Karma climbed under the icy cold spray of her shower and waited for her heart to explode.
Metaphorically speaking, of course.
Maybe.
She couldn't really be sure, not after what she'd just heard. After that, Karma wasn't sure she'd ever be sure of anything ever again. After all, she'd been sure Amy was asleep (sleep of the dead, remember?) and now she knew that wasn't true. Amy had been awake. Amy had heard it all, every word. Amy had heard her confess to hating Reagan, to wanting her love. She'd heard her admit she had wanted to it be Amy, not Liam professing love for her, heard her admit that she'd always known how she really felt.
Amy had heard her promise.
I promise to love you until the day I die and you will never know.
So, clearly, half of that wasn't true because Amy did know, she knew it all.
And she didn't care.
That was what Karma heard and yes, she knew that wasn't exactly what Amy said but it was what she meant and, really, that was all that mattered. Karma didn't focus on the words, on what Amy and Lauren had actually said because that wasn't her way. That wasn't how Karma worked, not as a teenager and certainly not then. She didn't hear the good (because if Amy was having even the tiniest doubt about marrying Maisie and lying to her about where she was certainly showed doubt and that was good, right?) And she didn't hear the struggle in Amy's voice, the way her best friend was clearly torn and coming apart at the seams.
No, Karma didn't hear that. She heard the doubts. She heard the questions Amy still had, even after everything she'd heard Karma reveal in the night. Karma's words, the ones she'd ripped her own heart out just to say (even if she didn't think, not even for a second that Amy was awake)? Those words didn't mean a thing, not to Amy. She still had doubts, she still had questions, she still didn't believe.
The water poured over her and Karma shuddered as it prickled her skin. She turned her head into the spray, letting it beat down against her scalp, the sound echoing in her ears but it still wasn't loud enough. It still couldn't drown out all that she'd heard, all the reasons Amy and Lauren had for why Karma had 'said it'.
And all the reasons she couldn't have meant it.
Our high school fantasies. That's what Lauren had said and Karma knew she was talking about Amy, at the time, but that was her too, wasn't it? Still trapped in this dream of the perfect life, the fairy tale, except now Karma had finally realized she wanted the cardboard castle and Princess Sarcasm was her knight in (somewhat less than) shining armor.
But that was all the past and that was all the fantasy and that was as close as Karma was ever going to get. She knew that now, she'd heard it and it didn't matter, not even the tiniest bit that Amy had never actually said that. Karma knew Amy and she knew that, with her, it wasn't about what she said, it never was. It was all about what she didn't say. That was Amy's M.O., that was how she lied and how she told the truth and how she did everything in between. There was always something she didn't mention, something she left out.
And Karma knew all too well the words Amy had left out, the ones she hadn't said, not once, during the entire conversation.
I love her.
She'd talked around it well enough. Amy had danced back and forth and tiptoed right up to that line, but she'd never said it. Karma had promised a lifetime of love and Amy had mentioned coming to NYC to 'find out'. Karma had confessed everything and Amy hadn't even told her Maisie didn't know she was there. Clearly (even if Karma didn't hear it quite so clear or focus on it quite as much as maybe she should have) Amy was confused and torn and not at all sure Maisie was the one.
But she sure as fuck didn't seem too sure Karma was either. Because she never said it.
I love her.
It was her meaning Karma and not her meaning Maisie because that Amy had said. That she'd made a point of saying, of correcting Lauren.
That's not fair. I meant it. I mean it. You know that.
Well, maybe Lauren knew that and Karma had certainly thought it but now Karma knew it and she knew Amy had made a point of it, had made it as clear as could be. She loves Maisie and yeah, Karma knows it's possible for someone to have feelings for two people (she'd liked Liam while loving Amy even if she'd always said it was the other way around, a decision she'd never regretted as much as she did right then in that shower) but Karma was sure you couldn't love two people, not the same way, not the way she loved Amy.
The human heart was only so big.
And that was the key, wasn't it? That was the devil in those details. Amy loves Maisie so Amy couldn't love Karma. She had though, Amy had. She'd loved Karma for so long, for so many years and Karma had rejected her again and again and Liam had warned her, hadn't he? Yes, he had, but she'd ignored him, just like she'd ignored Ash and her mother and Shane and anyone who even sort of suggested she felt more for Amy than she let on.
She'd even ignored herself. For so fucking long - too fucking long, apparently - because now Amy loved her but loves Maisie (present and future and till death do them fucking part) and if Karma had thought, even for a second, that she was going to somehow find a way to be OK with that, that she could live with it because she couldn't live without Amy?
That was before. That was before the call and Lauren and the questions but, mostly, that was before Amy had flat out fucking lied to her. And that Karma knew, was exactly what Amy had done. She'd lied but not like she usually lied. This wasn't faking faking it or saying she was over Karma when she wasn't or acting like a kiss didn't mean anything to her.
This was 'I am.'
This was those, those two words that Amy had said, that she'd looked right in Karma's eyes and said. I am. I am engaged. I am going to marry Maisie (assuming I ever, you know, say yes, but Amy hadn't said that.) I am hers and she is mine and you aren't (because, really, that was what Karma heard and fuck all if it wasn't exactly what Amy said.)
"I am," Amy had said. I. Am. Except she wasn't and Karma had heard that, she'd heard Amy say it. Well… technically… she'd heard Lauren say it, heard Lauren ask (like only Lauren could) what it was you called someone who proposes to you, but you tell them you'll have to think about it.
Think about it
As clear as Karma had thought 'I am' was… 'think about it' was clear as the California sky Amy lived under (and she lived in L-fucking-A so, yeah… clear.) Amy wasn't engaged because she hadn't said yes and Karma was pretty sure that you actually had to say that one little word, that you had to 'say yes' to actually be engaged. And Karma knew (and had done a lot of homework into) these new fangled ideas of fluidity and flexibility and love is love and all that happy horseshit.
But some things aren't flexible or fluid. Something are concrete. Some things are or they aren't and Amy's "engagement" aren't.
Aren't or isn't or what-fucking-ever it was just… not.
'The water soaked her hair and her skin Karma was sure her fingers were gonna be blue by the time she was done, but Amy was expecting her showered and not still dry and standing in the doorway listening to every word she said.
And 'yes' wasn't one of them.
'Yes' wasn't what Amy had said. 'Yes' was not 'I'll have to think about it'. Yes was sure and thinking about it was thinking about it and considering it and weighing options and that was when Karma felt her knees give out and she slumped against the shower wall, the water mixing with the tears she hadn't even realized she was crying and that one word ringing in her ears.
Options
She was an option. She was something Amy was considering (at least Lauren seemed to think so but, again, that was something else Amy never said). Karma guesses that was something that should have made her feel better, not worse, and it did, in a way. But right then and there, the only thing she felt (besides the icy sting beating down on her and that was something of a relief because that pain she knew she could stop) was slapped in the face.
It was bad enough that she'd been reduced to an option, to a consideration, a maybe, a might be. That was bad enough but now Amy knew exactly how much Karma wanted to be more that that, how much she wanted to be everything. And that hurt like nothing Karma had ever known in her life, more than every time her parents had ever favored Zen over her, more than when Liam had discovered the truth and dumped her, more than when she'd discovered the truth and dumped him. Even more than when she'd looked in Amy's eyes and known it was true, known that her best friend had betrayed her in an almost unforgivable way.
Fuck. She was Amy. She was Amy the night of the wedding, Amy who said 'I love you' and heard "I slept with Liam' in return and Amy who'd had to live every day knowing that Karma knew and did nothing but make it worse (unintentionally, but still).
Amy knew and Amy hadn't said a word. She hadn't done a thing. Amy had let Karma crawl out of bed and disappear into the bathroom in the dark. She'd let Ash be the comforter, the one to hand Karma the cool cloth for her neck and the one to sit with her while she fucking died. Amy had heard every word Karma had thought she was saying to the dark and she hadn't reacted, not one little bit.
Karma crumpled to the shower floor and pulled her knees to her chest. She could almost understand it. She could get, in a way, why Amy hadn't said anything then, in that moment, in the dark. Karma still remembered all too well how fucking gobsmacked she'd been when Amy had come out to her, how lost she'd been in those moments. Even now, she didn't really remember saying anything (she knew she had and she knew it had been the wrong thing but she didn't remember the words actually leaving her mouth). She imagined that was probably how Amy was in that moment.
Lost. Confused. Gobsmacked in the dark and so fucking alone. Karma got that.
What she didn't get, what she couldn't get, was why Amy hadn't said anything after. Or, really, why she had. Why the very next words she'd said to Karma, after hearing all that (and after 'hey' and 'feeling better') were those two.
I am
Amy had heard Karma confess, she'd heard Karma reveal her most intimate truth. And then she'd fucking lied.
Karma heard Amy knocking on the bathroom door, asking if everything was OK and she'd been in there a long time and if she didn't get a move on they'd be wasting their whole day.
"We don't get many of these Karms," Amy said, her voice just loud enough to be heard over the water that, try as she might, Karma couldn't fucking drown in. "We need to make the most of them, right?"
"Right," Karma croaked. She cleared her throat and tried again. "Right." she said. "I'll be there. Just a second and I'll be right there and we'll have... " She twisted the water off with one hand and muffled a sob with the other. "We'll have the best day ever. You and me. I… promise."
Karma heard Amy move back into the room but she just sat there, soaked and shivering in the cold, waiting for her heart to explode. She hoped it would, but she was pretty sure it wouldn't.
It was far too broken for that.