Remember what Amy did after she came out to Karma on the show? Yeah, she doesn't do that, but she does have an unexpected encounter…
So this, Amy thinks, is how her world ends. Not with a bang or a whimper or a ridiculously loud fight in the Hester cafeteria where she accidentally outs her and Karma both, but with a softly shutting bedroom door and a slow walk down the stairs and out the Ashcroft's front door.
And make no mistake, it is a walk - slow and deliberate, eyes watching one foot in front of the other and then repeat - and Amy's proud of that. She doesn't know for sure why she's walking and not running. Maybe, she thinks, it's because - in so many ways - that's what she's been doing for weeks, running. Running from Karma and running from herself and running from the moment she didn't even know would happen, the moment when some child she's never met broke her walls and sent everything she thought she knew crashing down around her.
Or, maybe, probably, unfortunately, it's because she thinks that the slower she goes, the longer it takes, the better the chance that Karma will come barreling out of her room and charging down the stairs and catch her just as she's about to walk out the door, spinning her around and kissing her - hard and long and real - before confessing that she wasn't faking it either.
That's the dream, right?
Amy nods, totally to herself, cause yeah, It was the dream, it's been the dream, for as long as Amy's been thinking about being gay she's been thinking about Karma being gay too and how perfect and romantic and fairytale it would be and yeah, that's usually Karma's thing, but a girl - even a sarcastic, cynical, glass is half-empty and will never be filled again girl - can still dream.
And that was definitely the dream.
But as Amy steps out of the Ashcroft's door and onto the driveway and the cool night air and the hundreds of stars and the absolutely no one else around reminds her that it's the middle of the fucking night and she walked here?
She knows the truth.
It was the dream. But she's wide awake now.
So, yeah, maybe she didn't plan this as well as she should have.
Like, you know, at all.
There ought to be a handbook, Amy thinks. A step-by-step guide to what one should do when one outs oneself to one's best friend / fake girlfriend / unrequited love and then has to flee - via a very evenly paced and not rushing at all walk - at… at… at…
(she tugs her phone from her pocket, exceptionally glad for it's freakishly good battery life as the light from the screen breaks up the dark all around her)
Two-forty-five. AM.
Yeah. A guide. Definitely a guide.
Amy slips her phone - without one missed call or a single text or tweet or Facebook or snap or even a fucking email - back into her pocket and she manages to leave it there for almost five minutes (this time) before pulling it back out and flicking her thumb across the screen - and still nothing - and she swears (this time) she's not looking again.
Until she does.
She's been walking for a good fifteen or twenty minutes, in the general direction of her house but on the side streets and the back streets and all the streets someone (Karma) would never think to go down, where she'd actually have to look, and if her walk out of the Ashcroft's was slow and deliberate, this is more like slow and…
Well…
Slow.
And not all that deliberate - like at all - and certainly not all that enthused and definitely not in any rush and that probably explains why she hasn't called Lauren or Shane for a ride even though Amy knows either or both of them would be there in a heartbeat. But they'd come with questions and Amy knows they would both try - Lauren probably harder than Shane - to just be patient with her and let her tell them in her own time.
As long as that time was by the time they got her home. Lauren would probably at least let her get in the house but Amy's pretty sure Shane wouldn't even let her out of the car until she spilled. And, frankly? Amy thinks she's had just about enough spilling for one night.
No, Karma. You were.
Yeah, maybe enough spilling for a lifetime or two or maybe three if, you know, Molly's right and everyone does come back after they die and Amy has to admit, much to her surprise, that she didn't get to find out about that - death - tonight, though she'd been so sure that the moment she finally told Karma she was going to up and kick right fucking there.
She's kinda glad she didn't though - die, she means - even if she thought she would. But she didn't and she's surprisingly (at least to her) OK with that though she could do with a little less of the pain (and fear) (and nausea) (and fear) (and confusion) (and did she mention fear?) rolling through her right now.
She'd thought telling Karma the truth would put an end to all that, but it seems to have only made it worse. And Amy doesn't get that, like at all. She had been so sure it was the secret - the having it and the keeping it and the keeping it from Karma - that had been eating away at her and slowly driving her mad. But now it's not a secret anymore even if not everyone knows yet, except - when she really thinks about it - they all do, cause school and Farrah and Bruce and anyone who saw her mother's report from fucking Homecoming and yeah, maybe they don't know all the truth but they know the important part and now?
So does Karma.
Amy stops dead in the street as that thought washes over her and she lets it, she lets the waves of it crash all around her, soaking her in the tide and, with every passing second, it's like she's experiencing it all over again. That feeling of relief and release as she finally let it all out and that right after feeling, the one that sunk its hooks into her as she shut that door and she tried so hard to push it away, tried so hard to not think that.
That it might be the last time. The last time she was in that room and shut that door and walked out of that house. It might be the last time. Their last time. Because Karma knows. Karma knows. Karma knows.
Fuck.
Karma knows.
Amy sits down - she has to - on the curb, and it's less of a sit and more of a fall, but not quite a collapse and that's something, though if she's being honest? She's getting fucking sick of 'somethings', of seeking and searching and desperately trying to find the thing to hang onto, to cling to, the thing that doesn't make it better, but makes it suck less.
Less isn't what she wants but it's all she's got and as she rests her head between her knees and focuses, as best she can, on breathing, Amy wonders if she'll ever 'got' any more than that, if it, as they all say, really does get better.
It has to, right? It has to.
It has to.
Amy clutches her head in her hands and concentrates on her breaths. On taking one in and pushing one out and counting them off in her head. One. Two. Three. And every time, for five solid minutes, she loses track and breath and her fucking mind at three. Every single time.
At one, she sees Karma and that look, that 'I get it but I don't know if I want it' look as she figured it out. Amy's glad she wasn't looking at Karma when she said… it… because she's not sure if she could have taken that. She's not sure if she could have handled watching their friendship - at least the way it's always been - die right in front of her.
Dying at her hand.
At one and a half (and yes, she's counting halves cause… she is) she sees her phone and its blank screen and she sees the empty street, without a car or a… truck… driving along slowly, without anyone peering out from behind a wheel or a passenger side window, without anyone making slow, wide turns, headlights sweeping across the streets and the sidewalks and the yards as they hunt and they search and they call out her name, desperate to find her in the dark.
But the streets are empty and the night is silent and she's alone and every time that hits - at one and three-quarters - Amy has to fight and she has to punch and push and force herself to keep going, to make it to two.
And then, every time she does? She wishes she hadn't. Cause two… two is worse. Two is hell. Two is Karma but it's not just Karma. It's Karma after. It's Karma when it's sunk in and she knows exactly what Amy said (and even what she so carefully didn't) and it's not just Karma but it's Karma and Liam.
At two, Amy sees them together, in the hall and then in the quad and then in the backseat of Liam's car and then, finally, as she exhales a shuddering 'two' into the dark, she sees them in a room that she assumes is his, but she doesn't know (yes, she does) cause she's never seen his room and she never plans to. But Amy pays the room no mind and she pays him no mind cause all she can really see is Karma in tears and Karma in pain and she knows - Amy knows - that it's all because of her.
And at two and a quarter, Amy knows. She knows why Karma's not out here, why she's not on the street or on her phone or on her social media stalking her across the Internet. She's gone to him. Karma's gone to him and not to her, she's run to him instead of after her and she's letting him hold her instead of prowling the streets and she's letting him comfort her instead of blowing up Amy's phone and she's… she's...
She's lost.
Karma is lost to her and when Amy realizes that, when she feels it in every single fucking 'three' she manages to somehow push out, that's when she cracks. The tears come and her heart wobbles wildly in her chest and she clutches at the curb and she wonders if she only survived Karma's room, if she only made it through telling her just so she could die out here, where at least she could do it alone.
Which is, of course, why after the last 'three', he pulls up. A knight in shining fuckboy armor atop his 'I've got money and you don't and let me show it off and remind you' silvery steed and he's hopping out from behind the wheel and just looking at her, not saying a fucking word but she knows he knows and yeah, she's not dead.
But this is definitely hell.
Amy's got no idea why she gets in the car. Maybe it's cause it's cold outside or cause it's damn near three in the morning and dark and she's alone or maybe it's cause she's already made a mess of Biblical proportions out of the night and she may as well finish it off.
Or maybe it's just because he's there and Karma's not and at least this way she'll know that they're not together.
Small victories and all.
She doesn't know, for sure, why she gets in and she really doesn't know why she just shrugs and stares out the window when Liam asks where he can take her. She could have (should have) said home or Shane's or a bar or maybe the airport so she could hop a flight to somewhere, anywhere (she hears Brazil is lovely this time of year) or even back to Karma's.
OK, maybe not there. And probably not back to his place or a hotel or the art room or wherever it is he takes all the other girls he picks up on the side of the road (cause you know he does) or at the bar or at the parties or any of the other long list of places she just knows he frequents in his never ending hunt for more conquests.
Like, you know, again, Karma's house.
And that thought makes her want to punch him, to bust her knuckles bloody right across his face but he's, you know, driving, and that would probably be a bad idea and it isn't like Karma's just some girl that he duped and charmed and lied to just to have his way with her.
It's kinda the other way around, it's kinda Karma (with her help) making him believe that she's something she's not, it's kinda Karma (and her) playing right into his apparent girls who like girls fetish and Amy wonders, for just a moment, if that's why he picked her up, if that's why he's playing the hero.
Any lesbian in a storm, right?
And that would make this night complete though, wouldn't it? Her and Liam Booker crashing at his place and he could ply her with drinks and charm (which Karma swears he has, if 'you'd just give him a chance') and then he'd give her those eyes - she knows the ones, she's gay and has good taste but she's not blind - and she'd tell him the truth.
"Karma's been faking it all along," she could say. "She's just been saying she's a lesbian to make you want her, but I'm the real gay deal and that's your thing, right?"
And he'd get hot and bothered and angry and drunk and she'd get… drunk… and then they could…
No.
Just... no.
Amy could be as straight as a fucking arrow and as heartbroken and devastated as… well… as her… and as drunk as drunk could be and still…
No.
Sleeping with Liam would be the dumbest thing ever, like OMG PLOT TWIST (that makes no sense) and it would, basically, make everything she's gone through the last few weeks utterly pointless. None of this has been about liking boys, that hasn't been the point at all and maybe she doesn't know if she likes boys or even what that would make her if she does but Amy knows that even if she does like them, she doesn't like him and yeah, he's objectively good looking and all, but she's not some sort of… sexual Hulk that just loses control around the hotness and can't control herself.
Plus - and far more importantly - it would kill Karma and though Amy's mighty hurt and definitely confused and totally crushed that Karma hasn't come looking for her?
She'd never do that. Not to Karma.
And not to herself.
"You hungry?"
Her eyes flick from the window over to Liam, expecting him to be staring at her like… like… well… like she imagines boys like him (or any boy, really) stare at girls. With those eyes and that smirk and that supposedly smoldering and soulful look that says 'yeah', and he just expects that to work (cause it usually does) and she'll be like all the rest, all the other girls he's dazzled with a street corner rescue and his fancy car and his gentlemanly ways and the promise of food.
(Not that she isn't hungry.) (She's outed herself and she's cried and she's accepted a ride from him, but she's still Amy.)
But he isn't looking at her like that. In fact, he isn't looking at her at all. He's staring out the window, his hands at ten and two on the wheel and he's yawning a fucker of a yawn - like the giant gaping tentacled pit from Star Wars opening to swallow them all whole kinda thing - and she's pretty sure his stomach just made the least sexy sound she's ever heard and, for just a second, Amy actually considers that he might be… you know… human.
Nah.
"I could eat," she says, with a noncommittal shrug (and why does she keep doing that?) and Liam nods and mumbles something that sounds like 'cool' through the end of the yawn.
"I know a place," he says cause of course he does and Amy's sure - fucking positive - that place is going to be his house, followed by his room and then his bed and she spends the next ten minutes trying to decide whether she'll kick him in the balls or punch him in the face (she settles on both but she's not sure what order and decides to make that call in the moment.)
So she's a bit surprised - more than a bit, really - when he pulls the car into the lot of an all night diner just the other side of Hester. It's tiny and it's a bit run down and "It doesn't look like much, I know," he says. "But the pancakes… oh my God." He glances over at her, a sudden look of concern on his face. "You like pancakes, right? I mean, everyone likes pancakes but… you do like pancakes? I mean, they've got other stuff and I'm pretty sure most of it is, you know, nut free and all but if you wanted to go somewhere -"
He's being nice. And thoughtful. And almost… fuck… sweet. And that is just a little bit - or a lot bit, really - more than Amy can handle just this minute so she mutters at him that pancakes are fine (cause pancakes) and she gets out (jumps) from the car and starts walking in without him, hoping he didn't see the tears and how fucking wrong is that, that she's even remotely worried about what Liam fucking Booker saw?
But at least if this is how her world ends? It'll do it with pancakes.
