs and that’s only about the five hundredth time someone has done that in the last six weeks, it’s happened so often it’s become a part of their family’s unspoken language and yes, it’s nice that they have something like that - and that she gets to be a part of, rather than apart from it - but it still just pisses her off.

Like that’s a first, either.

“Believe me,” Bruce says, “I know how you feel. I know Jack makes you uncomfortable and trust me, having my wife’s first husband living here, it’s not my idea of a good -”

She cuts him off. Hard. “It was your idea,” she says, turning against the counter, and scooting closer so she can whisper, lest Lucy or Karma or - worse - one of the kids hears her. Reagan’s been down that particular road with both her sister-in-law and her bff-in-law, and she knows they absolutely hate it when she speaks ill of Grampa Jack in front of the children. “You’re the idiot who suggested it.”

“Because I knew Farrah wanted it,” Bruce replies, ignoring the 'idiot’ part, and lowering his voice as well. He smiles politely at Emma as she snags an apple juice from the fridge and makes her way back out of the kitchen. “And I knew Amy wanted it.” He shrugs, again and Reagan grips the counter to keep from smacking something. “And it’s not like he’s gonna be here that long.”

He’s right. He’s so very very very right. But all the rightness in the world, doesn’t do a thing to keep them both from freezing in place at his words, their eyes doing a slow pan around the kitchen, out to the living room, just to make sure no one heard that.

It’s horrible to speak ill of the dead. That’s one lesson - maybe the only one - Reagan got from her mother that actually stuck. And, she supposes, that probably should apply to the nearly dead too.

Or, it will, if either of the nearly dead’s daughters (or Karma) or his granddaughter (or Emma) (or even Luke, even though his father wasn’t the nearly dead’s kind of son, but both of them still call him Grampa Jack and no, that’s not weird at all and God, sometimes Reagan thinks this family of hers needs a fucking flowchart) heard them.

Bruce nods, mostly for lack of anything better to do - and at least it’s not another shrug - but when he leans back on the counter and waves to Farrah, out in the living room with her little Katie-did on her hip, the smile crossing his face doesn’t match his words, not at all. “You don’t like it and I don’t like it and Lord knows Lauren doesn’t like it,” he whispers softly, “but this? It isn’t about us.”

He pats Reagan lightly on the shoulder and heads out of the kitchen, ruffling Luke’s hair on his way as - not for the first time - Reagan wonders why he’s not Papa Bruce or some such homey shit and yeah, she gets it, Karma and Shane are closer now to Jack than they are to Bruce and yes, she knows that’s only logical (he’s Karma’s family now, after all) but it still just… bugs.

Some things, she thinks, really never change.

She sighs and fires off a glance down the hall, at the very closed door to the spare bedroom that Bruce and Farrah added on a few years back. It was meant, at the time, to be a room for Katie, a nursery of sorts, first, and eventually her own bedroom, so she wasn’t just fitting into her mom or Aunt Lolo’s old room. It was meant that way and, Reagan supposes, it might someday still be that. Maybe.

Or maybe, when it’s all said and done, they’ll bulldoze the fucker to the ground and start all over.

The door’s shut, like it almost always is. She wonders sometimes - always silently to herself and never out loud, especially not to her wife - if keeping it shut is more for Jack's privacy or their benefit. There’s something to be said for out of sight, out of mind, even if she knows full fucking well that Jack hasn’t been out of anyone’s mind in months.

Cancer has a way of doing that.

Death does too.

She doesn’t need to do another scan of the room to know exactly who’s MIA, who’s behind that closed door. She’d watched as Amy headed off that way almost as soon as they got here, not before handing off Katie to her Nana (and yes, Reagan knows that’s a family tradition and that’s who Farrah is now, and she’s fine with it but, to her, there will always be only one Nana) and she hasn’t been seen since.

If she sticks with her usual pattern - and Mama Amy is nothing if not a creature of habit and routine now - Reagan won’t see her again, at least not for another hour and no, that doesn't really bother her. It doesn’t bother her so much that she only brought it up once, wondering if maybe Amy was spending a bit too much time with Jack.

“He doesn’t have much time left, Rea,” Amy said, in much the same soothing voice she used to try and get Katie to sleep at three in the morning, and yeah, that probably had something to do with both being somewhat lost causes. It was Amy’s 'mama’ voice and, if it wasn’t such a sweet and oddly arousing thing, Reagan might have objected to being 'mothered’.

The fact that she was holding her daughter, who had finally fallen asleep, in the rocking chair in the nursery - the chair Jack fucking built - and it was just about the most perfect moment she’d ever experienced had absolutely nothing (read: everything) to do with it.

“I just worry,” she said softly, careful not to wake the sleeping beauty. “I don’t want you see you get hurt.”

Amy nodded and smiled and if it didn’t quite reach her eyes… well… they were talking about the death of her father. And that, more than anything, was precisely why she so easily humored her wife about it all, why she didn’t object or get offended any time Reagan brought it up. Younger Amy might have. Younger Amy would have probably agreed but then argued just on principle.

(Read: for the make up sex.)

(Mostly.)

But Mama Amy wasn’t younger Amy and Mama Amy had spent the better part of thirteen years with every version of Reagan. She knew her wife inside and out and she knew that every time Reagan mentioned her spending a little less time with Jack?

It was always about her wish to spend more. She knew that when they talked about it, like this, they weren’t always - or even mostly - talking about the death of Amy’s father.

So, Amy did what Amy always did and kissed her wife softly and pressed an even softer kiss to the top of her daughter’s head and gently reminded Reagan that she couldn't get hurt, not by him, not anymore, and that now was the time, the only time, because time was one thing Jack just didn’t have much of.

“You heard the doctors,” she said.

Yeah. Reagan heard them. She heard their words - stage four, lungs, and maybe six months (or weeks) (she heard that too) - and she heard Jack joking about always thinking it would be his liver but he 'must have pickled that bad boy’ just a little too well (and she was the only one who laughed) and she gets it. She really does.

Getting doesn’t equal liking.

And neither of those equals being comfortable - something she’s never been and never will be when it comes to Jack and his place in their family - and yes, Reagan's also heard every one of the lectures (from Karma) (no one else would dare) about how holding a grudge, especially one against someone who never, you know, hurt you, is probably a bad idea and definitely not what a mature woman trying to be a role model for her little girl would do.

“Katie's three months, Karma,” Reagan said (said, not snapped, and see? She's matured.) “By the time she’s old enough to know what a grudge even is, I’ll be over it.”

She left off the 'cause he’ll be dead and all’ and see (again)? So. Fucking. Mature.

But Reagan’s heard it all and she's tried, really she has. She keeps her comments to herself, mostly, or to Bruce. Sometimes Lauren. Occasionally Katie, but only during middle of the night feedings and never in front of her mother or her Nana, and so, most of the time, she falls back on that other old chestnut that Martin taught her, for dealing with her own mother.

If you can’t say something nice? Well…

At least have the decency to whisper.

So she keeps quiet (mostly) and even tries to not let it seethe inside her, to not let herself dwell on it - and that’s so obviously working, right? - and to try to see Amy’s and Farrah’s and Lucy’s side of it all. She tries and sometimes she even succeeds, a bit, but it still feels… wrong. It still feels like a betrayal, though not of her, not really. Of something bigger than just her, bigger than one or two broken hearts (even if one of those was her wife’s), something like…

Them. All of them.

See, the thing Reagan can’t get past is that she remembers. She so remembers that moment when Amy told her what Jack said, about why he left. And she remembers the first time Amy told Jack she hated him. She remembers the first time Amy punched him, the first time she did, hell, she remembers the first time Karma did - and yes, every one of those was a first, not a last, or an only - and she remembers how Farrah threatened him with severe bodily harm when she found out he was back and the way Shane glared and Lolo tensed every time he was near. It wasn't just her.

They all hated him.

And yes, Reagan knows that hate is a fuck all lousy thing for anyone to need to unify them, to bring them together and she gets it - she really does - that somewhere along the line, hating Jack got to be more work for them than it was worth.

You think she never had that moment? That she never once thought about him with something other than hatred and disgust and disdain and a few more synonyms she can’t think of right this minute?

Reagan looks out into the living room, smiling at the sight of Farrah and Bruce bouncing her daughter between them, laughing uproariously at her every smile and giggle.

Her daughter. Katie.

“Katharine?” Amy asked her, in the hospital, as they laid her daughter in her arms for the first time? “I love it,” she said. “But it wasn’t on our list. What made you think of it?”

Reagan just shrugged and smiled and said she’d always thought it was a beautiful name and that wasn't a lie. Not totally.

So, yeah, she’s had that moment.

And maybe now she's always having that moment, every time she talks to him, every time she sees him and she finds herself cursing him under her breath for making her heart break - hers, not her wife’s - and for confusing her, for making it damn near impossible for her to tell anymore why it breaks.

Why it's breaking.

If there’s one lesson she’s learned from Jack, it’s this: it’s so much fucking easier to hate.

She’s alone there, in the kitchen, and Reagan remembers standing right here, right next to this counter as Amy helped prep the meatballs and Farrah slapped Bruce’s hand to keep him from stealing any more of the garlic bread - Martin’s recipe - and Lauren looked on with a bemused look on her face, like she knew she was seeing the beginning of something special, and she remembers…

Candles. Trick fucking candles.

And fuck all… why did she have to remember that?

It takes her about half the steps to that closed door - fourteen, if you’re counting along - before Reagan realizes she’s even moving. But once she does, you might think she’d stop, you might think that the fact that she has never once set foot in that room since it became his room, would be enough to bring her to a screeching halt.

And you’d be right.

But, if you’d think she wouldn’t just shake it off, that she wouldn’t just put it aside and start walking again?

Well, then you’re clearly living in the past, which is something you and Reagan might have had in common until about forty seconds ago but see, there it is again. Time. Living in the past is keeping yourself stuck in time.

And ain’t nobody got time for that. Not Amy or Lucy or Farrah or - God, help her - not even Reagan. Not anymore.

She doesn’t knock and Amy’s not surprised it’s her when the door opens. Anyone else would've knocked, but Reagan's not anyone else. “Hey,” Amy says, not looking up from the spot on the bed where her hand is resting over her father’s, neither of them moving. Reagan can’t help but notice the stark contrast, the way Amy’s skin’s still suffused with pink, all the blood, the life still flowing freely, and Jack is so…

He’s pale. That’s the word for it. Pale. That’s all he is. But it’s not all he almost is and Reagan has a moment - just one - where she wonders if this is it, if that’s why she’s here, finally, after all this time, cause somehow she knows this is her last chance.

She’s not wrong.

Jack’s been stubborn and Jack’s hung on, months longer than he should have, and every day seems like maybe it's the day, but damn does he keep fighting and lingering and…

Waiting.

“Where’s Katie?” Amy asks, even though she already knows and Reagan suspects that her wife knows, as in knows why she’s here, in the doorway, unable - just yet - to take that one final step.

Again, she’s not wrong.

“Your mom and Bruce have her,” Reagan says and she knows she’s whispering and she knows that’s fucking pointless - Jack can’t hear and even if he could, what difference, really? - but she can’t stop. “We may have to fight them for her when it’s time to leave.”

A time, she thinks, that’s coming faster for some of them than others.

Amy nods and stands, her thumb ghosting one last time across Jack’s knuckles. “I’m gonna go see if I can steal a few minutes with my nephew then,” she says and Reagan doesn’t even think of pointing out that Luke isn't really related, cause he so is and none of that is even remotely the point right now. “I’ll be back in a little bit.”

She pauses, just for a moment, as if she’s waiting for Reagan to stop her, to tell her no, don’t leave, I’m not staying with him, what kinda cray cray talk is that? But when Reagan just nods and steps into the room, so that she can step out, there are tears in Amy’s eyes and, this one time, they're not about Jack.

The door shuts silently behind her and Reagan’s alone. Alone with him and that almost never happens but every time it ever has, she always says the same thing.

“I hate you.”

In truth, she’s lost track of how many times she’s said that to him over the years. She know that probably says more about her than it does about him, like, for instance, that she’s obsessive and possessive and vindictive and probably a few other 'ive’s she doesn’t know but she’s sure apply.

But still…

“I hate you,” she says again, settling down into the chair next to the bed, the one Amy was just in. There’s one on the other side as well, Lucy’s, and somehow Reagan doesn’t feel right in that one, as if this one is somehow perfect. “Always have,” she says, her hand resting on the bed, not on him. “Always will. Dying isn’t a get out of jail free card. Just so you know.”

There’s silence in the room and Reagan notices that she can’t actually hear anything on the other side of the door. She knows they’re out there.

But she's in here.

“Sometimes,” she says, “I wonder. I know it’s stupid and self-centered, but Lord knows I can be both of those from time to time.”

He doesn’t argue. He wouldn’t if he could. And not just because he learned not to argue with her - about anything - long ago.

Reagan scoots the chair a little closer, so she can rest her elbows on the edge of the bed. “I wonder… why? Why did you stay?” It sounds heartless, even to her, questioning an almost dead man’s motivations, but… “I know you say… I know you do love her. But, sometimes I can’t help wondering how much of it was about Amy and how much of it… how badly did you just once want to prove me wrong?”

Ten bucks says you don’t even make it to graduation

That was the first time. Jack learned not to argue and he learned that, no matter what he said and what she said, Reagan was always right.

Except when she wasn’t. And that was almost always about him and yeah, she suspects he took no small amount of joy in that. She would have, if she’d been him.

“I should have known,” Reagan says. “I should have seen it was a sucker’s bet. You're her father and you’re both living proof that stubborn is genetic.”

She hears the word - 'living’ - fall from between her lips and OK, maybe not the best choice there, but come on. It’s not like she can offend him.

“You made it to graduation,” she says, remembering him there, in the back, in the last row of the faculty. He was still the Hester art teacher back then, the cool Mr. Lee, even if, by then, they all knew that was really his middle name. “You didn’t cheer,” she says. “Not for Amy or Lucy or for Liam.” Her fingers clench and unclench atop the sheets “But I saw you. You didn't need to cheer, did you?”

He glowed. Fatherly pride and yeah, she spent most of the ceremony staring daggers at him and thinking how… wrong… it was that he got to feel even one shred of that. She was so busy staring, she almost missed Amy crossing the stage until Farrah almost toppled out of her seat from the sheer force of her whooping.

“I should have seen it then,” Reagan says, as she leans forward, letting her forehead rest on her upturned palms. “It should have been so clear, the way it all worked. I would figure zig, so then you’d zag. I’d think left, so you’d go right. I’d think gone…”

He’d do stay.

When they left for New Orleans, she was sure. Like 100% certain, like positive that there was a better chance Liam and Shane would end up a couple, than there was that Jack would still be there when they came back.

“Four years,” she says. “Four fucking years and nothing here for you the whole time. It was so clear, so obvious.” She shakes her head and almost smiles. “Amy actually considered staying, you know. In New Orleans. We’d made a life and a home and we were happy.”

She leaves off the 'without you around’. Maybe she can't offend, but there’s no need to kick a man when he’s down.

And who would have ever thought she’d pass up a chance to kick him?

“I convinced her to come back. I talked her into moving home with Karma and the whole time, I was so sure…” Reagan leans back in the chair, forcing her hands into her lap. “I knew that you hadn’t left yet, so I’d been wrong about that, but maybe it was just… timing.”

He’d hung on, waiting out the college years. Waiting for his daughter to come home so they could pick up where they’d left off - not that that was anywhere special - but Reagan was so very sure (yes, again) that seeing Amy, the grown up and fully adulting Amy, would do the trick, would make Jack feel useless and pointless and make him wonder just how long it would be before his very smart and now very independent and not scared of anything daughter cut him the fuck off. Like she should have, long long ago.

“You’d hightail it,” Reagan says. “Either out of town or into a bar and no, it didn’t really matter which. Same end result, you know?”

And he did hightail it, he did run. Right to the nearest bank, where he took out a loan so he could expand the coffee shop - his foothold, his foundation in Austin - and open a second location. Reagan fully expected it to fail.

She wasn’t wrong then either.

But when it didn’t do so well, Jack didn’t throw in the towel or throw back a bottle (or six) and stuck it out, waiting and working and doing all the little things until it did work and wouldn’t you know that everyone (read: Amy and Farrah and even Lauren) was suitably impressed and, yet again, Jack had zigged instead of zagged.

“You persevered,” she says and yeah, the word still tastes a little bitter on her tongue. “Just like you did with Amy. Except that was no coffee shop, was it?”

No. It wasn’t. And - again (sense a pattern, yet?) - Reagan thought that would be it, that the longer it took and the less progress he made with Amy, the more she made him jump through hoops and follow rules and the more nowhere he got for it…

“It would take a toll. It would drain and punish and hurt and you don’t deal well with that,” she says - and she’s not telling him anything he doesn’t know - and she was sure not dealing well would eventually translate into fucking up and, again, she wasn’t wrong. Not entirely.

Jack fucked up. The second shop thrived, for a bit, right up until it didn’t and then it sank like a stone and he almost lost everything. He tried dating one of his baristas but then he cheated on one of his baristas with one of his baristas and they both quit.

But he didn’t.

Reagan remembers more, the long catalog list of the fuck ups of Jack. “You argued with Lucy so much about college that she didn’t speak to you for three weeks,” she says. “You thought buying Planter’s was the dumbest thing ever and you begged Amy not to help me. You even went to Farrah, to try and get her to talk us out of it.”

Remember how those first punches weren’t the last punches?

Now, you know why.

Also, Farrah didn’t talk them out of it. She chipped in.

“Every time,” Reagan says. “Every time you could have… should have… just cashed out. Like when Lucy went to college and left you. You could’ve just moved with her, it’s not like nobody else tailed a Raudenfeld girl off to school.”

And even that wouldn’t have been wrong or enough. It wouldn’t have been leaving, yes, but not like that.

But he waited. He stayed. And then, when Lucy came back after graduation, they did leave. A two month trip to Brazil and they sent Amy pictures every day, Skyped twice a week, and Jack was as stone cold sober - with a nice tan and a new appreciation for spicy food - when he came back as when he left and yeah, Reagan hadn’t seen that coming.

“You came back with her number, too,” Reagan remembers, with a small smile that she can’t quite kill, cause damn did Jack still have some game. “That little cutie from the surf shop. Her number and her email, but you still managed to fuck that up too, huh?”

He did. But she doesn’t really remember how, but she does remember the way Jack shrugged it off when Amy asked him about it at her birthday dinner and - now - she remembers the way he was talking to her, but staring at her mother, and yeah, that probably explains all anyone really needs to know about the how.

Or at least the why.

He fucked up and he made messes and he ruined shit and any one or all of them… they should have been enough. They should have pushed him out of town, or out of his mind, or right into a scotch and soda - hold the soda - and every time Reagan was sure.

“I’m not usually wrong, you know,” she says. “Not that much. Not that often.”

Reagan sighs and tips back in the chair, her eyes falling to the nightstand beside his bed, to the frames sitting on it. They’re those clear acrylic ones you can get for like 99 cents and she sees her own face smiling back up at her from one of them, right alongside Amy’s and Katie’s. She’s all of three hours old in that picture and Reagan still remembers that Bruce had to take it cause Farrah couldn’t stop crying enough to focus.

Jack had asked for that picture, when he moved in, but Farrah wasn’t sure that was the one he really wanted. “I can get you a different one,” Farrah told him. “One of just Amy and the baby, if you’d like.”

Subtlety was never Farrah’s strong suit.

But Jack hadn’t liked. That one, he said, would do just fine. Reagan suspects he thought it would annoy her. Or that, maybe, he actually loved her too.

Yeah. No.

She plucks the frame from the table, cradling it in her hands. “Amy was three months along when the doctors told you,” she says. “Three and a half when you told everyone else. Six months away.”

Six months. For Katie. And for Jack.

They said it was a long shot. Six months was the outside, the far end of the scale, that anything past three… well… that was just Jack living on borrowed time. Maybe, with treatment, the most aggressive, they could… prolong things. Maybe. But he’d be in the hospital the whole time and his immune system would, basically, cease to be and sure, if he could last long enough, he’d be able to see the baby.

From behind glass and from a distance and that was only if he was lucky and the docs, they didn’t put all that much stock in luck. No matter what he did, it was going to be a race and it didn’t seem the odds were in his favor.

Not that Jack listened and oh, there’s a shock. “I’m going to hold her,” he said, even before they knew it… she… was a, well, she. “I’m not going to see her under glass, like some exhibit at the zoo.” Oh, he told everyone exactly what was going to happen, he’d tell anyone he could get to listen - and it’s probably not that surprising the number of people who suddenly listen when they know you're dying - that he was going to make it.

“With time to spare,” he said. “I’ll see her born. And then some.”

Reagan sets the frame back down, and scoops up the other one, staring down at it like it’s the first time she’s ever seen it, not like she’s the one who took it. “I remember,” she says, “when Amy suggested that maybe she get induced a little early. So you could 'beat the clock’.”

It was probably the only time Reagan can ever remember seeing Jack angry with Amy or raising his voice to her.

And it was definitely the only time she could remember agreeing with him. Or understanding why.

She stares at the picture. Jack and Katie, both as bald as can fucking be, both looking right at her, and Goddamn if her little girl doesn’t have her grandfather’s eyes. “You made it,” Reagan says, softly. “You made it. You got to see her born… and then some.”

She sets the picture back down, carefully, and turns to the bed and then her hand… it’s on his and he can't take it and, truthfully, Reagan isn’t even sure he’s still really there. But Amy is and Lucy is and she’s not going to take that from them.

She’s spent long enough trying to take Jack away.

“I hate you,” she whispers. “I hated you before I ever met you. Because you hurt her. Because you somehow got it in your stupid head that leaving her was better for her and I will never ever be able to understand how anyone could leave her. Ever.”

Her eyes flick to the picture. Her and Amy and Katie and no, she can’t ever imagine a time when leaving her daughter would be anything close to an option. But then, she doubts Jack ever could either. Not until he did. Not until the math just added up.

Because of you. I’m leaving because of you.

“You said it wrong,” Reagan says. “Not 'because of’. For. You left for her, before you and Farrah ruined each other and she had to watch.”

A little pain, Jack had figured, was worth it. A little hurt, a little loss… well… it was math.

Her eyes drift to the other picture, to his smiling face, and yeah, the smile is as big as the world, but his… he's…

“I remember when I took it,” she says. “I remember thinking you shouldn’t have been there. Not because I didn't want you to be, cause I did. But you should’ve been…”

Gone.

Until the day she dies, Reagan will never tell anyone, not even Amy, about the next few minutes, about the way she presses her cheek against his hand - so cold, already - or about the way she heaves and sobs, like she did in Farrah’s arms so many years ago. Those are the first and last tears she sheds over Jack.

And they’re just for her.

When they’ve passed, when she’s got herself back in one piece, Reagan stands, still holding his hand in hers. She leans over him, memories of a coffee shop table and a stupid fucking bet that she’d lost even before she made it, flooding her mind. She kisses him, one soft press of the lips atop his head, and she whispers.

“You left for one little girl, Jack. And you stayed for another. And I swear to you, I’ll take good care of them both for as long as I live.” She squeezes his hand one last time. “It’s OK,” she says. “You can rest now.”

Reagan walks from the room and down the hall and out the front door without a pause, without slowing or speaking to anyone. Lauren starts to follow, but Amy catches her arm and shakes her head. Reagan climbs into her truck - not Lightning, not anymore, cause some things do change - and she drives without thinking, though she knows where she’s going the entire time.

The text from Amy comes as she’s leaning over Martin’s stone, her fingers tracing the letters of her father’s name.

He’s gone.

It takes you all of thirty seconds to decide, another twenty to make the call and so that’s less than a minute and then…

Well, then there’s nothing to do but wait and let’s face it, you’re fuck all at that. But, even though it’s the longest ten minutes of your life, you do manage to spend all 600 seconds of it not doing anything to actively making this any worse, so at least you’ve got that going for you.

A win’s a win, right? No matter how small.

You’re about to crack, about ten more seconds from losing your nerve and turning right around, walking right back into the diner and right up to Reagan and putting your lips right on hers and yes, that is an awful lot of rights and yes, you know they’re all mostly wrongs, but it’s been ten minutes with no Reagan and no Sophie, neither of them looking for you, and that's left you alone with just your thoughts and those are about the worst fucking company you can imagine.

You used to think no one could have more insane plans per minute than Karma.

Oh God, were you wrong.

Your hand is on the back door, the one leading from the break room to the alley and you know you’re on the wrong side of it, but that hand… it’s pressed against the door, holding it shut cause apparently some part of you still has some fucking sense but that sense is just about worn thin, like barely frozen ice you’re about to fall right the fuck through and that’s when you hear it, the sound of your savior, the familiar rumble of your mother’s engine.

Her car’s engine. You haven’t heard her engine rumble since the last time Bruce came back to Austin to visit Lauren and, as Farrah put it, “these things just… happen” and yes, you do realize now that these things do indeed just happen.

And you realize even more than you’d like, right now, in this so very rumbling (the car) and stumbling (you) (that’s all that you’ve been doing for what seems like forever now) and barely holding it together - and, in the case of that door, shut - moment, that you are far far far more like your mother than either of you ever imagined.

Once upon a time, that might have been a good thing.

There’s no reason - except sentiment and guilt a heart not quite as broken as it should be and yup, you are just so her - for Farrah to still be driving that big old fucking boat (a Goddamned yacht) of a car that Bruce bought her in those last few months of their marriage. It was all circling the drain by then. Her affair with your father (and yes, that’s as odd to think as it is to say) coupled with Bruce’s wild all or nothing homerun swings at proving… something… about his manhood or his prowess or some such macho bullshit (hence the yacht) was nothing short of a walking, talking, nonstop disaster (Epic Fail would have been kind) and it was all you and Lauren could do to, somehow, sometimes, look away.

“It’s like a car wreck,” you said. “Like a ten car pile up and you’re so worried someone might be dead, but you can’t stop looking and wondering and then… you’re almost disappointed when they’re not.”

Lauren nodded and watched - with horror and fear and rapt attention - as Farrah tried, and mostly failed, to appear something close to grateful or happy or anything other than the oh my God, why? she was feeling, but not saying, as Bruce gave her the grand tour of her new wheels.

The tour lasted like twenty minutes and you swear that was just the time it took to walk from one end of the fucking thing to the other and did someone say overcompensation?

“Sometimes,” Lauren muttered, turning to go back in the house (the one she was increasingly concerned wouldn’t be hers much longer), “it’s time to quit the CPR and just give up the ghost.”

Sometimes, she said, it’s time for the head to tell the heart what it already knows.

Dead is dead. And there ain’t no coming back.

Lauren, you’ve decided, wasn’t wrong. (Like that’s something new.) And, you know that your call to make… well… the call (to your mother) and your hand pressing shut on the door (to the diner) (to Reagan) is your head talking to your heart.

You’re just not sure it’s listening yet.

(Actually, you're absolutely fukcing positive it isn’t but you’re equally as not sure you want it to and yes, that’s as confusing as it sounds and you know it must mean something when all of this shit with Reagan and Sophie and Reagan and Sophie is all so royally fucked up that it’s actually enough to make you miss Karma and her mixed like a Long Island Ice Tea signals.)

(It means something.) (God help you if you have the first fucking clue what.)

You watch as Farrah squeezes the yacht down the alley and alongside you and you’re diving into the passenger seat almost before she’s even had time to slow down, not that the she’s actually going, you know, fast. For all it’s size and power, the yacht goes zero to sixty in about a fucking week but even as slow as it is, it still takes a good four or five more feet before your mother is able to actually bring the beast to a complete stop.

Farrah clutches the wheel and lets out a long shuddering breath as the brakes squeal so loudly you’re sure they heard them in Dallas (or, you know, behind that door that’s still not opening even though you’re not holding shut anymore.) Since the damn thing’s not moving anymore and she needs a moment to collect herself again - now your mother is also turning, which means, unfortunately, taking a good long look at you.

And if the long slow sigh isn’t a tip off how that she doesn’t like what she sees… well… it really is. You’ve been hearing that sigh from Farrah for years and yes, you’re used to it, but let’s face facts here. There’s a metric fuckload of things you’re used to.

Sophie’s crappy coffee. Karma’s two am drunk texts. Sophie’s snoring. Lauren’s looks (you even have an alphabetical list of what every one of them means.) Sophie’s habit of brushing her teeth with your toothbrush, Sophie’s incessant need to play that fucking Lola Montez song every time some new girl turns out not to be the girl, Sophie’s borderline obsession with finding a way to use the dancing lady emoji in every text conversation.

You’re sensing a pattern here.

(Besides the pattern of your roomie being somewhat nuts.) (Takes one to fucking know one.)

And yes, that pattern - the real one - is that you are used to a ton of things and now damn near every one of them feels like a thousand tiny knives in your heart and yes that fucking sigh from your mother is one of those.

Farrah is your OG. She was the first one you let down, the first one you failed. Clearly, not the last, but that’s not the point right this second.

She reaches out - the mother in her still seeing you as a tiny, as her little girl, even if you’re, you know, a grown up now (supposedly) - her hand hovering in the air just above your eye and it’s like you can feel the gentle brush of her fingers coursing through the air and you’ve got no earthly idea how you manage to not flinch, to not pull away.

“It looks worse than it is,” you mumble, your eyes unable to meet hers and that little lie is really just for you, cause this is Farrah we’re talking about.

She can always see your truth for the bullshit it is. At least when she wants to.

Her hand drops back to the seat between you and you let out your own slow, staggered breath, one that you hadn’t realized you were holding in. “You’ll want to ice that,” she says, “when you get back to the dorm. Before the swelling really sets in.” And then her hand is back on the wheel and the beastly yacht is slowly working its way to the other end of the alley.

The dorm. The dorm.

Well fuck.

Every inch the yacht chews up and spits out is one inch and then two and then six and then a whole fucking foot and 5,280 of those makes a mile and like ten of those makes a spot in the parking lot outside your dorm.

Which is, you know, not just yours.

How that particular thought didn’t occur to you till just now, well, who the fuck knows? Sure, you have some other… things… on your mind, but let’s not bullshit here, OK? Those other things? Like 99.9999995 percent Reagan - and 99.9999994 percent of those thoughts involve her with far less than 100 percent of her clothes - and like… the rest, which is more maths than you can handle right now are all Sophie, so maybe that explains how the whole dorm thing slipped through the cracks.

And oh, how you wish there was a crack or two you could slip through right now.

Farrah doesn’t say anything else - and neither do you, not until you hit the highway and there’s enough distance between you and… them… that you feel you can breathe again - and you can tell, surprisingly, that neither of you even wants to say anything.

You’d expected a lecture or, at the very least, a stern talking to. But Farrah, you realize, has come to the exact same conclusion you did in the ten, fifteen, twenty seconds before you made the call. The damage has been done. And there’s nothing you can do, no words you can say, no Harry Potter spell or crazy monkeys with typewriters that will even begin to come close to undoing it.

You’ve made your bed - and it’s in the fucking dorm - and now you’ve gotta lie in it. (And yes, lie is the right fucking word.)

Unless… maybe you don’t.

The idea comes fast and hard (yes, like Reagan did when you did that… thing… with your tongue and your hands and oh, why can’t you stop thinking about that?)

(Dumbest. Fucking. Question. Ever.)

You shove those thoughts away (for now) and focus on the idea, the one that seems so simple and easy and perfect that you can’t believe you didn’t think of it before now. It’s the oh so you solution.

It’s running. Except, sort of, running to instead of away, or at least you can claim it is and you’re the only one who can call you on that bullshit and you figure you’ve got at least… a week, seven days… before you’ll do that.

You don’t look at Farrah as you speak, focusing instead at the white lines counting down every one of those 52,800 feet. “So,” you say, as the car shudders its way onto the highway and the air returns to your lungs for the first time since you saw your phone in Sophie’s hand. “I was thinking… I kind of miss you. And home. And so maybe…”

Farrah doesn’t give you an answer. But when she exits the highway some 15, 840 feet sooner than she should, well, that tells you all you need to know.

It doesn’t help. It doesn’t help at all.

That ‘it’ is an ice pack and no, it doesn’t do much of anything, not for the pain or the swelling you can already feel starting in your cheek and around your eye, or for the regret and all the burning self-recriminations that started long before Sophie drilled you in the face. The bitter and painful cold of that ice, pressed tightly against your eye, doesn’t do much of anything for any of that.

The feel of Reagan’s hand, holding it there? Well… that does a lot. More than it should, more than you’d like.

And now that’s just another of your fucking lies and you know it even before you think it. You’d like - love - that touch to do even more, to make you feel more. You could quite happily spend hours or days or, you know, the rest of your life, letting that touch make you feel everything.

You’re pretty sure (past pretty) (more like totally, completely, infinitely sure) that, no matter what happens here today, no matter how many more punches you take, or what comes after, that no matter how many other touches there may be from other people in all the time still to come, hers is the touch you will always remember, the one you will always compare every other one to.

And they will all come up lacking. Sorely.

Which is, you know, the problem in a nutshell. Or, you know, in something else, what with your allergy and all and, yes, you’re totally debating what the problem is in, just so you don’t actually have to face it - her - cause she's right there, with one hand holding the ice to your cheek and the other… oh, the other.

That other is slowly and carefully and delicately brushing the hair out of your face, gently tucking it back and away from the ice. That other is treating you more like the victim that you know you most certainly aren’t and not the criminal, the perp - and let’s keep it real and call it (you) what it (you) is (are) - the bitch, that you most certainly are.

The other is just Reagan being Reagan and, until this very moment, that was something you’d never even considered as anything but a good thing.

Chalk that up as one more thing you’ve ruined.

You push yourself up from the chair, the one she sat you in, tucked away in the employee break room in the back of the diner, her hand - the other - dropping uselessly to her side as you clutch the ice pack yourself, wincing as you accidentally press it too hard against your skin, the rough corner of the plastic coating catching your cheek and if Sophie hadn’t managed to draw blood, you’re pretty sure you just did.

Reagan takes a step back, leaning against the wall and even now, even after years apart, you can still read her. The way her arms fold, crossing against her chest, one leg bent at the knee, foot pressed against the wall as if she’s ready to push off, just waiting for the starter’s gun, the signal to run. Again.

OK, that last bit might be a little projection. (Might be?) (Might be?) It was you who was always the runner. Though, in all fairness and yes, now seems like a perfect time to start being fair to you, it’s not like Reagan was just blameless in that.

You ran. But, it wasn’t like she didn't push.

(And no, you’re not the least bit concerned that you might be blaming the victim, here, or, at least, one of them.)

Still, you can read her - read her eyes as they find the floor - read the way her perfect brows knit together and there’s that crinkle between them, the mark of her 'deep thoughts’ and you know you shouldn’t, but you can’t help remembering a time when those deep thoughts were almost always either worries - about Karma and about you and about you and Karma, mostly - or they were musings on what might happen five, ten, or fifteen minutes later, when everyone else was finally gone and it was just you and her and a lot of clothes that would be just as gone, just as fast.

Somehow, you doubt either of those things are going through her mind right now.

And somehow, even after all this, even after Sophie and Sophie’s broken heart and Sophie’s fucking hell of a right hook, you’re still disappointed by that. And that, is the real problem and you may not know much about nuts (take that any way you like it) but you know enough to know there’s no shell in the world big enough for that.

“I probably had that coming,” you say, mostly to break the silence before it chokes you both. “I just never knew she could punch like that.”

Reagan mercifully leaves the 'probably’ part of that alone, choosing to ignore the fact that reality was somewhere north of 'probably’ and closer to 'absolutely’ or 'definitely’ or 'she could have jumped on you and pounded you for an hour and it still might not have been enough’. “Three years of Krav Maga in high school,” she says, without looking up, the criss-cross of her arms tightening against her chest. “She never told you?”

You shake your head, slowly, and even that little bit of movement sends more fresh ripples of pain cascading through your cheek and your jaw and now you’re suddenly overjoyed that you’re in a restaurant that serves nothing but eggs, cause you’re not quite sure if you’re going to enjoy chewing again any time soon.

Reagan nods. “She had a crush on the woman who taught the class,” she says. There’s just a hint of a smile there, you can see it, and even that tiniest of hints, very nearly does to your heart what Sophie’s fist did to your face. That was your smile, once upon a lifetime ago. “And then she ended up hooking up with this whole other girl, one she accidentally punched in the face during a class,” she says, and that’s when those eyes come up, finding yours across the tiny room, and you think you’d give anything to hold them there forever, but you’re almost definitely sure, you’ve lost the right to hope for that. “I don’t think this is gonna work out quite like that.”

You and Sophie making out? Yeah, no. You doubt there’s even going to be any making up, much less hooking up.

The ice pack shifts under your hand and a chill trails down your cheek. “Sophie never said anything to me about…” You trail off, stifling the moment of indignation or jealousy or whatever the fuck it is you’re feeling about Sophie sharing something with Reagan and not with you. After all, it’s pretty damn clear who the real Khaleesi of Never Mention is in this equation. “You two must have talked a lot,” you mumble, shifting the ice slightly, wincing again as the cold finds yet another spot to burn.

Reagan’s voice is as soft as you’ve ever heard as she damn near whispers “All last night” and the silence that follows hangs heavy and loaded, the 'after she found out’ left unspoken but sure as fuck not unthought.

All last night. All last night… well… all last night, you were wallowing in your misery again and Reagan was doing the work, all the heavy lifting, picking up the pieces of not just one, but two relationships you’d taken a damn flamethrower to.

Yeah, you so had that punch coming. And then some.

Reagan watches as you fidget with the ice for another moment and then, suddenly, she’s right there,her hand covering yours, and she guides you in steering the cold, her other hand catching you by the shoulder even as you start to pull away. “Hold still,” she says, or, really, commands (and no, you're not thinking of other times she’s used that tone, not at all, because, even you know that right now your face is the only thing that should be getting wet.) “If you don’t ice this properly now, you’re going to look like you’re smuggling golf balls in your cheeks tomorrow.”

She pauses, waiting, because - much to your surprise - she can still read you and this is an Amy moment, if there ever was one. Come on, golf balls in your cheeks?

That shit writes itself.

But maybe you’re older or wiser (or maybe just massively distracted by the way the fingers of her hand on your shoulder are brushing against the bare skin of your neck) but whatever the reason, you keep your mouth shut.

First time for everything, right? Except, you know, for you not screwing over your best friend with your apparently insatiable appetite for fucking the exact wrong person at the exact wrong time.

Reagan, satisfied that the ice is properly positioned, takes a small step back, but that hand, oh, it doesn’t move.

Or, really, it does, just not back (and away) like the rest of her, but rather down. As in slowly down the length of your arm. It takes all of three, maybe four seconds, but that’s a thousand times longer than it probably should, something far closer to a forever, and you are utterly and completely aware of every single moment. Reagan’s eyes are locked on yours the entire time, your heart a stuttering tick-tock clock in your chest and you swear someone has cast a spell on it, slowing the time down, stretching every moment into lasting an eternity that’s still over far too soon.

God, you are so absolutely screwed.

Reagan’s fingers dance across the border between short sleeve and bare skin, tickling their way past your elbow, down to your forearm and then your hand. She doesn't hold it, and she doesn't take it - and you don't give it, even if every part of you is screaming that you should - but her fingers curl against you, digging into your knuckles, before she finally (far far far too late) pulls her hand away, taking another - bigger - step back.

“Sorry,” she mutters, staring down at her hand as if it somehow betrayed her, as if she doesn’t understand what the hell it was doing.

That one word, that one fucking syllable… it kills you… and all you want to do, all you need to do, is scream at her, that she shouldn’t be sorry, not for that, and not to you.

No.

That’s another one of your lies - this one to just yourself, except your self ain’t buying it any more than anyone else with half a clue would - cause that is so not all you need to do. What you need, what every part of you aches to do, is to reach out and catch that hand and take it, and hold it, and tell her that you know (now) you never should have let go of it, not then, not now, not ever.

Anything else would be a lie.

And maybe, you think, now is the time. Maybe this is the moment when all the lies end and the chips fall where they may, even if every one of them is a little bit of Sophie, a tiny or not so tiny sliver of her heart and, no, you’re not thinking about what kind of friend that makes you, no, not at all, cause if you do…

You can’t.

You just… can’t. Not this time. Not with Reagan and not with this second (or is it third) chance, not with an opportunity to, for once, be utterly and completely honest in every way. That, you know, is what’s always been your downfall, your Achilles’ heel, the thing that did you in and not just with Reagan. With Lauren, at first. With Karma, obviously. With Sabrina, even if in that case, doing you in meant doing her for far longer than you probably should have, given that she wasn’t the one in your heart - another lie you told yourself - and even with Sophie.

You never tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. With you, it’s always been fragments and fractions and asides to the audience (read: Shane or Lauren or whoever was the ear on loan at that particular moment.) Maybe, you think, it’s time to go all in, to place your bet on honesty and coming clean.

Maybe, you think Reagan getting dropped on your doorstep was the universe’s way of giving you a chance and maybe, you think (again) there’s only one way to find out.

“Reagan, I -”

And, maybe, the words die in the air as she turns. Her hand - that same hand - finding the handle for the break room door, tugging it open (and it’s so much more than a tug, too violent, too much force and power and, almost, desperation), her feet crossing the threshold even before it’s swung open and even you can see that, can recognize it for what it is.

Of course you can. Takes one to know one. It’s what you do.

“We should probably get back out there,” she says and yeah, she’s pretending - and doing it well - to have never heard you. “Sophie’s still waiting and waiting…” She hesitates, one foot in and one foot out, but you know that’s just a function of movement, it’s not a metaphor in the slightest.

That foot might still be there, but Reagan’s already gone.

“Waiting just leads to wondering,” you say, incredibly proud of yourself for not choking on the words. “And wondering… well… that just never ends well, does it?”

Reagan’s hand tightens on the door and for a moment - a fucking tick and a fucking tock before the clock breaks - you think maybe she’s changed her mind.

“Nothing ever ends well, Amy,” she says. “Sometimes, all you can do is manage the pain.”

The question comes without thinking. “Is that what we’re doing?”

She shakes her head slowly, that foot finally finding it’s way out the door. “Not very well,” she says. “Not very well, at all.”

And then there’s nothing but her back and the sound of her steps echoing (far too quickly) in the hall and then…

She’s gone.

And the only thing you can think is that this must be what it’s like, to be the one that’s left, rather than the one that's leaving. So, yeah, maybe, you think, you had the right idea in the first place, all those other times, cause it seems so much better to run, than to be run from.

So… where were you?

“Yeah. I know.”

Oh. Right. There.

There’s silence. No. Not silence. Silence. Like, it’s so quiet you could hear yourself breathing, you know, if you were. But you’re not. Your breath has stopped and oh, if only your heart had stopped with it, instead of doing a fucking drumline in your chest, the beats ratcheting up harder and louder (those you can hear, thrumming in your fucking ears) and thicker than any Reagan has ever laid down.

Fuck. Reagan.

(Yes, you’d like to.) (Again.) (And that's so not the point.)

(Except it kinda is.)

She’s right there. Right there and yes, you’re emphasizing things a bit, but she's right fucking there and Sophie is right… there… like the other there, the across from you, staring into your eyes and daring you to try and spin some bullshit to get out of this there.

And you’re tempted. Sorely tempted. Tempted to the point of desperate cause, right now, the only way you seeing this end is you, alone, sitting here eating eggs you never fucking wanted, while the two people who just might matter the most to you are… well…

Just say it. You know you’re thinking it.

They’re gone. Again, in one case. And for good, in both.

So, yeah, you’re tempted to try and weasel your way out of this, to try and sell Sophie on some utter bullshit and hope (fucking pray) that Reagan goes along with it, that maybe together you can convince her not to ditch you both, even though there’s a pretty good chance (like 75%) (at least) that one of you is going to end up with a very Sophie-less life.

The thought of it being you absolutely breaks your heart. Yesterday notwithstanding - and all the pictures on your phone and all the feelings you never really felt for anyone else, not even the girl you dated for two fucking years also notwithstanding - you’re used to a life without Reagan. You can't imagine one without Sophie. So, you’re crossing your fingers and maybe your toes and offering up a few silent prayers.

You’re praying for Reagan to get dumped. Again.

God, you suck.

But… how about that bullshit? Hmmm… let’s see. Maybe the classics?

(They’re classic for a reason, after all.)

It’s not what you think.

That one is always an option. Lord knows, you used it on Karma a time or two or, you know, six hundred. Except, well, that was easy because you always knew what Karma was thinking.

Sabrina’s a bitch. Sabrina’s going to cheat on you. Sabrina’s going to break your heart.

It’s funny… in the end, Karma wasn't entirely wrong. But that’s pretty much par for the Karma-course. She’s never entirely anything.

But the trouble is, Sophie isn’t Karma. (And, any other time, that so wouldn’t be ‘trouble’.) You don’t know what she thinks. Maybe sometimes, like maybe when she’s watching Becky’s ass as it saunters away or like when she’s had one too many and she’s staring at the pictures of you and Farrah and Lauren that sit on your desk, looking lost and more than a little jealous, the wish for a family like that practically written across her face. But right now?

You haven’t a clue.

You know that she knows - she fucking told you that like five seconds ago - but you don’t know exactly what she knows or how she knows.

And then you spot your phone, resting on the table under her hand, the phone you haven’t been able to find since you left (fled) (the word you’re not looking for is fled) Reagan’s apartment and, yeah, now you’ve got a pretty good idea about the 'how’, at least.

“I always told you,” Sophie says. Her voice is soft and there’s no anger lacing her words and oh… fuck… that just terrifies you. “Someday you were gonna leave this in the wrong place.”

She slides the phone across the table, unlocked (she knows the code and yes, you realize now that might have been a dumb idea but, hey, it’s not like you haven’t had more than a few of those lately,right?) and the screen open to your gallery.

Which, to your eternal fucking horror, means open up to Reagan’s almost nude body, sprawled out on your high school bed, with your high school self curled next to her, equally as 'almost’ and what was that about dumb fucking ideas?

Apparently, there not just a recent thing.

You hear Reagan gasp - short and surprised, like those times when you snuck up on her in the shower and slipped your hand between her legs (that one time) (and she slipped and fell and almost cracked her head open on the tub and you both resolved that all… shenanigans would take place on dry land) and, yes, just as pained as that time - and it occurs to you that she showed you the picture she kept (if dropping it on the floor counts as showing and oh, it fucking does and you fucking know it) but you never showed her yours.

There’s a metaphor in there about hearts, but you’re not about hearing that, right now.

“I can explain,” you say, the words bumbling and stumbling their way out of you before you can stop them and you wish you could, cause even though - maybe - they’re true? Not bullshitting doesn’t solve the far bigger problem.

You don’t know who you’re saying them to.

Sophie’s hand lingers by the phone and all three of you stare at the screen, in all it’s nekkid glory - and no, that’s not weird at all - until the tiny bell over the front door chimes and Reagan has to actually, you know, do her job, and go seat someone. A little old couple, shuffling in for their morning eggs (they can so have yours) and if you looked, you’d see them - all of like a hundred and twenty combined - still holding hands like a pair of teenagers.

And if you could tear your eyes from the screen, you’d probably note that you’ve never seen Reagan move quite as fast as she does bolting from the table, not even the night she almost broke up with you at Communal.

And you’d probably wonder if that’s an almost she wishes she could have back.

But you can’t look away and it’s not just because it’s Reagan and she’s almost naked or just because your brain - traitor that it fucking is - is remembering exactly how she felt that day, that whole afternoon when Farrah and Bruce were at some dance recital thing for Lauren and the two of you had the house to yourself.

What does it say about you that you can remember every sight and sound and touch and feel and taste (oh… the taste) from just those few months with Reagan and yet, you can barely even remember how Sabrina sounds when she laughs?

Two fucking years.

You know what it says? It says you suck. Like a black hole.

But, you really can’t look away because there’s nowhere safe for you to look at. If you look at Sophie, you know what you’re going to see. That look of sadness, of betrayal, her eyes filled with the sad realization that you are just like them.

And Sophie has a long list of 'them’s’ to choose from. You just never imagined you’d be on it.

“You can’t even look at her, can you?”

How the fuck does she do that?

“It makes sense,” Sophie says, her hand slowly drifting back to her side of the table, out of your sight. It’s almost like she’s not there and oh, how that stings. “You don’t really handle guilt well.”

The response is automatic. Defensive. Blame shifting at it’s finest. “I don’t feel guilty about her,” you say. “Reagan… she… it was a mutual thing. Not like I forced her or something.”

Would you? Would you have made a move, would have you pushed it, would you have instigated - more than you did - if she’d tried to resist, to hold out?

You squeeze your eyes shut and yank the phone across the table, locking it and clearing the screen. Some questions, you know, are better left unanswered.

“I feel bad for what we did to you,” you say, realizing halfway through that you don't know that Sophie knows what you two did, but, really, it doesn’t matter. Because that isn’t even on the same scale, like not even the same planet, the same universe as the lie, as not telling her the moment you and Reagan met in the hall.

And isn’t that always the way? In the end, it’s all about the didn’t versus the did. And, in your case, the lie… those words you didn't say, you know, are so much worse than the deeds you did. You would have thought you’d have learned that lesson from Karma, from Liam, from Reagan the first fucking time.

Apparently, you would have thought wrong.

“Not gonna lie,” Sophie says, and that fucking calm and collected and not even hinting at anger or sadness or much of anything - she could be a fucking android right now - tone is driving you crazy. “You hurt me. You both did.” She drums her fingers on the table in front of her, you can feel the vibrations. “But how mad can I really get? Whatever you did to me, it’s not half as bad as what you did to each other.”

That's enough to make you look, to pull your eyes from the phone, to stare across the table at her in shock and confusion. “What we did to each -”

You never do get the 'other’ out. She moves faster than you can think, and all you can think is that it’s been building inside her, ticking down like a bomb. Maybe it was the way you looked at her, maybe it was the confusion in your voice, maybe it was the sight of Reagan behind you, helping that little old woman into her chair, seeing you and her even sort of together.

Or maybe it was etching your name on that list of 'them’s’, of realizing how badly you’d hurt her, of how broken every single rule was. The sense of betrayal and rejection washing over her and soaking into her skin and needing somewhere to go, some way to get out.

Then again, maybe she was just really pissed.

Whatever it was, it spurred Sophie into action, sent her shooting out of her chair, leaning across the barely there table and - with somewhat surprising force - landing a right hook to your face that would have made Ronda Rousey (before she sucked) proud.

It sends you sprawling backwards in your chair, clattering to the floor, your head coming to rest within spitting distance of that old woman’s shoes, staring up at the ceiling and willing yourself to ignore the shocked - and concerned - look on Reagan’s face as she looks down on you.

Amy doesn’t understand.

Not that that’s anything new, it’s not like it’s the first time (or second time or third time or fourth time or the you get the fucking idea time) someone could say that about her cause, let’s face it, there’s a lot Amy doesn’t understand.

The list - and it’s not a Karma list, but it damn near could be - is long and varied. There’s the appeal of kale, why anyone would willingly listen to reggae, and how on Earth anyone could think blondes have more fun (like, seriously, has anyone checked her life circa all of fucking high school?) And then there’s math. As in all of it. As in everything beyond addition and subtraction and even, sometimes, those and it’s not like she hasn’t tried to learn it or even had help with it.

Lauren spent the better part of two years in high school going over the quadratic equation and the Pythagorean theorem (as in over and over and fucking over) and the only thing Amy ever really understood - and still understands - is that a-squared plus b-squared equals her needing a fucking drink-squared.

“I have a calculator,” Amy said - also over and over and fucking over - ignoring Lauren’s rolling eyes and protestations about broadening horizons and well rounded education and critical fucking thinking. “A calculator and a cell phone. A fucking smart phone, and both of them can do math a thousand and one times faster than old Pythagoras ever even dreamed of,” Amy said, and that was the point at which Lauren almost always gave up.

Not that Amy was done.

“And, more importantly,” she said, always punctuating this part with a wagging finger, “if I had a dime for every time I have ever needed or will ever need to find the length of the third side of a triangle, do you know what I’d have?”

Lauren never answered. She’d learned the math on that one, the law of diminishing returns.

“I’d have zero fucking dimes,” Amy said. “That’s what I’d have.”

Clearly, Amy did understand the basics of currency.

So there’s math, obviously, and kale and reggae. But there’s more personal stuff too. Like, for instance, Amy doesn’t understand - like at all - how the whole Karma and Lucy thing happened.

“Karma was faking,” she says to Lauren or Shane or sometimes Reagan, but only when she’s drunk or exhausted or looking for a fight and no, that has nothing to do with how fantastic (like even more than usual) makeup sex with Reagan is. “She was faking and now she's kissing and just how the hell does that happen and no, I’m not jealous, I’m just confused, cause Karma's kissing and it’s my sister and stop giving me that look, I’m just trying to understand.”

And you can so add in why everyone (read: especially Reagan) thinks Amy ought to let that particular sleeping dog just fucking lie to the top of the list of things that Ms. Raudenfeld just doesn’t understand.

(Even if she really does. Like really really.) (But it's Karma. And Lucy. And seriously, W the absolute F?)

More? You need more?

Oh, there's more.

Amy doesn’t get - like at all - why Lauren is so pissed at Theo for choosing to go to a good school (at least he's going and not just staying and no, she’s never said that out loud and if you think she might, well, where the fuck have you been for the last two years?) She doesn’t have the first damn clue how Bruce puts up with her mother’s continued fixation on everything Jack does.

Or why Jack does anything.

She is utterly - like 100% times infinity (and beyond) - bewildered by the sheer physics of her girlfriend’s eyebrows. There hasn’t been one moment since the first moment when she’s understood even a little of why Reagan is with her. And, more than all the rest, Amy doesn’t understand how anyone could have ever cheated on Reagan.

“I get the literal how,” she told Lauren once - one of the many many many times Lauren wondered if being real sisters was worth it (she always decided yes, but still…) - “like I understand the mechanics of it, but seriously? The desire, the want to. I just don’t get it.”

What she does get?

She’s incredibly grateful that someone (hi Shelby) (you bitch) was that stupid.

So, yeah, there’s a lot of things Amy doesn’t understand and now, right fucking now, you can add a tiny velvet box, held out in front of her - daring her, calling to her, a fucking Siren song of temptation she’s barely resisting - to that list.

Also: how Reagan could think that now (right fucking now, as noted) is a good time to propose given, you know, that they just got back from visiting Amy’s soon to be new home. The one that’s 511.9 miles away (she can use Google Maps, too) and, really, that’s more like a world and, last time Amy checked, that world wasn’t going to be including Reagan.

Stupid world. Stupid fucking waste of a world.

“No.” Reagan says and Amy nods, even though it’s not a question. “No,” Reagan says, again, and it's still not a question but Amy nods again anyway which, to her, seems at least slightly counterintuitive (at best) and fucking rude (at worst), like she’s not just saying no.

She's hammering it. She’s driving that no nail right between those perfect brows with every fucking nod, but she can’t stop.

She’s a motherfucking bobblehead.

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” Amy says, finally finding a word that isn’t ‘no’. And it really is the truth, she does want to. If there’s anything Amy does understand, it’s the very simple - and yet massively complicated - idea that she wants, more than anything, to spend the rest of her life with Reagan.

Just, you know, not right now.

Reagan arches a brow (fucking physics) and Amy does her best not to get distracted. “I do,” she says and no, the irony of that phrase is not lost on her. “I just… I mean… I didn't…”

She sighs and drops her eyes, but not far enough that she misses Reagan taking a step back, just one, crossing her arms over her chest, the tiny box (Goddamn Pandora, that’s what that shit is) disappearing from view.

“No,” Reagan says, mulling the word over, rolling it round and round, letting it sink and soak in.

“Reagan, baby -”

And if there’s one other thing Amy understands, it’s that that - fucking baby? - was just about the worst thing she could have said, and if she didn’t understand it?

Allow Reagan to explain.

“Baby?” Amy tips her head back and curses the fucking stars for letting her speak. “So now this is a 'baby’ moment?”

Baby moments (aka a lesson in the Amy Raudenfeld Handbook for Dumbasses):

Reagan, baby, it doesn’t bother me that Karma’s kissing my sister.

Reagan, baby, of course your ass is still bangin in those sweatpants.

Reagan, baby, I know you wanted to go away this weekend but Karma…

Reagan, baby…

Amy watches as that one brow goes from cocked and loaded to full on ready for space launch and she backpedals furiously, even if she doesn’t actually, you know, move. “Let me explain,” she says (pleads.) “Please?”

Reagan says nothing and Amy knows that’s as close to permission as she’s gonna get.

“It’s not that I don’t want to,” she says again and Amy knows that every word out of her mouth is a tiny little shovel that just keeps digging and digging and digging. “I do. I so do. But, I just didn't… see it coming.”

Ain’t that the fucking truth.

(and for once, with Amy, it might actually be the whole truth)

“There was no warning,” she says and there wasn’t. There wasn’t a warning, there wasn’t a hint or a moment when even the thought of it - marriage - crossing Reagan’s mind crossed Amy’s at all. There were no funny looks from Lauren, there wasn’t a single attempt at subtle probing from Karma (or, you know, not so subtle, cause, well, Karma) and there was just no way Reagan had been planning this and at least one of them didn’t know. “And you’ve just been so distant,” Amy adds and yup, she still sucks at math, and oh, look, the first ever pair of fully orbital eyebrows.

“I’ve been…” Reagan takes another step back and turns, facing off to the side, looking out over the view they’ve shared so many nights. “Distant,” she mutters but Amy notes that, as annoyed as she sounds?

She’s not disagreeing.

“You have,” Amy says, pushing her luck, yes. But really, what does she have to lose at this point? “And it’s not like I’ve been doing much to fix it,” she says quietly. “We’ve both been ignoring the gorilla in the room so long, we never even noticed the wall it was putting up between us.”

“Elephant,” Reagan says, not even needing to look to see the confused look crossing Amy’s face. “It’s the elephant in the room. It’s bigger than a gorilla and less mobile, so it just kinda sits there taking up space and… and it’s a figure of fucking speech so… just never mind.”

Elephants. Gorillas. Fucking monkeys, that’s all they are. Monkeys playing around and keeping secrets and not talking about the things that actually matter.

“Honestly?” Amy says. “I would’ve been less surprised by a break up.”

And oh, why does she ever fucking speak.

But, again, it should be noted that Reagan doesn’t say a word in argument. And Amy does note. Oh, how she fucking notes.

“It’s crossed your mind,” she says, “hasn’t it? Ending this before I lea… before I go to school.”

Reagan stares at the ground, the box squeezed tight in her hand. “Leave,” she whispers. “The word you were looking for, the one you couldn't say? It’s 'leave’. Before you leave.”

Apparently they’re not ignoring the elephant anymore. They’re fucking riding it.

“Reagan, you know that’s not what I’m doing,” Amy says. She takes one hesitant step towards her girlfriend, who doesn’t even so much as move. “I’m not leaving. I’m going to college. Yes, it’s another state and it’s far away and it won’t be easy but…”

Amy trails off, no fucking idea where she’s going with this, but she can’t help remembering that, historically, the trail off has never been their friend.

“But it’s what you have to do,” Reagan says. “It’s your dream and I want it for you.” She chuckles and shakes her head. “Sometimes, I think I want it for you more than you do.”

“Rea… ” Amy closes the distance, her arms snaking around Reagan and she lets out a breath she didn’t know she was holding as she feels the older girl sink into her embrace. “I love you,” she whispers. “You… you’re my everything. And I know you think this is the way to keep that, to make sure college and distance doesn’t ruin it… ruin us. But marriage? I mean someday, maybe -”

Reagan’s head snaps up and she swivels in Amy’s grasp. “Wait… what?

"I said you’re my everything and I know what you’re trying to do and why, but -”

Amy’s arms fall to her side as Reagan takes a step back, holding up a hand to shush her. “No,” she says (irony) (again). “Not that part. The other part.” She watches as Amy goes over it in her head, slowly retracing her words. But, as usual, impatience wins out. “Marriage,” Reagan says. “You said marriage.”

“Well, yeah,” Amy says with a small nod toward the box. “That’s what I was trying to say. We can’t get married or even engaged. Not now. Not for this.” She shakes her head. “That’s why I was so surprised. I didn’t even know you were thinking about it.”

“Well,” Reagan says, reaching out and taking Amy’s hand, dropping the box into it. “That’s probably because I wasn’t.”

Seven Years and One Month Ago

The room is small. Like teeny small. Teeny tiny, smaller than her apartment small. Like small enough that Amy’s room back home might laugh at it (and swallow it), like small enough to make the 'size doesn’t matter’ joke die on Reagan’s tongue.

It would just be unnecessarily cruel.

Reagan’s not sure - cause she’s never actually seen it - but she suspects that even the Spawn’s nursery might be bigger than this.

(The Spawn = the baby = a name most definitely not on the list = exactly what Reagan’s going to call it - in her head - until they come up with a name.)

(And by 'they’ she 100% means Karma and by 'until’ she 110% means always. Like forever.)

She’s gotta think, even if she can’t be sure - not Spawn sure - that the nursery is bigger than this, again, not that she’s seen it. And yes, that’s been mentioned (once or twice) (usually by Karma) (and by 'usually’ she means… you fucking know what she means, we’ve been doing this shit long enough, no?) but it does bear repeating. You see, Reagan’s the only one who hasn’t seen it.

And it should be noted that that isn’t hyperbole or exaggeration, not in the slightest. This isn’t one of those 'only one’s’ like 'oh, you’re the only one who’s never seen that movie’ - like Amy and Princess Bride, once upon a time - when there’s literally thousands of other people who have never actually seen it.

Reagan really is the only one.

Karma’s seen it, which is to be expected since it’s in her house. Not that that’s weird at all, nope not one single tiny bit. Shane’s seen it too, but - again - kinda expected since lately he basically lives with the Ashcrofts and no, that’s not weird either.

(It is.) (It's weird.) (So fucking weird.) (So weird that even Liam has commented on it, going as far as to outright ask Shane if he’d gone straight - Karmasexual, that was his term and Amy almost fucking died on the spot - and yeah, Shane might have brushed it off and laughed at the very thought, but…)

(He might have laughed just a bit too hard.)

So, Karma and Shane have seen it but they live with it. And Liam’s seen it cause, well, duh, and Lauren’s seen it (which means Theo has seen it) because, well, Lauren.

Cause Lauren and cause her weird bond with Karma and yeah, Lolo was still Reagan’s BFF but this thing with her and Karma… it's…

Weird.

What’s weirder?

Farrah’s seen it.

Farrah.

And Amy’s seen it because Farrah’s seen it.

“Molly asked me to come see the nursery,” Farrah said out of the blue, one Wednesday and Reagan remembers it was a Wednesday because Wednesday’s are spaghetti night and the kitchen already smelled of Bruce’s special sauce - a phrase Reagan never thought she would ever utter or like - and Amy was already trying to sneak a taste out of the pot.

“What?” Amy said, spoon dripping red sauce onto the stovetop and God, could she ever eat anything without dripping something?

(Obviously, the answer is 'not if she’s doing it right and you so need to get your mind out of the gutter.)

(Not that Reagan wasn’t thinking the same exact thing.)

Farrah took the spoon from her daughter before Amy splattered the floor - again - and dropped it in the sink. “She asked me to come check out the nursery. She said she wants another mother’s opinion and, apparently, the other PFLAG moms don’t have my… taste.” Amy rolled her eyes and Reagan chuckled, both of them knowing exactly how Molly had hooked Farrah.

With her? Flattery really will get you everywhere.

“It would be impolite for me not to go,” Farrah said, lightly slapping Amy’s hand as she tried to filch a piece of garlic bread from the loaf by the sink. “And I am not going alone.”

It was simple, Farrah said, trying to convince her daughter to accompany her. A five minute visit, she promised. In and out, no harm, no foul, quick like bunny rabbits, done in a flash…

“Fuck it,” she muttered under her breath, running clean out of cliches. “Either you go with me, or there’s no camping trip for you and Reagan next weekend.”

Reagan could see the wheels spinning in her girlfriend’s head as she remembered camping, which, really, was remembering the table and the bed and, oh, that spot on the rocks down by the lake where those two teenage boys stumbled upon them and finished off puberty in about ten seconds flat.

Which was three seconds longer than it took Reagan to finish off Amy once they realized they had an audience, but that was neither here nor there, because what was here was Amy’s intense desire to not go there - she hadn’t been in Karma’s house in months and that had been weird, at first, but now it was more… comfortable - but Farrah was holding all the cards.

So, yeah, Amy went. And then Bruce went because… well… Reagan’s never been sure why but she’s got ideas (mind, gutter, you get that idea, right?) and then Jack - fucking Jack - went too (and oh, to have been a fly on the window for that five minute car ride) because of the whole mentor-slash-father figure-slash-sure, he can be a dad to fucking Liam thing and where Jack went (and where Karma was) then so went Lucy and so, yeah.

Only one.

Sometimes - usually when she’s trying not to think about it, which is like all the times - Reagan thinks that’s pretty much the sum total of what’s going to happen to her. The only one. The only one not moving on, the only one not moving up. The only one not growing and not changing, the only one not trying.

The only one left.

(And not just left behind, though, yeah, that’s the biggest bit of it all.)

So, she’s never seen the nursery and she doesn’t think she ever will, but she’s gotta think it’s bigger than this… room. If that’s what you want to call it. Reagan can think of other words.

Hole. Closet. Dent in the fabric of space and time. Tiny little hidey hole. Cupboard under the fucking stairs and nobody’s sending a 'Surprise! You’re a wizard!’ note here.

Oh. And one more.

Hell.

(That last one, obviously, has less to do with size and more to do with location, as in it's not Austin, and kinda everything to do with the way Karma and Molly are already softly whispering about where she and Amy can put their stuff and how cozy it will be and oh, yeah, cozy with the girl she was once in love with, cozy like no room to move or think or breathe, gonna be on top of each other… yup…)

(Hell.)

Farrah leans against the door - like there’s anywhere else she could stand - and surveys the room with a quick (very quick) (like Barry fucking Allen wouldn’t be able to keep up quick) sweep of her eyes.

“It's… homey,” she says, her lips pressed in a tight smile and yes, Reagan can add 'homey’ to her ever expanding list of synonyms for 'ridiculously fucking tiny’. And yes - again - she’s totally noticing the way Farrah can’t quite look at her, like her sorta-mom knows exactly what’s going on inside her head. She probably does.

Farrah is a lot of things. Dumb ain’t fucking one of them. But knowing what Reagan’s thinking and being able to convince her that she’s wrong are two very different things and, realistically, there’s not much chance Farrah could pull it off.

Still… it might be nice if someone tried.

“It has character,” Molly says - another synonym for the list - running a hand over the not too rusted metal bed frame of the bottom bunk. “Or it will, once the girls get through with it.”

Reagan tunes out as Molly starts in with a list of things the girls can do - at least she knows now where Karma gets that particular habit - especially when that list starts with taking the bunks apart and putting the beds side by side like a fucking sleepover.

Karma’s standing at the other end of the beds and she, at least, has the courtesy to blanche at that idea and she shoots Reagan a quick look, one the older girl thinks is supposed to say 'I’m sorry’ and 'that's not gonna happen’ and, yeah, it’s not like Reagan’s really worried about that.

Much.

“It’s a room,” Karma says, steering her mother off the discussion of the beds and where to put them and how they’ll be sleeping in them - cause, yeah, sleeping is the concern - and back to more practical matters. “Dorm rooms aren’t meant to be palaces,” she says, forgetting (or trying to) the fucking suite Lauren’s got at Yale. “Besides, we’ll be busy in the city and on campus and doing… you know… college things. We’ll probably only stagger back in here for sleep and a shower.”

Her eyebrow arches of its own accord, Reagan fucking swears.

“Showers,” Karma corrects, almost (but not quite) immediately. “Plural. One for me. One for her. Totally separate and not at all at the same time and yeah… so… ”

Reagan shuts her eyes as a hush falls over the world - or at least this tiny (so fucking tiny) little corner of New Orleans. She tries to ignore it, to not let it steer her into thinking about how silent her actual world is about to go.

And she remembers a time when she was so much better at trying.

It’s Karma who breaks the silence - and oh, that’s a shock - the desperation to salvage this trip before it… well… before it becomes everything they’ve all been expecting it to since pretty much the moment they left Austin, echoing in the pitch of her voice, cracking out almost an octave too high. “So,” she creaks, pausing to cough and reset. “Maybe… we should go check out the rest of campus? I’m sure Amy’s ready to sample the cafeteria, right Aimes?”

Eight eyes turns as one to look at Amy, who hasn’t said a word or even moved - like, not even an inch - from her spot by the window since the moment they all dogpiled into the room. And none of them, except maybe Molly (who’s still murmuring about the fucking beds) are surprised by what they see.

Reagan gets it first, of course, the moment she catches Amy’s eyes. She's so not surprised, not by the look - she expected it - but maybe a little by how much it still manages to break her heart, all her expectations be damned.

She sees it first and then it’s Farrah, only a half a heartbeat in front of Karma and it's her - of all fucking people - who reaches out, one hand brushing gently against the back of Reagan’s arm and it’s supposed to be comforting, it’s supposed to be a signal, a 'hey I’m still here’ and a 'it’s gonna be fine’. 'It’s just a look’ and 'there’s nothing to worry about’.

But, really? All it is a sign. A fucking neon blinking billboard in the night, screaming that that is utter bullshit, because there's everything to worry about. Because that look? That one Amy’s casting out the window - the one actually sort of big part of the room, overlooking campus with the flickering and blinking lights of the city in the distance - that look isn't just anything.

It's everything. That look speaks volumes, even if it only says two words.

I’m home.

(Technically, that's three, but who the fuck is really counting?)

For the first time she can ever remember, Reagan looks away from Amy. She has to, she has to drop her eyes as if she’s been staring too long into the sun and oh fuck no, she is not going to cry, not here, not now, not in front of… well… any of them. She’s not. She won’t.

She already is.

It’s Karma, again - and fuck all, when did she get a clue? - who bails her out. “Come on,” she says, crossing the room and tugging Amy by the arm towards the open door. “Greasy college food awaits,” she says, ushering her best friend and Molly and Farrah out into the hall, glancing back one last time at Reagan, staying behind to collect herself.

Alone.

Oh, like that’s going to help.

But then, like not even a minute later, it’s Karma - again - coming back through the door, a half crumpled paper in her hand, as she strides across the room (it’s like two baby steps, that’s all it takes) and shoving it into Reagan’s chest.

“You’re an idiot.”

Reagan blinks back the tears, her hand coming up to take the paper, crumpled as it is, noting, barely, a bunch of those little tear off tabs at the bottom. “What?”

“An idiot,” Karma repeats and they both remember a time when she wouldn’t have dared to say something like that to Reagan - it was right after the time when that sort of thing was all Karma could say to her - and there’s a look in her eyes that Reagan doesn’t quite recognize.

Right up until she does and it clicks where she’s seen it before. The night of the party. Right before Karma kissed Amy and it’s been so long since she even thought of that, but now it comes rushing back, water crashing over the levee, and oh… this… whatever it is, it really isn’t going to go well.

Color her fucking surprised.

“You think this is her new world,” Karma says. Her hands are on her hips and she’s trying to seem all determined and tough, but that look in her eyes dispels that right fucking quick. It’s a look of sad resignation, of knowing what she has to do, but really not expecting it to amount to fuck all in the long run. “You think she’s coming here and it’s all going to be new and different and exciting and it is. But you think… you think she’s going to find something here.”

Something. Someone. All the somethings, all the someones.

Reagan sags down onto the bottom bunk, the paper still clutched in her hand. “You saw her, Karma,” she says. “She’s not going to find something here. She already has.”

There isn’t much Karma can say in argument. They both saw it. There’s no arguing with the truth. But when the hell has even the cold hand of the truth slapping her right across the cheek ever stopped Karma?

“You’re right,” she says and yeah, that’s making Reagan feel just a metric shit-ton better, like seriously, go for a career in counseling, Karms. “Amy has found something here. A chance to be something other than her.”

Reagan wants to ask - she wants to fucking scream - just what the hell is wrong with just being her? Amy. Shrimps.

Hers.

“Can you imagine, Reagan?” Karma asks. “A chance to be something other than the girl Jack left and the girl Farrah basically tried to replace. Something beyond the once fake lesbian and the 'my’ in Karmy.”

Or the 'my’ in Reamy. Same difference, right?

“And don’t you even go there,” Karma snaps - she’s legit pissed and Reagan didn’t see that coming - staring down at the older girl still slumped on the bed. “Don’t go substituting Reamy for Karmy in your head, because we both fucking know it’s not the same. It never was.”

Damn. When Karma goes for insight, she goes hard.

“This is everything Amy’s dreamed of since she was seven,” Karma says and Reagan doesn’t have to ask why that age, she can still see that fucking photo on the living room wall as clear as day in her head. “But see, here’s the thing, Reagan,” she says, squatting down to force herself into Reagan’s vision. “Those dreams we have when we’re little?” Karma drops her head with a slow, sad shake. “Sometimes, we get stuck in them and we can’t see past them and we can’t understand that… when we grow up, those dreams should too.”

Yeah… not so sure they’re talking about Amy anymore. At least not only Amy.

“She gets that, you know,” Karma says, smiling, but barely. “Amy’s dreams… they grew. Bigger than getting out of Austin, bigger than college, bigger…” She shakes her head again, the 'than me’ left unsaid. “She understands that.” Karma stands and walks to the window, looking out at the city. It’s everything they talked about since they were little, everything two tiny girls once thought meant… everything.

But everything tiny must grow. And everything that grows…

“It changes,” Karma says softly, focused on a light in the far distance, a blinking speck just under the horizon. “Time changes and people change and priorities…” She leans against the glass, close enough to blur her own reflection and yeah, that seems just about right. “What was it you called this?” she asks. “Amy’s whole new world?”

Reagan nods. “It is,” she says. “A whole world of possibilities.” She doesn’t know how else to put it, to make it obvious that it isn’t the people she’s worried about, it isn’t the thought of Amy falling in love with someone else that scares her.

It’s the thought of Amy falling into life. Without her.

“It’s a world of chances, Karma,” Reagan says. “So many chances for her, just like you said.”

It's almost funny and Karma almost laughs. This, of all the times, is finally the time Reagan chooses to listen to her. “Yeah,” she says without turning around. “A world. But that’s just it. It's a world… not her world.” Karma turns from the window, staring at Reagan, and the older girl can see her heart - and it’s not quite breaking, but it’s not quite all in one piece, either - right there in her eyes.

Sometimes… usually when she least expects it and always when it seems most capable of absolutely wrecking her - Reagan understands perfectly why Amy’s never let Karma go.

“This is all wonderful and great and so many chances and it’s going to be an incredible time for her,” Karma says. “But you’re her world, Reagan. You have been since the moment she met you.”

“Karma -”

“No,” Karma says, cutting her off. “You’re not going to tell me different because… well… you’re just not. It’s the truth and we both know it.” And they do, even if one of them never wanted to believe it and the other one… can’t. “She would drop this,” Karma says. “She would walk away from school, give up on here, move back to Austin… Amy would throw it all away for you. All you’d have to do is say the word.”

Reagan doesn’t offer up an 'I never would’. Why bother? No one goes around telling everyone that the Earth is round or water is wet.

What is understood? Doesn’t really need to be discussed.

Karma steps back softly toward the bed, reaching down to tap the crumpled paper in Reagan’s hand. “Amy would give up everything for you,” she says. “She already did.”

I choose you. I choose us.

Reagan glances down at the paper, at the tabs at the bottom, the phone number printed on them in neat twelve point font. At the words, just beneath Karma’s finger, still brushing the paper.

“Maybe, Reagan,” Karma says. “It’s time you returned the favor.”

Amy doesn’t understand.

Yes, we’ve been here before. Recently, even. Some things… well… they just don’t really ever change.

But, apparently, some things - and some people - well… they do.

The box - now open and resting in the palm of Amy’s hand - doesn’t hold the ring that Amy was both expecting and fearing. She’s relieved, really she is, but there’s just the slightest rustling of something else starting to shiver inside her. It’s not disappointment, it can’t be that, cause let’s face it, even for Amy, that would just make no sense.

She said 'no’, after all. Why would she be disappointed?

(Why, indeed?) (But that’s a question - and an answer - for another time.)

(Like a few years later, right on this spot.) (But we’re getting ahead of ourselves and we wouldn’t want that.)

So, it’s not a ring, though, really, could anyone blame Amy for thinking it was? A tiny velvet box, held out to her by the love of her life (something she has never doubted) and there was such anticipation and hope dancing in said love of her life’s eyes - and oh, how long has it been since Amy’s seeing either of those in Reagan’s eyes - and it’s all happening in a spot so definitively and uniquely theirs.

Come on, that’s like something out of Proposals 101. How could Amy think it was anything else?

Well, for starters, she could have remembered this was Reagan and Reagan doesn’t do anything 101.

Or, you know, she could have just opened the box.

And found the key.

“A key?”

Never let it be said that Amy doesn’t, at least, have a firm grasp of the obvious.

“I don’t understand.”

Oh for fuck’s sake… here we go again.

“I mean, I understand,” she corrects (and she sorta does) (kinda) (maybe) (not really at fucking all). “I know what a key does and what it’s for, but… I already have a key to your place.”

Penny in the air.

“Yeah, I know that,” Reagan says, remembering quite clearly the moment she gave Amy that key. (It was a Tuesday and you know what that means.) (That it was a Tuesday.) (Not every day is a special food day, you know.) “I’m going to need that one back,” she adds, gently nudging Amy’s hand - and the box still in it - a little bit closer, urging her on, leading the horse to water, trying to teach the man to fish…

Oh, fuck the metaphors. She wants Amy to look at the tag - the tiny tag tied to the end of the key with tiny pink string that Karma gave her - like she desperately, achingly wants her to look at the tag and put two and two together and come up with four. Math even Amy can do.

“Back?”

There’s a ripple of pain trembling in Amy’s voice that Reagan didn’t expect, which isn’t much of a surprise. Truth be told, she didn’t expect any of this. It never once crossed her mind - or Karma’s or Lauren’s - that Amy might see the box and think ring and then make the jump from ring to proposal and even if she (or they) had?

Not a one of them would have thought 'no’ would be the answer.

So, yeah, this is going about as bass-ackwards as it could possibly go and see? This is what you get when you listen to an Ashcroft.

“You want your key back?” Amy asks, again and oh, shit, she’s going to cry, Reagan knows the signs and, even if she didn’t, the tears already leaking are a pretty good tip off. “But, I mean… why… ”

The trail off. Fuck all, it’s the trail off.

Amy blinks her eyes, flushing the tears and - Reagan knows - trying to gather her strength, fixing on her 'I’m not hurting and it’s all good, no worries’ face. Which looks oddly like her 'I want a doughnut’ face, but then most of Amy’s faces do.

“I mean, it’s fine, I’ve got it right here,” she says, shuffling the box into her other hand and reaching for her pocket. The key’s there, right where it always is. Amy’s lost the key to her house three times, the key to her car four times, and the key to Lauren’s journal (don’t ask, just don’t) once, but she has never not known where that key is.

She loves that key. It’s her… thing. She finds it. When she’s stressed or terrified or worried about Jack or the future or pissed (at Jack or the future) or just missing Reagan because she’s working her fourth straight late night catering shift. Amy finds it and she holds it and she runs her fingers across the teeth of it, tracing the grooves, the jagged points of the metal soothing her until whatever it is? It passes.

Reagan’s hand on her arm stills her movement, but that just sets those tears bubbling right back up. This is it, Amy thinks, this is that breakup that she wouldn’t have been surprised by. A thousand thoughts wash through her mind, tidal waves crashing against the rocks, but one cries out louder than the rest.

I can’t.

And she can’t. She thought she could. She thought - on those dark nights when even the key didn’t soothe - that if this is what Reagan was going to do, if this is what Reagan thought was best, well…

Then fuck her.

“I had a speech,” she mutters. “It was a good one. A tough one. All about how if you couldn’t just be happy for me and if you were going to let miles….” Amy shakes her head. Words. It was all just words and she's known that all along. She can’t lose Reagan. Not like this. Not like at all. She twists her arm in Reagan’s grasp, slipping their hands together, fingers lacing like they were made to do nothing else.

Fuck the speech.

“I won’t,” Amy says. “I won’t go. I’ll stay. I’ll stay here and go to UTA and I’ll live on campus, I’m sure I can find some nice girl to share a room with, one that’s not Karma, one that would never look at either of us like that.”

“Amy - ”

She hears Reagan - sort of - but talks right over her. “They’ve got a… decent… film program and sure, Karma will be a little pissed, but we’ll be fine. We’ve survived worse.”

“Amy -”

“And it doesn’t matter, anyway,” Amy says, rolling right along. “College is just… college. A lot of very well off and quite happy people never went to college, you know.” She squeezes Reagan’s hand in hers. “You didn’t go, and you’re doing just fine.”

“Amy -”

“No,” Amy says, another shake of her head, standing up firm and tall. “I’m not giving you the key, Reagan. If I give you the key then that’s it and that can’t be… that won’t be it. I just won’t let it.”

She takes a step back, trying to tug her hand free to show her resolve and all, but Reagan won’t let go. And if Amy had thought, even for a second, that there was any real chance Reagan ever would?

Well, then she just didn’t understand Reagan at all.

“Shrimps,” Reagan says, finally getting her girlfriend to pause, to slow down, to put the resist at all costs train back into neutral. “The key,” she says. “That one,” she adds, nodding towards the box. “Look at it, at the tag.”

Amy glances that way, almost afraid to let Reagan out of her sight, as if she might vanish into the ether if she looks away. Reagan lets go of her hand and Amy reaches over, plucking the key from the box, reading the tiny lettering on the tiny tag.

215 Treme Street. Unit 1C.

“Treme Street,” she says softly, the pieces settling into place “That’s like three blocks from…”

Her eyes light up and she looks from the key to Reagan and back to the key and back to Reagan.

And for once?

Amy understands.

“You’re coming? You’re coming to New Orleans with me?”

Reagan nods. “Yeah,” she says. “Recently, someone… surprisingly wise… pointed out that maybe it was my turn.”

The tears are back and it’s all Amy can do not to throw herself into Reagan’s arms right then and there. “Your turn for what?”

Reagan thinks about it for a moment, searching for the right way to put it. “My turn,” she says, smiling, “to try orbiting my world, for a change.”

Amy shakes her head, the confusion back in her eyes, but that's… well… it’s OK. Reagan understands enough for the both of them.

(Like she’d ever give Karma credit. Out loud.)

She catches Amy’s hand and pulls her close, slipping her arms around the blonde’s waist as she sinks back onto the swing. “Did you really think I’d break up with you?”

Amy shrugs and then nods and then, finally, slowly shakes her head. “Maybe for a second or two,” she says. “But I knew better.”

Reagan breathes - for what feels like the first time in forever - as Amy leans into her, her girlfriend’s lips brushing lightly across her own. “You knew, huh?” she asks and Amy nods.

So.

This was new.

There had been a time (or two) (or maybe more and she just didn’t want to think about that right now) (especially now) when Reagan had been on the other side of this equation. When she’d been firmly on Sophie’s side. A time or two (or, oh fuck it, four) when Reagan had been the one slowly turning circles - literally and in her mind - feeling that sickening feeling, that pain mixed with jealousy mixed with the urge to duck and cover as all the pieces seemed to click into place by falling square onto her.

A time or four when she’d been the one cheated on. When she was the cheated, instead of the cheater.

Maybe (not really maybe at all) that was why she didn’t say anything, not a single word in her own defense. Maybe it was empathy or sympathy - one kind of ‘thy’ or another - that stilled her tongue as she simply stepped aside and let Sophie pass, let the other woman (oh, wait, that was Amy) slip inside the apartment without a word.

Or, maybe that was just because, really, what the fuck could she say?

She could have tried. The words came to her, easily and quickly. The words she’d heard before, the explanations that seemed so… easy, so obvious, so perfectly typical.

Maybe a little 'It’s not what it looks like’? Well, maybe it wasn’t. Maybe Sophie was reading this entirely differently, thinking it was a one time thing - and oh, how sick Reagan felt at that notion, that maybe it was - and maybe she hadn’t pieced any of the rest together.

Not yet, at least. But she would or, in the end, Reagan would tell her because if she didn’t, then Amy would, for sure, because if there was one thing that Reagan still knew about her ex?

With her, the truth would always out. Maybe not willingly or pleasantly or in a way that actually did any good for anyone, but it would.

Reagan considered - for about ten seconds - trying a bit of 'I can explain’? She knew that was always good, a classic, a can’t miss, probably line number one on page number one of the So You Got Busted Fucking Around handbook, the definitive guide to what to say when you get caught with your hand between some other girl’s legs.

Except… she can't explain. Reagan doesn’t know how it happened (lie) and she doesn’t know why (bigger lie) and she has absolutely no idea how she feels about it.

OK, Pinocchio. Whatever you say.

(Your nose is showing)

And even if she could explain - and she so fucking can, but she so fucking won’t because, recent choices notwithstanding, Reagan isn't stupid - there’s a bigger problem. Those legs she got metaphorically caught between?

They don’t belong to just some other girl. Not for her.

And not for Sophie either.

That means the lie is out and the explanation is way out and, really, that leaves Reagan with only one thing to say. The one thing she knows is absolutely true and absolutely won’t make even the tiniest bit of difference, but she says it anyway.

“I’m sorry.”

The words slip free in a sigh as she shuts the door, leaning back against it and she wishes them back between her lips almost before they’re out. Reagan knows those words - those words in this situation - as well meaning as they are, she knows there’s only one person in this equation that they do anything for.

And it’s not the one they should.

Those words are for her - the wrong her - and all they do is slap a band-aid (a tiny one, one of those miniscule round numbers meant for a paper cut and this is a fucking chest wound) on her guilt. If she was Sophie, Reagan knows, those words would probably be met with scorn or derision.

Or a right to the fucking face.

But she isn’t Sophie and Reagan knows Sophie won’t do that. There will be no punching.

(And, later, Reagan will wonder exactly how many times in one day can she be wrong?)

So when Sophie doesn’t say anything back, the silence is almost a relief - and Reagan's almost ashamed to even think that - and she doesn’t even look in Reagan’s direction. That would only distract her, would take her focus from the slow and steady appraisal of every single thing in the apartment.

Fuck. Reagan knows that look. She hates that look.

It isn’t so much the look as what’s in it. The question. The questions, plural. None of them good, and the answers… oh, the answers are so much worse.

Did they do it over there? (Yes.) (At least some of it.) Were they one the couch when they kissed? (Does up against count as on?) (As if that would help.) Did they kiss? (Yes.) Or was a kiss too… intimate? (No.) Or is that who they were, who they are? (Were, yes. Are… who the fuck knows?) Were they intimate, more than just a quick fuck, more than just some instant attraction they couldn’t ignore - no matter the consequences - more than just a desperate need and lust? Was there actually something there?

Reagan knows - knew - the answer to that. And she knew the other answers would hurt, would wound, would cut.

And that one would kill.

Her mouth was dry and her lips couldn’t part and the words… well, this time they seemed bound and fucking determined not to come out no matter how hard she tried.

Which wasn’t all that hard. Not really. Not at all.

But, in the end, it didn’t matter. Cause Sophie had the question.

“You’re her.”

And, apparently, she had the answer too.

“You’re her.”

The first time she ever kissed a girl - really kissed a girl, not some stupid peck on the cheek playing some stupid game with some stupid boys - Sophie knew. She knew she was gay, she knew that, for her, it would always be girls and only girls, she knew that her life had irrevocably shifted with the touch of just two soft lips.

What she didn’t know was how the hell she hadn’t known.

Sort of how she was feeling just then. If, by 'sort of’, you meant exactly. Exactly how she was feeling right then. How? How had she not known?

It was all right there, if she’d only looked. Literally all right there, in the far corner of the room, the spot Reagan had breezed over in the grand tour, the one Sophie herself had ignored - she had had far better things to look at - tucked away in the shadows next to the bookcase, by the window.

DJ gear.

Two turntables and a microphone ran through her head and Sophie almost smiled but then, instead, she remembered. (As if she could have forgotten.) It was all right there, in that corner, two decks, a pile of tangled headphones and cords. A stack of vinyl as high as her waist. It was all right there.

It was always right there.

“It was there,” Sophie said, softly. “The night I was here. When you were…”

When Reagan was ready. Ready to forget. Something Sophie wished, right then (and five seconds later, and an hour later, and an hour and five minutes and one punch later) she could do. Forget.

“It’s funny,” she said. “The stuff we don’t see. When we don’t want to.”

Reagan took one short step toward her, one hand reaching out, but not quite getting there, not landing on soft skin or wrinkled shirt, catching nothing but air. That was Reagan’s choice - an idea that seemed to cover a brand new multitude of sins - because Sophie didn’t flinch. She didn’t pull away, didn’t make a mad dash toward the door.

Reagan didn’t touch her - Sophie had an inkling that would never happen again - but Sophie stood her ground.

“You’re the ex,” Sophie said, surprising even herself with how little bitterness there was to it, how even that word - 'ex’ - didn’t snap off her tongue like a curse. “You’re the one that dumped Amy in high school,” she said, her eyes never leaving that darkened corner. “Because she wasn’t gay enough for you.”

There’s a moment - it’s brief and passes quickly, though maybe not quickly enough - when Sophie can feel Reagan fighting it down. That urge to protest, to argue, to say 'no, that’s not the way of it’ (read: that’s some bullshit.) Sophie can almost hear the words battling it out inside the other woman, the other words, the other reasons, the ones she’s sure Reagan has spent the better part of two years trying to convince herself were the real reasons.

Karma. Amy’s lies. Liam. Karma. Amy just wasn’t ready for a relationship. Karma. Their lives were going in different directions and it just wasn’t there time and it wasn’t really anyone’s fault.

Did she mention Karma?

But - and this time it’s to her credit - all her (inner) protestations aside, Reagan doesn’t argue with the simple truth.

“I was stupid,” she said, taking a step back, her hand slowly dropping back to her side, as she confirmed Sophie’s suspicions without, you know, actually confirming. “Stupid and young and I’d had my heart and my trust broken.”

There was a split second of pause, a humming moment of silence when they both waited to see if Sophie would point out the obvious: she knew the feeling.

“What your ex did to you… the 'phase’ one?” Sophie nodded slowly. “What she did to you, it just sucked.”

She heard Reagan take a short quick breath behind her, the knowledge sinking in. Sophie knew. She knew all of it. She knew about Charlotte and she knew about her and she knew about her and Amy and about her and Amy and the breakup. She’d known all of it, all along.

Everything except the one part that mattered.

“It’s my own fault,” Sophie said. She’d drifted somehow - Reagan didn’t understand how she hadn’t seen her move, she was looking at her the whole damn time - and was now by the gear, one hand lightly brushing against a pair of headphones. “I was the one who made the rule, I was the one who said no names.”

She laughed then. A soft, hollow, it’s not funny, it’s ironic - like actually ironic, Alanis - little cough of a laugh. One word. One name. It all could have been prevented with one damn word.

“It was that night, wasn’t it?” she asked. “The night I… introduced… you two. That was why you bailed on our date.”

Reagan slumped back hard against the counter, as the memory of Amy’s face - of Amy's everything - rounding that corner in the hall outside their room, flooded her. “Yeah,” she muttered. “That was the first time we’d seen each other since… well… since she tried to get back together with me.”

It’s Karma, isn’t it?

And then it was Reagan’s turn to laugh - though hers was just a touch more bitter, a shade more 'should have seen this coming’ - because, well, yes.

It really was karma.

Sophie took another few steps, her fingers drumming atop the stack of records. In a bad movie or a TV show - the kind of shit they’d show on MTV, probably - she’d pick one up. Smash it on the floor while Reagan watched. And then another. And then another. One for every one of those multitude of sins.

The records stayed neatly stacked. Sophie wasn’t a rager, she wasn’t the kind for tantrums, she wasn’t a violent angry woman.

Not yet, anyway.

“Why didn’t you?” she asked, surprising herself and Reagan. “When Amy came to you and asked you to take her back, why didn’t you?”

She left the rest of that mercifully unsaid. You weren’t in love with Heather, not even then. It was still Amy, even then. You hadn’t let go, even then. You never let go.

I know. Because you told me.

“It wasn’t that simple,” Reagan said. She pushed off the counter and crossed the room to the couch, her defeated and guilty posture slipping aside, replaced by… something Sophie couldn’t quite read. “I had Heather and Amy…”

The rest of that sentence screamed it’s way across the room.

Amy had Karma. Or, more accurately, Amy had her want for Karma. Her need for Karma.

“She wasn’t running to me,” Reagan said. “She was running from Karma. Why would I have taken her back?”

The word - love - rolled its way up from inside of Sophie and she had to bite it back, gnash it crush it beneath her teeth. Ten minutes ago, she would have said it.

Ten minutes ago, she might have believed it would have mattered.

“She came to you,” Sophie said instead, marvelling to herself at her grasp of the blatantly obvious. “Didn’t that count for anything? Amy could have gone anywhere but she -”

Reagan cut her off so softly, Sophie almost didn’t hear her. “She did.”

She turned to the older woman - the one she’d thought… well… what she’d thought or imagined or projected or fucking dreamed didn’t seem all that relevant now - and watched as Reagan slowly, but inexorably, crumpled, sliding down along the arm of the couch, her knees coming to her chest.

There were tears in her eyes - fucking tiny puddles that Sophie could still imagine falling into and God, when was that going to stop? - but Reagan was refusing to let them fall. Maybe she thought she didn’t have the right (she really didn’t) or maybe she thought crying would just piss Sophie off (it probably would) or maybe, really, when it came right down to it?

Reagan had cried enough damn tears over Amy Raudenfeld.

(She had.) (She most definitely had.)

“She did go anywhere,” Reagan said. “One minute Amy was standing in my doorway, wanting me back. The next she was on a bus.” She wrapped her arms around her knees. “She told you about the bus, right?”

Sophie nodded, a glimmer of understanding - and fuck all, that wasn't fair - slipping in. Amy’s bus stories, the tales of her summer on the road, were the one set of stories where they didn’t need the rules about names.

Amy didn’t remember most of them anyway.

“I heard all about it from one of my friends in the band,” Reagan said. Sophie stood rigidly in place, refusing to even acknowledge the faint hint of sympathy or empathy - fuck all the 'thy’s, fuck 'em all to hell - she felt tingling its way up from her toes. “Every little detail cause, let’s face it, wild child Amy is an awesome story. And let’s also face it, I was over her, right? I was with Heather, after all.”

Reagan shook her head and swiped at one eye with her sleeve. Sophie leaned up against the bookcase and slowly sank to the floor across from her. She watched as Reagan fumbled with Amy’s phone, the one she’d never actually put down.

“That summer, Amy could’ve gone anywhere,” Reagan said. Her thumb ghosted across the screen, her touch light and tender as it slipped across Amy’s smiling face. It was the touch of a lover, and Sophie had to look away. “And she did. She went anywhere… anywhere else.”

Reagan didn’t say 'leaving me heartbroken, leaving me in a loveless relationship, leaving me wondering what might have been’.

She didn’t say 'leaving me with the wrong girl’.

She didn’t say it. But Sophie still heard it.

The phone slipped from Reagan’s hand, clattering on the floor, landing squarely between them and neither of them made any move to pick it up. “Amy just walked right out my door and she disappeared.”

She glanced around the apartment, as Sophie tracked her eyes, knowing exactly what she would find. No one but the two of them, anywhere in sight.