A/N: Sorry for the delay. But between having to go to a funeral and the election (which felt like a funeral) and a general mess of my life, this fell off a little. It's another flashback and Sophie-centric. Next chapter we find out all about how she found out. And then we're almost done! Read, review, threaten to punch, promise not to punch, you know the drill. - M
Sophie didn't do nervous.
No matter what happened to her or who said what to her or, in most cases, who didn't say what to her - like as in every girl she'd ever liked, you know, for more than just how they looked or felt or tasted - Sophie never got nervous.
Terrified? Yes.
Scared? Sure thing.
Constantly cripplingly anxious to the point of hiding in her room behind a locked door, curled into the tiniest ball she could manage, under her softest and warmest and biggest - best for hiding under, you see - blanket, hoping that no one would call (they didn't) or text (almost never) or snap or tweet or book (nope and nope and nothing but memes) or otherwise attempt to engage her in any real, human kinda way?
Oh, she did that. Like, you know, all the time.
But never nervous. That was just silly.
Like, for example, there was the entire month's worth of lead up to the day she left for school, till the day she moved to UTA to start her big adventure. There were no nerves then, not about that. There were no butterflies fluttering round and round inside her and there were no shaking and trembling hands, they were as still as death, holding the pen as she made out her lists of everything she'd need. Sophie was big on lists. They calmed her, they soothed her, they were like… rules.
And rules were good. So very good. Rules were like a firewall against nerves and that was good, even if she didn't really need it.
Cause she didn't do nervous. Not ever.
So, no nerves. But, oh, there was this other little thing… just a bit of anxiety. It was there - as if it ever left - riding its way along, tripping just underneath everything she did, like, for another example, when she dialed the phone number UTA had given her to contact her roomie and, for the first time, she heard Amy's voice on the other end of the line.
She sounded like she was eating.
Sophie started to apologize for interrupting but Amy poo-poo'd that right fucking quick. "It's nothing," she said. "My sister left some doughnuts out on the counter and they're kinda my weakness."
Weakness. One true love. You say tomato, I say tomapo.
The anxiety waned - but never left, remember - as they talked and exchanged the basic info about families and majors and whether Hermione should have ended up with Ron or Harry (they both voted Ron and Sophie felt a heavy weight break free from around her heart) and she had to admit that Amy sounded great and, when Sophie accepted her friend request on Facebook an hour later, she had to admit again (and even the anxiety agreed) that Amy looked nice too.
Nice, as in friendly and 'I'd like to hang out with her' and not as in 'oooh… nice' and 'I'd like to bury my face all up in that.' Not that Amy wasn't, you know, hot and all - this is Amy we're talking about - but she wasn't Sophie's type.
Again, she was nice.
And yeah, they'd talked about it and Sophie knew Amy was gay - mostly, probably entirely, "like 98%, give or take" - so, you know, at least partly. And yes, Sophie knew the technical term was bi and not partly or mostly or 98% (give or take) but technicalities were like the last thing on her mind. Cause, you know, roommate and hot and gay and 98% and maybe that wasn't all, but it was enough, as in enough that Sophie wouldn't have to live her entire first semester in a fucking closet which was fantastic.
She'd seen the dorm closets. She totes wouldn't fit. Though, in all honestly, she was used to not fitting.
Sophie might not have done nervous, but she'd done that. Like all her life.
So, no nerves and even a (little) less anxiety - it could fade, but not leave, like that was their agreement - as the summer rolled on and then it was the last week, the final seven days, the final countdown to lift off and still, the nerves didn't come. Sophie packed her bags - three days early - and left them by the front door and yeah, her dad kept tripping on them and Sophie tried (and failed) to give even a tiny fuck. Like, you know, maybe just 33% of one.
Give or take.
The nerves didn't come but oh, the anxiety did. It came like Rebecca Wolfe under the bleachers during the Homecoming Game - like a fucking freight train and slamming into her so hard and fast that Sophie was afraid she'd broken a tooth - and it left her as breathless and shaking as she'd left Rebecca (who'd still never called again and was dating Robbie Cherry by the end of the weekend, so, you know... ) The day she was supposed to go, the anxiety fell upon her like a vampire in the night - and not a hot one in leather pants and attitude, which totes sucked, no pun intended - and it drained her so fully, that it took Sophie an hour just to get out of bed. But, once she did, well…
It took another hour to leave her room. And then about forty-five minutes to leave the bathroom, but it only took her ten to get the fuck out of the living room and out onto the porch to wait for her ride cause, well, her dad was in the living room and her skirt was kinda short - like she owned any other kind - and he was kinda, well, looking, and yeah, the gross and dirty and utterly ugh of getting perved on by her own father easily outweighed anything else.
Even anxiety in it's not so leather pantsed vampiric glory.
So there she sat, her bags next to her and her map of campus tucked in her pocket and Amy's cell number already on speed dial, just in case she got lost once she got to campus.
She was relying on Amy for directions.
Sophie didn't do nervous, but she, apparently, did do nuts.
She sat on her porch and stared out over her yard and she was fucking exhausted. She hadn't slept the night before, her body tossing and turning and her mind following suit, ricocheting around in her head like a pinball shot from a pistol. She screamed at it, begged it to not go there, to her worst case scenario, but it did. Over and over and over again.
The call, she feared, would come just as she was pulling out of the drive. UTA would be on the other end of the line. It would be a woman - in all Sophie's imaginings, it was always a woman, an attractive one, the kind you only found on college campuses, so, clearly, the kind she was never meant to get near - and she would talk into the phone with a tone, one that just totally screamed 'why are you bothering me' (even if she had been the one to call) and it would just get worse and worse as she explained the… snafu.
"It happens sometimes," she'd say. Her name was Amanda - at least in Sophie's head - and she talked like she was snapping gum with jaws that could snap your neck as easily as a stick of spearmint. "Snafus like this," she'd say, drawing the word out - snaaafuuu, lots of 'a' and an extra dash of 'oooh' at the end - "more common than you think. And I apologize, really I do, but there was a mix up, you see."
No, Sophie wouldn't see so, of course, Amanda would have to explain.
"Your acceptance," Amanda would say, "there was a snaaafuuu. It was supposed to go to Sophia and…"
Yeah. And. Like there would be anything after that. Except the dream repeating over and over and did she mention over? Wash, rinse, repeat after me (me as in dad or mom or both) 'why would a good school spend it's money on… average'.
Sophie didn't do nervous. She also didn't do 'wonder where your anxiety comes from.'
She sat on the porch and tried not think of it, tried even harder not to look at the spot on the driveway - the one she always got to in her head, the point when the call came, so close to being gone - but it was like a wall rushing up from the ground. It cut her off and sealed her away and it was too high to climb and too thick to break through and too long to go around.
And it kept closing in.
Sophie tried not to think of it. She tried to focus on anything else, like on all that she wasn't feeling. There was no fear of the unknown that was unspooling out in front of her. She felt no worry that she wouldn't be able to handle college, that her classes would be too rough or her roommate too weird. There was no terror that she'd fail out, no panic that she'd have to come back home with her tail between her legs, proof positive of her average.
She wasn't scared of the unknown. That day, Sophie was more concerned, and really, let's call it like it was, fucking terrified - that's what it was - of the known. She wasn't worried about going.
She was afraid she'd have to stay.
But, in the end, she didn't. In the end her parents stood right there in her driveway, barely even raising a hand to wave goodbye as her cab - they called her a fucking cab - pulled away and as she rolled down the street in that yellow checkered number, not hearing a single word the driver said, Sophie counted the houses. She counted down the places she'd known - that she'd always known and had thought, worried, feared, that she'd always know - and every one was like a tick of a clock inside her, a countdown to detonation.
One that never came.
Not unless you count a heavy heavy sigh followed by a good ten minutes of shaking sobs with gurgly snorts, drowned words that Sophie would never admit to, curses and laments and pissed off realizations that, in the end?
"A cab. A fucking cab."
She knew her worth. At least to them.
And yeah, maybe she didn't normally do nervous but even Sophie would have admitted that, right in that moment, when it came to the thought of ever finding someone who valued her more than a quick call to A-1 Cabbies (first in the phonebook and in your heart)?
She was nervous. She was worried. She was…
Her.
And then she met Amy.
Sophie hesitated, just for a moment, in the door of their room, watching as the blonde slowly and carefully unpacked her stuff. She certainly didn't feel any romantic butterflies - and why is it butterflies, why not hummingbirds or bumblebees or fucking squirrels - when Amy bent over to put a pile of clothes in the bottom drawer of her dresser and OK, maybe her mouth went a little dry when Amy stood back up and stretched, her shirt riding up and oh… um… so… abs?
But that wasn't nerves. That was just having working eyes.
And then Amy saw her standing there and she smiled - and oh, fuck, Sophie'd seen that smile before, like every day, like every morning in her fucking mirror - and Amy took one of her bags and helped her get settled and they laughed and they joked. Sophie told her about the cab and Amy told her about Farrah and her obsession with Felix. They talked about how to decorate and Sophie showed Amy pins she'd been collecting on Pinterest and Amy swore up and down that she just had to meet her sister, Lauren ("You sure your last name isn't Cooper?") and promised they could go shopping the next day.
And when Karma called and Amy's eyes got that… look… in them, Sophie made a bunch of noise and yelled out that everyone was headed out to eat and Amy had to hurry up and the hug the blonde gave her after she hung up... that was the moment. The moment Sophie realized she had the one thing she'd never even knew she needed.
She had an 'us'.
And God did she love that. And oh, how she worked to keep it and to nurture it and to make it work and not fuck it up like she did so many other things. There were the rules and there were the jokes - she had an inside to have jokes now, an inside - and there were nights out for eating noodles and kisses and flirts and hands holds to scare off boys at bars and she got to go out to dinner with Amy and Farrah when she came to visit and she heard Farrah whisper to Amy that she liked "this one even better than Felix" and they laughed about that the whole ride home.
It was 'them'. It was her and it was Amy and it was her and Amy (Somy? Amphie? Fuck the ridiculous nicknames cause they're, you know, not Karma?) and it was perfect and even on days when the anxiety came - it never left, remember - and she couldn't drag herself out of bed to face class or campus or, you know, people, Amy was there with ice cream or stupid movies on Netflix or a take out order of noodles and a night of giggling and groaning and 'are you fucking serious, right now' left and right swipes on Sizzer.
Amy was always there. And Sophie was never once nervous about that.
You know, right up until she skipped her last class and took two busses to Reagan's apartment for the first time since the whole 'forgetting' discussion, wondering the whole way if, maybe, she had two 'us's' now and then, standing there in Reagan's hall, unable to even knock, Sophie realized she was having what could only be described as a fit of… yeah… nerves. So she did the only logical thing.
She called Amy for a last minute pep talk.
And that was when Sophie realized she might not have any us's at all.