A/N: Um… so this is a little long. And very ensemble. But there’s definitely a pretty significant Reamy bit so…
Previous Chapters
Lauren stays perfectly still in the middle of the bed. She pretends she doesn’t see Amy leaning against the bathroom door.
If she doesn’t see her, then she’s not really there, right?
Not really there becomes a lot harder to pretense when Amy crawls onto the bed next to her - and just when the hell did that become something they did? - and shoves her cell phone into the smaller blonde’s face.
“What. The. Fuck. Is. This?” Amy asks. She draws out every word and - just in case that’s not enough emphasis - she shakes the phone with every syllable.
“A sign I should have remembered to lock the bathroom door?” Lauren asks without looking.
She doesn’t have to look. She knows exactly what the fuck this is.
Her email.
The one that starts Dear Vashti.
She’d thought about the ‘Dear’ part. Wondered - briefly - if it was too informal.
But it was polite. Ladylike.
And if Lauren still has anything, it’s her ability to be ladylike.
Though if Amy doesn’t stop shoving that phone in her face pretty fucking quick, she’s going to find out how un-ladylike Lauren can be.
Amy pushes the phone a little closer. “I’ll ask again - ”
“Please don’t,” Lauren cuts her off. She sits up, scooting out from under Amy’s arm and off the bed. She stands in front of her dresser, her back to her sister and sees the bottle - her pills - just sitting there.
Out in the open. Where anyone could see them.
And Lauren remembers a time when that just wouldn’t have happened.
Fuck that, she remembers a time when there wouldn’t have been anyone in here to see them, a time when no one would have dared even cross the threshold.
Even after she and Amy became friends and then - eventually, slowly, in tiny baby steps - sisters, there was a time when Lauren would have never left them out.
Even after they all found out, even after that night in the garage when Tommy outed her.
(And is it totally unreasonable to hold that dipshit at least a little responsible for what happened tonight? He got the ball rolling, after all.)
(He told Booker.)
Even then, when they all knew, Lauren didn't…. knowing, she understood, was different than seeing. Knowing was different than having it right there, right in your face, right in the light of day.
And the sad thing was - the total honest fucking truth of it - was that Lauren had been living in the dark for so long, she wasn’t even sure she could endure the light.
Maybe, she remembers thinking, it would burn her. Like a vampire.
Maybe coming out - sort of - would just make it worse. Maybe the light wouldn’t save her or spare her or show her that she was just like everyone else.
Maybe, she remembers thinking, it would just burn her alive.
Or, maybe, as it turns out, it would just be simple.
Talking to Amy one morning while she leaned against the bathroom door.
(Apparently, something of a habit for her.)
Getting distracted by the conversation. Setting the pill bottle down on the dresser. Not even realizing she’d done it till later that night.
Maybe, as it turns out, it would be that one moment, seeing them there, cocking her head slightly at the realization of what she’d done.
And that the world - not even her little part of it - hadn’t ended.
A ‘huh’. A shrug. And then climbing into bed, going to sleep, and not thinking of it again.
Until now.
Which, Lauren figures, stands to reason.
It’s been a whole night of 'until now’.
She hears Amy scramble off the bed and then the taller blonde is right up in her face and Lauren - not for the first time - misses that aura of 'don’t fuck with me’ badassery she had going on there for a while.
“Vashti?” Amy asks, waving the phone again and giving Lauren the urge to see what it might look like after ricocheting off her bedroom wall.
Amy slams the phone down on the dresser, knocking the pill bottle over in the process, and Lauren watches it roll slowly toward the edge.
“You can’t be serious,” Amy says. “Vashti? That's…”
“Nuts?” Lauren suggests as she reaches out and stops the bottle just short of tumbling to the floor. “Stupid? Ridiculous? Overreacting?”
Amy arches an eyebrow - silently wondering how Reagan does that so fucking well - and stares at her sister. “So you agree, then?” she asks. “You agree that this is the dumbest idea you’ve ever had?”
“I still think letting Harvey take those boudoir photos was dumber,” Lauren says with a shrug and a little bit of a shudder. “But the boy did know his lighting.’
“This isn’t funny, Lauren.”
Lauren nods, like she needs Amy to remind her of just how un-funny any of this is. “Neither is taking a hot selfie to sext to your boyfriend,” she says. “That’s make or break kinda shit.”
Amy snatches the bottle of pills from in front of her and holds it up between them.
“How long?” she asks. “How long did we live in the same house before I even knew you take these?”
Lauren stares at the bottle and says nothing.
She’s pretty sure Amy isn’t looking for an answer.
Amy doesn’t stop. “How long was it - even after I found out - before I ever saw you with them. How long before I found out you kept them hidden in your top drawer right behind your thongs?”
Lauren bites back a comment on Amy knowing where she keeps her thongs.
“How long, Lauren? How fucking long?”
Lauren shrugs again and takes the bottle from Amy before settling back down on the edge of the bed. “If you’ve got a point, can you get to it?” she asks. “I"m tired.”
“My point,” Amy says, “ is simple. It took you more than a year to tell me. To let me in, to share this with me. Or with your minions or Reagan or Theo.”
It took two and a half months with Theo, Lauren thinks, but Amy’s point stands.
“You kept it in all that time,” Amy says. “And now… because of Liam… you’re going to tell the world.”
“Don’t be so dramatic,” Lauren says, though she knows she’s just being argumentative. “I’m telling Vashti, not the world.”
“Same fucking thing and you know it,” Amy says. She paces across the room. She came in here to make things better, not worse, and she needs to be calm to do that. “You know what telling Vashti means, Lauren. You remember what she did to me after the threesome.”
The words ’that was Karma’ leap to Lauren’s mind, but she keeps them to herself.
And since when does she skip a chance to take a shot at Ashcroft?
Personal growth can be something of a pain.
“You tell Vashti and you tell the school,” Amy says. “All of them. And there’s no taking that back.”
Lauren’s eyes grow wide. “Take it back?”
“Right now,” Amy says, “the only people who know anything are the ones who were at the party. We can handle them. We can lie. We can cover for what Liam said -”
“You want me to hide,” Lauren says, cutting Amy off.
And even the words hurt. And that only makes her more sure she’s doing the right thing.
“Liam was drunk,” Amy says. “He didn’t know what he was saying. Hell, half the people there probably didn’t even understand him. We could spin that. We really could.”
Amy’s right. Lauren knows she is.
“Vashti has enough material for the tumblr already,” Amy says. “Me and Karma. Me and Reagan and Karma. Me and Reagan knocking Liam out.”
Me. Me. Me.
It should have been me.
“You got stuck in this because you were defending me.” Amy says. “Lia, only went after you because of me.”
Once upon a time, Lauren would have seen the logic in that. She would’ve let it override everything she knew to be true. She would’ve let herself blame and then hate Amy and never even thought twice.
Personal growth can be something of a good thing, too.
Amy sits down on the bed next to Lauren and the older girl can see the pain in her sister’s eyes. “Please, Lolo,” Amy says. “Please just let me handle this. Reagan and me and Theo. We can take care of it. We’ll tell Vashti not to come And if she still does, you can stay up here. We’ll deal with her.”
You can stay up here.
You can hide.
I can hide.
It’s tempting. So fucking tempting.
And that temptation? That split second when Lauren considers giving in?
That’s all she needs to feel. All she needs to know.
Lauren reaches out and takes Amy’s hand in hers and, for just a moment, Amy thinks she’s won.
“No,” Lauren says.
Simple. One word. One syllable.
But it really says it all.
“I’m not hiding, Amy,” Lauren says. “I’m not letting you or Theo or Rea…”
She stands quickly, the movement so sudden that it shifts the bed and sends Amy tumbling to the floor. Lauren grabs her pills and then Amy’s hand, helping her to her feet.
Lauren leads her sister to the door, slipping the lock back and pulling it open. Theo topples back into the room, thudding to the floor at her feet.
“Come on,” Lauren says, stepping over him and into the hall. “Find Reagan and Farrah and meet me downstairs.”
“I’m only saying this once.”
When it comes right down to it, it shouldn’t surprise her. Not really.
It does make a certain kind of logical sense - or at least ironic sense - in it’s own way.
Farrah really shouldn’t be all that shocked that the daughter that isn't hers - biologically, at least - is actually the one that’s just like her.
But, as she stands and listens to Lauren lay the law down to her sister and her best friend and her boyfriend - as she explains exactly why she emailed Vashti and exactly why she’s going to 'out’ herself - Farrah is surprised.
By the echoes.
The echoes of her own life. Her own decisions.
Of the way she once realized it wasn’t 'have to’.
It was 'want to.’
Farrah learned long ago - probably from the first day she met her - that Lauren was smarter than anyone gave her credit for. And she’s seeing the proof of that playing out in front of her.
The way Lauren keeps saying it, over and over.
“I have to.”
She keeps hammering the point home. Because Lauren knows. She’s smart and she gets it.
'Have to’ is the the only thing the other three will understand.
Even if it isn’t the truth.
Farrah knows that all too well. She used 'have to’ before.
For Farrah, it happens the day Jack leaves. The day he walks out on his family and disappears.
He leaves her. But he doesn’t just leave her.
He leaves her with a giant fucking mess she has to clean up.
Which, really, shouldn’t surprise her because cleaning up after Jack has, by that point, become Farrah’s full-time job.
But this was different. This wasn’t just their marriage. This wasn’t just their family. It wasn’t just her.
It wasn’t just Amy.
Jack walks out on everyone. On Farrah and his daughter. On his mother. His brother. His sisters.
Jack packs up and buries his whole fucking life somewhere behind him, never to look back.
And it falls to Farrah to fix it all.
For months before he left, Farrah spends nearly every waking moment trying to do exactly that - trying to fix it all.
She tries - against her own better judgment and the advice of, well, everyone - to piece it all back together, the massive jigsaw puzzle their lives had become.
She’s been a bit desperate. She’s been a bit frantic.
Farrah has, in truth, become every horrible, bitchy, condescending thing Jack has ever accused her of being.
You try fixing a life. See if you don’t get a bit touchy.
Farrah tries, so very hard, to find a way for the all the pieces of this puzzle to fit together. She knows, in her heart if not her head, that it won’t ever be perfect.
There was going to be the odd edge piece missing.
There were going to be pieces that - no matter what they were supposed to do - wouldn’t fit quite right.
Every puzzle has those.
The defects. The misfit toys. The ones that are meant to go together, the ones that were made for each other.
But still don’t work.
And if that isn’t a metaphor for her life, Farrah isn’t sure what is.
And then Jack leaves and it’s like he kicks the table over, sending the pieces flying in every which way. And, try as she might, Farrah can’t seem to find them all.
Because it can’t be.
It can’t be made better.
It can’t be smoothed over.
It can’t be fixed.
Her husband, the father of her child, the man she thought she would spend her life with?
He just fucking left.
Left.
And, in her weaker moments, Farrah can’t help imagining him out there. Living it up. Drinking his sorrows - assuming he has any - away. Spending his time the way he wants.
Making his 'art’.
Fucking and drinking and laughing.
No kid raising, no wife nagging, no family depending.
It can't be fixed, but Farrah still tries.
Because, she says, she has to.
Which is why, when the phone rings at seven-thirty in the morning, a week after Jack leaves, Farrah answers it.
She’s terrified, just the way she has been every time she’s answered the phone for the last seven days.
Afraid it’s the cops. Afraid it’s the hospital. Afraid someone’s found him. Dead. Or just wishing he was.
But, let’s be real.
She’s been dreading that call a lot longer than the last week.
So when she answers the phone and, instead of an officer or a nurse, it’s Jack’s mother?
Farrah can be forgiven for considering - longer than she should - hanging the fuck up.
Jack’s mother hates her. (The feeling is entirely mutual.)
Hell, Jack’s mother hates Jack.
(That might be the only thing the two women have in common.)
The only member of the family Jack’s mother can even tolerate is Amy and - Farrah suspects - she only does that to piss Farrah and Jack off.
So, yeah. Farrah can hang up. Or she could yell into the phone, telling the old bitch that her son has finally lived up to his genetics and run out on his family.
She can - and she really considers - telling Mama Raudenfeld that when that call does come?
(And even years later, Farrah’s still somewhat surprised it never did.)
When that call does come, the old witch can haul her sorry ass down to the morgue and identify her son’s body all on her own.
Farrah can do that. Any of it. All of that.
And it would be fair, it would be fine. Half the reason Jack is the man he’s become is the old woman on the other end of the line.
She can do that. But she doesn’t.
Instead, she tries.
She tells the truth. She tells Jack’s mother exactly what’s happened.
She tells her how close Jack came to crossing that line.
The same line his father had crossed every day for a dozen years.
Farrah tells her mother-in-law exactly what her son’s face looked like when he saw himself in the mirror. When he saw his own fist drawn back. When he sat the anger and the hate in his own eyes.
When he saw his wife cowering in fear.
Farrah tells her mother-in-law exactly how she watched Jack break. How the anger and hate had faded from his eyes, but the life - the love - she’d always seen there, even at his worst, never returned.
“That,” Farrah says, “is when I knew I’d lost him.”
And that, Farrah thinks, is the moment when she knew he would never come back.
Farrah waits. She listens to her mother-in-law’s soft breathing on the other end of the line.
She waits. And tries.
God does she try.
She tries not to say it. Not to do it.
For years afterward, Farrah will always say exactly what Lauren’s saying to Theo, Amy, and Reagan.
That she had to.
But that - just like what Lauren’s claiming - was just so much bullshit.
In the end, Farrah doesn't have to.
But she wants to. She so fucking wants to.
Farrah’s tired of living like this. She’s tired of living with the specter of Jack’s family and his past and all the shit that bred in him.
Jack had, for better or worse, tried to shield her and Amy from his family in every way he could.
But the shield just fucking walked out.
And so maybe Farrah doesn’t have to do it.
But maybe - no, not maybe - she wants to. And maybe she needs to.
And so she does.
“Jack’s gone,” she says. “He left. He abandoned me and his daughter like the coward that he is.”
She pauses. And then…
“Like the weak as hell fucking coward you raised him to be.”
She’s answered by only silence.
“He’s a coward,” Farrah says, “because he didn’t stay. He didn’t try. But, coward or not, he’s still a damn fucking sight better than you.”
She should stop. She knows she should.
She doesn’t.
“Even in his cowardice, he still did what his father never could. He stopped. And he saved his family. And if you haven’t heard from him in the week, he’s been gone?”
Farrah knows these will be the last words she ever says to the woman she was supposed to call 'mom’.
“Then I guess he saved himself too.”
The phone clatters to the ground as Farrah tries to slam it down, but she doesn’t care. She doesn’t notice the sound of her mother-in-law calling out to her.
Or maybe she does. And she just doesn’t care.
She doesn't have to.
And four years later, when Jack’s mother - who doesn’t see her granddaughter even once in those four years - finally dies in her sleep?
Farrah doesn’t even send flowers. And Jack doesn’t come to the funeral.
So, maybe, all these years later, Farrah is the one who gets it. The one who hears the truth in Lauren’s words.
Farrah is the one who understands when the best friend, the sister, and the boyfriend just don’t.
Just can’t.
“Lauren, please,” Amy says, and in sixteen years, Farrah’s never once heard that tone in Amy’s voice. The pleading. The need.
She’s pretty sure her daughter’s just about three seconds away from dropping to her knees in a full on beg.
“You don’t have to do this,” Reagan says.
“There’s other ways, baby,” Theo chimes in.
(And, on a totally unrelated note, that’s the moment Farrah realizes how much Lauren loves Theo. He calls her baby. And there’s no bloodshed.)
“No,” Lauren says. “There is no other way.”
Farrah hears it, even if no one else does. She hears what’s there in her step-daughter’s tone.
And what isn’t.
There’s no anger. There’s no pain, no sadness, not even resignation.
Lauren sounds like Farrah did, all those years ago.
She’s not doing this because she has to.
Lauren’s smart enough to know they could lie. That there’s a thousand stories they could spin, and probably ninety-five percent of them are more believable than the truth.
Liam was drunk. And the ramblings of a drunken teenage boy could easily be explained away.
He was angry. He was bitter.
He was pissed at being someone’s second choice, someone’s consolation prize.
He couldn’t hurt Amy - though he tried - so he went after the next best target.
They could make that work.
So, no, Lauren doesn't have to confess to Vashti. She doesn’t have to tell the whole school who she really is.
But - Farrah knows - she wants to.
“Tonight, Liam Booker used my most personal secret like a fucking shovel,” Lauren says. “He tried to bury me with it, he tried to make shut up and back down and nobody does that.”
Farrah can’t keep a small proud smile from crossing her lips as the young blonde eyes everyone else in the room.
“Nobody makes me back down,” Lauren says. “And nobody is shaming me into silence. Nobody is going to push me and think for even one second that I won’t push back. Nobody -”
“Puts baby in a corner,” Reagan mutters and Farrah almost laughs at the way Lauren has to literally bite her lip to keep from smiling.
“I’m not asking permission,” Lauren continues. “I didn’t send you the email for you to try and change my mind or for your blessing.”
“Then why?” Amy asks.
“Because when I tell Vashti and she tells… everyone…” Lauren looks at each of them. “It doesn’t just affect me,” she says. “Not anymore.”
The boyfriend.
The best friend.
The sister.
Farrah wonders, not for the first time, how truly fucking amazing Lauren’s mother must have been to have given birth to the spectacular young woman standing before her.
“How you deal with, how you handle it is your call,” Lauren says softly. “But nobody will ever use who or what I am against me again. Not ever again.”
She turns and heads for the stairs, stopping at the bottom to rest a hand on Amy’s shoulder and turn back to the four of them.
“I’m telling Vashti in the morning,” she says. “What y'all do… that’s up to you.”
For Theo, it all becomes so clear so fast, he’s surprised he never saw it before.
Lauren has her secrets. There are things she doesn’t tell people. He knew that all along, even before she told him.
He was fine with it. He was fine with what she told him. He was fine with her secrets.
It’s not like he doesn’t have one or two of his own.
There’s a reason Theo didn’t punch Liam. There’s a reason that even if Reagan and Amy hadn’t gotten to him first, Theo probably still wouldn’t have dropped him.
Theo’s a lot of things. But a hypocrite isn’t one of them.
Theo is fourteen when it happens. When, like Pablo always used to say, he chooses to feed the bad wolf.
He’s fourteen when he has to make a choice, one not unlike the choice Liam has years later.
Be a man. Take it, take the pain, keep your head up and be a decent fucking human being.
Theo is fourteen when, like Liam does years later, he chooses the other path.
Her name is Etta. She’s sixteen and his math tutor because while fourteen year old Theo is already six-foot-one and a beast on the basketball court?
He’s a fucking uncoordinated shrimp of a guy when it comes to math.
And, unfortunately, when it comes to the ladies as well.
Fourteen-year-old Theo lacks a certain subtlety. So, Etta picks up on his crush right away.
She’s smart. She’s funny. She’s gorgeous and pure in that innocent way that only a sixteen-year-old girl can make work. And she has - to quote one of Theo’s older teammates - an ass you just want to sink your teeth into and never let go.
Of course Theo has a crush on her.
It doesn’t hurt that she’s the only girl who ever talks to him.
Lauren would be shocked to hear that, stunned that the perfect specimen of man that she gets to stare at whenever she wants ever had trouble with women.
But fourteen-year-old Theo is not half as smooth as seventeen-year-old Theo will be.
He’s also not half as ripped or half as graceful.
Worst of all? Fourteen-year-old Theo isn’t half the man he will one day be.
And that’s the problem.
At seventeen - almost eighteen - Theo will sit outside Lauren’s bedroom and wait for her, as long as it takes and would never even think of doing to a woman - to anyone - what Liam did.
And maybe, if you look at it just right, that’s why Theo becomes the man he does.
Because they boy he is at fourteen is such an incredible, monumental, abject fuck-up.
It happens a month into tutoring, when Theo’s crush has reached the 'I would dive thousand of feet below the sea and retrieve a mystical evil fighting blade for you’ levels.
And as romantic as that might sound? Etta has had just about enough.
Enough of what Theo considers subtle advances.
Enough of the hand on the knee. Enough of the accidental brushes up against her. Enough of the constant staring at her chest.
Enough, Etta decides, is enough.
She lets him down easy. She tells him it’s the age thing. Girls mature faster than boys, she says.
Sure, she’s only two years older. But in high school? For a guy and a girl? Two years is a lifetime.
Theo nods. Theo seems appropriately chagrined. Theo seems to get it.
Theo - at fourteen - is a big a fuckboy as Liam Booker will ever aspire to be.
He watches as Etta gets picked up by a boy - a man of eighteen. He watches as she hops into this 'man’s’ jeep and curls up against him, kissing him in a way Theo’s only ever seen in movies, and watches - letting his imagination run wild - as her hands drift down out of view.
They’re probably just holding hands.
Or Etta’s resting her hands on his leg or the seats.
Or she’s tugged him free from the confines of jeans and her head will be bobbing up and down in his lap before they’re even off Theo’s street.
At fourteen, Theo is living proof that there is nothing as wild as the imagination of a horny young boy with way too much access to the Internet.
As they pull away, Theo is livid though he can’t quite process why. Is it the rejection? The rejection for an older man - one with as great an age disparity as Etta just claimed when she gunned him down?
Is it the crushing destruction of his first love?
Or is it fucking hormones and ego and pent up sexual frustration?
Or, maybe - as Theo at seventeen might agree - Theo at fourteen is just a fucking dick.
Seventeen, almost eighteen-year-old Theo will one day know the answer.
He’ll know that the answer is, simply, that it doesn’t matter. Because any answer is an excuse, a rationalization, a way to make himself feel better for what he does next.
Because all fourteen-year-old Theo cares about is the pain in his chest. The way watching Etta drive off feels, the way it hurts, the way it burns and makes him feel just like all the older guys on the team make him feel.
Fucking worthless.
So fourteen-year-old Theo does what he thinks is reasonable. He steals Etta’s cell phone the next time she comes over to tutor him. He steals it and finds the less than appropriate pictures she has hidden away on it.
The selfie in nothing but her bra.
The shot of her ass in the mirror, wearing a thong so tiny it’s nothing but a string being swallowed by her ass.
The one that was clearly taken by someone else - a certain jeep driving motherfucker, perhaps? - with Etta on her knees, staring up at the camera seductively.
Older Theo would see how whoever took that one must have thought it was the hottest thing ever. But older Theo would see the look in Etta’s eyes. The desperate, can’t believe I’m doing this, but I have to if I want to make him happy fear-pain-shame rolling around behind her eyes.
Older Theo would beat the shit out the supposed 'man’ who took that pic.
Fourteen-year-old Theo can hardly keep himself from disappearing into the bathroom with the picture and a bottle of lotion.
That Theo emails the pics to himself and returns Etta’s phone to her, the young girl none the wiser.
She won’t know - or even suspect - a thing until two days later. Not until she walks into school to find those pictures - printed out and blown up - scattered all along the hallways, a collage of the taped around her locker.
The same locker with 'SLUT’ and 'WHORE’ spraypainted on it in bright red and blue letters.
School colors.
It is, really, the almost perfect crime. Theo, truthfully, almost gets away with it.
Except for Abbie.
She’s fifteen and she has a crush too.
A crush on popularity. A crush on rising up through the social ranks. She wants to be Queen Bee someday. She wants to be Regina George.
And Theo is her ticket,
Abbie is smart. Smart enough to know where Theo is headed. She knows he’ll grow into himself, that he’ll become the man - the kind of man who will wait outside a bedroom door for as long as it takes - that will win the hearts and minds of everyone he meets.
And this is her chance. Witnessing Theo’s crime - and there’s really no other word for it - is her chance to get in on the ground floor.
Imagine, she tells Theo once, that you could have been a part of Facebook, right at the beginning. Imagine where your life would be.
So, fifteen-year-old Abbie does what she thinks is reasonable.
She blackmails Theo. She makes him date her and take her places and buy her things and, for all intents and purposes, be her bitch.
And Theo goes along with it, partly because Abbie’s not bad to look at and it makes some of the other guys on the team jealous.
But mostly? Mostly it’s because even fourteen-year-old Theo figures out very quickly just how horrifically he’s fucked up.
Because the school? It doesn’t turn on Etta. It doesn’t shame her or shun her or make her pay for that burning pain in Theo’s chest.
It embraces her. It loves her. It vows to find and punish the fuckboy - because everyone knows it’s a boy - who did this horrible thing.
And even at fourteen, Theo is smart enough to recognize that being found out as that fuckboy would end him.
It doesn’t matter how big he is. It doesn’t matter how good he was or will be at basketball or how model level his good looks and eight-pack abs will be.
All that matters are those words.
Slut.
Whore.
He’d meant to damn her. He’d meant to condemn her.
She wouldn’t fuck him. So he tried to make her pay.
And all he really did was fuck himself.
So Theo goes along with Abbie’s every demand. And enjoys the perks of being a couple.
At least in public.
Because when they’re alone?
Abbie makes no bones about it - Theo is hers.
Hers to play with.
Hers to cuckold.
Hers to use for her own ends and to destroy if and when she feels like it.
She has the power. She knows his secret and she holds it over him, a metaphorical gun to his head.
And Theo goes along with it.
Right up until the moment when Etta congratulates him on passing math. Right up until that moment when she hugs him and thanks him for being her friend, even after she broke his heart.
It’s in that moment when fourteen-year-old Theo figures out the lesson that seventeen-year-old Theo will remember as Lauren lays down the law about Vashti.
Because he sees Abbie watching him and Etta in the hall. And he knows, he sees the jealousy and the anger dancing across her face.
And he knows she won’t blow up his spot. She won’t rat him out. Not if it means losing her position.
But someday? Some day, there will be a better position. There will be a better, faster, stronger, more popular fuckboy for Abbie to ride to the top.
And if getting to him means burning Theo alive?
Abbie won’t think twice. She won’t think once.
“I’m sorry,” fourteen-year-old Theo says softly, almost whispering into Etta’s ear. “I’m so sorry. It was me. The pictures. The locker. I’m so -”
The slap shuts him up. It shuts him up and attracts everyone’s attention and within an hour - less than that, really - everyone knows the truth.
Theo’s family moves out of the district a month later.
And the two most lasting memories seventeen-year-old Theo has of that place?
The look on Abbie’s face as her meal ticket crashed and burned in front of him.
And the lesson his father, the cop, taught him after Theo explained it all, including the blackmail.
The same lesson he realizes tonight that Lauren’s learned all on her own.
You want to keep someone from pointing a gun at your head?
Don’t let them have any bullets to shoot.
Reagan knows that no matter how long she stares, no matter how long she stands there and lets her eyes drift over the pictures dotting the walls of the Raudenfeld-Cooper living room, they’re never going to change.
They'all always be the same.
Amy. Her friends. Her family.
Amy. Karma.
Family.
She can let her mind play back over everything that happened tonight. She can remember it - all of it, not just the painful parts - and she can know.
Amy said it.
I choose.
I choose Reagan.
Amy picked her. She - not Karma - is Amy’s girlfriend.
But the pictures aren’t about girlfriends.
They’re about family.
Reagan’s never been real sure about that last word, she’s not sure she’s ever really understood it.
Since the day her mother left, she’s not even sure she’s had one.
Yeah, there’s her dad. And her brother.
And they’re related. And they love each other. And she would die for either of them as they would for her.
But family?
She has them, her father and Glen. But having them and knowing - knowing - that they could leave at any moment…
Like her mother. Like Lauren’s mom, in a way.
Like Amy’s dad.
For Reagan, that’s what family does.
It leaves.
And now, this little makeshift family that she’s made - her and Amy and Lolo and Shane and Theo - this little family is breaking.
And it terrifies her. Because she doesn’t know if it can ever be put back together, not the way it was.
So Reagan looks at the pictures. She stares at the moments of Amy’s life that she’ll never know and she tries to convince herself that there won’t be another her.
That someday someone else won’t be standing in this same spot, looking at pictures from now, from next week, from a month from now, and wondering the same fucking thing.
And who is she kidding, really?
She’s not worried about someone else.
She’s worried about family.
Karma.
Reagan stares at the one picture, the one Farrah pointed out to her that night. The one with Jack’s arm just barely in the shot. The one where he’s holding his daughter, looking for all the world like he’ll never let go.
But he did.
Everybody does. Reagan knows that. It might be the one thing she’s certain of.
And tonight didn’t do much to convince her differently.
I choose Reagan
Those are the only words that matter.
Correction: those are the only words that should matter.
And Reagan wishes - God, how she wishes - that they really were.
But there were the other words. The ones from Liam. The ones from Karma.
Even now, the ones from Lolo.
Reagan doesn’t want Lauren’s secret for herself. And she gets why Lauren wants to tell the truth.
But it’s one more crack. It’s one more thing that her little family had that will be gone.
And every little crack?
It just makes all those other words ring so much louder in her head.
Makes them almost deafening in her heart.
And Reagan isn’t even a little bit sure how she’s going to stop hearing them.
“I wonder sometimes,” Farrah says softly, slipping up behind her, “how much different things would have been if Jack had stayed.”
Reagan finds her eyes drifting to that picture again. To that little bit of him, the only part of Amy’s father she’s ever seen or probably ever will see.
She wonders, just for a second, how much you can tell about someone from just their arm.
The grip should tell you something, right? The way Jack wraps his arm around Amy, holding her so tightly, like she’s leaning out over the edge of a steep-drop fucking cliff instead of a birthday cake.
Amy holds her like that. Whether it’s wrapping her arms around her or even clutching her hand.
In Amy’s grasp, Reagan feels like she’s wrapped up in the softest, smoothest, strongest and most perfect steel ever forged.
She feels invulnerable. Like nothing can ever hurt her.
And every time - every fucking time - that scares her a little more.
Because Reagan knows.
Safety is family.
And family… well…
“Do you think it would have been different?” she asks Farrah, and she really doesn’t know what answer she wants to hear.
Farrah shrugs lightly and Reagan can just see the movement out of the corner of her eye.
“I think,” she says, “that it would have been different for Amy. Jack would’ve handled some… things… better than I did.”
Reagan doesn’t have to ask.
Things.
Karma. Amy coming out. Amy’s heartbreak.
Tonight.
“I think you’ve done a pretty good job,” Reagan says. She can’t pull her eyes from the photo, but she reaches out, blindly, and takes Farrah’s hand.
Amy’s mother squeezes the younger girl’s fingers tightly. “Thank you,” she says. “But we both know that’s just so much bullshit.”
Reagan arches an eyebrow at the language - she’s never heard Farrah say so much as 'damn’ before - but says nothing.
“I’ve messed up with Amy more than I’ve succeeded,” Farrah continues. “And that’s just the truth. Recent events notwithstanding.”
And even Farrah wants to call herself on her own bullshit there. Because recent events?
One daughter comes home sobbing hysterically and locks herself in her room. The other one looking like she’s just wrapping up a three day heroin bender and bleeding all over the couch.
Recent events aren’t winning Farrah any mother of the year honors.
“From everything you and Amy have said about her father,” Reagan says, “I doubt he’d have done much better.”
Maybe, Reagan thinks, he would have just kept holding on. Too tightly.
Recent events aren’t exactly going to put Farrah in the running for mother of the year.
“From everything you and Amy have said about her father,” Reagan says, “I doubt he’d have done much better.”
Maybe, Reagan thinks, he would have just kept holding on. Too tightly.
Or maybe he would’ve just pulled Amy right down with him.
“Jack was a good father,” Farrah says. “A lousy husband and a bit of a shit as a human being, but a good father.”
I’m leaving because of you
Reagan has her doubts about the good father.
“I’ve been meaning to talk to you, you know,” Farrah says. “About your family.”
And there’s that word again.
You keep on using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Amy’s father was family. Once. Reagan’s mother was family. Once.
Karma was family.
Farrah lets go of Reagan’s hand and moves closer to the pictures. She tilts one slightly, adjusting it just so.
“I understand from Amy that it’s just you and your dad and your brother, right?”
Reagan nods. It’s been years of people describing her family like that and it still makes her feel like her mother’s dead and not just living across town.
“Well,” says Farrah, “this week is Thanksgiving. And it just so happens that it’s our year to host.”
Reagan nods, again, cause she’s got nothing else to do being as lost as she is right now.
Farrah adjusts another picture, running a finger along the top of the frame and frowning at the dust she collects.
“I was wondering… well… hoping, really,” she says, turning back to face Reagan, “that you and your family would come to dinner. On Thanksgiving, I mean.”
“What?”
Reagan doesn’t want or mean to sound rude. Or ungrateful. Or anything like that. So she tries again.
“I’m sorry,” she says, “but… what?”
Farrah laughs lightly and the sound of it - so much like Amy when she giggles at something and thinks no one is watching her - does something to Reagan’s heart.
Something that’s almost enough to drown those other words out.
“Theo didn’t tell me much about what happened tonight,” Farrah says and if the change of subject throws Reagan, she doesn’t show it. “Just that there was something with that Booker boy and Karma and some punches…”
Farrah trails off for a moment and stares back at the picture.
Jack’s hand isn’t visible.
The scraped and bruised knuckles - some from punching a wall, some from a bar fight - are hidden out of the shot.
Like father, like daughter, it would seem.
“I know whatever it was, it put a strain on you and Amy,” she says, finally. “I could see that even without Theo.”
Reagan shuffles in place, eyes cast down to the floor.
Those words in her heart are getting louder by the second.
“I don’t want to know the rest,” Farrah says and this time Reagan can’t hide the surprise on her face. “I don’t want to know something I can’t 'un-know’, something I can’t forget.”
Reagan…
The younger girl gets that idea. Really, she does.
Farrah glances back at the pictures, eyes drifting from one shot to another, so many with Karma and Amy together.
And then, it’s like she’s read Reagan’s mind.
“Karma is Amy’s family,” Farrah says. “And whether it’s tomorrow or a week from now or next year… someday Karma Ashcroft is going to come walking up to my front door and she and Amy will be thick as thieves and best friends all over again.”
Deafening. Those words in her heart are absolutely fucking deafening.
Farrah looks at Reagan, staring into the younger girl’s eyes. “I know that scares you,” she says. “But it’s a fact, Reagan. As sure as the sun will rise and someday we’ll all die.”
Reagan doesn’t know what to say. She doesn’t know what to feel.
Farrah steps closer and takes both Reagan’s hands. “But Amy’s here. Now. Tonight,” she says. “Do you understand what that means?”
I choose
I choose Reagan
Reagan nods, slowly.
“Before tonight, I never would have imagined Amy ever walking away from Karma for any reason, certainly not by her own choice.”
For someone who doesn’t know what happened, Farrah certainly knows.
“Amy’s never been good at letting people in,” Farrah says. “She’s always afraid they’re going to leave.”
Reagan doesn’t wonder why. Not even a little.
“And I know… well… I'm guessing, you’ve got a bit of that fear in you too, Reagan,” Farrah says. “And you can spend the rest of your life waiting. Waiting for the moment Karma comes skipping back into Amy’s world. Waiting for the moment Amy leaves.”
Reagan’s pretty sure that’s exactly what she’s going to do. But she doesn’t want to. “Or…?”
Farrah smiles and for the first time in a very long time - longer than she’d like to think about - Reagan, for just a split second, doesn’t miss her mom.
“Or you can remember,” Farrah says. “You can remember that Amy’s here, now. That it’s you she wants. You she let in.”
Reagan blinks back tears and wonders - not for the first time - if her mother is as good with her other kids as Farrah is with two girls that aren’t even really hers.
“Amy forgives Karma every time,” Farrah says, “because she never leaves. And no one else has ever done that for her. So, you can wait and worry. Or you can bring your dad and brother to Thanksgiving to meet the rest of the family.”
Farrah pulls Reagan to her, wrapping the younger girl up in her arms.
And, for Reagan, it’s that same perfect, comforting, loving steel.
“Come to dinner,” Farrah says. “And show Amy. Show her you’re not going anywhere. And you can take away the only weapon Karma has left. And even when she comes back…”
Reagan gets it.
Even when Karma comes back - and she surely will - she won’t be coming back to just Amy.
She’ll be coming back to family.
Their family.
There are, in truth, a lot of things that Amy does well.
She’s a hell of a friend. Loyal. Trustworthy. Caring.
Just ask Karma.
There’s very little she won’t do for someone she cares about. She’ll listen. She’ll fight. She’ll fake being a lesbian.
Just ask Karma.
She forgives, sometimes even when she shouldn’t. She tries not to hold a grudge. She accepts apologies with ease.
Juast ask…
Yeah. You get it.
So, OK. Maybe most of the things Amy does well are Karma related. But that stands to reason - most of Amy's life has been Karma related.
Until tonight.
But even before tonight, even before - as Amy thinks of it - she broke her best friend in fucking half, Amy knows she’s been branching out. She’s been trying, really hard.
(and she means really hard. Not just her usual half assed 'Amy’ version of hard.)
She’s been trying so hard to find things she does well that have nothing to do with Karma.
Before tonight, she had a list.
She was a good sister. Maybe not great, not yet, but she was getting there.
She was making new friends. Theo. Duke. That woman at the pharmacy who sold her the morning after pill and always says 'hi’ to her every time she goes in there.
And then there’s Farrah. Maybe there still not going to be winning any 'mommy and me’ contests. But they can talk. They can laugh.
It’s been at least a month since Amy wondered if Farrah really loves her.
Progress.
And, of course, she can’t forget Reagan.
Talk about branching out. Talk about finding things you do well.
Amy’s pretty sure - or she was before tonight - that the thing she does best in this world is love that girl.
She can kiss her and she knows she does it well. She can feel Reagan’s heart race. She can hear Reagan’s moans.
She can make her laugh. Even when it’s something as simple as Amy not knowing some new and trendy thing girls her age are supposed to know in their DNA.
(Like Amy was supposed to know 'on fleek’ was a thing.)
(Seriously. 'Fleek’? Really?)
She can, every once in a while, find a way to make Reagan swoon.
I don’t need a movie, Reagan. I just need you.
And the best part? Amy doesn’t have to try for any of it. It comes natural It’s like breathing or finding the best documentary on Netflix or hating Liam.
She doesn’t have to think about it. She doesn’t have to remember to do it or work at it.
It comes naturally.
Or it did.
Until tonight.
Amy gets the feeling that if she ever thinks about it - really sits down and considers it all - she’ll find herself saying 'until tonight’ a lot.
She can run down that list in her head.
Emotionally devastated sister? Check.
Going off on her other best friend for every single tiny thing he’s ever done that pissed her off even a little? Check.
Punching her best friend’s boyfriend? Check.
And… double check.
She hit the fuckboy twice.
(so, maybe the night wasn’t a total loss.)
And, of course, let’s not forget the highlight of the night, Amy’s moment of crowning glory.
Accidentally making her girlfriend - that one she loves so easily - think that she’d broken up with her.
For Karma.
In front of half the school.
Including a somewhat - OK, more than somewhat - gloating Karma.
Check. Check. And check.
Amy’s been branching out. But tonight she feels more like the tree just fucking landed on her.
And maybe that’s why - more than anything else - Amy doesn’t want Lauren to do this. Why she so desperately wants her sister to email Vashti and tell her the whole thing was a big misunderstanding.
Amy wants one win tonight. She wants one check in the success column.
She wants - more than anything - to protect Lauren.
The way Lauren tried to protect her.
The way she did try to protect Lauren. Even if it was a little too late. A little too after the fact.
A little less protection and a lot more revenge.
Amy knows she had her chance, knows that the opportunity was there.
She could have stepped between them. She could have cut Liam off before he opened his fuckboy mouth. She could have punched the words 'science project’ right back down his throat.
Could have. Could have.
If she could have stopped looking at Karma. And thinking about Karma. And dealing with Karma.
Seems like even Amy’s failures have everything to do with Karma.
And she knows Lauren won’t say it And Theo won’t say it - even if that is out of his guilt, more than a lack of hers - and even Reagan won’t say it.
But Amy can feel it. She can feel it radiating off all of them like they’re all mini-Chernobyls, all scorched Earth that she ruined in just one night.
Amy knows the truth. She failed. She failed in epic fashion.
And for all the things she does well, if there’s one thing Amy doesn’t do well at all - like not even a little - it’s failure.
Especially when it’s failing the ones she loves.
I’m leaving because of you.
Wonder where she gets that from…
So now it’s like three in the morning and she’s just sitting in the hall staring at Lauren’s locked bedroom door.
(She tried the bathroom a couple hours ago. Twice. Locked.)
(Lauren learned.)
Theo’s gone to bed in the guest room, refusing to leave - thought it was mostly a plaintive begging kind of refusal, the kind Farrah couldn’t help but whip out pillows and blankets for - and Amy suspects (or maybe just hopes) that he’s still going to try and talk Lauren out of it in the morning.
Farrah’s out too. She padded by Amy about an hour ago. She told her not to stay up too late.
“It’ll be OK,” she said, running one hand gently over Amy’s shoulder.
Amy knows that’s a load of crap and she’s pretty sure Farrah does too.
Though she does appreciate the effort.
But Amy doesn’t really think she believes in OK anymore. She used to. Really, she did.
And then she watched Lauren crumple in Theo’s arms. She watched the strongest woman she’s ever known break like a China doll.
And she watched Liam hit the floor like he’d been shot. And Karma break so badly she had to lean on Shane - Shane - for support.
And then there was Reagan.
Reagan…
Amy’s pretty sure she has all the reasons in the world for not believing in OK anymore.
She doesn’t even know where Reagan is. Amy thought they were better. She thought they’d at least established that they were still a 'they.’
That together, they’d stepped away from the edge.
Except then, right after Lauren laid it all out for them, Reagan had talked to Farrah. And Amy has no idea what they said, but she knows it made Reagan cry and then disappear outside for a few minutes and then…
And then nothing. Amy hasn’t seen her since.
Amy knows she should go and find her. She knows she should go downstairs and find Reagan wherever the hell she is and get it out of her.
What did Farrah say? Why was she crying? Why is she avoiding her?
Are they going to be OK?
Amy knows she should stop staring at the door and go and find her girlfriend.
But, honestly?
She’s not sure she can handle on more failure tonight.
So when Reagan appears at the top of the stairs, the overnight bag she always keeps in her truck sling over her shoulder, Amy can’t help it.
The tears come. And Amy doesn’t think they’re ever gonna stop.
She can’t see through the blurry watercolor mess that is her vision, but Amy hears the bag hit the floor and Reagan’s quick steps across the hall and then Amy is in her arms and Reagan’s whispering softly in her ear.
Amy can ’t hear any of it. She can’t hear a single word her girlfriend is saying. But even the feel of Reagan’s breath against her ear and the soft murmur of her voice is enough.
Just enough to make Amy wonder if she might be able to believe in OK again after all.
Reagan can feel it. She can feel the desperation racing through Amy’s body like blood pumping from her heart.
It’s in the sobs. The way the tears just won’t stop coming. The way Amy’s hiccuping them out against Reagan’s shoulder.
It’s like every bit of this night, every bit of the pain and the fear and the fucking rage, is just tumbling out of her.
And Reagan knows. It’s not just tonight.
It’s in the way Amy’s hands are clutching at her, bunching the fabric of her shirt between her fingers and then Amy’s tugging at it, pulling it free of the jeans and her hands are under the shirt, ghosting across Reagan’s skin and the older girl shudders beneath Amy’s touch.
And then it’s Amy pulling away. Her hands flying out from under the shirt and fumbling in her lap. Her lips muttering 'sorry. sorry.’ through the sobs.
She thinks she did wrong. Reagan can see it in the way Amy won’t look at her. The way she’s staring down at her hands like she wishes she could burn them off.
Amy thinks she’s lost the right. The right to touch Reagan. To feel her. To let her hands roam and wander and explore.
Reagan can’t believe she didn’t see it before.
Amy thinks - no matter what they said in the living room - that she’s lost her.
And that?
Well, that’s one step too fucking far. That’s one last thing this night is threatening to take and Reagan’s just not fucking having that.
She stands, holding out both her hands for Amy, grateful when the blonde finally takes them and lets Reagan pull her to her feet.
Reagan’s seen enough wounded animals - and enough wounded people - to know that look in Amy’s eyes.
She’s waiting. Waiting for the shoe. The bomb. The hammer to fall.
So Reagan drops the other shoe.
She kisses her. Slowly. Deeply. Reagan lets her lips speak the words her voice can’t seem to find.
I love you.
I love you.
She pulls back for a moment, letting herself gaze into Amy’s eyes, checking. Is the fear still there? Is she still scared.
Yes. And yes.
It’s fading. But it’s there.
Reagan tips her head against Amy’s, letting their foreheads rest against each other, even as she reaches behind the younger girl and turns the knob, slowly opening the door to Amy’s room.
She takes both of Amy’s hands - again - and leads her into the room, kicking the door shut behind them. Reagan drops the blonde’s hands for a moment, just long enough to lock the door.
“Reagan?”
The older girl doesn’t respond, not with words. She cups Amy’s cheeks in her hands and presses a soft kiss to her girlfriend’s lips. And then another. And another.
Reagan lets her tongue dance along Amy’s lips, slowly tracing the curves and ridges and the feel of them - the feel she’s come to know so well.
She’s memorized them. She’s kissed them so often and for so long that she knows every single inch of Amy’s lips. Knows the spots the drive Amy mad, the spots that make her open up and let Reagan in.
Reagan feels Amy tremble in her arms and that - that one simple sensation - elicits a moan from the older girl, one that rumbles up through her throat and vibrates across Amy’s lips.
And Reagan’s suddenly aware of Amy’s hands on her hips. Pulling her closer, pulling the flush.
And there’s another moan - or something a little closer to a growl - and Reagan can feel Amy smile into the kiss. A little one. A smirk.
Reagan breaks the kiss and leans back, arching one brow at her girlfriend.
“You like that, don’t you?” she aks. “You like knowing what you do to me.”
Amy says nothing. But her hands tighten on Reagan’s hips, pulling her closer. Impossibly close.
And Reagan moans again as their hips collide and Amy smirks again.
Sometimes, Reagan realizes, she can be a cocky little shit.
The older girl pulls her hips back, creating just enough separation to reach down to the button of her own jeans, to pop it loose and slide the zipper down.
“You want to know?” she asks Amy, the husk in her voice betraying her own excitement. “You really wanna know what you do to me?”
Amy can only nod as Reagan takes her hand and slowly - so fucking slowly - guides it inside her jeans, pressing Amy’s fingers against the outside of her panties - already so soaked they may as well not even be there.
It’s a first for them. They’ve been naked together, but only in the faint light of one small lamp. Hands have wandered, but only for the briefest of touches, never lingering, never really feeling.
It’s a first. And when Amy pulls her hand free, when she tugs it out from between Reagan’s legs, the dark haired girl thinks - fears - maybe she’s gone too far, too fast.
But when Amy returns the hand - immediately - this time inside Reagan;s underwear, two fingers gliding through her folds?
OK. Maybe not too far. And definitely not too fast.
Reagan feels her knees buckle as Amy brushes her fingers against her clit - and holy fuck if two fingers just doing that is enough to buckle her, Reagan knows she’s in trouble.
“I do that?” Amy asks, her fingers exploring and roaming and the unexpected touches are driving Reagan up the fucking wall. “I do that to you?”
Normally, Reagan finds Amy’s innocence and lack of confidence kind of adorable. Right now?
Right now she doesn’t fucking care. Not as long as Amy never stops touching her like that.
“You’ve made me wet every time I’ve ever seen you,” Reagan says, truthfully - something about the way Amy keeps 'accidentally’ finding her clit makes it impossible for her to lie.
“Every time?” Amy asks and Reagan can’t help wondering if the blonde has even realized the way her other hand is pressing down on the outside of her own jeans, rubbing small circles, almost mimicking the way she’s moving against Reagan’s wetness.
“Every. Fucking. Time.” Reagan breathes. The words come out in hitched gasps as Amy has decided to focus almost exclusively on her clit, flicking it gently with her thumb before rubbing it slow, deliberate circles.
“The first time I saw you,” Reagan says, her hands finding the waist of Amy’s jeans. “At Booker’s party. I wanted to pin you up against the wall of that storage room and kiss you for like three, four days.”
Amy’s eyes widen and Reagan isn’t sure if it’s her words or the hand she’s slipped between the blonde’s legs that do it.
“And then at the rave,” she says. “You in that dress, getting all flirty with me.”
Reagan slides two fingers through Amy’s folds, teasing them against her girlfriend’s entrance.
“I didn’t want to kiss you then,” she says.
“No?” Amy gasps out the word as Reagan lets her thumb brush against her clit - turnabout is fair play after all - and the blonde can’t help the way her hips buck at her girlfriend’s touch.
Reagan leans forward, her cheek presses against Amy’s as she whispers into the younger girl’s ear.
“Nope,” she says. “I wanted to fuck you. Kind of like this.” Reagan punctuates the thought by slowly sliding one finger inside Amy, using her free arm to brace her now slightly wobbly on her feet girlfriend.
“Though,” Reagan says as she curls that one finger inside Amy, bringing a whimper from her girlfriend’s throat, “I really would have preferred to do it with my tongue.”
And that does it. That breaks the dam. Amy pulls her hand free and uses both of them to pull at the hem of Reagan’s shirt and then push at the waistband of her jeans and then to cup her face and pull her in for a kiss that.. well…
Reagan’s heard about those small orgasms. The 'little deaths’. She’s never really believed in them.
Until now.
She tugs her own hand free and guides Amy closer to the bed, pushing her back onto it. Amy stares at up at her from the mattress, watching as Reagan pulls her top off and then her bra, both of them ending up somewhere scattered on Amy’s floor.
Amy can’t get her jeans off fast enough. She can barely control her shaking hands as she pulls her shirt off and unclasps her bra.
She’s not sure if she’s that turned on
(OK, she knows she's past being that turned on)
or if she’s trying to go fast to avoid the shyness, the insecurity that she knows will settle in any moment.
Staring at Reagan’s body doesn’t help.
Her girlfriend, Amy quickly decides now that she can really see her, is a fucking goddess.
And then the worry does come. The fear. The feeling of inadequacy. How can she measure up? Why would someone like Reagan want someone like her?
Reagan sees it. She knows it. She reaches out with her hand, tucking a finger under Amy’s chin and tilting the blonde’s head back so they can look in each other’s eyes.
And - just as Reagan hoped - Amy sees it. She sees the lust, the raw fucking naked need, in Reagan’s eyes.
Amy may not understand it. She may never understand it.
But she can’t deny it.
Reagan wants her.
Reagan wants her. In the worst fucking way.
Amy sits up, reaching for Reagan, but the older girl pushes her back down onto the bed, gently guiding her to the edge of the mattress, her ass resting against the edge and her legs dangling to floor.
Even as inexperienced as she is, the sight of Reagan dropping to her knees between her legs is a pretty big tip off for Amy. She knows what’s coming. And she only has one concern.
“What about you?” she asks.
Reagan knows there will be time - so much fucking time - for Amy to learn about mutual pleasure and returning the favor.
That’s not what this is about.
Reagan leans in, resting her head on Amy’s thigh as her eyes dart back and forth between Amy’s face and the dripping wet feast before her.
“Not tonight,” Reagan says. The heat of her breath against Amy’s skin sends a shiver up the blonde’s spine.
Reagan drops fully to her knees, her hands slipping under Amy, cupping her ass and lifting the blonde to her waiting mouth.
“Tonight?” Reagan asks, her eyes staring up at Amy’s face.
“Tonight,” she says again, emphasizing the word with one long slow lick from the bottom of Amy’s puss