Broken Over You
A/N: Just trying my hand at this since I just kind of write intermittently these days. This is somewhere after 2x05 but no Reagan and we'll minus out Liam/Amy.
Summary: So yeah, she's angry. Yeah, she's jealous. Liam is around now like a barnacle on the bottom of a boat and it fucking hurts. And yeah, she gave them her blessing for Karma's birthday. But shouldn't she have known it meant 'I'm barely getting these words out of my mouth so please don't flaunt the fact that Liam has the piece of you that'll always be just out of my reach.'
It hurts now; being around Karma now is nothing short of heart wrenching for her. It wasn't supposed to be this way – they were supposed to grow old together remember? But Amy can't figure out how to get anywhere close to normal again after "the rejection." She can't figure out how to not feel irrational amounts of rage (jealousy) when she sees Karma with him. Their friendship was always the easiest thing in her life and now it's like navigating a minefield.
She has so many questions: how can you be best friends when you can't stand to hear any details of your best friend's relationship? How do you get over someone you spend all of your time with?
In Amy's experience, (which she admits is very little), getting over someone would require her cutting them out of her life completely. She can't fathom doing that to Karma. Karma would never let her. They've made so many promises. For one thing they promised it wouldn't get weird after "the rejection," but all Amy feels is weird, and hurt, and uncomfortable when Karma constantly brings Liam around because she seems to 100% believe everything's all fucking hunky dory. That couldn't be further from the truth, and this leaves one final question that Amy wants to ask her:
How did you not know?
Is that fair? They've been friends for ten years, Amy figures it's fair enough to wonder if Karma purposely had blinders on so they didn't have to deal with what would certainly tear them apart. Karma has always known everything there is to know about Amy so she can't figure how Karma didn't see it. Karma knows her better than she knows herself and she didn't see Amy's breathless looks after they kissed?
So yeah, she's angry. Yeah, she's jealous. Liam is around now like a barnacle on the bottom of a boat and it fucking hurts. And yeah, she gave them her blessing for Karma's birthday. But shouldn't she have known it meant 'I'm barely getting these words out of my mouth so please don't flaunt the fact that Liam has the piece of you that'll always be just out of my reach.'
Amy wonders what happens to all the love she's holding onto for Karma – where's she supposed to store that because it always feels like she's going to burst out when she sees Karma smiling, laughing, concentrating – she sometimes physically feels like she's going to vomit all the love she has for Karma that's just going to waste. And she thinks it's a shame because she barely even likes most people she comes into contact with so her love must be a precious commodity that Karma should've taken better care of.
And so they drift apart day after day, week after week. Amy can feel them growing apart even as hours pass. It's killing her but Karma seems happy and unphased and is making Liam the center of her goddamn universe. Fine. That's just fine. They used to make fun of those girls when they were kids, before boys and Liam and faking it. Karma used to threaten to kick her ass if Amy ever became the girl that ditched her for a boy.
"Amy! I haven't seen you in weeks!" Amy knows it's been months since they've done anything but wave hellos in the hallways.
Karma's got a tight lipped smile as she approaches. The blonde spends at least some portion of every single day regretting the fact that she confessed her feelings.
"Guess you've been busy with Liam." She smiles back at Karma with the same amount of insincerity. "And it's fine… I've been busy too. You know, finals and all."
They both know she's lying.
Karma's staring at her shoes (ones Amy's never seen before – and that stings) and fidgeting with her bag and Amy's so over this. She doesn't have the patience or pain tolerance to stand here in awkward silence with the one person that never really minded her unique brand of awkward.
"Can we talk?" Karma says at the same time Amy says "Listen, I've gotta run-"
Well, Amy wasn't expecting that.
She can't put all the blame on Karma. She's been pulling away too as the months have gone by. She's been trying to get over Karma and spending less time with her seemed like the only logical solution. It doesn't mean it didn't hurt when Karma didn't say a word. She hates that she ever confessed – at least if she hadn't there'd still be some sliver of hope she'd be hanging onto and she'd still see Karma because she wouldn't be working on getting over Karma. She supposes she'd still be hurting but there'd still be Karma and Amy. The package deal.
She's at least 80% sure she's going to wear a hole in her carpet from the pacing. Farrah and Bruce are on trip to who the fuck knows where and Lauren is out with her minions doing something that Amy couldn't bother to remember because Karma's coming over.
She should've never agreed to this. She should've just told Karma to go back to her boyfriend so she could continue on with her meaningless existence. Okay, she knows that's dramatic but she never realized how much time Karma took up until there was no Karma anymore. Even Shane can't fill a void that big.
There's probably no one who can take Karma's place – Amy conceded to that months ago. The first step to recovering is admitting you have a problem, right?
"Hey…"
Amy tries not to look like she's been counting down the minutes. They both know she's lying.
"Hey, Karma… hi." She's completely giving herself away with all of her nervous ticks. Karma might've gone MIA but it doesn't mean she forgot the last decade of their friendship. Amy knows Karma still knows her better than anyone. "Do you wanna sit?"
Why am I being so formal? Amy curses her awkward nature. Karma looks tense as she tucks herself into Amy's computer chair.
They're both looking around the room like they didn't spend the better part of their shared childhood in there. The room is still filled with Karma. Amy knows Karma's staring at the glow-in-the-dark stars, or rather the half that are missing that Amy tore down in a fit of rage and tears a few months ago. She instantly regretted it and thought about putting them back up until she got on Facebook and was subjected to:
Karma Ashcroft feeling happy with Liam Booker
10 mins – Austin, TX
Having the greatest date night with the greatest boyfriend in the world!
All those stupid fucking stars were deposited into the trash immediately after. And when the Liam & Karma selfie of them in the movie theater followed up the status – well, Amy took the whole trash bag out of the kitchen and dumped it into her neighbor's bin outside, took a deep breath, and promptly deleted her entire Facebook. (She only occasionally creeps on Karma's page on Shane's phone when he's in the lunch line. She never said she was perfect.)
"Yeah… they fell off one night... it was real humid in here," Amy says. Karma rolls her eyes and for just one second Amy thinks she might get up and walk back out and they could just pretend the last ten minutes never happened.
"Don't lie to me, Amy. I've always known when you're lying."
Amy scoffs and raises an eyebrow. Karma only seems to use that defense when it suits her and not when she's purposely ignoring Amy's ridiculously noticeable feelings that are staring her in the face.
"Fine. I took em down."
"Why?" Karma's just picking at scabs tonight.
"Karma… why are you here? It's been months. Where's Liam tonight?"
"Why did you take them down?" She finally makes eye contact with Amy. Amy sees hurt there and for a half of a second she feels bad. Then she remembers the mental image of Liam and Karma kissing that came up on her Instagram feed. She remembers unfollowing Karma. And then following her again ten minutes later. Yeah, Facebook is stupid but she always liked instagram more anyways and she wasn't looking to attract Karma's attention. (Except she was).
"They hurt to look at," she's mumbling hoping Karma just lets it go. It's not likely but then again Karma's been letting the last few months go so she might just have a chance.
She hears Karma's breath catch at her admission. Serves you right, Amy thinks.
Karma lets out a deep breath after that and continues to look around the room. Amy guesses she's looking for more things that have gone missing.
"How did we get here, Amy?"
Amy shrugs. Not for lack of interest but lack of words to explain that they both probably fucked up and now Amy can't figure out how they can come back from it.
"Things got complicated," Amy explains. Understatement of the year.
God, she wants to blame it all on Karma. She wants to scream and lose her shit and tell Karma that if she didn't need to be fucking popular they wouldn't be here. They'd still be watching Netflix on the weekends, still laughing hysterically as they called each other sloths for not wanting to get up to pee before the couple picked their house on House Hunters. Amy's nostalgic for simplicity. Karma wanted all this complex bullshit they're dealing with.
Amy knows she never should've agreed in the first place but when has she ever been able to say no to Karma and her stupid schemes. That's how they always worked. Karma comes up with idiotic plans that she never has the balls to follow through with, and Amy, knowing this, always has to carry them out.
She knows she should've just let Karma chicken out of faking it. In hindsight she knows she just wanted an excuse to kiss Karma. (And yeah she only just recently admitted that to herself. She's trying to be more self aware). She's been gay longer than she thought. Probably. She's not really sure. It sucks to self analyze and think back over all of her interactions with Karma and wonder what exactly her subconscious was planning when she was 10 or 13.
"What do you even want, Karma?"
This weird intermittent conversation they're having is just making Amy tired. She loves having Karma back in her room, but not like this. Not when things are so weird they only catch each other's eyes every five minutes and have literally nothing they want to say to each other that won't hurt the other.
Karma's been playing with a loose string on one of her green throw pillows. She has it wrapped so tight around her thumb that it looks like her circulation is cut off. She always did that when they were kids. Amy used to worry she'd cause permanent damage. She still does… she's just better at not expressing her thoughts to Karma these days.
"I want to fix this. I think I messed up."
Amy's eyebrows basically shoot up through her hairline. She didn't mean to look so caught off guard. On the list of things she expected Karma to say tonight that didn't even make the Top 50.
"Karma, I-"
"Cause baby now we got bad blood, you know we used to be mad love. So take a look what you've done, cause baby now we got bad blood hey! Now we got problems and I don't think we can solve 'em, you made a really deep cut-"
Amy stumbles over literally everything in the room to get to her phone on the dresser to put an end to the song. She feels her face turning beet red. So she likes Taylor Swift, whatever. She was feeling especially bitter the night she changed her ringtone. She never actually expected Karma to hear it. Jesus.
She can't even bear to look at Karma for a reaction she just swipes the screen as quick as she can to turn the fucking music off since it already took six years longer than it should've to get to her phone. On a scale of 1-10 for embarrassment she just wants to crawl into a hole and die.
Karma's always been the musical expressionist of them. If anyone was going to have an embarrassing ringtone it was always going to be Karma. Amy just feels dumb now that Karma knows about her passive aggressive ringtone that she was never legitimately supposed to know about.
So she clears her throat and takes her place back across from Karma. "Sorry about that. I, um, yeah. 1989 was a good CD. Did you ever end up getting it?"
Karma nods. Her face is this weird mixture of amusement and pain that Amy's never seen before.
She flicks the phone to silent and puts it in under her pillow. Amy never wants to see that god forsaken gadget again. Or at least not for the rest of the time Karma's here.
"I don't think we've ever been this awkward, Amy. I don't even know what to say. I'm sorry doesn't really cover it, right?"
Amy wishes it did. She wishes it covered even half of it.
"Karma, it doesn't even begin to fix things." She just needs to keep going to get it all out. "I'm sorry I ever even said anything. If I could go back… well I don't know if I could've held it in but I hate what it did to us and I'm sorry if you ever felt bad that you couldn't or didn't feel the same. It's fine, really. I mean it's not a romantic comedy," Karma smirks at that. They both know Amy hates those. "I can't expect everything to work out the way I wanted. You… like-love-want to be with, whatever, with Liam. It's fine. Really. I'm working on it."
"If it was fine we'd be fine. We're kind of not exactly fine. I haven't been here in months. We barely speak. I hate this. This isn't us. We never sat in the same room and had nothing to say to each other."
"Yeah, well-"
"No, Amy, I can't do this. I've been trying to leave you alone because I know how you are, you needed space. You said you had to get over me and it's killing me and I've been trying to let you do your thing but we're just getting further and further apart. I've been here for like forty five minutes and you couldn't even speak to me for the first forty –"
And Amy just loses it.
"Karma, if I said everything I wanted to fucking say to you you'd never speak to me again. I don't want to say things I can't take back but if I said everything, you'd hate me. And you sucking Liam's face 24/7 and having no time for me is a hell of a lot better than knowing you hate me. And if you know me so well like you're always saying, Karma, then I have one question: how did you not know?!"
Fuck. She never actually meant to ask it. Amy had put that question away. Karma looks taken aback and is gripping the armrests to the chair so hard her hands are turning white.
"Nevermind. Just forget I asked."
"I knew."
Amy barely hears it. It's so low she almost doesn't. And she knows they're about to open Pandora's box of problems so she almost ignores it but she can feel the resentment bubbling to the surface.
"You what?!"
"Amy, I knew. How could I not? I know you better than anyone, right? Of course I knew."
Karma's sitting next to her suddenly and Amy has no idea when she moved. She's just trying to hang on as she watches the entire beginning of their sophomore year get rewritten.
"Then why the fuck would you… how could you… why?"
Amy's having trouble breathing and Karma's looking at her with worry in her eyes that hasn't been there since – Amy can't even remember the last time she was the focus of Karma's attention.
"Breathe. Amy. Relax."
"You relax!"
"I'll explain if you calm down."
"And how do you expect me to do that after you just sat here and dropped a bomb on me? Like what?!"
Karma takes one of her hands and starts rubbing her thumb along the back. Her heart slows considerably. Amy just watches Karma's thumb continue to rub small circles like she used to do when they were kids.
She's feeling brave so she looks up and to her right to meet Karma's eyes that are full of concern and something else she's seen in glimpses over the years that's never been quite as present as it is today.
"You okay?"
Amy nods and turns her eyes back to the floor because she isn't really ready to fall back into the hole it took her months to climb out of. And looking at Karma like that – well, she knows she'd be diving back in headfirst.
Karma's back in the chair she moved from but she's a lot closer than she was before. She's definitely close enough for Amy to grab her hands again but Karma looks hesitant and Amy thinks it's probably going to be easier for them both if they're not touching right now.
"Amy," Karma takes a deep breath as she prepares to wreck Amy all over again. Amy just braces herself for the fall. "I knew. It took me a little while to catch on but by the time we were getting ready for the threesome I was pretty sure."
Amy pulls back. She feels betrayed.
"I just… it's stupid but I didn't wanna lose you. I knew when it finally all bubbled to the surface for you it would be bad – look at us. But I mean why else would you agree to a threesome? With Liam?"
"You knew and you let me go into that stupid threesome and try to win you?"
"I didn't know what your plan was. I was a little too focused on me to even try to figure out what was going on with you. Somewhere in the back of my mind I knew you'd stopped faking with me and after the threesome and then with Vashti and the way you kept trying to stop the break up – I mean that's part of why I pushed it so hard. I couldn't do that to you anymore. I was trying to stop it all before we crashed and burned. Amy… it hurts me when you're hurting."
Amy's hands are balled up together when Karma's hand lands back on them. She's conflicted. She wants to believe Karma is walking down this path of good intentions like she says but Karma's never really been all that self aware. Or was she?
"Then what the fuck did you sleep with Liam for? You knew that would hurt me." She couldn't keep the broken tone out of her voice if she tried.
"I… that's where things get hard. I love Liam." Amy cringes outwardly and Karma's left hand squeezes hers in a silent apology. "I know that hurts. By the time – at the wedding, your speech. I mean it wasn't hard to confirm what I thought. I hate even thinking about that night and causing you that much pain. I cried all night over it. I just wanted things to be back to normal again and we were so far past that."
"We're still so far past that, Karma. I don't even know how to .. how do we fix it?"
Amy is 100% certain she sounds pitiful. She just wants to throw her arms around Karma and beg her to never leave. At one time she knows Karma would've laughed and agreed to stay forever. She's only certain now that Karma would tell her she can't stay forever – Liam's waiting.
"My feelings haven't changed –"
"Just stick the fucking knife in why don't you, Karma. Jesus Christ." Amy's curling back into herself, pulling away from Karma in every sense of the word. Karma can go fuck herself, Amy thinks.
Karma's already crawling across the bed. "Ames, wait. You keep cutting me off. Just give me a second to explain. My feelings haven't changed and maybe that's why I couldn't figure out what I feel for you. I mean I'm still confused because nothing for me has changed. Amy, I've always loved you, more than anyone. More than Liam. You know that. You have to."
Karma's grabbing her chin so she'll meet her eyes because the only thing Amy wants to do is crawl up and out the window. She doesn't really think she's in a place where she can handle Karma being all up in her space like this. It's confusing and hurtful and makes her heart beat in ways that she thinks a doctor should look into.
She should've known their time apart would only amp up her feelings further. Amy knows what this is. She's missed Karma.
"What are you even saying?"
"I'm saying… I love Liam but I love you too. And I don't know what the hell that means but I broke up with Liam a few days ago because I've spent weeks trying to figure out what is going on with you and me. I've been trying to give you space but, Ames, I keep thinking of you "getting over" me and being with someone else and that doesn't feel good either. I didn't realize I was feeling anything for you because I mean I've always loved you. You've always been what my whole world revolved around. And I took some time away to try to let it revolve around someone else and there were good days… but then I got home and all I wanted to do was talk to you about my day. I missed you. Every day. I mean none of my days make sense if I'm not laughing with you at the end of them."
Amy's smirking at Karma because that was just about the cheesiest thing she's ever heard. Straight out of a romantic comedy.
"I think I started to realize the night of the threesome… you were right about me feeling something… but I mean I was scared. This could wreck us, you know? And being with Liam was just easier and normal - and if we didn't work out then whatever he just goes away. He's just a boy. If we didn't work out then what? You're gone. How could I lose you? I tried to break it off like I said because it was hurting you and I was scared of ruining us by pushing it any further. It didn't really matter, I basically lost you anyway and so here I am, hoping you'll forgive me because I know I screwed up."
"And what am I supposed to do with this? I mean, Karma, you can't expect to just come waltzing in with a big speech and expect the last few months to be erased," but Amy's heart is so full and her eyes are sparkling with hope and they're just betraying every word coming out of her mouth.
Karma's inching herself closer. "I legit have no fucking clue what to do with this."
Amy's smirk turns into a full laugh and Karma's smiling at her like she used to. She sees Karma's hands inching towards her across her comforter.
"NO! Karma!"
And she's being tickled by her best friend and everything feels like it did before and her heart just fucking hates them both for this.
Ten minutes later they're staring at the half of the stars that are still on her ceiling. Karma starts giggling.
"I can't believe you threw them out!"
"I was so mad at you!"
Amy's looking over laughing, her fingers playing with Karma's on top of the comforter. And nothing has ever felt so easy.