There was a time, and it wasn't all that long ago, when Karma knew every piece of jewelry Amy owned.
There was the bracelet Karma gave her when she turned sixteen, the one with both their birthstones in it and 'Always' inscribed between them and motherfucker even then Karma was waterboarding both their fucking hearts.
Then there was the pair of rings, one emerald and one ruby. Amy's Nana gave them to her when she was nine and they came complete with a built in backstory about belonging to her great-great-great-grandnana from the 'old country' which Karma knew (but never told Amy) was a complete load of BS cause she saw the same set at Walmart for twenty bucks.
Amy owned a half dozen pairs of earrings, including those ridiculous doughnut shaped ones from Reagan (which had nothing to do with why Karma hated them so much and might - might - have 'misplaced' them during a sleepover senior year). There were a few assorted rings Amy'd picked up at junk sales with Karma's mother (some she bought just to keep Molly from buying them and forcing them on Karma), a toe ring some cousin had given her for Christmas, a charm bracelet Bruce bought her (that she never wore) and, of course, her half of the 'Best Friends' necklace.
It wasn't the original. Karma had never found hers after the move, but their last night in Austin she'd surprised Amy with a new one. "It cost me a month's tips to get there," she'd said. "Worth every penny."
It had been two months, but the look on Amy's face and the way she hugged Karma extra tight (and extra long and Karma had been extra not complaining) would've been worth a year's worth of tips.
In all of it, in every piece of knock off crap and supposed family heirlooms and the occasional decent piece, there was one thing conspicuous by its absence.
A diamond.
Amy hated diamonds. Farrah had rocked a parade of them over the years, every one bigger than the last and every one of them stuck around longer than the man that gave them to her and sometimes Karma thought it was a sign. The bigger the diamond, the shorter the marriage.
As long as Karma had known her, Amy had never owned, borrowed, or even worn a diamond, no matter how often Karma tried to convince her she could. "It won't make your skin turn green," she said. "Or make you break out in hives or doom you to a lifetime of failed marriages."
It didn't matter what she said. When it came to Amy, diamonds were a no go.
At least, they had been. That fucking rock (and it was a fucking sparkler and yes, Karma was pretty sure she would always refer to it as that fucking whatever) that dangled between Amy's breasts suggested otherwise.
And Karma didn't know what the hell to do with that.
That fucking rock (and really, anything that big could only be a rock cause it was too big to be tasteful like a stone would be) was on her mind the entire night. It was on her mind through the first round of whiskey shots, the ones Amy talked her into.
"It'll put hair on your chest," the blonde joked as she downed her shot and slammed the glass on the bar and all Karma could think about was something else (that fucking rock) that was already on Amy's chest.
It stayed on her mind through the second round of shots (tequila, she thought) but the whiskey still burned and the fucking rock was still there (and now that Karma knew it was there she could see it, no matter how covered it was or what angle Amy stood at or even if she disappeared to the bathroom for a minute, probably to polish the fucking thing) so, really, Karma could have been drinking bleach and she wouldn't have noticed.
She thought about it through their first three dances, through the two guys she fended off by dancing closer to Amy (city boys weren't nearly as into lesbians as high school fuckboys), through the four girls Amy had to politely turn down (and fuck all the gaydar on those bitches), and through the third round of shots that Karma thought were Sex on the Beach but could have been Purple Hooters or Scooby Snacks or Buttery Nipples for all she knew cause, really, all she could see, hear, smell, and fucking feel was the weight of that fucking rock against her own chest and in her hands and why the fuck was Amy wearing a diamond and, more importantly, not telling her about it?
There was an obvious answer but it was one Karma didn't want to consider. One that started with 'M' and ended like 'daisy' and fuck Karma knew she'd be trouble with her pretty name and her big (giant) fucking tits and she probably smelled like fucking roses and sweetgrass and Karma just bet (fucking bet) her pussy tasted like sunflowers.
And maybe (not maybe) that last shot had been one too many.
So, of course, Karma had another.
The whole night was decidedly not going according to plan (yes, Karma had a plan because… well… Karma) and maybe it hadn't been her best plan, but she'd barely had time to think before Amy had come out in that outfit and then there was hand holding and 'I missed you' and then there was that fucking rock so she hadn't had time for her usual level of complexity.
Step One: Kiss Amy
Step Two: Bring Amy home
Step Three: Kiss Amy (again)
(some steps beared repeating)
Step Four: Kiss Amy (again and again and in less clothing)
(though maybe leaving the skirt on)
(but not the underwear)
Step Five: Convince Amy to transfer to NYC, spend all of college (or what was left of it) together, get married, live in one house (no need for next door anymore), have teeny-tiny Karmy babies (Amy would carry the first two, Karma the last one), grow old together, sip iced tea.
But see, the problem was that the night was so not going according to plan because there'd been no kisses (though that one persistent bitch had almost kissed Karma's fist when she got a bit handsy with Amy on the dance floor). And there was definitely not less clothing and Karma suspected (probably rightly) that there wouldn't be, not so long as that fucking rock was hiding behind Amy's top.
Transfer plans? Housing choices? Babies?
That all seemed a bit premature. After all, Amy was wearing another woman's fucking rock and Karma was no homewrecker. Especially since that… thing Amy was wearing made one other thing very, very clear.
Karma was the new Amy. The tables had turned. She was the one with the unrequited love who would have to watch from afar as Amy made a life with someone else. And yeah, that fucking hurt and maybe (so not maybe) that was a good (very good) reason for Karma to pass up the fourth and fifth (and maybe one or two or she lost fucking count more after that) shots of the evening.
So, of course, she didn't.
Which totally explained how she ended up like a typical college student (and God, how Karma hated being typical), with her head over the toilet and her best friend holding her hair back. And as if the nausea that rolled through her wasn't bad enough, if being reduced to a pukey mess wasn't enough to turn her red with shame, well…
There were always the thoughts Amy's hands were arousing (and yeah, that was the word for it) in her. Those hands tangled in her hair gave Karma all kinds of thoughts of other times and reasons and positions (so many positions) they could have been in with Amy's hands in those exact spots and Karma's hands roaming all over Amy's body and she kinda doubted Amy tasted like sunflowers but she was willing to bet it was something like the flavor of heaven.
And for fuck's sake…
What, Karma wondered, was the point of getting blind stinking drunk if it didn't even kill the crazy? Because she knew that's what it was. Crazy. Crazy talk, total madness, utter fucking insanity. She had let her emotions get ahead of her and let that connection she and Amy always shared just explode inside her mind. She'd done what she always did and made so much bigger a deal out of everything than it really was.
Karma knew the truth. She couldn't be in love with Amy. She couldn't be. If she was, if she'd been in love with Amy all this time, she'd have known. Because if there was one thing Karma knew, it was herself. If she'd been in love with Amy all this time, what level of denial could she possible have been in?
She couldn't be.
Nobody buried something that deep, right?
Right.
Right?
And second of all, she thought (and she'd been counting, right?) if she was so in love with Amy, if Amy was the one she wanted to be with, if Amy was the one who dominated her thoughts so much that she'd just thought her name three times in like ten fucking seconds of drunken rambling, the explain this.
This being Liam. And Jackson. And Frank and Davis.
If Karma was so in love with Amy, so in love with another girl (sorry… woman) then those four men would never have been, certainly not in the quantity (Liam) (and Davis) and frequency (Jackson) and variety (Davis, again) of ways (and positions) they had been. That would make Karma bi and, Shane's protests (and Reagan's issues) aside, Karma knew enough about being bi to know that if she happened to be bi, she'd have fucking known.
Right?
Right.
Except….
Except she'd never once spent even a single second thinking about lives with them. Not one moment spent pondering where they would live or how many kids they'd have or how any of them would look when they were old or imagining watching the sunset from the front porch and sipping iced tea.
That had never been them.
That had always been her.
Oh. My. God.
She'd always been in love with Amy and yes, Karma knew she'd figured that out hours ago but she was drunk and Amy was touching her and there was the fucking rock… and so maybe she realized then that she'd missed a few hints, some suggestions that there might have been something more, that maybe she had less 'love' for Amy and more 'LOVE' (her drunken mind caps locked it all) but she also realized something else, something far more important.
It didn't matter.
It didn't matter for one simple, irrefutable, super important reason.
Amy didn't love her like that. Not anymore.
That fucking rock proved that.
"Karma?" Amy's voice echoed off the tile in the bathroom and snapped her out of her drunken stupor long enough to grunt something that approximated a reply.
Amy's fingers slipped from Karma's hair to her back. She rubbed small circles, her nails occassionally sliding across the bare skin of Karma's back (she'd stripped to her bra just in time for round one) and every time (every fucking time) they did it sent a wave of something rolling through her, but Karma held it back and managed a nod.
"I'll be right back, OK?" Amy asked. "I'm going to get you some water."
She nodded again but Amy was already headed for the small fridge next to Ashlyn's bed, so Karma slowly sat back and leaned against the cool bathroom wall and waited until Amy dropped back onto the floor next to her, settling onto her knees as she handed Karma the open bottle of water. She waited until Karma took a few slow and tentative sips before speaking again.
"You want to tell me what's wrong?"
Karma popped one eye open, squinting against the impossibly bright lights in the bathroom until Amy reached up and flicked them off. "Too much," Karma mumbled (which was so true on so many levels). "Too much to drink," she added, which was also the truth, but only part (the part that didn't matter). "It happens."
Amy nodded. "Yeah," she said. "But not to you and not like this. Not since the party…"
The party. The party. The one with the pool and the fight and the Wade and the body shots and the splash and… and…
And the kiss.
Karma groaned and Amy scooted closer.
"I haven't seen you like this since then," Amy said. "And we've gone out plenty of times."
"Just because you haven't seen it that doesn't mean it hasn't happened," Karma said and she immediately regretted the tone, the snap to it, the clipped way the word shot from her lips like tiny bullets. But either Amy didn't notice or didn't care and instead of pulling away, she settled down further onto the floor, her legs stretched out on either side of Karma.
The bare skin of one of those legs (still in that skirt) brushed against Karma's hand and she tipped her head back against the wall and prayed a little prayer to any of the Gods or Goddesses or spirits or what-the-fuck-ever her parents believed in that she could just pass out before she said (or did) something stupid involving those legs and that skirt and finding some way (any way) to get it off Amy.
"I know I haven't been… around as much," Amy said. "I mean, obviously, we live on different coasts and all, and you've been busy with school and your music and work and I've been busy with classes and Maisie -"
"How is she?" Karma interrupted. "Maisie?" She was glad her eyes were closed so Amy wouldn't spot them drifting to that spot where that fucking rock was hiding.
If she'd been sober, Karma would have noticed. She would have heard it, the pregnant pause between her question and Amy's answer ("Good. She's… good.") which wasn't much of an answer at all, not in the words at least.
But Karma wasn't sober, not in the slightest, and she wanted to hear about Maisie about as much as she wanted another shot (which she'd need if Amy started talking about her). As it turned out, that was just fine with Amy because she soldiered on as if Karma had never spoken.
"And I know," she said. "That I missed a couple Skype dates and phone calls and I really didn't mean to, but things have gotten… well… I mean… shit… that's really why I came here cause there's something I want… no… need… to talk to you about and I can't believe I'm doing this when you're drunk but maybe that's just easier or maybe I think you'll actually tell me the truth now cause, you know, like Felix said about people and what they do when they're drunk -"
Karma lurched suddenly and pushed past Amy and dove for the toilet, the last of the shots roaring back at her. Amy caught her by the shoulder and held her back from slamming against the porcelain.
"It's going to be OK," she whispered, as her free hand rubbed calming circles on Karma's arm.
Karma wasn't sober, not in the least, and she had no earthly idea what Amy had been about to tell her, but as she heard her best friend (her love and oh fuck did that word hurt) whisper over and over again that it was all going to be OK, Karma let herself think that maybe, just maybe, it would be.
She really should have known better.