So… yeah.

Didn't see that coming. Like, you know, at fucking all.

So…

Yeah, you said that already and oh, you better hope you get out of this repeating yourself habit right fucking quick or else your conversation with Reagan is going to be one long stream of you babbling (so, you know, the usual) and her staring at you like you've got two heads (but also a totes top shelf ass) and then her shaking her head (while still sneaking peeks at the shelf) and then her walking - as in away - and yes, you know now and have known since the moment you committed grand theft Good Karma, that Reagan leaving you (again) (oh, wait, that was you) is a possibility.

Maybe it's even a likelihood. Maybe an almost certainty. Maybe it's about the only logical and reasonable and expected way for this to end cause this ain't no TV show where everything gets fixed in twenty-two minutes but it's also the way you're not thinking about cause, if you do, then your nerves / fears / instincts / 'oh what the fuck am I doing?' are going to take over, forcing you to go all angry parent and turn this van right around and go home.

Except… that's probably not a good idea. 'And why not, Amy?' Well, you're so glad you asked cause, to recap, home is where the heart is except (again), in this case, that's two hearts, as in Sophie's and Karma's and when you say 'hearts', what you mean is a world full of shit and many many many apologies (mostly by you) to a pair of women you've hurt - in some very surprisingly similar ways - and a pair of women you've kissed (one more recently than the other and nuh uh, you're not thinking about how it might have been better if it had been the other way round) even if two of you don't talk about it and the other two of you totes shouldn't.

So, yeah… maybe even the possibility of Reagan walking away is the lesser of two evils, so you're gonna keep on keeping on even if, really, you don't have the first fucking idea where to keep on to.

And, in your usual style, that's where you came in. Back at 'didn't see that coming' and, to catch us all up, what you didn't see coming?

Well, that 'what' would be a 'who' and that 'who' would be Lauren and that who was getting off a bus at the corner of the street three over from yours (you've never remembered names unless it was a street with a doughnut shop, a coffee shop - cause, you know, usually also doughnuts - or a noodle place cause Sophie loves noodles of all kinds and yes, you see the irony of the woman who is likely the gayest gay you know being almost orgasmically into noodles) and that who was so not paying attention and walked right out in front of you and almost got run over.

Death by Karma.

Lauren would be so pissed. If, you know, she wasn't dead.

(You're quite sure even death wouldn't preclude her from being angry or from finding a way to let you know about it, but you didn't run her over - almost doesn't count - so let's not dwell.)

She climbs into the van and you don't look at her cause, well, you can feel the 'you nearly killed me' glare, why do you need to see it too? There's like a zillion questions running around in your mind - like why she's here and how she ended up on a street corner and how badly she's going to smack you later for the almost running her down (so maybe it's only three) - so, you say the only thing you can.

"Hey."

So, if the other glare was the 'nearly killed' glare than this one would be the 'nearly killed and all I get is hey' glare and, yeah, if you're gonna name every one of Lauren's glares, that might take a while.

She tears her eyes (lasers) (they're like tiny burning lasers) away from you and glances in the back, then back to you, then back to the almost empty rear of the truck, then back to you.

"Is there a reason you're driving around in… this… without… her?" she asks. You start to give her an answer - and talk about things that could take a while - but then she holds up a hand to cut you off. "Never mind," she says, "I have a feeling I don't want to know."

She's not wrong.

"Your mother called me," she says and now it's your turn to glare - not at her, you're not stupid, but you're totes glaring a hole right through Farrah, in your head - "she was worried and didn't know who else to turn to and it took me a few days to arrange it, but here I am."

Yup. Here she is.

Here being the passenger seat of the Good Karma truck and the intersection of… um… some boulevard and some other avenue (and who are you kidding? They could both be a lane or a street and you wouldn't know the fucking difference) and you only really remember that cause there's someone leaning on their horn behind you and it dawns on you that you're more or less parked in the intersection and you should probably go.

Go where is the question.

"Where are we going?" Lauren asks - it's like she read your mind - and you don't know what to tell her except the truth.

"Crazy," you say as you turn onto one of those streets you don't know, headed for somewhere you also don't know, in search of a woman who may well run at the very sight of you and break your heart beyond all repair.

Yeah. Crazy fits.

So… yeah.

Didn't see that coming. Like, you know, at fucking all.

So…

(Sophie said that already.) (Or, you know, thought it.) (And yes, that word - 'so' - that one tiny fucking syllable is just about all she can think.) (And, somewhere on some street she doesn't know, Amy's ears are burning cause it's like they're sharing a brain.)

So…

Her.

Karma has a her - a her - and that's so far out in left field, it's lucky it's still in the ballpark, not that Sophie's got any idea of that metaphor actually works cause, you know, she's not big into baseball and she's kinda fixated on that other tiny detail.

Her.

Her name is Charlie and oh, she's hot and Sophie just knows it cause, well, Charlie is the kinda name you only get - if you're a girl - if you're supa tomboyish / butch / Ruby f'ing Rose (in other words, hot) or if you're a total dork / geek / Felicia Day on Supernatural (so, again, hot) or you're a stuck up priss (a Charlotte) (like Reagan's) who's trying to downplay the stuck up-ness, so the opposite of Charlotte from Sex and the City (she and Amy binged the whole series) but she was hot too, if annoyingly so, and yes, Sophie is so very very very off track right now, but…

But

But her. But Charlie. But Karma and Charlie and this is good shit even if, really, she doesn't know any of the actual shit, yet, except that it drove Karma back to Austin and onto to Amy's bed and, you know, onto Amy and so, come on.

It's gotta be good.

(And, by 'good' she totally doesn't mean sorta hot and kinda arousing and not at all the sort of thing that somehow makes Karma, you know… attractive.)

(Or, as the case may be, more attractive.)

But still… all good. Except…

Except for that one tiny detail (read: Charlie) (girl Charlie) that suggests - and only suggests, so far - that Karma might actually be gay or bi or pan or, at the very least, a Charliesexual and yes, that does open up a can of worms that even off track Sophie knows is all sorts of problematic.

And yes, it's a big can, like a giant fucking can with jumbo, gigantic, like boa constrictor worms ready to swallow them both whole in it.

But it's still so… but. So very very 'oh, Amy's stolen a truck and driven off in search of her insanely hot but so often clueless ex-girlfriend? Here, hold my beer' fucking but.

It's drama and it's shock and it's epic and, if Sophie knows anything about Amy's other best friend? It's that all that is Karma to a fucking T.

Karma hasn't moved and she hasn't said a word and Sophie thinks that's probably fine cause it's only been like ten or fifteen or twenty seconds (it's been three minutes) (and counting) and that's totes normal. (It's not.) (Karma hasn't been this quiet this long since the fourth grade.) It's like she's waiting for something and oh… yeah…

She's waiting for her. As in Sophie. As in Amy's roomie and other bff and the first person she ever confessed even a part of her biggest secret to and yup, that probably means a something and it's probably a something important - or at least potentially important - but they'll get to that later cause first?

"Her?"

So… yeah. Think one syllable. Speak one syllable.

Karma nods and lets out a breath (had she been holding it all this time?) and pulls back into her corner of the couch, like she's expecting Sophie to grab that throw pillow and start wailing away on her with it but, since Sophie's still too shocked to move (or speak or think) and this isn't some horrible porn (that she's totes never seen) there will be no pillow wailing.

Yet.

Sophie reserves the right to change her mind cause, again, worms.

"Did Amy tell you anything about my semester at Clement?" Karma says it like it was her one semester and not just the one as in the first, but one as in the only and not just the only as in so far. "Did she mention there was a guy I liked?"

Did she mention?

Well… no.

And, if Karma thought about it, she'd realize that of course Amy didn't cause she didn't tell Amy about him (and not her) until Christmas break, which was only like a week ago. But, if she'd told Amy before then, then Sophie would have known for sure and what she would have known was that there was a guy - and isn't there always (well… apparently, not) - and he was the captain of some team or other and a Clement legacy and a true BMOC and Karma really really really liked him and she was sure he was falling for her.

And (like the most important 'and' ever) he had (has) (still) (not like she's dead) a sister, who is very interesting and she and Karma (another important 'and') have been spending a lot of time together.

But… Amy never mentioned.

To be fair, she was kinda busy the last week or so.

"I liked him," Karma says. "He was the college dream. The Ferrari of college boyfriends. He was popular, handsome, and tortured on the inside with some ridiculously privileged first world angst." She shrugs. "What can I say? I've got a type."

A type, Sophie thinks, that's somewhat… evolving… but let's not get ahead of ourselves.

Karma slowly scoots out of her corner - confident she's not gonna get smacked (yet) - and goes on. "I wanted him and I wanted him to want me and if you'd ever known me in high school, you would know that's not a good combo." That much Sophie had heard. "I did everything to get his attention. I dressed different, I sat near him in class, I pretended that I didn't understand the first thing about musical theory and desperately needed his help."

So, in other - more resonant - words, she faked it.

Again.

"There was this one night at a party, " Karma says - as if any story that starts like that ever ends well - "and I… well… I pulled a 'me' from junior year. I danced on tables and I ground up against him and let him grind on me, and then I let him and his buddies do shots off my stomach."

Sophie digs her fingers into her own thigh, cause so not thinking about that right now.

"In high school, that got me all the attention I wanted," Karma says and Sophie knows that the 'all' in that phrase was mostly Amy's and Liam's. "But in college? That's expected. And body shots are passe and if you haven't been on your knees in a bathroom stall in some club…"

(Insert innocently whistling 'who me?' emoji here.)

Sophie's got an idea where this is going - Karma giving it up in all manner of various and sundry and 'oh, girl' kinda ways just to get him to notice her - and she hates it and not just for the many ways it's all about the patriarchy and the power and the male gaze and all the other things she learned about in Women's Studies (when she wasn't studying the women) and from Amy's too much time on Tumblr.

There's also a certain level of… well… not jealousy. Can't be that. But it's in the neighborhood and that's problem enough.

That's also not to say she hasn't done it (all the stuff she suspects Karma's gonna say she did) (or the gay equivalent of it) but she still hates it. And all Sophie really wants to do is pull Karma close and hug her and hold her and tell her it will all be OK and that she is worth so much more than that. And OK, maybe that's not totes all - the whole realization that Karma might be down with the girl thang is… intriguing - but that more than 'all' can wait.

At least until she hears the rest of the story.

"I was getting nowhere," Karma says. "And that's not true. I was getting somewhere. Further and further down the road toward 'oh, I hate myself' and 'oh, now I'm that kinda girl' and 'really, I'm that desperate for attention?' and I just…"

She couldn't. She couldn't do that to herself so she just stopped and started hanging out with a better class of people. People who respected her for who she was and for her talent and people who wouldn't expect anything out of her in a bathroom stall.

And, maybe, in another story, that might be true. But this isn't another story and, if there's one thing that Sophie is learning about Amy's other bestie, it's this.

She has… patterns.

"I just couldn't give up," Karma says, and Sophie can hear the desperation in her voice, the raw fucking need that's so clear and so there that it actually hurts. "So I might have, kinda, maybe… suggested… that I'd be down with him and me and another girl."

Oh. That.

Well… you know… really… who hasn't suggested a threesome to get a guy?

(Put your hands down. That was sarcasm.)

Karma clutches the throw pillow. She's sure that little bit has made the whole throw idea very appealing for Sophie - she's not wrong - and shakes her head. "I know, I know," she says. "It was crazy and stupid and crazy and horrible and crazy. But I…"

But she… nothing. She's got nothing and Sophie knows it and, more importantly, Karma knows it and Sophie can tell that by the way she tucks the pillow tight against her chest and sniffles as a thin line of tears spills over and tumbles down her cheeks.

And God, she hates having to ask, but…

"Did you?"

Karma shakes her head and Sophie lets out a breath (and we're not gonna talk about how her heart starts beating again in her chest) and she reaches out, tugging one of Karma's hands off the pillow, lacing their fingers together.

It's meant as an 'OK', as in 'it's gonna be' or 'you'll be' or 'everything is' but there's something else, something Sophie didn't expect. And no, it isn't as cheesy as a spark or electricity or all the fireworks in Texas going off just from their touch. It's not that.

It's deeper. It's a connection, a bond, a something she didn't see coming (again) and it's in the way Karma looks at her as their hands slip together and no, it doesn't feel like they were made for that and it doesn't feel a thing like Sophie suddenly can't remember what it was like to hold anyone else's hands - she still remembers Reagan's quite well - and the Earth doesn't quake beneath her feet.

It's worse.

It's the slow dawn that Karma is actually a real person and not just this… something… that Amy told her stories about. It's the tiniest of notions that all those flaws of hers that drove Amy nuts and - sometimes - broke her heart, weren't just the machinations of some two-dimensional and totes cardboard TV villain. It's the very idea that Karma is human and going through something and that 'something' is all too familiar and all too very real and remember that ridiculous Humpty Dumpty metaphor?

Yeah… it's all too fucking clear now. Karma's as cracked and as broken as the rest of them and fuck all that's not supposed to make her beautiful.

(But it does.) (And who the fuck saw that coming?) (And put your hands down again, that was rhetorical.)

"I couldn't," Karma says. "He was into it cause, well, he's a fucking dude." And ain't that a four letter word. "We even set up a time and he said he knew a girl, cause of course he did, but… I didn't… I couldn't. I kept remembering…"

She kept remembering breaking ice and fancy lingerie and the sight of Amy and the thought of Liam and yeah… that was just not happening again.

"I went to his room to tell him that I couldn't do it," she says and no, Sophie doesn't point out that a text or a call or a fucking letter in the mail might have been a smarter play, one that didn't reek of 'I can't do that, but since we're here, in your room, alone…' She suspects that Karma knows (knew) all that. "He wasn't there, but his sister was and I have no idea why she was in his dorm room, alone, but there she was and we got to talking and…"

And, if you suspected that the follow up to that was that one thing led to another - that 'another' being clothes on floors and lips on flesh and thighs on ears (or, you know, around them) - and Karma finally doing what some people (y'all know who you are) suspected she always wanted to do…

You'd be so fucking wrong.

"We talked for days," Karma says. "She walked me home and then she came in and then we got breakfast the next morning, lunch the day after that." She smiles as she talks and Sophie doubts she even knows she's doing it. "She wasn't Amy," Karma says, "we didn't have history and all those years to fall back on, we didn't have a decade bonding us together, and maybe it was that, maybe it was the lack… maybe that's why, but I swear,Sophie, I never saw it coming. But then… one day… there it was." She looks down at their hands, still entwined, and makes no effort to change that. "I woke up one day and Charlie was my friend. My best friend."

And we all know where the 'best friend' goes, now don't we?

It's a rite of passage for a reason, after all.

"I didn't understand it, at first," Karma says, shaking her head and looking away, but not letting go (and yes, Sophie's aware she's always had a problem with that.) "Charlie's just nothing like Amy, and Amy... well... she's always been my standard, you know? Like I measured everyone against her. And that's not a contest many people can win."

Sophie gets that. She gets that a bit too well, really.

"Amy's a good many things," Karma says. "And many of those things, most of them, really, are actually good." She ticks them off one by one, like she's reading from a list (or a script.) "She's smart, except in math." (And in love.) "She's beautiful. Hot, even. And she's so so funny and sometimes it's even on purpose and she's caring, like to the point where she might possibly be the most devoted person in the history of devotion."

Just ask Karma.

Though, if they're going to be honest… Amy's also, quite clearly, in the top five percent of the most selfish peeps in the history of 'I fucked the one person you wanted, but I felt ridiculously guilty about it afterward, though, really, not guilty enough to confess before getting caught, but that's just details and the only detail that matters is that I love you, right?'

Again, just ask Karma.

Or, you know, Sophie.

God, with friends like Amy…

"And Charlie is… well… she's none of that," Karma says and that doesn't really make Charlie sound good, like at all, so she clarifies, as best she can. "She's cute, like adorable, but she's not hot. And she's funny, but in this ridiculous and goofy way, like playing the entire Game of Thones theme on a kazoo, which sounds way more annoying than it really is. And she has no use, like none, for people who piss her off. Like, aggravate her once and you're dead to her."

Karma pauses, her brow furrowing (and yes, Sophie's always wanted to think of something furrowing) and, clearly, something has just occurred to her.

"Except me," she says, softly. "I did one stupid thing after another cause, well, I'm me." Self awareness, thy name is Ashcroft. "I fawned after her brother and I made excuses to see him and I even told her about the threesome and she didn't talk to me for almost two days, and I thought… but she came back. For me."

So, Sophie thinks, maybe Charlie and Amy? Not quite so different.

"But I fucked it up," Karma says and Sophie can feel her start to pull away - literally, her fingers are slipping free - but she holds on, not that she has any idea why. (Liar.) "I ruined it all and it's all my fault. I saw it coming and I didn't do anything to stop it even though I knew… I knew. I'd been there before, you know? I'd been there and I knew how it would end and still…"

Seems like that's the story of all their lives lately. And still…

"What did you do, Karma?" Sophie asks and if Karma is surprised by her gentle tone, how her voice almost… breathes… it's way out, so soothing, so caring, well, then Sophie's just fucking gobsmacked cause her head is thinking 'you hurt another one, didn't you?' but, see, that's the problem, really.

Right now? Sophie's not exactly thinking.

"I kissed her," Karma says - and those three words sting, even though they shouldn't, like they really fucking shouldn't - but oh, she's not done. "I kissed Charlie and I liked it," she says. "So then I kissed her again. And then again. And then…" Karma looks down at their hands, but it isn't Sophie's she sees. "I slept with her," she says. "And then I ran."