In the end, Karma's wrong.
It isn't the summer they spend apart that ends them. It's the night they spend together.
She never imagined it could be like that. She never once thought of being with a girl, certainly not with Amy, of all people.
And that she knows is one of those devil's in the details, pay extra close attention to the words kind of lies, not unlike the one that sent Amy off on that summer apart she was so sure would be the death of them, not unlike 'I can't', which wasn't 'it didn't mean anything' or 'I was thinking of Liam the whole time' or even 'no'. This was one of those kinds of lies.
She never once thought of being with a girl. Once.
Oh, if it had only been once. If that idea had only crossed her mind once or maybe even twice, or only when she was drunk or lonely or bored to death in class or tired of listening to Liam (and God, it would have been all the fucking time then) or any one of a hundred times when thoughts like that, she was sure, occured to everyone.
Who hasn't sexually fantasized their way through a boring Biology lecture? Or a trip to the dentist? Or all forty-eight hours of parent's weekend because - by Gaia - if she had to listen to one more discussion of how the new smoothie flavors were taking of and whoever would have thought not including pot in the brownies would actually make them taste better, she was going to have to fuck someone.
It didn't cross her mind just once or a hundred times or a thousand times and it was never just any girl and Karma knew it. But she also knew - knew - the damage it could do to them. She had seen first hand the destruction sex could do to a relationship (and she had long since stopped considering what she and Amy had as a friend kind of ship.) She'd seen it more than once.
See Liam. See Wade. See Frank and Jackson and that other guy - what the hell was his name? - the one with the long hair and the arms and the habit of walking around the dorm shirtless…
Davis.
So, yeah, maybe the sex had been good. Maybe in some cases (Davis, in particular) it has been more than good. But, in Karma's experience, in the end it had always been exactly that.
The end.
Maybe not right away. It wasn't like she'd fuck and run or they'd cum and quit, but it was always the first step on that slippery slope that always ended with someone in tears and someone's heart in tatters.
And that - that end - was the one thing Karma couldn't have with Amy. They had, somehow, survived faking it and the Liam incident and the drunken pool kiss and even the summer apart, which had - to Karma's everlasting surprise - actually brought them closer. Their relationship could stand up to almost anything.
Karma was in no hurry to test that 'almost', no matter how much some parts of her wanted to.
And so maybe by the time junior year of college rolled around they weren't as close as they'd once been (no one was ever that close). Living on opposite coasts and making fewer and fewer trips home - which Austin still was, even if in name only - could do that to even the best of friends. And that, Karma was sure, was what they still were - the best of friends.
"We don't need to be in the same place to be together," Karma said, the night before they flew off in opposite directions for college. Amy nodded, always agreeable, always going along with Karma's still intact plan of growing old together, living next door to each other, maybe even marrying siblings.
Karma had eventually grown (sort of) comfortable with the idea that it might be a brother and sister pair.
She still had some doubts though, even if Amy didn't. Even if Amy's ill-fated and anything but serious 'thing' (a term only Karma actually used) with Felix had done more to convince Amy that she was, in fact, gay than even her relationship (a term Karma still only occasionally used) with Reagan had.
"It happened once," Karma said, in reference to Amy and guys. "It could happen again."
Once, really, was Liam. Once was a mistake. Once was drunk and once was pain and once was anger and lashing out.
See Karma's thoughts on sex ruining everything.
So there were about a thousand good reasons (and about a thousand more not so good but always ready to be trotted out in a pinch) that even if Karma did, sometimes, consider or contemplate or spare even a single passing thought on the idea that she might one day hook up with a girl, she was beyond convinced that said girl would not be Amy.
"Why not?" Ashlyn asked.
Ash was Karma's very curious and very non-filtered roommate (think Lauren with even less tact) and whenever they had a few too many (which, with Ash, was so very often) the subject somehow turned to Karma's potential girl-on-girl tendencies.
How Karma never got the hint, Ashlyn never knew but, apparently, no matter how much she'd grown in college, Karma was still - more often than not - fucking oblivious.
"I've seen the picture, I've seen her on Skype," Ashlyn said. "I even saw her for like thirty seconds that one time she came here, before you whisked her away and disappeared for the entire weekend."
Ash leaned closer as she spoke - the concept of personal space was one Karma's roomie understood but didn't obey - and her breath tickled the hairs along the back of the redhead's neck, making her remember so many sleepovers when Amy's breath had done the same.
"Your bestie?" Ash said. "Fucking hot."
Karma rolled her eyes, reminded Ash that she'd probably had a bit too much and - when Ash wouldn't let it go - she wandered off across the bar and found Davis leaning against a table and it took all of thirty seconds and one promise to let him do that thing he liked so much before Karma was in a cab on the way back to the dorm and all thoughts of Ash and Amy and warm breath on her neck were driven far from her mind.
Far. Driven far. Just never… far enough.
That was the story of Karma's life when it came to Amy and sex and her. She could push it away - the thoughts, the want, the need - but it never stayed gone long.
There was that dream, back in high school, the one after she'd fucked Liam in the art room as a 'thank you' for saving them all for jail (which had nothing to do with knowing Amy and Reagan were off in a tent somewhere doing… well… things). Karma remembered feeling a bit of something whenever she remembered the part of the dream that was her and Amy.
Or even when she remembered the part that was Amy and Reagan and, nope, Karma wasn't thinking too long or too hard about the common denominator in those equations. Especially not when she, as she always did, remembered the part that was Amy and Liam and fooling her and betraying her and there it was, again.
Sex. Fucking everything up.
Even the men in her life couldn't make it go far enough or stay gone. It still drifted back, invading her mind at the most inopportune times.
Like when Davis was fucking her from behind in the tiny dorm laundry room and the sight of Amy's doughnut shirt - the one Karma had 'accidentally' stuck in her suitcase after their last mutual trip home - circling around and around in the washer had brought up a few thoughts of spots she might not mind Amy's tongue circling over and over and over….
Or when Frank offered to give her a shoulder rub in the hot tub after her first 5k run and hearing him offer to work the kinks out for her and the heat and his touch and the way those kinks melted away had sent her mind wandering and visions of Amy came tumbling along.
Amy in her bikini that last summer at the beach. The way Amy's face had flushed when she saw Karma in her Pamela Anderson-approved red lifeguard suit. Amy's face - red and sweaty and so hot in the non-sweaty way - when Karma had surprised her in California and walked in on her and Maisie (and God, Karma hated that bitch) just as Amy was squeezing said bitch's head between her thighs and letting loose a string of curses and commands that had made Karma's knees weak.
Amy herself was no help either. Like the time she answered their weekly Skype call flushed to the gills, nipples still so obviously fucking hard with someone's bra (tacky and ugly and fucking huge so it had to be Maisie) and how Amy kept the call oddly focused on her face and Karma swore a couple times her best friend's eyes were about to roll back into her head.
Yeah. That didn't help keep those thoughts at bay.
But it didn't matter how often the thoughts came or what her lust wanted or what that ache between her legs called out for. The only thing that mattered to Karma, the only thing that had ever mattered to Karma was what her heart wanted.
And her heart… well…
Fuck.
Her heart wanted Amy. It always had and it always would. But Karma's heart was much like the rest of her. Unsure, unfocused, confused, and reluctant.
In a word? Scared.
So Karma scratched her itch - or Davis of Frank or Jackson or the vibrator Ashlyn had helped her pick out one drunken night they never spoke of again - scratched it for her and Karma kept her eye on the prize.
Life. Life with Amy. Growing old together, houses next door to each other, kids playing together, sibling spouses who would just have to understand that they would always play second fiddle.
It was perfect. A fairytale. Everything she ever wanted. And sex, Karma knew, would just fuck it all up.
And, as it turned out?
She was right.