author's note: I've been trying to write this for months, honestly - I've had the idea but haven't been able to make it work in a way that I'm happy with. This is the happiest I've been with it so far and I know if I don't just go ahead and go with it I will keep on stressing myself out over it so here we go, I'm posting this anyway. Haha. Let me know what you think, please. Oh, and also - the quote from the summary is from the song "Just Like Him" by Brandy Clark.
love is like coming home.
'they say love is like coming home, and i come from a broken one'
Amy Raudenfeld is in love with Karma Ashcroft.
Amy is in love with Karma's crazy schemes and how her auburn hair always looks perfect and the way she still cries every time they watch Bambi. Amy is in love with the way Karma falls asleep on her shoulder when she chooses to watch a documentary on Netflix and the way she leans forward, fully engrossed, when they watch Dance Moms. Amy is in love with Karma's soft laughter and the way her eyes twinkle when she thinks of a comeback and how she doesn't start anything without a plan, even a poorly-formed one, and the way she loves to spend hours researching things to form organized binders. Amy is in love with how Karma thinks Bradley Cooper and Ben Affleck are more important than Barack Obama and Joe Biden, with the way she will call 13 times in a row until Amy answers, with the way she pops each piece of popcorn into her mouth individually.
Amy Raudenfeld is in love with Karma Ashcroft.
She remembers telling Karma one day in the seventh grade that she didn't believe in love, not long after her mother's third divorce. Karma had shaken her head, had argued with Amy like she always did when the blonde said something cynical. "Love is real," she had said, her voice full of confidence and surety. "Love is like coming home."
"Yeah, okay," Amy had said through a laugh, rolling her eyes, but it stuck with her. She is pretty sure that Karma had gotten it from a movie or a book, something that supports the idealism Karma has always believed in, but at the same time her best friend had seemed so sure. And Amy has always wished she could have that same idealistic worldview Karma possesses.
She realizes now that she will never see the world the way Karma does.
Because home has always been nights alone with babysitters (when she was too young to stay by herself) or nights alone with the DVD player (when she finally turned 10 years old). Home has always meant frozen dinners on good nights, or awkward "family" dinners on the unfortunate nights that her mom and current husband decided to stay in. Home has always felt too empty, too lonely, even when her mom and stepdad are home, even when her mom is single. Home has always been placing bets with herself – how long until she divorces this one? and how long before this one proposes? – and a strange mixture of happiness and disappointment and hurt when the last suitcase rolls out the door and the last piece of paper gets signed.
Home is where she listened to her mom fight with Husband #1 for hours nearly every night starting two months after the honeymoon. Home is where Husband #2 – good old lazy eye – stood and told her mother he couldn't put up with her obsession with reputations and appearances anymore. Home is where Husband #3 laid a too-heavy hand on her, where she got a black eye she sported for a week, the place that inspired the softball bat under her bed. Home is where Husband #4 admitted to sleeping with his ex-wife, where her mother fell apart in the kitchen as he tried his best to apologize, where Amy finally had to tell him to pack up his things and leave.
Home is the place Bruce and Lauren invaded. Home is the place that has never felt quite like Amy's, the place where she has lived for years but still feels like a visitor in. Home is cold and empty and lonely.
"Love is like coming home," rings in Amy's ears out of nowhere as she watches the tears roll down Karma's face. She has finally told her secret and now has to watch it destroy her best friend. She has finally done it, finally said the four hardest words of her life, "I slept with Liam," harder than "I'm fine" and "I love you" and "step off the edge with me."
The tears are streaming down Karma's face, falling faster than Amy can comprehend, and Amy has never seen this much pain in her eyes. This much betrayal. This much hurt and anger and disgust. It hurts even more to know that she caused this, to know that she is the reason Karma feels like her whole world is falling apart.
She isn't sure if she is her mother or husband number whatever in this scenario, but she knows she has to be one or the other because this scene feels far too familiar to her.
Karma looks at Amy like she is looking at a stranger, someone she has never seen before and doesn't care to see again. Amy is apologizing, saying words without processing them, as if it will make a difference. But isn't she the one who always tells Farrah not to go back, to stand strong, not to buy into the apologies and the promises because people only make the same mistakes again and again?
Then Karma walks out the door, slamming it behind her and making the picture frames on Amy's walls rattle. She wants to chase after her but Amy stays rooted to the spot, her own tears falling. Because isn't she the one who always tells Farrah not to run after them, the one who convinces her that it will do no good?
So she finds herself on the floor, sobbing into her hands, the emotional mess that Farrah always becomes. And Karma is gone.
"Love is like coming home," she hears again, Karma's voice pounding in her ears.
She hates it when she realizes that Karma was right all along.