There are days when Amy wishes she'd just stayed in bed. A box of donuts, a documentary on Netflix, a blanket to pull up over her head and hide under. She'd had more of those days during what Shane refers to as her "Karma phase" than she has recently, but there are still days…
Days like today.
She'd known this was going to be one of those days from the moment her phone buzzed on her way to lunch. From the second she'd read the text from Reagan.
Party at Shane's. This weekend. Please?
Amy knows she's going to cave. Hell, she's not even sure why she's going to fight it, except on general principle. She remembers all too well - and Lauren and Shane won't let her forget - how Karma led her around by the nose all those weeks they were faking it. But she knows Reagan's different. She never asks for anything, she'll happily do whatever Amy wants, particularly if it involves making out (which, Amy knows, it usually does).
So, when Reagan does ask for something, Amy gives in. Sometimes without even fighting, though then she doesn't get the eyebrow and the little lip bite and the inevitable making out that those two always lead to.
And as she slipped her phone back into her pocket and settled down next to Karma at their usual table out back of the school, nearly dropping her tray in the process, she sighed. She's going to give in. But as she sees Shane making a beeline for their table, she knows it isn't going to be that simple. Because, she knows, it just never is.
So it doesn't come as any real surprise to her that Shane is the one to out her, yet again. It's something he seems to have a knack for.
And it's yet another reason to wish she'd stayed in bed.
She knows what he's going to say before he even opens his mouth and as he slides down onto the bench across from her and Karma, Amy's already answering the question he hasn't yet asked.
"No," she says, shaking her head emphatically. "No way."
Shane grins, not dissuaded in the least. "She told you?"
Amy pokes her fork into her mashed potatoes and fixes Shane with the most withering duh, dumbass look she can muster. "Of course," she says. "You may be her new BFF -"
"GBF," Shane corrects, the grin still plastered on his face.
"Whatever," Amy says, though even Karma - sitting there confused, lost, and shocked by how quickly this conversation has passed her by is able to pick up on the does it really fucking matter subtext. "You may be her new GBF, but I'm still… me."
Shane chuckles. "I should have figured," he says. But then the grin grows bigger and he arches an eyebrow. "Or maybe I did? Maybe I knew she'd tell you? And maybe I knew she'd be able to talk you into it?" He leans his elbows on the table, tilting his head toward her conspiratorially. "I mean, I may only be the GBF," he says. "But she's still… her."
Amy lets out a throaty chuckle and blushes slightly. Not for the first time she wonders why she ever tells Shane anything. Ever since she'd mentioned that Reagan had "convinced" her to go back to the underground club by using her "lesbian wiles" (Shane's term, not hers), he's been searching for a way to use that against her. To get her to do something she wouldn't normally do.
Like a party. At his house.
Because, Amy thinks, we all know how well that went last time.
And Karma looks between the two of them, watches them having a conversation that seems like something out of a World War II codebook to her, and feels confused. Left out.
And she doesn't like it.
But before she can chime in, Amy's speaking again. "She tried, Shane. Really she did." It's a lie. Reagan really trying would have involved more than a texted 'please'. There'd have been donuts. And kisses. And, lately, increasing amounts of bare skin.
Amy blushes again at the thought.
"But," she says, pushing away thoughts of Regan and her lips and that thing she's been doing lately with her tongue. "It isn't happening. Not this weekend or next weekend or any weekend that starts in week and ends in… end."
That sounded so much cooler in her head.
"Come on, Amy." He's treading dangerously close to whining and, no matter what others may think, Shane hates whining. Almost as much as he hates begging. "It's the perfect time. My parents are gone for the weekend, I haven't had a party in almost a month, she's got the whole weekend off…" He tilts his head again, fixes her with the closest thing he's got to puppy dog eyes. "This is the perfect time for Reamy to make their public debut."
Amy sighs and fidgets with her fork. She knows she's going to give in, hell, Shane knows it. But she wanted to put up a better fight. She's about to cave when Karma, sensing this might be the only opening she gets, blurts her way into the conversation.
'What's a Reamy?"
And it's as if Amy had forgotten she was even there and, in truth, it wouldn't be the first time Karma has slipped her mind in recent weeks. But now she remembers. Remembers that Karma's been sitting there listening to the entire conversation. Remembers that she and Karma are probably way overdue for a talk about the developments in Amy's life. Remembers that Karma doesn't know and Shane doesn't know that Karma doesn't know…
And oh, fuck, this is going to end badly.
Shane rolls his eyes and shakes his head at Karma. "Seriously?" he asks, barely able to hide the annoyance in his voice. Since Karma and Liam became official, he's found himself forced to tolerate her presence even more than usual and, with every passing day, he's found it harder and harder to bite his tongue around her.
Karma looks between them again. She notices the slightly terrified look in Amy's eyes and wonders, briefly, why her best friend is scared. And why, for the first time in their friendship, she doesn't know something about what Amy's feeling.
OK. Maybe not for the first time.
"Sorry, Shane," she says. "I guess we're not all as 'in-the-know' as you."
Shane resists, barely, the urge to explain to Karma all things she doesn't know, but focuses instead on the question before him. "Reamy," he says again, simply. "Reagan. Amy." He holds his hands out separately as he speaks, then brings them together. "Reamy." He can't resist one little jab. "You know, like Karmy. Only with twice the lesbians."
Yup, Amy thinks, definitely one of those days.
She can feel Karma's eyes on her without looking. And, just like before with Shane, she knows what Karma's going to say before she even speaks.
"Amy?" Karma's voice is quiet, which only makes Amy's insides twist a little bit more. "Who's Reagan?"
Amy stares straight ahead, eyes locked on Shane, and she sees the realization wash over his face.
"Shit," he mutters. "You didn't… I thought…" He drops his eyes to the table as he fully comprehends what he just did. And then, suddenly, his head snaps up and he looks off into the distance. "What? Was that Liam? I think it was!" He jumps to his feet, consciously avoiding looking at Amy because, well, because he doesn't want to die right this second. "Coming, Liam!" And he's off, sprinting across the quad and Amy muses, briefly, that she's never seen him move quite so fast.
"Amy?"
And yet again Amy is reminded that Karma, her best friend since forever, is sitting right next to her. Confused. Left out. Wanting to know who this 'Reagan' is.
Amy makes a mental note to start eating lunch alone. In a closet or under the bleachers or somewhere shit like this just can't happen.
"Reagan's my girlfriend," she says softly, praying it was quiet enough to make it seem like it isn't a big deal, but loud enough that Karma won't need her to repeat it.
"Girlfriend." Karma says it like she's rolling the word around in her mouth, trying to decide if she likes the taste. "Girlfriend," she says again.
Amy hasn't heard that tone since Karma tried one of her mother's kale and turnip muffins when they were twelve. Then, it was followed quickly by a projectile vomiting moment the like of which the Ashcroft kitchen had never seen before.
Amy discreetly slides an inch or two further away from Karma on the bench.
"Since when do you have a girlfriend?"
It's a loaded question and they both know it. If this was a new development, then Shane wouldn't have assumed Karma knew. And if it's not a new development…
Then why the fuck, Karma wonders, didn't she know?
"A month," Amy says, noncommittally. "Two?"
Karma's fingers drum on the table top. "I've been with Liam two months," she says. "Two months this weekend."
"OK," Amy says, still refusing to look at Karma. In the back of her mind, she knew that since the day Karma and Liam reunited was, after all, a day she'd spent weeks prepping for only to see it crash, burn, and sink to the depths of hell right in front of her.
"So, maybe it's not exactly two months," Amy says. She does the mental math in her head. "One month, three weeks, four days?' She shrugs. "Give or take."
Karma gets up and moves around the table, sitting down across from Amy, directly in her line of sight, and Amy has no choice but to look at her because looking away now would be so obvious, so weak.
"You've been seeing someone almost as long as I've been with Liam and you never told me?"
Amy shrugs again, mostly for lack of anything better to do. "It's not like it was a secret," she says. And immediately knows that was the wrong tact to take.
"Of course not," Karma snips. "Because we don't keep secrets, right?"
In her head, Amy envisions all of the unpleasant things she's going to do to Shane.
"I'm sorry," she says, though apologizing to Karma leaves a taste in her mouth the reminds her again of kale and turnips. "I just… we haven't…" she sighs and shakes her head. "I just hadn't had a chance to tell you." She rubs her hand across the back of her neck, trying to ward off the headache she feels coming. "I mean, come on Karma. This is the first time you've eaten lunch with me - us - in three weeks. And we haven't exactly been scheduling girl's nights on the regular, you know?"
"Seems like you've probably been having a whole different kind of girl's nights," Karma says.
Amy wants to be angry. She wants to fling mashed potatoes off her tray into Karma's face. She wants to demand to know where the hell Karma gets off giving her attitude and bitching about her keeping secrets and why the absolute fuck Karma thinks she's got any right to be pissed.
Amy wants all that. But she settles for a sigh. And, yet again… 'I'm sorry, Karma."
Karma stares at her across the table, the anger and the hurt etched clearly on her face. She wants to be angry too. And unlike Amy, she's having no trouble embracing it.
"Who else?" she asks. "Who else knows? Who else knew before me?"
Amy wonders if she'd be able to tie Shane to a chair and make him watch Liam and Karma make out for hours on end because, really, that's about the only suitable punishment for this.
"Shane," she she tells Karma. "And Lauren and Theo, but only because they were there the night Reagan and I met." It's a little lie, in the grand scheme. No need to tell Karma about the Booker's party and Shrimp Girl and the momster.
"Anyone else?" Karma presses. This time, she can read Amy and she knows there's something the blonde isn't telling her.
Amy runs a hand through her hair and goes for full honesty, because she knows there's no other way out of this. "My mom and Bruce," she says. "They had Reagan over for dinner, so meeting her was kind of, you know, essential."
If Lauren and Shane and fucking Theo knowing about Reagan before Karma did was bad, then Amy's mom and step-father? That was bad on a level usually reserved for after wedding confessions and birthday scavenger hunt fights.
"You weren't going to tell me, were you?" Karma asks. The anger's drained from her face. She's not mad. She's hurt.
I'm not angry with you. Just disappointed.
"Yes, I was," Amy says. She starts to reach across the table to take Karma's hands, but thinks better of it. "I just… I just wanted to find the right time, that's all."
"Like at Shane's party? A party Liam, and therefore me, would most likely be attending? So I could be introduced to Reamy and all their glory with the rest of the Hester High riff-raff?"
And in that moment, Amy knows she's well and truly fucked. Because she hadn't once thought about Karma being at the party. She hadn't once even considered it. Her best friend slipped her mind.
Again.
"I wouldn't have done that to you -"
"I can still tell when you're lying, Amy." Karma shakes her head. "At least sometimes." She gets up to leave, clearly pissed, clearly hurt, and clearly in no mood to talk. "Don't worry," she says. "I'll make sure Liam and I don't come to the party. I wouldn't want to embarrass you or ruin your big night."
There's just enough venom behind the words to let Amy know how much finding out this way hurt Karma. And just enough to finally push Amy past guilty right on into pissed off.
"Grow the fuck up, Karma."
Amy's not sure what's more surprising: that the words came out of her mouth or the look on Karma's face when they do.
"Excuse me?"
Amy considers backtracking, for a heartbeat, but then figures, fuck it. In for a penny, in for a pound.
"You're pissed at me because I didn't let you know every little detail of my life," she stands as she speaks, mostly because she doesn't want to look up at Karma. "Did it ever once cross your mind that maybe, just maybe, I needed something that was mine? Just mine? Not Amy and Karma's, not Hester's, not all tied up in this… whatever this shit is that's been going on with us since you decided to fake it?"
Amy grabs up her bag and her tray. She's not quite done, but she knows that when she is, leaving is going to be her only option.
"Since we sat up there on that roof and I, for whatever idiotic reason, said 'let's be lesbians', I've been rejected, hurt, embarrassed, humiliated, and broken in every way you can imagine." Amy can feel her heart hammering in her chest, but it doesn't bother her. It feels good. "So, yeah, I kept something to myself. Something special. Something I had no idea I could ever have and still have no real idea where it's going. I've had one relationship before this, Karma, and in case you forgot that one was fifty percent lies and one hundred percent pain."
"Amy, I-"
Amy cuts her off because, at this point, the 'fuck this shit' train has left the station and it isn't coming back anytime soon.
"I have a girlfriend," she says. "Her name is Reagan. She's 18. She has her own apartment, a couple of jobs, hates cats, loves music, has the sexiest eyebrows you've ever seen, and is hot enough to turn Shane straight." Even thinking about Reagan like this brings a smile to Amy's face, which doesn't go unnoticed by her or by Karma. "My mother loves her, she charmed the shit out of Bruce, she and Shane get along frighteningly well, and last weekend she went shopping with Lauren in Dallas. And survived."
Karma stares at the ground. She doesn't know what to say or how to act. Even in their worst fights, Amy never went off like this. It's a side of her best friend she's never seen.
Seems like there's a lot of those lately.
"I'm… we're going to this stupid party this weekend," Amy says. The anger is slowly seeping out of her voice, but there's still an edge to it. "And if you're there, you can meet her. And if not… then… we'll do lunch or something." Karma glances up, slightly relieved that things seem to be calming down. "I'm not trying to hide her from you, Karma. Or you from her. I'm not embarrassed by either of you. I just…"
"You just, what?" Karma asks, finally finding her voice again.
Amy looks at her, dead in the eyes. "I just needed something for me," she says. "Just for a little while. Before the rest of the world comes in, before the Hester bullshit and all our baggage and… everything." She tears her eyes away from Karma then, because she doesn't want to see the look she knows is coming.
"I just needed some time before everything got fucked up again," she says softly. The implication is clear.
Before you fuck things up again, Karma. Before you find some way to mess things up. Like you did with faking it. Like you did with the Brazilians at the carnival. Like the truth or dare game from hell or the scavenger hunt gone wrong or right fucking now.
Amy heads to the nearest trash can to dump her tray. "We'll be at the party," she says. "Maybe we'll see you there."
She walks off to class without looking back, not entirely sure what the hell just happened or what it means or how she's going to fix it or if even can be fixed.
All she knows is one simple thing. She really should have just stayed in bed.