I'm engaged.

Those are the words that ended it, even if there were so many words that came after it and even if all of those words were ones Karma meant, maybe more than any she'd ever meant before.

Those were the words that asked questions Karma had no good (read: unselfish) answers to, the ones that made her confront everything (everything) about her and Amy and how they'd been.

How they are.

And really, those two words from Amy, and all the rest of the words from Karma, they aren't even the words. It's the words that came after those. They're the ones that finished it off and Karma will never understand how she came to say them, even though writing them wasn't quite the same and even though she knew she had to.

Had to.

But that's how it ended and how it started… well… if Karma was being honest and actually looked at things closely enough (never her strong suit) it didn't start with Amy waving her way down an airport concourse or nearly falling getting out of the cab or even with the way she unceremoniously flopped down onto the bed in Karma's room and all Karma could think was how she didn't think she'd ever want Amy to leave that spot.

It started long before any of that. It started in a ball pit or a tiny cardboard castle or one of a hundred other moments that she lived through but never felt (or let herself feel) because she was too little and never imagined and then, even when she was older and imagined far more than she knew she should, she was too busy... how did Lauren put it?

Chasing boys and the approval of others.

Yeah. That was pretty much true. But that was also much safer. Far safer than her 'imaginings' and safer, Karma knew, was better even if it meant her reality (LIam) was so much less than the life she lived in her head when she wasn't paying attention.

And even if it didn't start then, not 'officially', not for Karma at least (but she knew it did for Amy because Amy told her so in the single moment Karma felt most loved in her entire life which is so why she spent that night in Liam's arms), it could've started any one of a thousand other times.

The moment they kissed, when she knew exactly what Amy's 'I know' meant. Or when they 'broke up' and Karma thought she'd gone too far (and who knew, really, that the sex addict thing would get that big?) and lost Amy forever. Or the night of the wedding when she broke Amy's heart (and her own) and spent the night crying and shaking in mortal terror that they'd never be right again.

Maybe the moment Liam confessed (even though he didn't, not really, and how many nights has she wondered what he would have done if she'd said any other name?) and Karma found herself wondering how she'd ever forgive Amy.

And, more importantly, how she couldn't.

Or it might have been the moment when she stood by, helplessly crying, as Amy had rolled away with Pussy Explosion and Karma had wondered (every day for three months) if she'd ever come back. Or every single time, be it end of summer or a holiday break, or just a weekend visit, when they'd part again and go back to their separate lives.

It might have started any one (or all) of those times and Karma intentionally never wondered why every time she thinks it might have started was a time it might have ended.

But that weekend, it didn't really start at the airport (when she knew they'd sleep together) or outside the cab (when she finally thought, 'out loud', that she loved Amy) but more, or less, it did start in that moment when she and Amy got to the room (the empty room because, of course, Ashlyn had to listen this time) and Amy dropped her suitcase on the floor and dove onto the bed.

And really? Five seconds in the room and she was already on the bed?

It was a test. It had to be.

And if there was one thing her college GPA had taught Karma? She sucked at tests.

Amy patted the spot next to her and Karma dutifully (If as distantly and stiffly as humanly possible) dropped down next to her. They'd been like this a thousand times, ten thousand maybe, and not once had Karma ever felt every fucking bit of the distance between them like she did right then. It was like every inch of poorly made Bed, Bath, and Beyond comforter between the seemed to Karma to be not far enough and too fucking far all at once.

She was so screwed.

She could barely concentrate when Amy made small talk (and since when did they do small talk) and asked her if she'd met anyone new since that guy…

"Dave?" she asked. "David?"

"Davis," Karma corrected quietly, as she tried so very hard to distract herself and conjure up a mental image of Davis naked, stepping out of her shower, water dripping down his torso, tiny little rivers of it flowing between her breasts, her long blonde hair hanging down, framing her face….

So fucking screwed.

"So?" Amy prodded. "Have you? Is there anyone new in your life?"

Karma had to blink away the images in her head (like that would work). New? Someone new?

Well, not technically new…

"No," she said and how the fuck she didn't pick up on every signal Amy was laying down (especially since this was Amy and subtlety and Amy were never that well acquainted) and never once saw the pole or the hook or the work as Amy went fishing, Karma will never know.

She shrugged. "No one new," she said, as her fingers absently played with the loose end of a string on the comforter. "I haven't, um, had much time, you know? Classes and all."

It wasn't a total lie. Classes were a bitch and Karma had taken an overloaded schedule that semester which, combined with work and Ashlyn's insistence on dragging her to damn near every party in a two mile radius, had left Karma just about fried and in no condition to meet anyone new.

"I've been thinking of changing majors," she said, which earned her a Raudenfeld Roll (and when your best friend's eye rolling suddenly makes your stomach do flips…). Karma understood though, it wasn't like this was the fourth time she'd changed majors since she started college or anything.

"I don't think they award diplomas for trying every major in the school, Karms," Amy said with grin and how (just fucking how?) had Karma never noticed the way that smile made her heart stop?

(Not skip a beat. Stop. Done. Over. Die fucking happy.)

And then Amy patted her knee and Karma felt her heart restart, hammering away at triple time in her chest and she suddenly had to be anywhere but right there, so she slid off the bed and moved to her desk, sticking her tongue out at Amy as she went.

"I just want to be sure," she said as she sat down in her desk chair. "I mean, I was always so set on music, but there's so many things out there. This school has sixty-five different majors, Amy. Sixty-five. What if what I always thought I wanted wasn't…"

She trailed off because, really, she didn't have to look too closely to see that.

But Amy either didn't notice or didn't care and, maybe, if Karma hadn't been so wrapped up in her own metaphor she might have caught it. The look on Amy's face, the way her eyes flickered down and away from Karma's as the redhead said the words, the way she swallowed hard and nodded just a little too enthusiastically. Maybe Karma might have caught on that Amy might have been thinking pretty much the same thing.

If she'd only been looking.

"That makes sense," Amy said. She sat up, pulling her legs underneath her on the bed, and she was practically vibrating with nervous energy and Karma couldn't remember the last time she saw her best friend like this. "But enough about all that," she said. "I've got forty-eight hours of freedom and I'm leaving you in charge of it. So, tell me. What are we doing? Clubbing? Frat party? Hiding the parts of Ashlyn's bed in different boy's rooms so she has to go hunting them all down?"

Karma laughed, Amy's enthusiasm was infectious and, for just a second, all of the other stuff (and by stuff, she totally meant every urge she had to really take charge of Amy for the rest of the weekend) slipped from her mind and it, in fact, stirred something in Karma that wasn't the same something that had been stirring since the moment she saw Amy again.

It stirred something that was the exact opposite. A calm, a peace, something Karma never felt except around Amy. Karma was always a nervous person by nature, anxious, a worrier, a stresser. Everything had to be right… no… not right, it had to be perfect and nothing ever was because nothing ever could be but when Amy was there, when Amy was near…

It settled. Amy soothed Karma in a way even her parents' 'special' brownies never could and she made it all seem like even imperfect might be good. Like it might be enough.

Karma had to fake a cough so she could look away because suddenly looking at Amy was like staring too long at the sun and it warmed her so, she was afraid she'd burn away. Karma hoped Amy didn't see it, she hoped this girl she'd loved her whole life (and was now pretty sure she'd been in love with for at least half of it) didn't see the way she was looking at her.

Maybe that hope was what blinded her. Blinded her to how Amy was looking at her in the exact same way.

And to the way Amy kept playing and fidgeting with the chain around her neck, the one that if Karma had looked close, she might have spotted it, she might have noticed the way that when Amy tangled it or flipped it just right way the light glinted off the diamond dangling from it.

She might have noticed.

But then Karma never did look very close.