I tried to make it a little more developed this time. Hope you like it! Thanks for all the likes!
Lauren was late and Karma was freaking. She'd been expecting this ever since the two of them had started this… this… whatever the hell this was. Sooner or later, Lauren would get sick of her. Or it was all some sick joke, Lauren's twisted way of paying Karma back for her role in the croquembouche incident or for hurting Amy.
I knew it, she thought to herself as she paced back and forth in the tiny janitor's closet. I knew she'd leave me hanging. I knew she'd get bored. I knew this would never last.
Karma stopped pacing to wonder, just for a second, about that. Did she want it to last? Did Lauren? Did either of them even know what they were doing?
She'd never really stopped to think about it before, mostly because every time they were together all she was thinking about was kissing and touching Lauren (and there had been a steadily increasing amount of the touching, even if it hadn't gone under clothes or any really… important… spots yet) and when they weren't together she was too busy figuring out when they could be together again or responding to one of the surprisingly dirty texts Lauren sent her.
Maybe the amount of time Karma was spending with Lauren, thinking about Lauren, and planning how to be with Lauren should have clued her in. This had been all about fun and kissing and super sexy dirty secrets in the closet.
But if the way she was frantically worrying about why Lauren was five (now six) minutes late was any indication, things were starting to change.
And Karma had no idea what the hell to do about that.
Lauren was five minutes late and it was all that fucker Harvey's fault.
He'd just had to to talk to her. He'd just had to bring up Amy, like Lauren wasn't thinking about Amy and how she'd react to what Lauren and Karma were doing enough as it was. And he'd had to go and get all suspicious when she freaked out about Amy and Reagan maybe breaking up.
Lauren stopped dead in the hallway, just around the corner from the janitor's closet door. Why had she freaked out about Amy and Reagan? So what if they broke up. Couples break up all the time. Lauren didn't believe in all that one true love, OTP crap. And even if Amy and Reagan did break up, it wasn't like Amy was going to head straight for Karma, pledge her undying love, and sweep the redhead off her feet.
And what did it matter if she did? Karma was single. Amy, if she broke up with Reagan, would be single. Two single girls could be together all they wanted.
Any two single girls.
Lauren took a small step toward the closet and froze again. She couldn't get her mind off the idea of Amy and Reagan breaking up and it had her all nervous and jittery. It's just because I want Amy to be happy, she told herself. Yes, that was it. She wanted Amy to be happy and Reagan made her happy and it was totally about that and not about the possibility of Amy stealing Karma away.
Wait.
Stealing Karma?
Lauren stutter-stepped backward and leaned against the wall.
Amy couldn't steal Karma. That would mean that Karma was Lauren's and that was just ridiculous. First of all, Lauren couldn't stand Karma. Second of all, even if she could stand Karma, it was only in small doses. And by small doses, Lauren was thinking in the closet, with her eyes closed (even if she'd been opening them a bit more lately because, well, Karma had been looking extra hot), and with their lips together. Or on each other's necks. Or behind the ears. Or running along their jaws in that soft, delicate, barely there way Lauren liked so much more when Karma did it than when Theo…
Oh. Fuck.
Lauren stared at the closet door. She wanted to go in. She really wanted to go in. Which is probably why she stayed rooted to that spot.
Lauren Cooper was crushing hard on Karma Ashcroft.
And Lauren had no idea what the hell to do about that.
Karma had known right from the start that this would end badly.
The very first time it was Lauren who kissed her. Well, technically, the first two times (if you counted all the kisses the night of the party as one). At the party and then that Monday in the janitor's closet. It wasn't a problem that Lauren had been the one to kiss first. Karma actually kind of liked that. She'd always had to initiate kisses with Amy and Liam barely kissed. He was much more into hands and touching and kissing was only good as a brief (very brief) lead up to the other stuff.
Lauren, Karma had discovered, was all about the kissing. Which was good, because Lauren was very, very good at the kissing!
But even though Lauren had kissed first, she'd also run first. Like the night of the party, when people had started clearing out. Karma could remember now. She remembered the way Lauren jumped up from the bed and took off out the door. And their first time in the closet, Lauren ran again. She'd used Karma's ringing cell phone as an excuse and got out of there as quick as she could.
Karma didn't know what had been going through Lauren's mind that Monday when she pulled her into the closet or when she ran off. All Karma knew was that she couldn't stop thinking about it. She tried, she really did. She tried talking to Amy, but that was a no go. She tried thinking about finding Liam and dragging him off to the art room, but that just made her feel icky.
And when she'd gone to the bathroom during Study Hall and seen Tommy and Brandi making out in a dark corner by the cafeteria, Karma had given in and texted Lauren.
Karma: Janitor's closet. Empty wing. Twenty minutes.
The next twenty minutes had been the longest of Karma's life. Right up until the six, now eight minutes she had spent waiting for Lauren in the closet. Karma was convinced it, whatever it was, was over already. Lauren had kissed her first but then she'd run.
And now Karma was scared Lauren was running again.
Lauren really wanted to see Karma. She really wanted to kiss Karma. She really wanted to open the closet door, step inside, and forget that she was thinking.
This was supposed to be a no-thinking-thing! When did this start? When, Lauren wondered, had she stopped just kissing and feeling and started thinking?
Honestly, Lauren knew she'd been thinking right from the start. Or, at least from Monday (she'd been just tipsy enough to not think at the party). She'd been thinking when she ran from the closet after Karma's phone rang (Lauren was sure it was Amy) and she'd spent the next two periods torn between freaking out that she had kissed Karma at a time when Karma was sober and an insane, and growing, desire to do it again.
All that thinking had almost kept it from ever happening again. When Karma texted her during Study Hall and asked her to meet at the Janitor's closet in the empty wing of the school, Lauren had to think about it. And her brain came up with all sorts of reasons not to go.
The worst of it was the idea that Karma was just out to get her. Lauren knew Amy's best friend had never liked her, not from the moment she'd moved to Austin. She'd always assumed it was because Karma was afraid Lauren would try and steal Amy away. But what if now, Karma finally had an opportunity to pay Lauren back and maybe even get her out of Amy's life?
Lauren could just imagine it. Karma would be waiting by the janitor's closet with Vashti and a photographer for the school's tumblr. It would all be just one giant plan to humiliate her. Karma is a planner, after all.
Lauren kept thinking about it and thinking about it and thinking about it. Then there was the other part, the part of her that hadn't been thinking, which was the part that had really, really, really liked kissing Karma kept screaming at her to go. But when she left class to go to the bathroom to think and saw Tommy and Brandi (the same Brandi who had tried so hard to steal her last man) kissing in the hall, Lauren's decision was made.
Ten minutes later, she'd click-clacked her way right down the hall in her heels, so angry and worked up that she almost hoped Karma was setting her up. But Karma wasn't. And Lauren figured that out immediately after stepping through the closet door when Karma pushed her back against it and launched a full scale attack on her mouth. The redheaded girl had been a little overanxious and knocked Lauren's head against the door pretty hard, but the feeling of Karma's tongue sliding against her own helped Lauren quickly forget the pain.
Kissing Karma, Lauren had discovered, helped her forget a lot of things.
Which is why, thinking or no thinking, worries or no worries, fear or no fear, Lauren stood up straight, nodded once, and opened the closet door.
The "Oh thank, God" and subsequent kisses (very good kisses, so very good) told Lauren she'd made the right choice. And pretty soon, she forgot why she'd been thinking at all.