A/N: Two left after this. If you're still out there lol :)
There are a lot of things Amy misses from the time before she was an adult.
And yes, she does think there was a time before that, even if she's often felt far more adult than most women her age. It makes sense, what with all of the coming out (her) and the freaking out (Karma), the tormented sister and the prodigal dad (and if that's not just a totally awesome band name, she doesn't know what is) and then the fire and the deaths and the best friend(s) raising the daughter of the dead (another band name) and, really, she's not at all sure how she misses anything from before she was an adult cause she's not sure that time ever existed.
She knows it did, like logically and all, but it seems so far from where she is now, that it's almost an entirely different life. That life… that girl… she was the one who spent all her time with Karma or thinking about Karma or wishing that she was with Karma (even before 'with' was 'with'), who automatically hated every new stepfather, even if every one of them was at least a little bit better than her actual dad (because… well… there), who wanted to run (right to Karma) and hide (with Karma) the moment she found out that there was a sister with the latest dad and dreaded every single moment without Karma and…
And fuck all… there was a lot of Karma back then and now… well…
"Penny for your thoughts?"
Well, now, there's Reagan and there's always Reagan, like every second of every day even when she's not actually, you know, there or even like now, when she's hidden behind one of those vaguely Asian looking changing screens, trying on her wedding dress (for what Amy's sure is the thousandth time and who ever said Reagan wasn't a total girl… well….)
(They'd clearly never seen her without the dress, but that's an entirely different story.)
"Last time you offered me that," Amy says, "I wasn't sure you could afford it."
Reagan pokes her head out from behind the screen. "You mean way back in my part-time DJ, part-time cater waiter, all-the-time hottest piece of ass you could ever get days?"
Amy'd like to argue but… well….
But well, there's certainly a lot of 'well' in her life lately and, let's face it, Reagan's not wrong.
Not even a little.
"So," Regan says, leaning gently against the screen and Amy can make out just enough skin to know that the dress hasn't quite made it to the top yet and oh, she really shouldn't be thinking about that. "Now that I'm in my successful record producer, at least for local talent, profitable local business owner and semi-independently wealthy cause my dad left me a bunch of money I didn't even know he had and oh, how that pissed off my mom days… I can probably offer you a quarter. Fifty cents, if those thoughts are… you know…."
She wiggles one eyebrow and yes, Amy knows and all those thoughts she's not supposed to be having - the rehearsal is supposed to start in like an hour - come roaring back and it's like she's sitting in Lightning's front seat, one foot resting against Reagan's thigh and evil (in a good way) intentions blinding her to everything but the woman she loves.
Yeah, she's an adult, but God can Reagan still make her feel like she's sixteen.
Amy shrugs her shoulders and forces herself to look… well (again)... anywhere but into those eyes she knows so well. "It's nothing," she says. "Nothing bad. I was just thinking about all the ways things have changed, you know? Since we were kids." She can see Reagan's brow shift out of the corner of her eye and she just… knows. "Yes, I was a kid at some point, I'll have you know. I wasn't always the well-adjusted and fully formed adult that…"
She trails off, the words dying on the vine cause even Amy, the queen of the not quite true and the sorta accurate but not in the important ways, can pull that off.
"It's just weird, OK?" she says, punctuating it with a poke of her tongue. "I mean, we're getting married. Married. And Lauren's already been divorced and now she's all… whatevering… with your brother and Lucy's back and maybe staying and Karma's…"
There was a time - back before they were adults, you see - when ending a sentence like that, with an 'and Karma…' would have been enough to send Reagan's blood pressure skyrocketing (taking both eyebrows with it) and she would have either had a fit (or as close as she ever came to a fit, which was mostly doing household chores very loudly) or tackled Amy on the spot and, more or less, fucked the 'and Karma…' right out of her.
Those days are, apparently, long gone cause Reagan doesn't set one foot on this side of the screen (and there's not a chore to be done) and Amy's glad of that, really she is.
(See? Still the queen of the not quite true cause she might not have any chores she needs done but… well… she could stand to be done, if you get the hint.)
(You so do.)
But now, Reagan simply waits cause she knows Amy's got something she wants to say - this whole thinking about them being kids and 'remember when' bullshit is about as transparent as she gets - and there's no point in pushing or rushing or trying to cajole it out of her cause this is Amy.
When she's ready to blow? She's ready.
"And now," she says, and here comes the blow, even if that blow ends up being considerably less potent than it might have been before she was an adult. "All that is going on and my best friend is pregnant with my other best friend's baby and that would be so much less weird if one of those said best friends wasn't gay."
She means Shane. She thinks. Though, truthfully, she also thinks Lucy might have something to say about the other said best friend and no, that's not just because she must have mentioned Karma about a hundred times on the ride back from the airport.
While texting her.
And Snapchatting her.
And tagging her in like seven in the car selfies and, really, whoever invented the fucking 3-D phone camera is someone Amy would like to see smacked (or, at the very least, taken a pic of in really bad lighting after a tear-filled car ride with prodigal dad and no, she doesn't think Lucy took those pictures just because she looked shockingly good for just having flown in, especially in comparison to her.)
(Not just.)
Amy sighs and settles back into her chair and yes, she's an adult and no, she's not like fifty but still, even just getting all that out exhausts her though, if she really thought about it, she'd know that exhaustion was probably less about Lauren and all her whatevering and Karma and Shane and their babying and actually a lot more about her and Reagan finally coming to the end of the 'single but in name only cause wedding' line, which has often felt like a story… no… like a book, like a fucking novel that's gone on for waaaaaaay more chapters than it probably should but she can't put it down cause she's gotta see it through to the end and yeah, that does make marrying Reagan sound much less appealing than it actually is, but fuck all, she's tired.
Adulting is hard fucking work, you know.
"You know?" The sound of Reagan's voice snaps her back fully awake (not as fully as, say, if Reagan actually came out from behind the screen, but still…) and Amy glances up. "You know about Shane and Karma?"
There's a part of Amy, a small part… oh, who is she kidding… it's a fucking huge part, like almost three-quarters of the size of the 'I love doughnuts' part of her, that burns a candle of satisfaction at the shock and surprise and plain old 'holy shit' she hears in Reagan's voice. It's nice, she thinks, for once, to be the one doing the surprising instead of it being the other way round.
"Is that really such a shock?" she asks even though she knows full fucking well that it is. She knows a secret. A secret about Karma. A secret about Karma that could - possibly - be a giant massive untakebackable fucking mistake and she hasn't said a word.
Non adult Amy wouldn't have lasted five minutes with that.
Hell… six months ago Amy wouldn't have lasted five minutes.
"I am observant, you know," she says (though clearly not that observant as she has yet to notice that Reagan's shifted position and that - clearly - the dress hasn't made it all the way to the bottom yet, either.) "I pick up on things and I pay attention and I notice."
Like right now, for instance. She's totally noticing the look Reagan's giving her. The 'you should have quit while you were ahead cause now I know you're full of it and you're going to tell me, like right now' look.
"I do," Amy stresses, both of them smiling (just a little) at the irony of her choosing those two words. "Like, for example, I totally noticed when Shane got waaaaaay too hammered at your bachelorette party and talked even more way too loud in my ear the whole ride home and, you know… might have mentioned something about Karma and a bun he had 'a-bakin' in her oven."
His words. Not hers.
So never ever ever ever hers.
And so, OK, maybe Amy doesn't notice quite as much as she claims - though, once Shane had actually said it, she did see it and oh, God, how had she ever missed it - but, still, she's kept her mouth shut and her business has been well minded and she hasn't once even thought of taking Karma by the shoulders and shaking her and asking (demanding) (pleading) with her in all kinds of 'what the fuck are you thinking' and 'how did this happen' and 'oh, shit, don't you really tell me how' ways.
And if that doesn't say adulting, Amy doesn't know what does.
"You've known since my party and you haven't said anything?" Reagan's eyes are as wide as her brows are high (Amy occasionally wonders what it must be like to be so identified with one body part) (especially when there are so many other parts worth identifying.) She takes a half step out from behind the screen - oh, and would you look, that dress isn't really making it to the middle, either - and cocks her head to the side. "Who are you and what have you done with my Shrimps?"
Amy rolls her eyes and resists - barely - the urge to comment on what her Shrimps would like to do to her, but only (and it really is only) because her phone buzzes in her lap. It's the message she's been waiting for (did she forget to mention that) but now that it's here…
(Now that they're here…)
"You know what I remember?" she asks her wife-to-be, still staring down at her phone. "We were silly, once. All of us, not just Karma." Well… mostly Karma, but the point stands. "The biggest worries we had were so… ridiculous, you know? She'd worry that we wouldn't ever be popular, and I'd worry that we would. She'd wonder if she'd ever meet a boy…"
"And you'd worry that she would," Reagan finishes, but without a trace - not even a smidgen - of the bitterness of jealousy she might once have.
Amy nods. "Guess I never thought that boy might be my sister," she says. "Which would have been sorta extra weird since, you know, girl. And, at the time, Lauren."
They both bite back a laugh (Amy's is more of a snort) at the very thought. Cause, you know, really? Karma and Lauren? Larma?
Who would ever be that crazy?
But Amy does remember those silly times and all Karma's cares about being popular and liked and boys and being liked by boys and, sometimes, it's hard for her to forget that girl and know the woman her best friend is now. Just like, sometimes, it's hard for her to forget the girl she was, the one who didn't know her place - even before she knew she was… her - the one who always secretly wondered (and worried) that she might not ever find a place or a group or a someone that made her feel even half as safe and comfortable as Karma did.
Sometimes though - most times, at least most of the not life-changing, holy shit times - Amy knows that girl… well… she left the building right about the same time she sat on a roof and said 'let's be lesbians' and though that (and how literally she took it) might have lit the fuse of some of the most explosive and terrifying - and sometimes awesome - moments of her life?
Well… one look at Reagan - in or out of that dress - is all it takes for Amy to know that she'd do it all again. Every. Single. Bit.
Of course, it doesn't hurt (like at all) that the view right now is mostly out of the dress.
"You're not supposed to see me like this," Reagan says though her words might carry a little more weight if she was making any move to cover up (the dress) or duck behind the screen or do anything to hide anything from her fiancee's eyes. "It's bad luck for the groom to see the bride before the wedding."
Amy leans back in her chair - one eye flicking almost involuntarily to the door and the lock - that message forgotten for the moment. She's 100% purposefully ignoring the fact that, apparently, she's 'the groom' cause, really, she probably is, even if her sister (both of them) and her mother and her… Karma… finally talked her out of wearing a suit for the ceremony.
(For the record, Reagan was all for it, at least after Amy modeled it for her.)
(Read: modeled, as in wore the suit jacket with nothing on under it and just the pants, but those might have gotten a little torn - accidentally - when Amy, or… you know… someone was trying to get them off.)
Instead of thinking about that, or about the message, Amy is choosing to focus on the sight of her wife to be in (sort of) that dress (or parts of it) and no, she isn't thinking at all about just how quickly she could change 'sort of' to 'not at all' and if she could only remember for sure if she locked the door.
And if you read 'for sure' as anything other than 'it really doesn't matter cause she can press Reagan up against the door to keep it shut' or 'at all' as anything other than 'she's thinking of that and nothing but that except where she can lay the dress so nothing happens to it during their… fun… because a single wrinkle or a bit of lace out of place and Lauren will rearrange her face?
You clearly haven't been paying attention.
Amy's phone buzzes again in her lap. "Do you need to get that?" Reagan asks, still not moving or, at least, not moving away. She is moving - closer - but slowly, like one purposeful step at a time and Amy can't help it, her one track mind is already slipping back to that day in the Hester hallway, watching Reagan coming toward her (for her) and God, is it really possible that older does equal hotter cause, seriously?
Damn.
Just… damn.
She shakes her head - speech drifted somewhere beyond her the moment Reagan took that first step and that dress slipped just a little more - even though, really, she does need to take it, or else risk ruining the surprise she's spent months planning. She wasn't even sure she was going to make it back here in time, what with getting Lucy from the airport and then having to get Lauren - after a frantic call that said she needed a ride and she needed it now and no, she wasn't going to explain what she was doing at Theo's or why she wanted to be dropped at the hotel instead of the church - but she asked Jack to hurry and, for once, he did as she wished.
And so, yeah, when her phone buzzes again, she should really get it. That would be the adult thing to do. And that was how this all got started, right? Her being an adult and doing all the adult things?
You know, like the very adult things she'd like to do with Reagan right now. The adult things that get more and more appealing with each slow and deliberate (and less clothed) step that Reagan takes toward her. Those things are adulting too, right? Amy likes to think that they are because they spend a lot of time… adulting…like that. Sometimes it's just a kiss, a quick and fleeting bit of a moment.
And sometimes that moment is like three or four or eight hours long, when it's just them, alone behind closed doors - or, sometimes, out on the porch at the back of their house, though that's only when it's really really really dark and they've made very sure to shut off those motion lights cause that's a mistake you only make once.
Though, in fairness to Amy, it's sort of… difficult (she was thinking 'hard', but those jokes just write themselves, so…) to remember mistakes or moments or messages with Reagan and like 60% of her dress settling down on her lap, a leg on each side of her and oh, she's kinda, well, trapped now and yes, that word does seem a little… wrong… considering she'd gladly stay right there, just like that (or, you know, with maybe 50% less dress) for like the rest of her life.
If her phone would just stop.
Reagan reaches a hand down between her legs (not like that) (into Amy's lap) (still not like that) deftly plucking her fiancee's phone right out of her fingers. "Seriously, Shrimps. I know you're the groom and all and I know you've got shit to do, but who can't wait five damn min…"
She trails off - as if that ever ends well for Amy - at the sight of the name on the caller ID, eyes darting back and forth between the phone and the blonde's face, confusion sending her brows skyward at a somewhat alarming angle.
"I can explain," Amy says and she really can, not that that's all that soothing cause, let's face it, no good conversation ever starts with those three words. "It's a surprise," she says, "and until yesterday, I wasn't sure I could pull it off, so I didn't want to say anything, not even to you."
They long ago swore that there'd be no secrets, that there would never be anything they kept from each other. Hell, Reagan won't even let her wrap up Christmas presents anymore. And that rule had - a very long time ago - come with one very very very specific amendment.
Secrets were forbidden. Secrets about Karma?
'Nuff said, right?
Amy just hopes this can be the exception cause, really, the last thing she needs is a pissed off bride. And not just cause that would lead to a pissed off Lauren.
And, really, it wasn't that Amy didn't think Reagan would understand or even that she'd be too mad. They were long since past that (she thinks). And it wasn't like she hadn't been keeping the mama of all Karma related secrets, lately, though Amy knew far better than to try and use that argument. It wasn't the secret that worried Amy so much, more the idea of telling Reagan about it and then having t fall apart and having to tell her that she couldn't actually pull it off.
She knew Reagan would see right through whatever bullshit lines she fed her about it all being OK and it was a longshot anyway and it didn't matter, not to her, not really.
Because it did. It mattered. A fucking lot. Because it… she… mattered. Matters.
To Karma.
And that was the worrisome part. Because this? This isn't a bridesmaid's gift, this is so not the lockets she got Lucy and Lauren with the pictures of the three of them. It's not even the key to the motorcycle parked out back of Planter's that Reagan got Glenn. It used to be Martin's and she had it fixed up for him, so it's not too much better than Amy's gifts.
At least some of them. Cause, again, this isn't a gift.
This is love.
"I don't understand this," Reagan says, though Amy suspects that she's already got an idea and maybe that's why she doesn't sound mad (though she does sound like she's reserving the right to change that) which is a far cry better than some of the reactions Amy was expecting. "Why is she calling you?"
There's a simple explanation. But, if you thought Amy was going to go for simple?
Remember that bit about not paying attention?
Amy shifts in the chair, slowly guiding Reagan off her and onto her feet. "Cover up," she says, nodding at… well… at the lack of covering up going on.
Reagan eyes her and there's just enough of a glint of amusement in her eyes that Amy thinks her secret might not have screwed anything up just yet. "You haven't said that to me since the summer we spent at Nana's house."
If it's possible for anyone to blush with every drop of blood in their body, then Amy does. "I had to," she says. "You remember the rule. 'It's my house, so I don't knock.'"
And she didn't.
It was three months of no knocking and three months of Reagan (and somehow it was always Reagan) diving for her shirt or her pants or a bedsheet - or, that one time when it was the keys to the handcuffs - as Nana announced her entrance with a loud 'I'm coming in' and, of course, who can forget the time Nana took those words (minus the 'in') (but you probably figured that) right out of Reagan's mouth.
Reagan smirks, but she does as asked and collects her robe from behind the screen, wrapping it around herself as Amy takes her hand and guides her to the window. She tugs one curtain to the side and nods down at the parking lot in front of the church. "They got here a bit earlier than I expected," she says. "I figured they'd meet us at Planter's, but… well… leave it to that family to always fuck up my plans."
Amy nudges Reagan to the window and watches as she looks down, her eyes widening and oh, wow, she didn't know eyebrows could do that. "How… when…" She looks back at Amy and out to the lot again. "How did you do this?"
How?
With a lot of begging. And a lot of pleading. A fair amount of threatening. One weekend when she was supposed to be camping with Jack - as if that would ever happen - and instead spent two days in Dallas, making her case. And then, in the end?
"I didn't," Amy says, with a nod at the lot, at the young girl standing nervously next to the far too big to be unnoticed (because of course the word 'incognito' would be totally fucking Greek to the Bookers). "She did."
She feels Reagan's hand slip into hers as they stare out the window, watching as the not nearly as small as either of them remembers Emma Booker glances up and, spotting them, waves with a big, happy, toothy grin.
Amy hears Reagan's breath catch and she knows the feeling. It hit her the first time too.
Emma's got her father's smile.
