A/N: I really need to stop tweaking these when I go to post them. My goal was to end this last week, on the two year ‘anniversary’ of chapter one. So, that didn’t happen. Partly because of real life and partly because I had more ideas when I went back to what I’d written and so now there’s 9k words instead of 4k. But it’s almost done, I think. (Emphasis on think)
Previous Chapters
Seven Years Ago
It’s all about the shock.
Yup. Shock. That’s it, that’s Amy’s reason, that’s her excuse. Shock is her story and she’s totally sticking to it. That word… that no… it was said in surprise, in amazement, in a state of complete and abject fucking… shock.
(See? Story and sticking to it.) (Woot Amy!)
She never saw it coming and, really - if we’re gonna be, you know, picky about it - since she said that… word… (no) (she said fucking no) before Reagan asked, well, then she didn’t actually see it or hear it cause, you know, it never actually came.
So, really - if we’re gonna be picky (again) - Amy didn’t actually say no cause you can’t say no if you were never asked, right?
Right.
“No?”
Apparently, Reagan doesn’t quite see the… right… of it all.
But Amy does see, she sees oh so fucking clearly.
She sees that this? This is it, this is that… moment, her moment. This is her chance (cue inspirational music swelling up in the background), her second chance - and probably her last, if she’s reading those eyebrows right - to fix it, to make it better, to put right what she just managed, in such an ‘only Amy’ kind way, to put wrong.
This?
This is an opportunity, that’s what this is. It’s an opportunity come a knock knock knockin’ on her door. It’s a voice (that too), and it’s calm and it’s soothing and it’s reassuring - so, you know, it’s totally not hers - and it’s speaking to her, whispering in her ear, telling her just the right words to say and she’s totally not wondering where that voice was five minutes ago.
But it’s here now, so she should, you know, probably listen to it, she should probably pay attention to what it’s saying.
Reagan. That's what it’s saying. Remember how much she means to you, remember how much you’ve been through, every storm you’ve weathered. From Hurricane Karma to Typhoon Jack, from the miserable downpours of Tropical Storm Liam to the ferocious F- 5 winds of Tornado Lucy. Remember - if you can - the last time it was even possible for you to imagine a life without Reagan, it says. Remember every moment since that little DJ cart bumped against your hip and you heard the words that changed your life forever.
“You’re saying no?”
(Ugh) (Dammit, Reagan, she's trying here!)
No, not those words, it says (whispers) (and yes, Amy’s aware she’s talking to herself without actually, you know, talking.) It was those other words - 'Shrimp Girl?’ and 'you should come up and visit me later’ - and, let’s be real, it says to her, even back then you didn’t hear those words so much as you heard angels singing (an entire choir) (with a 'hallelujah’ soaring out from every throat) (all of them sounding suspiciously like Lauren and Shane) and there were harps playing and the sun was shining and there was a voice in your head (another one) (you might need to get that looked into) and it was saying 'go, go, go, climb girl, climb!’
Yes, that’s cheesy. And silly. And sappy and the sort of thing Amy would expect from Karma and not her subconscious and it’s all very 'oh, give me a fucking break.’
But when she looks at Reagan - even pissed off, kinda rejected, ready to blow and not in the good way that Amy makes her do with her tongue Reagan - Amy still hears the angels (every time) and she still hears the harps (once in a while, usually when she’s ready to blow) and the sun is always shining.
(They live in Texas. It’s not that uncommon.)
See, the voice says, nothing has changed. And it’s right. Nothing has changed for Amy, except for everything, except for her and the person she is and, maybe, the resolve she has to be the person she’s always wanted to be, the one that maybe she forgot for a little while (between 'let’s be lesbians’ and, you know, actually being one) but no matter how many angels she hears and no matter how many harps play, Amy knows that that box (that she hasn’t opened) and that question (that she hasn’t heard) and that word she can’t imagine not saying (the one she didn’t) would change everything in every way
And she’s just not ready for that yet.
So, she nods. “I’m saying no.”
That’s her story. And she’s sticking to it.
Seven Years and Three Months Ago
There have been a good many things Lauren’s imagined - sorry, visualized (if you visualize it, you'll be it) - that she would someday become.
A Yale graduate at twenty-two, still on track. Master’s by twenty-four, elected to her first local government position - Austin City Council, probably - by twenty-six, on her way to a spot in the Dallas statehouse by twenty-nine.
She’d take a year off in there, in the middle, for marriage. To Theo (duh) as if her schedule would leave her any time for breaking in a new husband-to-be. Plus, Theo is sweet and good and kind and he seems to be keeping up his end of the loving her for exactly who she is and not being an asshole bargain, so she guesses she’ll keep him.
She could do worse.
(Or so she thinks.) (Then.)
It will be a small, intimate November ceremony. She’s had November 4 pegged as her date since, well, since she was old enough to understand calendars and marriage. Bruce will walk her down the aisle and Amy, Farrah, and Reagan will stand beside her as she takes her vows. They’ll all look fantastic, of course. None of that craptastically hideous colored taffeta bridesmaids bullshit here.
Not that any of them will look as good as her, but that’s kinda the point, right?
“That's it? That's all?” Amy asked her once, during a girl’s lunch with Karma and Reagan and Lucy and, even though that particular lunch was pre 'the kiss’ (Karma and Lucy) and post 'the reconciliation’ (Karma and Amy) and somewhere in the middle of the 'we don’t hate each other but we’re so not friends’ (Karma and Reagan and is anyone else sensing a theme here?), it was still just about as awkward as you’d expect.
“Yeah,” Karma chimed in - which she only did when Amy led the way cause she was still pretty much terrified to speak otherwise - “no twenty piece orchestra?”
“I was expecting at least three hundred people,” Reagan said. “And at least like… two hundred of them we wouldn’t even know.”
“Butlered hors d'oeuvres,” Lucy added, to wildly enthusiastic nods from the other three. “And bubbly! Like two grand a bottle champagne, just for toasts!”
Oh, those girls. Those silly, silly, so uninformed and God, they all better hope Lauren agrees to plan their weddings someday girls.
“First of all,” Lauren said, calmly poking her fork through her pasta alfredo - it was her carb cheat day and it was a Friday and she wanted it so you can just STFU, alright? - “everyone knows an orchestra? Not worth a damn if it’s less than thirty and for a November wedding, that would just be ostentatious.”
Lauren pretended not to notice Karma - and Lucy and Reagan - Googling 'ostentatious’ on their phones, under the table.
Amy didn’t have to. She lived with her. She was used to the vocabulary.
“Secondly,” Lauren said as she reached over and speared a bite of Amy’s chicken cordon bleu off her plate (cheat day, remember?), “it wouldn’t matter if I didn’t know any of those people because they would know me. And third, a sit down dinner is the only way to go.” She stabbed another bite of chicken, ignoring Amy’s 'I was eating that’ glare. “Butlered hors d'oeuvres are so 2015 and I hate champagne.” She reached again and Amy blocked an effort at a third bite, which might not have been her best choice. “Besides,” Lauren said, “if I recall correctly, some of us don’t handle the bubbly so well.”
Karma and Reagan both choked on their waters and Amy stared daggers at her sister - but didn’t block any more bites - and Lucy felt confused and left out.
Not that that was new. It was pre 'the kiss’, after all, and that was when she really joined the team. Apparently, as Lauren would say later, post 'the kiss’, “you’re just not one of us till you make out with one of us.”
Plus, Lauren pointed out, returning to her own meal, not everything in life has to be big or about being the best or the brightest or the most. “All that matters,” she said, “is the right people standing next to you and the right man -”
“Or woman.”
(She was never sure which of the other four said it the fastest.)
“Right, or woman,” Lauren amended, “standing across from you.”
She was right, of course. And, maybe, if she’d had the right man standing across from her the first time, well…
But back to her schedule. Once that year - which was the absolute minimum it would take for planning and prepping and, you know, the actual marrying - it would be time to get back on track and that meant State Senator by thirty-two, Senator Senator by thirty-five and that, she said, was the magic number.
“Kids?” Lucy asked.
“President,” Lauren replied. “It would be sooner but, you know, the law and all that.”
Lauren had it all laid out in her head - and in her dream journal, tucked under her mattress, with three tiny padlocks on it and a note on the cover reminding anyone that found it that she most likely knew something horrible about them and she wasn’t afraid to use it - and it was, if she did say so herself, perfect.
Maybe not everything has to be about being the best and brightest and most. But not everything doesn’t either.
Of course, like any plan - perfect or otherwise - there were interruptions. Hiccups, if you will. For Lauren, those started years ago. Her mother’s death was the first.
And always the worst. Always.
Her father’s string of increasingly poor romantic decisions following her mother’s death had been the second. And the third. And the fourth. And when he had dragged her - kicking and screaming and vowing legal action - to Austin and to Farrah and to Amy and Hester and all the rest, Lauren had been convinced her life had turned into one never ending hiccup.
But then came Karma. And that did nothing to change her mind. And then came Shane and Liam and yup, one big fucking hiccup. But then, when she was least expecting it, came Amy and Reagan and Theo and, eventually - like the longest eventually in history - Karma and Shane and Lucy and, well, then Lauren had to admit that even with all the visualizations in the world?
She’d never seen a family coming.
But of all things Lauren had ever imagined herself being or, even, of the ones she hadn’t, the one she most never saw coming?
Karma’s sidekick.
Which brings us back to the Ashcroft plan du jour.
“Engaged?” Seriously? Like as in 'getting married' engaged?“
Karma nods and Lauren frowns cause, let’s be honest, she knows that nod now. She knows it far too fucking well.
“Oh, no,” Lauren says, almost leaning across the table in the back corner of Planter’s that, somehow, has become their table and it’s not like there’s a 'reserved for Amy, Reagan, Lauren, Karma, Lucy, Shane, Theo and anyone else they like’ sign on it, but there may as well be, and she fixes Karma with her most… Lauren look. “Don’t you even.”
“Don’t I even what?” Karma asks, her eyes focused on the table or her milkshake or, you know, pretty much anywhere that isn’t the towering - even in her tininess - blonde across the table.
“Don’t you give me that 'my mind is made up and I’m doing it whether you’re on board with it or not but please, please, please be on board so when it all goes to shit I’m not in a fucking world of trouble all by myself’ nod, Ashcroft.
It comes out in one rushing breath and Lauren has to steal a quick sip of Karma’s shake before she can speak again and that gives Karma an opening, which she instinctively knows is most likely the only one she’s gonna get.
"I don’t have a 'my mind is made up…’ whatever the hell else you said, nod,” she says, even if she knows full well that's exactly what she has. “I have a nod, just the same as everyone else does.”
Head up. Head down. Head up, you’re so not gonna convince me, head down, that I shouldn’t scheme my best friend and her girlfriend into marriage. A marriage that is legal now, you know, but that’s not in the nod, so…
Karma returns her attention to the table, to the paper and the pen in her hand just above it. It’s purple - the pen - and the paper is pink, like sickening tummy coating for when you ate too much the night before pink.
Lauren’s only slightly jealous that she doesn’t have stationary just like it. “Bullshit,” she says, reaching across the table and plucking the pen from Karma’s hand. She can’t plan if she can’t write. “That’s the same nod you gave me when you decided you were going to talk to Lucy about the kiss.”
Karma’s eyes go wide - like super poorly drawn by a fifth grader anime wide, like 'holy fuck you mentioned that in public and Vashti is sitting like two tables over and I don’t wanna end up on the front page of the tumblr again’ wide - and she grabs for the pen but Lauren keeps it just out of reach. “We agreed to never speak of… that… again,” Karma hisses.
“No,” Lauren says. “You agreed.” She smiles that smile Karma knows too well and the other girl drops her head into her hands. “I just nodded. Same as everyone -”
“I get it,” Karma mumbles, cutting Lauren off. “Fine. I have a nod.” She reaches down and fumbles through her purse, resting next to her chair. “And yes, for the record, engaged as in to get married and spend the rest of their lives together, which we all know they’re going to do anyway and HA!”
Karma sits back up, triumphantly holding a pen - purple, again - in her hands.
Lauren snatches it away and she thinks - for a moment - Karma might actually cry.
“You do realize how insane that is, right?” Lauren asks, but Karma refuses to answer. She just stares forlornly at her two pens, one in each of Lauren’s hands. “Amy’s eighteen. Reagan’s barely twenty-one. Half the bridal couple won’t even be able to drink at the reception.”
Yeah. Cause that’s the only reason Karma’s plan is nuts. Well… her plan to make a plan, anyway, because she hasn’t really started the plan, yet.
No pen and all.
“I didn’t say they had to get married next week, Lauren.” Karma shakes her head and glances down at her purse, trying to remember if she packed two pens or three. “I just said engaged and just before Amy and I leave for school. They can actually do the deed… whenever. After college or grad school or after Reagan gets a record deal or, you know…”
She mumbles something and Lauren has to ask her to repeat it.
Karma sighs. “I said or…afterImeetaboywho'snotatotaldoucheorsomeoneelse'sbabydaddy.”
Or notagirlwhoisalsoAmy'ssister but since we'reneverspeakingofthatagain, that goes unsaid.
And, really, when she puts it that way… “It's still fucking insane,” Lauren snaps as she taps one pen against the other.
It is insane. It’s cray cray and weird and ridiculous. You know who gets engaged in high school? Fucking weirdos and cult members, that's who. And yes, Lauren knows that Amy and Reagan are always going to be together and yes… now that she thinks of it… that is kinda sweet and super romantic and yes… now that she thinks of it again… she could throw them the most kickass combo engagement and graduation party…
“You’re thinking about it,” Karma says with a bemused little chuckle and a bemused little grin and Lauren wants to bemuse her right upside her head. “You’re actually thinking about it.”
“Am not,” Lauren says with 'pshh’. She tosses Karma’s pens back on the table. “I’m just thinking that it’s pointless for me to try and stop you because you’re going to do it anyway, just like with the -”
Karma holds up a hand - the most terrified look ever on her face - and Lauren hushes just in time as Amy drops down into the chair next to her.
“Karma’s going to do what anyway?” she asks as she reaches over with one hand to steal a pickle from Lauren’s plate and grabs Karma’s shake with the other. She looks at Karma and her slightly redder than her hair face and frowns. “Ugh,” she says, setting the shake back down without even taking a sip. “Tell me this isn’t about you and Lucy again.”
Lauren’s eyes go wider than Karma’s and they both steal quick glance at Vashti - who seems totally oblivious but oh, come on, she’s the press and that’s always how they get you - before turning back to Amy. “Wait… you know?”
Amy snaps off a bite of pickle and nods. “She kissed my sis… Lucy,” she says, speedily correcting away from using the ’s’ word in front of Lauren.
“I know what she did,” Lauren says, choosing for the moment to ignore the almost slip of the tongue and focus on the bigger picture. “But she told me. And I know she didn’t tell you so that means…” At this rate, Lauren thinks, as they widen and widen and widen, her eyes might just stretch over her head. “Lucy told you?”
The pickle finds its way back onto Lauren’s plate as Amy scoops up a handful of fries. “Not exactly,” she says. “Lucy was freaked out and she needed someone to talk to and her normal confidant was kinda out of the question.” She nods at Karma. “So, she turned… elsewhere.”
Karma slides the shake across the table without looking and Amy takes a sip.
And chews a fry.
And takes another sip.
And another fry. And reaches for the ketchup just as Lauren reaches her breaking point. “Amy!”
“What?” Amy asks, pausing mid-motion, the ketchup bottle pointed dangerously close to her white shirt and that so can’t end well. “Oh, sorry, you wanted to know?”
There’s just enough of a smirk on her face that Lauren knows that she knows and that she knows that Lauren knows and oh, what she really knows is that Amy’s gonna pay, but that's later.
“Yes,” Lauren and Karma say in unison now and yes, that’s as terrifying as it sounds.
“Fine,” Amy says, setting the ketchup down. “Lucy told Liam.” She holds up a hand at Karma’s burgeoning protest. “I know,” she says. “And Liam couldn’t manage to handle his ex making out with -”
“A kiss,” Karma interjects. “One. Singular. Uno, Un, less than two, most definitely not making out.”
Lauren and Amy both arch a brow - and Lauren’s actually looks like a question and not like she’s stroking out at the table - before Amy continues.
“Anyway… Liam couldn’t handle it so he confided in Shane.” Another hand, this time aimed at Lauren. “I know,” she says. “And Shane… well… he's Shane so, of course he couldn’t keep it to himself.”
“So Shane told you?”
“No, Shane told me," Reagan says, settling into the chair between Karma and Amy - and yes, that seating is entirely intentional - and sliding a plate full of burger and fries over to her hungry girlfriend. "Which is, basically, the same as telling Amy, so…”
They all nod cause, well, yeah.
“And BTDubs, Karm?” Amy asks. “Totes making out.”
Karma turns redder - which Lauren didn’t know was possible - and shakes her head, whipping her hair back and forth. “No,” she says, emphatically. "Not making out. One kiss and only one and why are we even talking about -“
"Judges?” Amy interrupts, turning to Lauren and Reagan. “We need a ruling. Kiss or making out?”
Lauren watches as Karma’s head drops and, as much as she sometimes misses being more enemy than friend with the girl, she does have to admit, embarrassing the hell out of her is a lot more fun this way.
“If the kiss lasts more than two minutes,” Reagan says, dipping a fry in the ketchup on Amy’s plate, “it’s making out.”
Karma says nothing.
“If the kiss involves copious amounts of tongue, particularly if said tongue is mutual,” Lauren adds, “it’s making out.”
Still silence from Karma’s side of the table.
“If,” Amy says, “the kiss involves any groping, fondling, or lingering touching of parts other than lips? It’s making out.”
“Over or under clothes?” Karma blurts before she can think better of it - like that’s not her life story in a nutshell - and now it’s Amy who gets the wide eyes and Lauren who gets the bemused little smile as she answers.
“If you gotta ask?” she laughs, “It’s making out.”
Karma sighs and picks up her pen. “Fine,” she mumbles. “It was making out and now that we’ve established that can we just, you know, never mention it again?”
“Mention what?” Lucy asks as she pulls up a chair rightnext to Karma’s and the whole table laughs.
Well, except for Karma. She’s too busy putting her head in her hands, trying - and failing, failing absolutely miserably - to cover the fact that she’s gone like Mars red and she’s only saved (and the rest of them wrecked) by Lucy.
“Ooooh,” Lucy says, almost hopping - yes, hopping - in her seat and pointing excitedly at the paper in front of Karma, apparently oblivious (which is how she gets around her) that it’s still, you know, blank. “Is that the list?”
Amy stops mid-chew, the burger - her delicious bacon and mushroom and extra extra BBQ sauce with tiny bits of onion rings spread on it burger - suddenly losing its flavor. Reagan freezes in her chair, like if she doesn’t move, it’s not really happening. And Lauren fixes Lucy with her most… Lauren… glare - which, unfortunately, Lucy is too used to getting for it to have any impact - before turning her attention to Amy.
“Sometimes,” she whispers - and they both know she means like all the time - “I really wish you were an only child.”
Ah, the list.
Or, as Reagan - and Amy and Lauren and Shane (if he was around more) and Liam (if it wasn't for him) (and even still…) - might put it: Ah, the motherfucking piece of shit I swear to God if she makes us go over it one more time I’m gonna light it… or her… on fire list.
Or, you know, something like that.
The paper in front of Karma, the one Lucy’s so helpfully pointing at, isn’t the list. The list is in Karma’s purse, for one and, for two, that paper Lucy’s pointing at was supposed to be for Karma's other pet project, the one involving more rings and church bells and rice being tossed and pretty dresses being worn and less - far, far, far less - baby booties and pacifiers and two am feedings.
Plus, it’s not the list cause, duh, it's blank. No pens, remember? “Nope,” Karma says. “Not the list.”
Didn’t we just establish that? Like back at ’duh’?
“But,” she says and that's all she has to say. Just that, just 'but’ - cause it's always the 'but’, you know - just that one word is enough to make Amy wonder if she can make it to the car before Karma gets the damn thing out and enough to make Lauren regret ever letting Karma have the pens back and enough to make Reagan… well…
Let’s just say Amy’s already slowly sliding all the cutlery away from her girlfriend’s side of the table.
It’s not that Reagan doesn’t like the list. It's not.
It’s that she hates the list. Like unreasonably and irrationally and with a fury Amy hasn’t seen in her since the last time she knocked a dude out (which wasn’t Liam but, again, that’s another story.) No one is quite sure why she hates it so much - or if Karma’s even aware that she does cause, you know, Karma - and that 'no one’ includes Reagan who, whenever she thinks about it and really, that’s not too often - chalks it up to it being a Karma-list.
See, it’s two years after rock bottom but it’s still a few years - like, eight, but no one’s counting, not just yet - before a certain moment in Planter’s when the hatchet officially gets buried once and for all and whole Reagan and Karma get along now, it’s not always… easy.
Cause, you know, Karma.
And, let’s be honest, cause Reagan too.
(Amy knows how to pick 'em.)
But, in both their defenses, they’re both trying. Karma has steadfastly avoided doing or saying anything that would even suggest she (still?) has feelings for Amy.
Things like blushing-slash-drooling when Amy changes in front of her in the locker room (but those abs) or singing unintentionally romantic songs to her from the lawn or getting annoyed when Amy spends more time with Reagan than her (a work in slow progress) or, you know, making out with a girl who might be the closest substitute to Amy she could possibly find…
oh… wait.
She’s trying. Trying doesn’t always equal succeeding, but she’s putting in the effort and that counts.
And Reagan is trying too, she’s trying so hard, so very very very hard to keep the promise she made to Amy at Lauren’s eighteenth birthday soiree.
“Yes, Amy,” she’d said as she leaned against the stairs and wished, not for the first time, that someone - read: her - had spiked the punch. “I promise. I promise I will try harder to get along with Karma and I promise that I won’t ever even wonder about you two being roomies in college, even though I’m sure you could have found any number of other nice girls to room with that I would have liked so much better, and yes, we can totally sneak upstairs and have sex while Lauren’s opening her presents.”
She might have only said that last part in her head.
Which doesn’t mean it totally didn’t happen.
“That’s all I’m asking,” Amy said or, more accurately, gasped cause, you know, out of breath from the very enthusiastic, yet remarkably quiet, present opening sex. “Just try,” she said, “and maybe… kinda… if you can… turn down the snark about everything she says, maybe just a smidge?”
Reagan wanted to protest. She so did. She even rolled over onto her side and did her best to level a Lolo-like glare at Amy as preparation for said protest. Her snark, she wanted to remind Amy, was one of her better qualities. She wanted to point out that it went - in order - her ass, her brows, her snark, her lips.
(OK, the order might be negotiable.)
She wanted to do all that. But, it turned out, one of Amy’s better qualities, a skill, really - one honed through several years of dedicated study and practice - was knowing exactly how to angle her fingers to get Reagan to do damn near anything she wanted.
A skill she put to use right then and right there, on the floor beside her bed where they would totally be out of sight if someone were to walk in.
But, unfortunately, not out of thumping heels on the floor which just happens to be the dining room ceiling and yeah, Lauren gave them a talking to later.
And so, Reagan agreed to try harder - which may or may not have been (totally was) the word she whispered-slash-moaned as Amy did her best convincing for the next few minutes if, by 'minutes’, you totally mean like an hour and yeah, they got talked to about that too. And then Amy reminded her of her agreement one last time on their way back down to the party.
Which was so not the down Reagan wanted to be going.
“If you can’t say something nice,” Amy said, with one eye on Karma who was standing lonely and uncomfortably by the front door and so not obviously avoiding Lucy and yeah, Amy was gonna have to talk to one or the other of them about that. Maybe. Probably not. “Then, at least,” she said to Reagan as she kissed her on the cheek and went off to find her sister - the one not likely to make out with her best friend - “try not to say anything that’s, you know, outright mean.”
Reagan nodded. But that was easier said than… well… said.
But she did try. She tried and she tried and she reminded Amy, on the fucking regular, that she was trying. And, honestly, she did a pretty good job, usually, and, even more honestly, it wasn’t all that hard, really, cause - and this is like ridiculously honestly - Karma was sort of staring to grow on her.
Until the list.
Reagan is not a list person. Like, not even a grocery list or a 'to do’ list - why make a list that just says 'Amy’ like a thousand times? - and none of them are, not really. Lauren likes lists OK, but she prefers charts and plans and detailed methodology. And as for Amy… well… she’s like Reagan: she tries. She really really does. Years and years and years of Karma rubbing off on her - and no, not like that - have inspired her more than once to give the list thing the old college try.
And she can make one. A good one, great even. Full of details and bullets and sub-bullets and arrows and, really, Amy’s something of a list savant, a Rain man of the list, as it were.
But then, she forgets. Like, all of it. She forgets why she was making the list and she forgets why she put things where she put them on the list and, more often than she’d like to admit, she forgets where she put the list.
“If I need a list to find my list,” she says, “it’s too much fucking work.”
So, the lists are all a Karma thing and, again, that might not be too bad, even for Reagan, except for this list. Oh, this list… it sucks.
And oh, it should be noted - probably - that this list? It’s the official list of possible names for little baby Booker. Or, as Reagan has come to refer to it: The Spawn.
What? She didn’t say Hellspawn. Or Spawn of Satan. Or little fucker what gonna get birthed cause big fucker couldn’t keep his little fucker locked away and now there’s gonna be another one of them - Bookers - and, really, is that too long for the list?
It probably is. Even if it is entirely accurate.
Amy’s sick of the list and she’s been sick of it since the first time Karma pulled it out (which, maybe, is what Liam should have done) (oh, like you weren’t thinking it) and asked her what she thought of 'Caroline’. Amy’s sick of it and Lauren tolerates it, mostly just so she can continue to put her two cents in cause no decision, not even the naming of The Spawn, should be done without two Cooper Cents.
“Caroline is too old fashioned,” she says. “It’s 2016 Ashcroft, try and keep up.”
So, Amy’s sick of it and Lauren tolerates and Reagan… well… we covered that. And then there’s Lucy.
Lucy loves the list. Lucy is all about the list, she thinks the list is great, the list - according to her, and only her - is just fucking brilliant. Sometimes, Reagan thinks if she asked Lucy what she wants to be when she grows up?
She’d totally say the list.
And, OK, so, maybe, Lucy’s affection for the list is less about the list and more about the person making the list but Reagan (and Amy and Lauren and Theo and Shane and Farrah - especially Farrah - and even Jack) try not to think about that any more than necessary.
So, you know, like at all.
But none of them, not even Lucy, feels as… passionately… about it as Reagan does. She hates it (we might have mentioned that, but it so bears repeating.) She hates the list like she hates Jack - maybe… maybe… a little less - but unlike her hatred for him, she can’t think of any actually logical reason why. It’s not because it’s about Liam or his kid, cause all that shit with him… well… it’s not exactly water under the bridge.
But she doesn’t actively spend time wanting to drown him under the bridge, so that’s something, right? They’ve reached a sort of 'gentleperson’s agreement’. He doesn’t bother her and she doesn't punch him and that seems to be working just fine for them both.
But that list…
“It’s more scientific than you think,” Karma says as she tugs the list out of her purse because of course she has it. Reagan rolls her eyes and Amy glares at her but she can just go right on glaring cause an eye roll? Not breaking her promise, she didn't say a thing. “Naming a kid is not simple,” Karma says, smoothing the list out on the table. “You have to consider a lot of different variables.”
Like, for instance, how many other baby mamas the baby daddy is gonna end up with cause you totes don’t want any duplicates, right?
Karma taps the pink - so fucking pink - page in front of her and Amy fiddles with the straw in what has become her shake and Lauren groans and Reagan scans the table for a knife or a spoon and Goddammit Amy hid them again and Lucy…. Well…
She looks at Karma in much the same way Reagan remembers Karma looking at Amy and no, not thinking about that at all.
But there is so much to think of, Karma tells them, at least when it comes to names. There is, for example, the issue of tradition vs. modernity. Old school classics vs. new celebrity inspired hotness. Different spellings and accidental cultural appropriation and potential future siblings.
“And other kids,” Karma says with a slow, sad shake of her head. “If you don’t account for the possible meanness of other kids…”
Well, then you do something silly. Like naming your kids Karma and Zen and no, Reagan doesn’t say that out loud.
A promise is a promise.
Karma scribbles out one name and moves another one up from near the bottom of the list, staring at it in all its pinkness and she does this all the time. Every day the list is changing and every few days it’s a new piece of paper - Reagan swears each one is pinker than the last - and one day #1 is #10 and #3 is #5 and then, by the end of the week, #10 is #6 and #7 is #9 and 11 is the number of beers Reagan thinks she’s gonna need if she has to listen to Karma talk about the fucking list one more fucking time.
“What do you think,” Karma asks Amy and Lucy and Lauren - she's learned - “of Anna?”
Go away, Anna.
And take the fucking list with you.
“I like it,” Lucy says - and oh, there’s a shock - and yes, she’s totally got that 'I like it, but not as much as I like you’ look on her face that Karma either doesn’t see or doesn’t understand or, more likely, doesn’t know what the fuck to do with and you know, what?
Scratch 11. This is gonna take at least a case.
“Meh,” Lauren mutters, munching on a fry to avoid talking. (Smart girl.)
“I think it’s the name of Reagan’s first ex,” Amy says, which doesn’t really matter to anyone except her and since she’ll probably spend like no time with The Spawn, that’s really not all that important. “And,” she says, “unless you want God-daddy Shane singing 'do you wanna build a snowman’ on perpetual repeat, you should probably reconsider that one.”
Ah.. Shane.
Shane doesn’t think about the list or, truthfully, about much of anything these days. He’s too busy getting busy and no, it doesn’t help him forget the Duke dumped him and no, it doesn’t help heal his broken heart - his first and by God he swears it’ll be his last - and yes, that is totally disrupting his whole 'get over by getting under’ worldview but he’ll think of that later.
You know. When he runs out of boys. So… yeah… that might be a while.
Karma glances up from the list, looking over at Shane, sitting at the counter talking to yet another guy none of them have ever seen before and she shakes her head.
How, she wonders, could anyone ever think of Shane and father - even if it’s only Godfather - in the same sentence?
So, Anna drops from #3 to #25 and by next week she’ll be off the list. Poor, poor, poor Anna.
“Bryce?”
It’s Amy’s turn to roll her eyes and groan, Lauren sighs, and even Lucy crinkles her nose - but still with a smile - but Karma gets the hint and #5 becomes #50 (yes, fifty) on the back of the page, at the bottom and seriously…
Fifty.
Eliza (#7) and Jordan (#11) and Sansa (#26) are all quickly dismissed as too old fashioned and too pornstar and too are you fucking kidding me and Sansa but not Arya, really now? Lily - as in How I Met Your Mother and not Harry Potter because, apparently, Karma doesn’t know how to read - and Jean and Lesley and Carolyn all drop too and some others, like Jane and Vanessa and, inexplicably, Siobhan, all rise.
Kinda like that something Reagan feels in the back of her throat.
“You know,” she says, risking a comment and causing eight eyes to snap her way in shock and awe, “the baby’s not due for like three more months, right?”
She thinks it’s three months. It’s something like that, anyway, something in the general vicinity cause she remembers it’s August cause Reagan remembers August.
No matter how hard she works to forget it.
August, Reagan’s decided is her own personal hell. It’s not bad enough that it’s August in Texas and so it’s, you know, hot. But now August is a new Booker arriving and Amy…
She can’t even think it, let alone say it. Reagan can’t even get her brain to form the 'l-word’ even though she knows it’s coming, it’s getting here faster and faster and there’s nothing she can do about it or the pain, the kind she feels now even thinking about thinking about it or the kind she's gonna feel
Well. There is. But she’s not asking Amy to stay. And she’s not breaking up with her.
Reagan’s sure of that. Well… at least one of those 'that’s’. And yeah, which one changes from day to day and see, this is why she avoided dating high school girls and yes, that is why and no, it’s got nothing to do with just never happening to find one that was hot and smart and not that special brand of high school crazy, at least not until she found Amy, and yes, she knows Amy doesn't exactly fit all three.
But Reagan likes her crazy. She loves it, actually and yup… it’s gonna be hell. Total fucking hell.
“I know that,” Karma says and even Reagan - as distracted as she is - picks up on the effort the other girl puts into only saying it and not snapping it and, she supposes, she should feel kinda honored, like maybe she should stand up on the table and yell it to the world (or at least to Vashti.)
She likes me! Karma Ashcroft likes me! At least enough be semi-nice and, considering where we started, that’s like true fucking love!
Reagan stays in her seat and doesn’t move an inch. Let Vashti find her own headlines.
“But it’s important,” Karma says, tapping her finger on the list even as she picks up her fork, finally remembering she’s got a salad to eat.
A salad.
It should be noted… so fucking noted… that Karma is at Planter’s. She’s at Planter’s with Amy who’s already finished her burger and started on Reagan’s. She’s at Planter’s with Amy and Lauren - the queen of no carbs - who’s halfway through a plate of fries that would make Ronald McDonald jealous and she’s eating a salad.
With dressing on the side and oh, fuck me, sometimes Reagan really wonders what Amy sees in the girl. She really does.
“In three months, she’ll be here,” Karma says. “And she has to have a name, she can’t go around just being Baby Girl Booker cause… ugh.”
Reagan has to agree. For entirely different reasons, she’s sure, but yes. Ugh. Totes ugh. All the ugh.
“Things are changing, Reagan,” Karma says, taking a tiny tiny Jesus that’s not even a bite out of a tomato, like she’s terrified that every nibble will add another inch to her waist. “And change, it always happens faster than you think.” She gives up on the tomato - freeing it to live a healthy and never eaten life until Lucy snatches it up while Karma’s not looking - and stabs her fork into a piece of lettuce, dipping it lightly (she touched it, that's it) into that dressing on the side. “And three months from now, the baby will be here and Liam will be a dad and and Amy and I will be in New Orleans and it’ll seem like it was just yesterday when we had this conversation.”
Karma doesn’t see Amy tense, she doesn’t see the way her best friend’s grip on Reagan’s burger tightens just a hair. She doesn’t see that the bite Amy eventually takes is small, at least for her, or that she takes like a year to chew and swallow and, you know, breathe. Karma misses all that.
But Reagan doesn’t.
“Oh, that reminds me,” Karma says, that same bite of salad - touched as it was by the dressing that no one can see dripping from it - hovering in the air as she turns to Amy. “Did you check with your mom? Can she get that time off next month to go with us to visit campus? I’ve got a whole list of things we need to check out while we’re there.”
Karma shuffles aside one list as she reaches down to her purse for the other and so she misses Amy’s eyes darting to Reagan, but no one misses Reagan standing suddenly, mumbling something about need to use the restroom except those are in the back which is that way and this way - the way she's going - is nothing but the front door and she’s almost out of it when she hears Karma behind her at the table.
“Was it something I said?”
Of course it was something Karma said. In the all the years, she’s known Reagan, Karma’s pretty sure it’s always been something she said.
Though, this time - maybe for the first time - she doesn’t really know what.
“We have an agreement,” Amy says, pushing away her plate. “Me and Reagan. We don’t talk about Clement or New Orleans or August. Like ever. Like at all.”
So, that’s the what.
Lucy nods as if that makes all the sense in the world. Karma knows her well enough - and not just in the ways no one likes to think about, they do actually talk - to know that that is her total bullshit nod (everyone’s got a fucking nod), the one she gives people when she knows she’s supposed to agree but, really, she thinks they’re being total stupid idiots.
Karma would go with dumbfucks, but to each their own.
In this case though, she kinda agrees with Amy and Reagan. Karma gets it. Head in the sand, don’t talk about it, just pretend it isn’t happening and yeah, that hurts like hell in the end, but in the meantime?
In the meantime you Facebook stalk your best friend’s new girlfriend and storm over to said best friend’s house determined to reclaim your rightful place and end up with an eyeful of something you can’t ever unsee and so, yeah, maybe Lucy’s got a point.
Karma tries to apologize - oh, look, something new - but Amy waves her off. “Not your fault,” she says. “You didn’t know and you couldn’t have since, you know, no talking about it.”
Still, Karma could have known, if she’d just thought about it for like half a second. Or if, you know, she was Amy. But, if either of those things were true, then not only would Karma have known not to mention the 'A’ word or the 'c’ word, but then she’d also know that sometimes it’s best to just let Reagan be, to let her stew and mope a little and then try to fix it.
But Karma doesn’t know that and, even if she did know, she’s fuck all at waiting and so that’s probably (read: exactly) why she finds herself standing on the edge of Amy and Reagan’s park, silently watching the older girl swing.
“You can come in, you know,” Reagan says. “It’s a public park. I don’t actually own it or anything, though… how cool would that be?”
Karma shuffles slowly across the last bits of grass between her and that invisible line that separates the park from… not the park. She’s been here before, they all have, and she knows that things are different between her and Reagan now, but still…
“I’m sorry,” Reagan says and but still that. Karma has to lean against the slide so she doesn’t pass out from the shock. Reagan just apologized.
To her.
Karma takes a quick and, hopefully, discreet look around the park to make sure she’s not being punked. “For what?” she asks, still not quite convinced Ashton Kutcher isn’t going to pop out at any moment but, she supposes, if he brings Mila Kunis… She shakes her head and takes a couple more tentative steps forward, slipping down onto the swing next to Reagan. “I was the one who said the stupid thing. Again.”
Reagan laughs softly and Karma smiles, feeling some of the tension slowly floating away. “I shouldn’t have just left,” Reagan says. “It wasn’t you… OK… it wasn't just you.” Now, they’re on more familiar ground. “I’ve been being a bitch anyway,” she says, “about the list. Even if I haven't said it, I’ve been thinking it and I know that’s not the same, but it kinda is and either way, it isn’t fair. Not to you.”
Seriously, Ashton, where you at?
Karma’s not surprised. She knows Reagan hates the list, she’s known that all along. But Reagan never said it and so Karma didn’t either. Call it their 'gentleperson’s agreement.“
"Is it Liam?” she asks. “Is it because it’s his kid?”
Reagan stares out over the view for a long moment before slowly shaking her head. “No,” she says. “I mean, don’t get me wrong. There’s like any number of guys, like infinity number of guys whose kids I’d rather be naming. But…it isn’t about him. Or you. Or the kid.”
Karma pushes against the ground with her feet, gliding back through the air. She’s fuck all at waiting, but even she can tell - sometimes - when it's needed.
“Liam’s going to be a dad,” Reagan says, with almost a sense of reverence. “A dad. Like my dad or your dad or Bruce or… well… hopefully not like Jack.”
At least they can agree on that.
Reagan grips the chains of her swing just a little tighter. “He’s not gonna be one of us, anymore, not even in the tiny ways he has been,” she says. “He’s gonna be in this world of diapers and two am bottles and mommy and me classes where he will, hopefully, not try and pick up any of the other moms.”
Karma can’t help the tiny snort that slips out and Reagan laughs too. But they both know she’s so very right.
“Lolo’s going to Yale,” Reagan says, choking up even further on the chains. “Yale. That’s like some hardcore Gilmore Girls shit, that’s like half a country away and, let’s be real, Yale and Austin, Texas are more than half a world apart.”
They are. But if anyone can bridge the gap - or make everyone else bridge it for her - Karma knows it’s Lauren.
The chains swing free as Reagan hops down from the swing, her feet kicking up a scuffing of loose dirt from the ground. “It’s all new worlds, Karma. Liam’s a dad, Lolo’s a Yaleie, Shane’s gonna be banging his way cross the state, Theo’s off to play ball, Lucy’s gonna be out in Cali, and you and Amy…”
Head meet sand.
“New Orleans isn’t that far,” Karma says. She’s trying - trying to comfort Reagan and talk about new worlds - but It’s weak, it really is, though it’s the best she’s got and if that’s her best, well, she knows she’s in trouble.
“511.9 miles,” Reagan says, taking a few steps toward the hill overlooking all the places she used to know. “It’s a seven hour and thirty-six minute drive and the average flight takes about half that but costs about three hundred bucks.” She grinds a shoe against the grass, digging her toes into a soft spot. “With what I make now, I could probably swing once, maybe twice a semester.”
Two times in almost five months. That sucks. That sucks right out fucking loud. “There’s Thanksgiving,” Karma offers. “And I think we get like a four day weekend in October and Amy and I could easily drive home then.” She tallies it up on her fingers. “So that's at least four times,” she says. “That’s like almost once a month.”
Reagan nods cause she’s already done that math. “Yeah,” she says. “An almost once a month interruption. A once a month reminder that the world she lives in every day…” She shakes her head and shoves her hands in her pockets, trying not to let Karma see them shake. “Amy's so gonna kill it, you know. This whole college thing, she’s gonna absolutely kill it.”
Just because they haven’t talked about it, well, that doesn’t mean Reagan hasn't thought about it. And that doesn’t mean she hasn’t envisioned the world Amy’s going to be living in - nope, correction, the world Amy’s going to be thriving in - every day since that letter came, the one Amy kept a secret for weeks.
As at home as she is behind her turntables, as comfortable as she is spinning the nights away, Reagan knows Amy’s gonna smoke that in college. She’s got the brains and the curiosity and the need to… learn… and to know and to grow and all of that has been bubbling inside her, like a Coke that got shook up and it’s just waiting for some poor sucker to twist that cap so it can just fucking blow.
“It won’t happen right away,” Reagan says. “At first, we’ll talk every day,” she says. “Or text, at least. It’ll be 'morning, baby’ and then 'how’s your day, honey’ and then 'night, my love’.”
“I’m sure it will be more than that,” Karma says, slipping off her swing. “I mean, come on, you two text more than that when you’re sitting next to each other.”
“Yeah,” Reagan laughs, but it doesn’t echo like it usually does. “Maybe. At first, probably. I’m totally gonna want to hear about her day, obviously. About her classes and her homework and the crazy ass professors she’s gotta deal with.”
Karma nods. “Exactly. And she’s gonna want to hear about the fight that broke out at your DJ gig and the nasty food you had to serve at a party and how your lunch went with Farrah cause you know you’re gonna have to have like three of those a week.”
Three? Try six. Farrah’s already making reservations.
Reagan knows she’s right, she knows Karma has a point or several and that, for once, they’re actually good. But…
(Told you. Always the but.)
“But what happens when she misses a call or a text?” Reagan asks, even if it really isn’t a question and even if there’s absolutely no doubt in either of them that it would be Amy who would do the missing. “She’ll be busy with a project or a class or a club or even just friends, the kind that are, you know, actually there. And she’ll get caught up and she won’t hear her phone in her pocket and she won’t read the message until two am and by then she’ll be so tired…”
“Reagan -”
She shakes Karma off, cause she knows, she knows everything Amy’s friend - because that is what she is, above all else - would say: 'You’re looking for trouble.’ 'You know Amy will always have time for you.’ 'You know she loves you.’
Yes, she is looking and yes she knows Amy will always have time for her and of course she knows Amy loves her.
But just because you’re looking for trouble doesn’t mean it’s not there to be found. And it’s not a question of Amy having time, it’s a question of making the time and - and this is the worst, the absolute worst - so what if Amy loves her?
Jack loved Farrah. Martin loved her mother. Rebecca loved Bruce and Liam loved Karma and Brad loved Angelina and those all ended oh so well.
And really? The 'well’ part’s got nothing to do with it.
It’s the end. They ended. That’s what counts.
“Amy’s going to have a life, Karma,” Reagan says. “She’s going to have a life there and she can't… she won’t be able to keep living a life here when she's there and I wouldn’t want her to, she deserves… she deserves better than that.
There are times when Karma still wonders - just for tiny moments - if Reagan is really right for Amy, if she’s really what’s best for her.
This?
Not one of those times.
Reagan pushes past the swings, headed back toward the restaurant, even if Karma’s got no doubt that's not where she’s headed. "Reagan, wait.”
The older girl shakes her head. “That’s what Amy’s going to do,” she says. “She’s gonna wait and wait and wait to do what’s best for her. And she’s going to wait to make the hard call and she'll wait because waiting… she thinks it’ll make it easier.” Reagan pauses by the slide and braces herself against it with one trembling hand. “She’s gonna let the currents take her… take us… and let us drift and drift and drift until I’ve washed up ashore and I can’t see her anymore, out there, sailing for the new fucking world and I’m going to let her cause I can't…”
She shakes her head again and pushes off the slide and stalks up the hill and doesn’t even bother asking Karma to not say anything to Amy cause they both know even if Karma made that promise?
It’d last about ten minutes.
And worse than that?
Even if Karma broke the promise?
Nothing would change. They - Amy and Reagan - still wouldn’t talk about it and their heads would be buried neck fucking deep in that sand because Reagan can’t and Amy won’t and Karma doesn’t know what to do about that but her phone is in her hand even before she reaches the bottom of the hill.
Ashcroft: Scrap Marriage. We’ve got bigger problems.
Cooper: Oh, fuck all. It was something you said, wasn’t it?
No. It wasn’t.
Not yet, anyway.