A/N: Sorry this took so long, holiday and all. This one’s long (I didn’t plan it that way), very Lauren-centric (cause let’s face it, she’s awesome), and does another flashback. And for those who have been asking in PM’s - this is a Reamy fic. I know everybody’s diving back onto the Karmy ship after the finale, but I’m sticking with Reagan in this. I just can’t do the ‘Karma realizes her feelings and Amy immediately dumps Reagan’ thing. Hope y’all like it…
Previous Chapters
Lauren was eleven years old when she heard her mother’s voice forthe last time.
She was in a Dallas area hospital standing at her mother’s bedside. Three days later, a week shy of Lauren’s twelfth birthday, her mother Rebecca died.
Rebecca had been sick for some time, longer than Lauren’s eleven year old mind could really process. For three - or was it four? - years, Lauren had seen the inside of every hospital from Dallas to Houston to Fort Worth. Her mother had called it the Great Cancer Tour. Told every new doctor, every new specialist, every new team of nurses that she’d always wanted to tour the state.
Inoperable brain tumors seemed a long way to go for some sightseeing.
The tumors eventually became not only inoperable, but unresponsive. They laughed at chemotherapy. They mocked radiation. They taunted the doctors and specialists and nurses by spreading, moving from brain to liver to lymph nodes to heart.
For three - or was it four - years, the cancer refused to cooperate. And, in some sick final joke, it refused to just finish the fucking job. It made Rebecca weak, frail, slowly withering like a once proud rose bush after the first frost.
But it wouldn’t kill her.
Lauren wanted her mother to live, wanted it more desperately than anything else she’d ever wanted in her young life. And every day that Rebecca held on, Lauren knew was another day she was supposed to be grateful for.
But even at eleven, she was smart enough to know that sometimes even the things we think we want can hurt like a bitch.
The last six months, the last six months of Lauren’s eleventh year of life, had been a seemingly never ending cycle of admissions and discharges, of late night ER visits, of supposed -to-be-comforting smiles and reassuring hugs.
A never ending cycle of ‘is this it?’
But it never was.
Lauren spent so much time at the hospital that Rebecca and Bruce eventually had no choice but to pull her from school. Not that Lauren noticed or cared. When she had been in class, her body had been there, sure, but her mind?
Fuck. Even Lauren wasn’t entirely sure where her mind was.
Eventually, Rebecca was admitted full-time. No more discharges.
Well, Lauren thought, that’s not entirely true. There would be one more discharge.
She got to the point where she knew all the nurses on her mother’s floor. She knew which ones always had candy (Delia), which ones would take her for walks while Bruce and Rebecca met with the doctors (Sandy and Laine), and which ones would hold her hand while she cried (Rosie).
She also knew which ones would sugar coat it and which would rip the fucking band-aid off and tell her the whole ugly truth.
Lauren liked those nurses better. They reminded her of her mother.
Rebecca wasn’t one for glossing over anything. Not even for an eleven year old girl who already had more on her plate than most adults.
"I don’t know what your daddy’s told you," Rebecca said to Lauren one morning, as her daughter sat on the edge of the hospital bed. "But I imagine it’s some bullshit about me being home soon and everything being just fine?"
Lauren nodded. Those were, in fact, the exact words Bruce had said to her the night before, as she was headed to bed.
Mommy will be home soon. Everything’s going to be just fine. Night, night, baby girl.
Even at eleven, Lauren knew when someone was blowing sunshine up her ass.
But she also knew when someone needed to do it. Not for her. But for themselves.
"Laur, honey," Rebecca said. "I’m not coming home." She stared at her daughter with eyes that had once danced but now were tired and fading. "But you knew that already, didn’t you?"
Lauren nodded again. She hadn’t known, not until right that moment, but she’d had an idea. An idea she’d been content to let Bruce’s sunshine cover up.
"Your daddy’s a good man, Laur." Rebecca coughed and the force of it shook the bed under Lauren. "But sometimes, he’s a fucking idiot."
Lauren smiled in spite of herself. She knew her mother didn’t mean anything by it, and she knew just as well that Bruce himself would probably be the first to agree with his wife’s assessment.
Not that he ever disagreed with Rebecca on much of anything.
Lauren often wondered how exactly her parents had ever found each other, much less actually gotten married and had a kid. Bruce was a down-home, redneck, right-wing Texas charmer who hated confrontation. Whenever he and Rebecca did fight, which wasn’t often, he insisted they go down to the basement so the neighbors wouldn’t hear.
Rebecca? She was as blunt as a hammer, took no shit from anyone, and loved being a part of the world, not just in it.
They shouldn’t have worked. Fuck working, they shouldn’t have made it past their first date - a rodeo, Bruce’s idea, of course - and they shouldn’t have fallen in love.
But, somewhere between the first bucking bronco and the post-rodeo mint chocolate chip on a sugar cone, Bruce had fallen so hard, so fast, that he told his brother later that night that he’d met the woman he was going to marry.
Which was fine with Rebecca. After all, she’d told Bruce the same thing right before she kissed him so long and so hard - with a tongue Bruce thought should have been registered as a weapon - that he dropped his ice cream cone on the sidewalk.
Even at eleven, Lauren knew she would never be satisfied in life if she had anything less than what her parents had.
"He doesn’t think you should be here, you know," Rebecca said to he daughter once the coughs passed. "He thinks it’s too hard on you. He doesn’t think anyone your age should have to go through this."
That didn’t surprise Lauren much. Bruce had always wanted to shield her. The longest, and nastiest, fight he and Rebecca ever had been about that very subject. Rebecca wanted to tell Lauren she was Intersex.
"She’s five," Bruce had argued. "She’s too young."
"She needs to know," Rebecca had replied. "She needs to know who she is. She needs to know that’s the only thing that matters. Who she is. Not what.”
Eventually, Bruce had let Rebecca have her way. He almost always did.
Rebecca reached out and took Lauren’s hand in hers. Her skin was cold and Lauren could feel every bone beneath it, but she didn’t flinch at the touch.
"Your father would do anything to protect you," Rebecca said. "He wants to keep you safe and never let anything or anyone hurt you." Her voice cracked with every word. "And sometimes," she said, "I think he really believes that’s possible."
Lauren stared down at her mother’s hand in hers. And she knew her father couldn’t have been more wrong.
"You know we don’t care about you being Intersex, Laur." Lauren’s head snapped up. She didn’t hear the word often, not even from her mother. "It’s never mattered to us, not even a little. But you father… he thinks it will matter, to everyone else And he’s probably right, it probably will matter. But it shouldn’t.”
Lauren had learned a while ago that shouldn’t and didn’t were often very different things.
Rebecca squeezed her daughter’s hand as tightly as she could. “I need you to remember this, Lauren. What you are means nothing. Who you are is everything.”
She leaned forward as best she could, bringing her other hand up to cup her daughter’s cheek. And Lauren wondered, not for the first time, if this would be the last time her mother ever touched her.
"You don’t ever hide, Laur, you understand me?" Lauren could hear her mother - her heatlhy, vibrant, fuck ‘em all mother - coming through. "You never hide. You never take shit from anyone. And you find those people who know that different doesn’t mean less. The ones that know that you’re more. Not because you’re different, but because you’re you.”
Lauren nodded. She brought her hand to Rebecca’s, cradling them both against her cheek.
"You find those people and you hold onto them. You love them and they will love you."
Rebecca smiled at her daughter one more time. One last time.
"And you never, ever hide.”
His name was Billy. He was Filipino - not that it mattered, but he was the first ‘different’ from her person Lauren had ever known - and his family moved to Dallas in time for Billy to start fifth grade.
Lauren met him on the second day of school. And though they were never friends, never even anything close to it, she knew who he was. She saw him in the cafeteria or study hall or playing baseball during PE.
She knew him to say hi. To smile at him in the hall between classes. To let him help her when she dropped her books and he bent down to scoop up her math notebook.
She knew him when she returned to school after Rebecca’s death.
While she’d been gone, her district had gone through some reorganization, restructuring, re-some-fucking-thing-or-other, and Lauren now found herself in a brand new school. Only six of her classmates - Billy included - had been shifted to the new school with her.
It was a fresh start, Bruce said. “Think of it as a chance,” he said. “A chance for you to be whoever you want to be.”
He said who. Lauren heard what.
Be whatever you want to be.
As if being an Intersex pre-teen about to hit puberty without a mother and having to start over at a brand new fucking school wasn’t just the ideal fucking thing to fucking be.
Lauren had clearly inherited her mother’s flair for profanity.
She had also, apparently, inherited her mother’s ability to realize things quickly. Because it took Lauren less that a day to learn the first, and most important lesson of her new school.
She could be whoever she wanted to be. But, really, want had very little to do with it. It was all about need.
By the end of second period, Lauren had stopped thinking of it as ‘school’ and more like the Hunger Games without the bloodshed. At least so far.
But, she figured, the day was still young.
Her old school, the one where she’d met Billy, hadn’t been some liberal oasis of blue in a sea of red, but compared to this place, it might as well have been. In her old school, being different had been… well… it had been different.
Sure, even there, if your version of different meant smoking like half a pound of weed a week, or getting hammered and falling off of your roof while your friends videotaped you, or getting caught up in some hippie commune leftist cult, well then you were fair game.
It was still Texas, after all.
But different hadn’t automatically equaled bad. It hadn’t immediately translated into being ostracized or shunned.
But here? Lauren learned quickly that here, if you stood out?
You went down. Hard.
By the end of third period, she felt like she’d been sucked up into a low-budget remake of Mean Girls, except every girl - and quite a few of the guys - was Regina George, or trying to be, if only to survive. Because one slip meant that speeding bus was going to run you down in the street.
Lauren saw a pretty little blonde girl with flowers and turtles on her dress reduced to tears over a bad haircut. (Though, in fairness, the buzzed sides wouldn’t be in fashion for another few years.)
Another girl, a petite brunette who Lauren was pretty sure could’ve slid under a classroom door with room to spare, ran from her fourth period math class when another girl said she was ‘too fat to live.’
And then came the assembly. Then came Billy.
The entire student body filed into the gym for a special assembly. There were to be awards given out to some of the new students who hadn’t , in the shuffle of changing schools, received their due recognition at the end of the last school year.
Billy was the fourth student to be called up. He won a special honorable mention certificate for his science project on the life cycle of spiders. As he’d made his way to the front of the gym, he’d spotted Lauren, someone he knew. He smiled.
Lauren looked at the floor.
She saw Billy again a few hours later, right after art class. He was walking across the quad area, with a teacher on one side and a woman - Lauren assumed she was his mother - on the other.
His eye was black, his lip was cut, his pants were torn.
That night, as Lauren sat on the end of her bed staring at the bottle of her pills on top of the dresser, she thought of Billy.
They’d beaten him up. Over a certificate for a science project.
She stared at her pills. She was Intersex. To people around here?
She was a science project.
Lauren saw it very clearly then. She had only two choices. She could blend in, disappear, do just enough to get by.
That way, she knew, led to fear. To spending every day living in terror that someone, anyone, would spot her, that she’d suddenly show up on their radar. And once that happened, how long would it really take before someone found out what she was?
As she sat there on the bed, Lauren heard her mother’s voice.
What you are means nothing. Who you are is everything.
Easy for her to say.
But Lauren knew. She knew her mother was right. What she was didn’t matter. Just as long as it stayed a secret.
And that was why she knew she had to take option number two. Because blending in wasn’t good enough. Disappearing still meant she could be found.
And that just wouldn’t fucking do.
The next day, Lauren walked across campus with her head held high. She shot daggers at anyone that came near her. She mocked a teacher or two, verbally dressed down three girls over their ‘slutastic’ wardrobe choices.
And then she bumped into Biily.
"Hey, Lauren," he said. "It’s nice to see you back. I’m sorry about your mom-"
She cut him off by slapping the books out of his hand. As he bent to pick them up, she sauntered by him, ‘accidentally’ grinding one heel into his hand, ignoring him when he yelled out.
She was being watched. And she watched them all back. The look in her eyes said only one thing.
Fuck with me at your own peril.
Within a week, she’d become the queen. Within a month, she’d broken enough hearts and lives that no one gave going up against her even a second’s thought.
She was blending in. She was disappearing.
She was hiding in plain sight.
And at night, when it got quiet? When her own breathing was the only sound she heard?
No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t hear her mother’s voice anymore.
The first time Lauren heard her mother’s voice again, the first time in a very long time, was the morning after the wedding.
She thought it might have been because, for once, she was quiet. For the first time since Billy, there was silence around her. She’d avoided silence for as long as she could remember, actively done everything she could to never be alone, never quiet. She slept with her iPod on, she let Lisbeth ramble on for hours on end about shit no one - no one in their right mind, at least - cared one whit about.
Fuck, she’d dated Tommy just for his mindless prattle.
But, sometimes, silence was unavoidable. Sometimes, no matter how hard she tried, she still ended up alone, with just her thoughts.
But even then, for a very long time, she hadn’t heard Rebecca.
Or, maybe, she just hadn’t been listening.
That, Lauren knew, was far more likely. That, and it might have had something to do with the other thing she’d heard, the night before.
The sound of her sister’s heart breaking. The sound of Karma devastating Amy in a way Lauren hadn’t realized one person could do to another.
Or, maybe, it had something to do with her own onrush of guilt as she realized Amy hadn’t been faking after all.
It was that guilt - that and an odd sudden protective urge that she refused to think about or analyze - that had led Lauren to try and help. She’d brought Amy cake. Yeah, she knew cake was a pointless gesture, Don Quixote flailing against the windmill of heartbreak. Cake wouldn’t make Karma suddenly feel the same way. Cake couldn’t make Karma see that Amy was everything Liam was not, in all the good ways.
Cake couldn’t un-say those words.
It’s no big deal. Right now, you’re just confused.
Just not like that.
I slept with Liam.
Hell, Lauren knew the cake was more for her than Amy. What did they always say? It’s the thought that counts. Cake was Lauren’s thought. A small gesture to maybe bring five minutes of happiness - OK, five minutes of less massive suck - to Amy’s life and to assuage a little bit of her own guilt.
And since she couldn’t exercise that protective urge by kicking Karma’s ass, no matter how tempting the thought was, cake would have to do.
They ate their cake together in relative quiet. The caterers cleaning up in the background. Their own thoughts about the evening loud enough in their own heads.
Tommy’s an asshole.
Karma’s a bitch.
They were right on both counts, Lauren thought. And cake, as good as it was, didn’t make Tommy less of an ass or Karma less of a bitch. So when Amy had finally staggered off with cake crumbs in her hair and half a bottle of champagne clutched in her hand, Lauren had let her go.
They could deal in the morning, she thought. What else could possibly happen tonight? There was, literally, nothing either of them could do to make this any worse.
Lauren eventually made it up to her room, hit play on her iPod, and fell asleep in her dress.
The next morning, this morning, she woke to silence. She’d forgotten to plug the iPod charger in and the little gadget that had kept her sane for so many nights was just sitting there on the table next to her bed. Dead.
It was still too early for the sun. Too early for the birds, for Farrah,for her father, or for Amy.
And that was when she heard it, for the first time in a very long time.
You don’t ever hide.
Twelve hours later, she stood in her garage, Tommy duct-taped to a chair, and she heard entirely different words
Why would I tell anyone that my girlfriend’s a dude?
And suddenly, hiding wasn’t an option anymore.
But that night, after Shane and the others had promised to not tell anyone, Lauren slid into her bed, clutching her iPod.
She left it off. Went to sleep in silence.
And didn’t hear a thing.
It was the drama club auditions. That was what did it. That was the moment.
The moment when Lauren realized that she couldn’t hate Karma.
How could she? They were too much alike.
She watched Karma settle into the chair on the stage. Watched as the redhead prepped for her dramatic moment.
Lauren rolled her eyes.
Here it comes, she thought. Some melodramatic bullshit about how hard it is for her. Some sad sack load of crap about her hippie-dippie parents, her broken lesbian love affair, her popularity washed away.
Washed away in my sister’s tears, bitch.
Lauren never mentioned to Amy that she’d thought that. She barely even acknowledged it to herself.
Lauren wondered, briefly, if it would help her cause if she tore Karma a new one right then and there. If she called her out on all her bullshit, if she shredded her heart like she had done to Amy’s.
She knew she could. Lauren was like America at the end of World War II. She had the bomb. The kind of bomb found in an empty box of morning after pills.
But she had promised Amy… but still…
But then Karma started to speak, except she wasn’t rambling on about her parents or her brother, or her ‘break up’ with Amy.
She wasn’t just speaking. She was fucking confessing.
Holy. Fucking. Shit.
Karma Ashcroft had just outed herself, and not in the good way.
And she wasn’t done.
I can be a really insecure person and I hate that part of who I am.
Desperate for approval. ‘Like me! Like me!’
Cause if you like me… then maybe I’ll like myself.
Well. Shit.
Lauren had never wanted or expected to understand Karma or, quite frankly, to give a flying fuck about her as anything other than an appendage to her sister. Until that moment, Karma had been nothing more to Lauren than the lying, faking, so desperate to land the hottest guy in school that she’d fuck over her own best friend bitch that Lauren had heard the night of the wedding.
Until that moment, when Karma had gone up there on that stage and laid herself bare, knowing full well the hate that was headed her way, not fearing the scorn or the condemnation that was going to land on her doorstep.
Well. Shit.
Lauren watched Karma come back to her seat. She expected there to be joy behind the other girl’s eyes, the thrill of knowing that between that little performance and her singing (and where the hell had Ashcroft been hiding that set of pipes?) she’d practically assured hersefl of the drama club spot.
But Lauren didn’t see any of that. All she saw were the eyes of a young girl who couldn’t quite process what she’d just done.
Eyes that looked all too familiar.
And then it was Lauren’s turn. And there was ‘Fuck you, I’ve struggled.’
And there was her mother’s voice.
You never hide.
And then there was a crash and she turned. And saw Theo.
Lauren closed her eyes. And when she opened them, she saw Karma. And she saw strength and courage, the kind that might only last for a moment, but the kind that had been there nonetheless.
And she couldn’t speak and she couldn’t make the words come up and out of her throat and she couldn’t find a way to do it, to say it.
And she couldn’t hear her mother’s voice.
That was the moment. That was the moment when Lauren realized she could hate Karma.
After all, they were nothing alike.
Lauren was the first of Amy’s friends - and did they really qualify as that? - to meet Reagan, but it was by default, really. She lived with Amy, and since the blonde had been smart enough to schedule their first date for a night when Farrah and Bruce were out - and Amy was still upstairs freaking the fuck out - Lauren had to answer the door.
She stared at the girl on the other side of the door all flannel and tight jeans and funky hair.
And OK. she’d admit it. Amy had picked a hottie.
"You must be Reagan," she said.
"And you must be the spawn of Satan."
Lauren had to bite back a grin. Bitch has balls. “Please,” she said. “Satan’s fears me.” The ‘and so will you’ was left unsaid, but Lauren figured Reagan looked smart enough to pick up on subtext.
"Well, lucky for your sister, I don’t scare easy." Reagan stepped through the door, sliding past Lauren. "Is she ready?"
Lauren rolled her eyes and shut the door. “Nope,” she said. “She’s upstairs having a little freak out. First date jitters you know.” Lauren stepped around Reagan, and led her down the hallway to the living room. “And since this really is her first she’s probably…” She trailed off as she realized what she’d said. “I probably wasn’t supposed to mention that.”
Reagan arched one perfectly-on-point eyebrow. “That’s OK,” she said. “I’ve been lots of girls firsts.”
Lauren glared at her.
"OK," Reagan shrugged. "Not lots.” Lauren raised one not-quite-as-on-point-but-still-effective eyebrow. “OK,” Reagan sighed. “Not any.” She settled down onto the couch. “But don’t tell Amy that,” she said. “I need to maintain my aura of mystery.”
Lauren bit back a laugh until the older girl grinned and she was sure Reagan was joking. “So…” Lauren said, dropping down onto the other end of the couch. “Amy says you’re nineteen?” Reagan nodded. “So, what exactly does a nineteen year old want with a sixteen year old sophomore?”
Reagan shrugged again, the purple tips of her hair sliding across the shoulders of her leather jacket. “Well,” she said, “for one, she asked me out. And, as hard as this may be to believe, that doesn’t happen all that often. And, for another…” She shrugged again. “Have you seen Amy?”
Lauren rolled her eyes.
"I should probably check on her," Lauren said. She got up from the couch and headed for the stairs. She paused on the bottom step and glanced back at Reagan, who was jiggling one knee nervously and fidgeting with her hands in her lap.
A hottie. And just as much of a dork as Amy.
Her sister knew how to pick ‘em.
Lauren bounded up the stairs and through Amy’s door without so much as a knock. She found her sister pacing back and forth, though she was only actually moving two or three steps in either direction.
"Your date is here," Lauren said. Amy stopped mid-pace.
"Fuck," she muttered under her breath. "Fuck, fuck, fuck.”
Lauren plopped down on the bed and rolled her eyes, again. “I’m pretty sure even lesbians don’t do that on the first date,” she said. When Amy didn’t crack a smile or even look at her, Lauren sighed. “What’s wrong?”
"There’s a girl downstairs," Amy said. "A hot girl." She paused and then did look at Lauren. "Did she look hot?" she asked. "Tell me she didn’t. Tell me she looked all busted and butch and scary."
Lauren shrugged. “If I swung that way, I’d have probably jumped her.”
Amy’s face paled and her jaw moved up and down, but no sound escaped.
"Sorry," Lauren said. "Forgot I was being supportive." She grinned at her flailing sister. "She looks horrible. Scary. Like she bought her clothes at the thrift shop and not the cool one from the Macklemore song."
Amy shook her head and sat down on the floor. “She could be down there in a fucking garbage bag and still be hot,” she said. She ran a hand through her hair which, to Lauren’s great annoyance, still looked fucking fantastic. “What the hell am I doing?” Amy asked softly.
"Well," Lauren said, "right now you’re having a massive freak out while your hottie date waits downstairs." She slid off the bed and sat across from Amy. "What’s really going on, Raudenfeld?"
"I’m going on a date." Amy said. "With a girl." The look on Lauren’s face told Amy that her sister clearly didn’t grasp the significance. "I’m gay," she whispered. "I’m a lesbian.”
Lauren remembered, just in time, that she was trying to be supportive (though she really had no idea why) and held back a laugh. “I thought that fact was pretty well established,” she said. “You know, with the whole in love with Karma thing. Or the being repulsed by sex with Booker thing. Or the making out with hot Brazilian chick thing.”
Amy shook her head. “Karma was… different,” she said. “That was just about her. And being repulsed by Liam, well, that would happen to anyone with taste, right?” Lauren nodded, she couldn’t argue with that. “And the Brazilian girl… that was just making out. Hell, straight girls do that all the time now. It’s like the cool thing. Like getting your ears pierced or listening to One Direction. It’s in.”
Lauren had both ears pierced, twice, had every One Direction CD - and the concert DVDs - and she’d never once had the urge to stick her tongue in another girl’s mouth.
Maybe she just wasn’t cool.
Nah, she figured, that couldn’t be it.
Amy was still rambling on. “A date is different,” she said. “A date is like… a future, maybe. It’s one step from a relationship and that’s one step from commitment and that’s one step from marriage and a family and spending your life with someone and now I’m doing all that with a girl.”
"Maybe," Lauren said, "before you start picking out china patterns and knitting baby beanies, you should, you know, go on a date?”
Amy stared at her. Just stared.
Lauren sighed. “Look, Amy,” she said. “I understand that you’re nervous. Believe me, every time I meet a boy and it starts getting serious and I remember… what they don’t know about me, I feel the same way.” She scooted across the floor so she was right up in Amy’s face. “But there’s a girl downstairs who said ‘yes’ to you. To you. And if going out with her makes you a lesbian, well, there’s worse things to be in this world, right?”
Amy nodded. Slowly.
Lauren fidgeted with the hem of her shirt. “Someone very smart once told me that what you are is nothing. All that matters is who you are.” She let out a deep breath. “And you are, somehow - and believe me, I did not see this coming - one of the cooler people I’ve ever known.” Amy’s eyes widened. “And if you tell anyone I said that, I’ll kill you.”
There was a long moment when Amy sat there, silently staring at her and Lauren worried - briefly - that the girl had gone catatonic. But then… “You don’t suck either,” Amy said, quietly.
And they both laughed.
Amy stood up slowly, extending a hand to Lauren and helping the smaller blonde back to her feet. “I’m really doing this?”
Lauren gave Amy’s hand - the one still clutched in her own, and how the hell had that happened - a soft squeeze.
"Yeah," she said. "You are."
Amy nodded once and then headed for the door. She paused for a moment and then turned back toward Lauren, taking two quick steps across the room and sweeping her sister up in a hug.
Lauren went stiff, for a moment, then slowly relaxed, even wrapping one arm around Amy’s back.
"Sorry," Amy said, breaking the embrace. "It just seemed…"
Lauren nodded. “It’s fine,” she said. “Just don’t make a habit out of it.” She put her hands on Amy’s shoulders and turned her back to the door. “Now go,” she said, giving her a gentle shove in the back. Amy headed out the door and down the stairs.
Later that night, after Amy had finally come home - two and a half hours late - grinning from ear to ear, Lauren climbed into bed. She reached for her iPod, fingers ghosting over the controls.
And then she set it back down, pulled her blankets up under her chin and went to sleep, in silence.
Somewhere between that first date and the morning Karma showed up in the living room like some masochistic voyeur, something had changed between Amy, Reagan, and Lauren.
Lauren couldn’t put her finger on it, she couldn’t identify the moment when it had happened.
Probably because there was no moment. It wasn’t like in the movies where the main character has a sudden epiphany and figures everything out. Life didn’t work that way.
Live was slow. Gradual. Like the song said, Lauren figured. You can’t hurry love.
No matter what kind of love it is.
For the first couple of weeks after that first date, Lauren paid little or no mind to Amy and Reagan. Yeah, sure, she liked the older girl. But that was to be expected. Reagan was pretty much the definition of likable. She was a charmer, she was funny, and she seemed genuinely interested in Amy.
Plus - and this was the biggest and best selling point to Lauren - she wasn’t Karma.
But, Lauren figured, odds were good Reagan wouldn’t be around long. She was a rebound. She was a temporary fix, a needed life experience, a growth opportunity for Amy.
But she wasn’t endgame. Karmy, Lauren knew, was Amy’s OTP.
Of course, the key word in all that was pairing.
It takes two to tango, Lauren thought. And she’d seen Karma at the drama club auditions.
Bitch couldn’t dance.
By the middle of the third week, Lauren noticed that Reagan was still around. More than that, she seemed to be settling in, like she wasn’t leaving any time soon. And something else was different.
Amy was different. She was… smiling? She seemed… happy?
Come to think of it, it had been at least fifteen days - eighteen? nineteen? - since Lauren had heard Amy crying at night.
And come to think of it, it had been at least that long since Lauren had seen Karma around the house.
Near the end of that third week, Amy knocked on Lauren’s door and actually waited for Lauren to say ‘come in’ before she barged through. So, among other things that Lauren preferred not to think about, Reagan was apparently teaching her manners.
Amy stood in the doorway, hemming and hawing and stumbling over her words until Lauren had finally had enough and told her to get to the fucking point already and then Amy rushed out would-you-want-to-go-to-dinner-with-me-reagan-and-shane-tomorrow-night? so fast that Lauren thought the taller girl might black out.
Well of course she wouldn’t. And the fact that Amy was even asking just proved that Reagan hadn’t taught her enough yet.
And that would all have been true if Lauren’s mouth, apparently on leave from its relationship with her brain, hadn’t opened up and said ‘yes’.
Her brain checked back in long enough to ask ‘it’ll be just us, right? No… ?’ And somehow Amy had gotten the point - so clearly Reagan was clearing the Karmalized fog from her sister’s brain - and Amy nodded quickly.
So, by the end of the third week, Lauren decided she really did like Reagan, and hoped she’d stick around. But what shocked her, what made her pause and wonder just what the absolute fuck was going on, was when she realized that not only did she like Reagan.
She liked Amy too.
Liked her enough to chat with her on the way to school in Bruce’s car. Enough to sit with her at lunch and go to the mall with her - only so Amy could go to the used bookstore tucked into the far corner of the far end of the shopping center where nobody else ever went - or flop on the couch and make fun of whatever doc-u-crap her sister was watching.
Enough to start referring to Amy as ‘her sister’.
But only in her head of course. Never out loud.
That happened halfway through the fifth week. She said it out loud to Shane while yelling at him to stop asking Amy questions about Reagan’s tongue and scissoring and every other dumbass lesbian fetish-related topic in his brain.
Amy had stopped dead. Paused with a forkful of mashed potatoes - and fuck all, that girl could eat - halfway to her mouth. She looked at Lauren for a brief moment, her head tilting sideways. Then she smiled, a little one, and shoved the potatoes in like she was afraid someone was going to steal them from her.
They never did speak of it. Other than the next morning, when Amy tried out a tentative ‘sis’ and both girls gagged a little before dissolving into giggles.
And now she was giggling with Amy. And what the fuck was wrong with her? Lauren Cooper did not giggle.
And then there was the shopping trip to Dallas, which meant one fucking long ride from Austin in Reagan’s non-air-conditioned pickup, the one with the actual tape deck and the one tape of Billy fucking Joel and who the hell was Billy Joel?
When Lauren walked back into the house late that evening, humming Uptown Girl, Amy just laughed.
I told you, she said. That shit gets in your head.
That night, Lauren followed her normal nightly routine. She brushed her teeth, twice. She laid out her outfit for the next day, only changing the blouse twice, which showed remarkable restraint on her part. She brushed her hair - 100 strokes on each side - and then climbed into bed.
She fell asleep with Uptown Girl running through her head.
The day Karma treated Amy and Reagan like her own personal peep show, Lauren heard her mother’s voice, one more time.
And you find those people who know that different doesn’t mean less. You find those people and you hold onto them. You love them and they will love you.
She heard Karma leave, heard her tell Amy that Reagan seemed nice, and then Lauren slipped out the back door, scampered around the house, and found herself just a few feet in front of Karma, on the sidewalk.
The other girl had her head down, not watching where she was going, and Lauren had to clear her throat to get her attention. Karma’s head snapped up and her eyes widened for a moment.
"Jesus, Lauren," she muttered. "I didn’t even hear you. You’re like Satan’s fucking ninja."
Lauren made no move to get out of Karma’s way. “Satan’s afraid of me,” she said, remembering when she’d said those words just a couple months ago. “And you should be, too.”
She wasn’t banking on Karma being able to pick up on subtext.
"Are you threatening me?" Karma asked. There was a little fear behind her eyes, but mostly anger. Which, given when she’d just gone through with Amy and Reagan was probably not surprising.
"I’m giving you some advice," Lauren said. "If you fuck this up for Amy… if you even think about fucking this up for Amy… I will drop a bomb on your life so big, all the king’s horses and all the king’s men won’t be able to put your shit together again.”
"Sounds like a threat to me," Karma replied. "And Humpty-Dumpty? Really?"
Lauren shrugged. “You like fairy tales,” she said. “I figured I’d speak to you on your level.”
Karma glared at the blonde. “So, what? You think you’re Amy’s protector now?” She arched an eyebrow - a seriously not even close to on point eyebrow - “Or is this about Reagan? Maybe you’ve skipped a pill or two and decided you kinda like it on the other side of the fence?”
Lauren’s glare faltered, only for a moment, but a moment was enough.
"Yeah, that’s right," Karma said. There was anger in her tone, and though Lauren knew that wasn’t about her, she also knew she was the closest target. “I remember your little secret, Lauren. So maybe you ought to be a little more careful about who you threaten.”
Karma shoved past her, but only got a step or two before Lauren grabbed her by the wrist and spun her back around.
"You think I care, Ashcroft? You think I give one silly little fuck about what you know about me?”
Of course Karma thought that. Lauren thought that.
"You can tell the world, for all I care, Karma," Lauren said. "You can take out an ad on the school Tumblr or have your boyfriend pay to have skywriters fly overhead. I don’t care."
Her grip on Karma’s wrist tightened and she pulled the redhead closer.
"You’ve done enough damage to my sister," she said. "So if you think, for one second, that I’m going to let you-"
“Let me?” Karma asked. She yanked her wrist free and rubbed the spot where Lauren’s fingers had dug into her skin. “Sister? You and Amy get along for a couple of months and you’re suddenly sisters? Where the hell were you for the fifteen years before that?”
"Better question," Lauren said. "Where were you the night you broke Amy’s heart? Or where would you have been if Shane hadn’t opened his mouth and wrecked all your little lies? Where would you have been while Amy was crying and trying to drown herself in bottle after bottle of champagne?”
Karma glared at her, but there was nothing to say.
"Maybe Amy and I don’t have ten years of friendship," Lauren said. "But sometimes, Karma, all being that close with somebody does is make it easier for you to hurt them."
"What the fuck would you know?" Karma spat. "Have you ever had a best friend? Have you ever had friends?”
"You’re right," Lauren replied. "I don’t have friends. But I do have family.”
Karma snorted. “You think a piece of paper that ties your father and Amy’s mother together makes you and her family?”
Lauren shook her head. “No,” she said. “I think our choices do. And my choice is to protect my sister.” She took one last look at Karma as she turned to go. “You’re the family Amy’s chosen, Karma,” she said. “Try not to let her down again. Because if you do? You’ll find out really quick that Satan’s got nothing on me.”
Lauren slipped back into the house. She could hear Amy’s voice upstairs, and the sound of the showers - shower - running and so,yeah, she was staying downstairs.
She leaned against the kitchen counter. It was quiet. She hadn’t really appreciated quiet in a very long time.
And then she made a choice.
She tugged her phone out of her pocket and hit ‘three’ on her speed dial. “Hey, Theo?” she said when the boy finally picked up. “It’s me. Yeah, I know I’m supposed to be shopping with Amy. But I need to talk to you. No, it’s nothing bad, it’s just… something I should have told you a while ago. Can we meet? Our spot? Half an hour?”
Theo agreed and Lauren hung up the phone. She dashed off a quick note to Amy.
Have to meet Theo. Need to tell him about… you know what. I already got you an outfit for tonight. It’s in the back of your closet, behind the trench coat. Tell Rea I hope her coffee with Karma goes well. Call you later.
Love you,
Lolo
Lauren paused and looked at the paper. Love you.
The pen hovered over the word. She could cross it off. She could throw the paper out and start over. Or text her.
Lauren sighed and dropped the paper on the counter where she knew Amy would find it.
Never hide, she thought.
Never again.