Sorry this took so long. Busy busy busy and the A.R. Project took most of my writing mojo. Hope to be back on track with this though. Let me know what you think!

Lauren dropped her bag on the bench and slid into the booth.

It was her booth, sort of, you know, in the way that the place you sit all the time becomes yours or the cookies that your stepmother always buys but only you eat (and only at night and in your room where no one else can see) are yours or the girl that makes your heart flip and your palms sweat and you actually think of those as good things is yours.

Maybe your name isn't on them, maybe it's not scrawled on the cookie package in permanent marker or carved into the wood of the Chew-N-Brew booth with a pocket knife or signed across the girl's heart, but that doesn't make any of them less yours (hers), possession (or occupation) being nine-tenths of the law and all that.

She's been sitting here, in her booth, at this time for the last three Tuesdays (and two Thursdays) and, save for the dorktastic little freshman last week that she chased off with a glare and a steely 'move', no one else has seemed even interested in her booth. It's in the back, in the corner, nowhere near the counter or the little row of special creamers and sugars and the display cases full of doughnuts and brownies and goodies that put five pounds on you just for looking.

She settled into the booth and did her best to convince herself that no, the seat wasn't really conforming and molding around her butt, it wasn't that familiar with that particular part of her anatomy (unlike Karma's hands) (and even thinking of that, which Lauren did more often than she cared to admit sent a rush of blood tinging her neck and cheeks and she needed to sip her drink.) And that, her drink… well… that wasn't hers. It was an iced venti mocha something or other (number three on the menu) with extra caramel and a second shot of espresso and that was Karma's. Her favorite, her drink of choice and yes, Lauren was ordering her girlfriend's favorite because her girlfriend loved them and yes, she was that girl, fuck you very much.

She was in love and she was being loved back and it had been a month already (thirty days, four hours, five minutes and she had no fucking clue how many seconds) and even if neither of them had actually said the words, they still knew.

Everyone did.

Everyone.

And therein lay the problem that had given Lauren a booth (and a drink she was convinced was going to fatten her up or make her heart explode from the caffeine or both): she and Karma were real. They were public. They weren't a janitor's closet secret anymore, they weren't sneaking around and catching stolen moments whenever and wherever they could.

And fuck all, but people liked them. They were popular and they were known (and there were rumors of prom queendom) and everyone had seemingly forgotten that Karma had faked it and everyone had seemingly forgotten that Lauren dated a cop and people smiled at them when they walked through the halls holding hands and people invited them to parties (they never went cause, as Karma put it, "nothing good ever happens at a Hester party") and the met at their lockers between classes and came and went together every day.

Except Tuesdays.

And Thursdays.

Lauren didn't get it and Karma really didn't get it. She'd been terrified of 'coming out' seeing as how she'd done that before (twice) and she was sure people were going to hate her.

"They're not going to believe me," she'd said the night before their 'debut', snuggled with Lauren on her bed (Molly and Lucas just downstairs, happy but confused) and Lauren had held her tighter and not argued cause, honestly, she thought Karma was probably right. "They're all going to think I'm up to something… again… and it's only going to be worse that it's you."

Lauren didn't need her to explain. It's one thing to come out in public and admit to being in a same sex relationship. It's another thing altogether to do it after you faked it before.

And it's another thing (a third one?) to do it when the same in the same sex was your fake ex's sister.

Really, you just can't make that shit up.

But, to both their great surprises, no one cared. Everyone seemed… accepting. Accepting and then some, in most cases, and Lauren wanted both to stand up on a table at lunch and demand to know what the hell was wrong with all of them that they were so trusting and to not look a gift horse in the mouth.

"I don't get it," she said to Shane cause, well, who else was she going to talk to? Amy was a no go and who did that leave? Booker? "Karma faked it and I've never been anything but straight and I hated her and yet…"

Shane shrugged. "That's probably it," he said, his eyes tracking Amy as she slouched her way across the quad, never once looking up from the ground in front of her. "If Karma was faking it again, she sure as hell wouldn't have chosen you."

He had a point. Hell, if Lauren was being honest, she was still sometimes confused about why Karma had chosen her.

Not that she was complaining.

No, the complaining she left to Farrah.

"You?" her stepmother asked, as she stared at Karma and Lauren - together - on her couch, holding hands and smiling and sitting so… close… acting for all the world like this was even remotely… normal. "You and…" Farrah ran a hand through her hair and started (three times) to say something but all that came out was a sort of… gurgle…

And then Amy had walked into the house, home surprisingly early from the doughnut date Shane had promised to take her on, seen… them… and her mother and turned on her heel and stalked right back out of the house, the door slamming behind her.

"This isn't good, is it?" Farrah asked. "This, you and…"

Gurgle.

Fucking gurgle.

That wasn't helped in the least, not even a teeny-tiny little bit, that it was only two days later when Farrah… well…

"We were fully dressed and in the living room and we were just kissing," Lauren said, trying desperately to talk Karma down off the 'we're fucking doomed' ledge she'd perched herself on since the moment Farrah had come strolling into the living room and seen a bit more than any of them would have liked.

"Fully dressed, yes," Karma said. "With my hand fully under the top of your dress and just kissing? Just?"

Lauren didn't say anything. She'd learned, fairly quickly, that sometimes you just had to ride 'the Karma' out.

"You were just kissing there," Karma whispered (which was silly cause Amy wasn't home and Lauren was pretty sure Farrah had fled the scene of the crime too) as she waved her hand in a circle around the… swell… of the not inconsiderable cleavage she was sporting in that outfit.

(It was one of Lauren's favorites.)

"Farrah already hates me for hurting Amy and now she thinks I'm corrupting you and are you serious right -"

One thing Karma had learned, fairly quickly too, was that when it came to kissing, which was what Lauren started doing right then (on the lips) (not the cleavage) (not yet) Lauren was always serious and she let Lauren push her back on the couch, again, and it wasn't long before Farrah was the last thing on either of their minds.

Amy, on the other hand…

She was on both their minds. All the time. All the time, like every Tuesday and Thursday at three in the Brew-N-Chew, you know, for example.

Lauren had realized early on that everyone knowing about them wasn't the problem. It was what that meant. If everyone knew about them then…

"Everyone knows about Amy," she said to Farrah, over a cup of tea (Lauren suspected there was a little… extra… in Farrah's) as she tried to help her stepmother… understand. "They know about her heartbreak with Karma and her break up with Reagan and when they're not all staring at us, they're staring at her and…"

And Farrah nodded and sipped her tea (and the extra) and offered nothing in the way of help whatsoever.

But at least she didn't gurgle.

It wasn't even that everyone was staring at Amy. It was more that everyone was staring at Amy while she was staring at Karma (and Lauren) (sort of) (by extension, guilt by association kinda thing.) That was happening all the time, every day, every time Amy saw them and they went to the same school and had four of the same classes and walked the same halls.

She saw them a lot. And so she stared. A lot.

Right up until she stopped.

That was a Thursday, the one before the first one Lauren spent in her booth. The day Amy stopped staring was also the first day she joined film club (and yes, Hester actually had a sort of normal and kinda cool and not there just to give the weirdos a home, club) (who knew?), the same film club that met twice a week at the Brew-N-Chew.

Twice a week. Tuesdays and… you know.

That same Thursday, Lauren saw Amy out of the corner of her, a split second before - for the first time in school (well) (in school in public) - she found Karma's lips pressed against her own and it felt like the whole world stopped, like one of those scenes in the movies where everything else slows and goes quiet and there's nothing but the kiss.

Except, for Lauren, there was nothing but the kiss and Amy. Amy taking a deep breath and looking away and then slamming her locker shut and walking off in the other direction, head held high and that was the first time Lauren had seen that in weeks.

And she had no idea why the hell that hurt so much. But she was Lauren so, of course, she was going to find out. So, that same Tuesday, right after school and after a few more kisses and a prolonged goodbye (Karma didn't know how to do any other kind) and a 'yes, I'll be at your house later', Lauren followed Amy out of the building and across the street and down the two blocks to the Brew-N-Chew and watched through the window as Amy did something Lauren wasn't sure she'd ever see her do again.

She smiled.

She smiled a lot, like non fucking stop, like a constant stream of teeth and gums and bright eyes and dimpled cheeks and Lauren should have been relieved, she should have been thrilled, she should have done a fucking dance of joy right there in the street because right there, right through that big glass window was all the evidence she could need that maybe things might actually be OK again.

Yeah… she should have. But she didn't. She didn't do any of that, just like she didn't mean to stay, just like she didn't mean to lean against that window and watch Amy for the next hour, just like she didn't mean to show up the next Tuesday and find that booth in the far back where she could see Amy without much effort but Amy would only spot her if she was actively looking and that didn't seem… likely.

Lauren went, every Tuesday and every Thursday, and watched and saw and basked in the Amy smiles and the Amy cheer and the Amy jokes (she couldn't hear them but she knew they were jokes cause she saw the looks on the other faces and no one made that face unless they'd just suffered through a Raudenfeld one liner) and tried and tried and tried so hard to gather the courage to walk across the Brew-N-Chew (with a doughnut in hand, a peace doughnut or maybe two) just to have the chance to talk to Amy, even if she didn't know what to say.

Which, really, wasn't true. Lauren knew exactly what to say, exactly what it was Amy wanted to hear. But since she wasn't breaking up with Karma or moving back to Dallas or both, Lauren just sat and drank her (Karma's) drink and watched as Amy laughed and smiled and acted for all the world like nothing bad had ever happened to her. Those two hours every Tuesday and Thursday were Amy's happiest hours of the week.

And Lauren's too.

Lauren knew Amy didn't know she was there. She never looked behind her on the four minute walk to the Brew and she was always so engrossed in whatever it was film people talked about that she never once looked, never let her eyes drift around the shop, never even accidentally found that booth in the back. Lauren knew that Amy didn't know, but she let herself think of it as their time anyway, let herself sink into it and revel a little bit, let herself pretend that they were… sisters… again and she never told anyone, not even Karma. It was her little secret.

Lauren should have known, she should have remembered.

Nothing stayed secret for long.

Shane slipped into the other side of the booth, sliding a tall plastic cup of something across the table, something that looked a lot like the drink Lauren had just finished.

"Your usual," he said and it was, right down to the low fat whipped cream and the extra swirl of caramel lining the lower half of the cup. "Which is also Karma's usual, right?" He waggled an eyebrow at her and leaned back in the booth. "Make you a deal. You don't ask how I know Karma's drink order and we can both pretend you're not drinking her favorite so it's like she's here even when she's not, K?"

Lauren glared at him but nodded. She knew a good deal when she heard it. "Why are you here?"

Shane swirled his straw around in his own drink. It was darker and more chocolate than Lauren's (Karma's.) "Isn't it obvious?" he asked. "Same reason you are."

Lauren nodded again. "So you're here to get your math homework done so later on when you're supposed to be studying quadrilaterals you can instead be studying all the different ways you can use your fingers to make Karma moan?"

Shane gagged halfway through a sip of his drink, caffeinated chocolate burning up through his nose. "That was just mean," he said, coughing into a napkin.

It was and Lauren knew it, but it was also true. She could never get any homework done at Karma's and she was pretty sure her GPA had dropped like half a point in the last month, not that she cared.

(She cared.) (But Karma.) (And moans.)

Shane wiped his lip and dropped the crumpled napkin onto the table. "You know, as much fun as I'm sure playing stalker stepsister is," he said, "you could try talking to her." He nodded back in Amy's general direction. "Or, you know, keep going with the whole longing stares across the Brew-N-Chew thing. It works for you. Really."

Lauren took a long sip of her drink and glared at him over the straw. "You think I haven't?" she asked. "Every day, Shane, every fucking day for a month I've tried." If, by trying, you mean sometimes saying something (good morning was a popular choice) or sometimes trying to say something (fucking gurgle) or, more often than not, thinking about saying something.

Something like 'I'm sorry' but without the 'I'll do anything to make it up to you' cause Lauren knew it was really almost anything and the 'almost' was what Amy wanted.

"I've tried," she said. "And Karma's tried. Fuck… Farrah's tried. And you know what we've gotten?"

"Not enough sleep?" Shane smiled but it was weak and pitying and Lauren hated it. "I mean, seriously, those bags under your eyes could carry groceries."

Lauren put her head in her hands and sighed. He wasn't wrong. Between the nights she slept alone and the guilt kept her tossing and turning and the nights she crashed at Karma's and she kept her tossing and turning (and a few other -ing's) she couldn't remember the last time she'd gotten a solid eight hours or even six.

"How is she?" Lauren asked. She watched across the table as Shane suddenly found his drink to be the most interesting thing ever, twirling the straw round and round and round. "Don't play dumb, Harvey," she said. "I know she's not home half the time and I know she's crashing with you. Farrah told me that much."

Shane pushed the straw away with his finger and frowned. "How do you think she is?" he asked, though with considerably less bitterness or bite than Lauren expected. "She's a wreck half the time," he said. "And she doesn't know which end is up. She doesn't want to go home in case you've got Karma over and she wants to go home in case you've got Karma over."

Well that made all the Amy-fied sense in the world.

"It's the whole only way out is through bullshit," Shane said. "She thinks she won't get over it until she gets used to it and maybe she's got a point…"

"I sense a but," Lauren said though she thought that might be wishful thinking.

Shane glanced over his shoulder at Amy, still sitting at her table, her laptop and a doughnut and some pink-peach-purple looking thing in a cup in front of her.

"Truth?"

Lauren nodded. "Truth."

"I don't think she's as torn up as she thinks she is or as she wants to be," Shane sighed. "Like, I don't think she's as wrecked that you and Karma are together as she is that you all lied to her for so long." He tapped his finger against his cup, weighing how far this truth should go.

"Spill," Lauren said, reading the signs.

"She knew," Shane said. "She knew about you two. She knew right from the beginning, she saw you at the party, in the bedroom upstairs."

Lauren clutched her cup and felt the world drop out from under her. She'd known. Amy had known and Amy had known the whole fucking time and she'd… she'd…

"She let us…" Lauren let her head drop, resting it against the cool faux wood of the table. "She waited. She waited for us to tell her and we never did and oh… fuck... "

"Yeah," Shane said. "That was why she and Reagan broke up. Amy slipped up and said something and when Reagan realized why she'd been so off lately…"

She already knows.

Reagan had been right. She'd told them, told them both and Lauren and Karma hadn't listened and they'd gone right on making it worse. Sure, it hadn't been for long but…

"We should have told her," Lauren said and Shane cocked his head, startled to hear that much… was that regret?... in her voice. The Lauren Cooper he knew didn't do regret.

Then again, the Lauren Cooper he knew didn't do Karma either so it looked like all bets really were off.

"I need to talk to Karma," Lauren said, grabbing up her books and her bag and fumbling for her keys. "We need to… I don't know… we need to do… something." She shoved her notebook into her bag and tapped her passcode into her phone, intent on dialing Karma right then and there. "She's a planner, she can… plan."

Lauren froze as Shane's hand covered hers, slowly slipping the phone from between her fingers and setting it on the table. She looked up at him and yeah, that was regret, right alongside a heaping helping of freak out and a dash of 'fuck fuck fuckity fuck' and a whole mess of broken.

"I think the last thing any of us need right now is a Karma plan," Shane said. "Right now or, you know, ever." He smiled, trying to soothe Lauren's rattled nerves but that only seemed to make it worse. "Lauren," he said, as calmly as he could. "Look at her," he said. "Look at Amy."

Lauren did, she looked. She looked and she saw. She saw the way Amy smiled and the way she pointed at her laptop screen and the way she laughed at something the girl next to her, the one with the funky hair and the two rings in her nose, said. Lauren saw the way Amy talked, the way she talked to other people, people who weren't her or Karma or Shane.

She saw. She saw Amy and not the Amy she'd met or the Amy she'd learned to like or even the Amy she'd come to love. This was a different Amy and Lauren didn't know if that was good different or bad different but she knew she owed it to Amy to let her figure that out.

"She's… growing up," Lauren whispered. "God, that sounds so stupid. Like I'm so much more mature."

Shane laughed. "I know what you mean," he said and he really did but that wasn't what he wanted Lauren to see. "But look again," he said. "Notice anything?"

Lauren looked again, watching Amy carefully. She laughed and she plunked away on the laptop and she grinned down at a text on her phone and she nodded when someone asked her something and she took a sip of her drink and typed out a text and ate a bit of doughnut and checked her phone and closed up her laptop and tapped out another text and then she stood and….

"Who?" Lauren asked, asked herself mostly. "Who is she texting? Amy doesn't… I mean she knows people but… she only has like three numbers in her phone." She looked across the table at Shane, grinning like a fool. "Truth," she said. "Truth right now, motherfuc -"

"Amy's seeing someone," Shane said. "And she won't tell me who and she won't tell me anything, but I know the signs."

Lauren glanced back at Amy, smiling down at her phone and fuck all those were… those were total heart eyes.

"Amy's got herself a secret girlfriend," Shane said. "Any idea who?"