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ii. friendship and love, they don’t really mix.
They don’t talk about it. Not even so much as a mention or a passing comment, there’s not even a pause in the next step; Sleepover Saturdays are as much a staple of their relationship as they ever were, complete with hate watching and House Hunters, onesies and popcorn. Even Lauren joins in, judgemental comments about Katniss Everdeen kept mostly to herself as risk of being voted out of the sleepover. But the kiss is never brought up. Which suits Amy just fine.
Four weeks, three days and sixteen hours is how long it takes for her to become so obsessively curious as to what in the hell happened that night enough to actually confront her. So. PJ-clad, messing with the DVD player as Karma sets up the popcorn and frosting, Amy blurts out: “Why did you kiss me?”
Silence ensues.
Seriously, it’s as if the entire planet went into deep freeze - or one of those cheesy moments in a Christmas movie where the main character pauses the action and breaks the fourth wall. The Office style, Amy almost looks around for a camera to stare into. Karma says nothing for a really long time, long enough for the opening credits to have passed and the movie to start, Bella Swan’s obnoxious monologue voiceover breaking the silence instead. On one hand, she would love to just shrug and say ‘forget about it’, move on from the entire embarrassing (and, most likely, drunken) incident and continue on with whatever pretend ‘okay with it’ charade they had going. On the other hand, there are butterflies and bombs going off in her stomach. This is so very not good.
And right when Amy can hardly stand it anymore, Karma mumbles, “I don’t know.”
How fantastically specific, can we break that down?
“That’s...” Alright. Okay. No problem. I can work with I don’t know. It’s fine. Amy thinks of Lauren. Of Theo’s lies and the way she handled it, of the pageant and how much respect Amy found for her stepsister. It’s easy to fake being strong when you’re really desperate for a reaction. “...not good enough.”
Karma freezes again - deer in headlights, almost comical - and twists to look at the blonde. It’s almost as if she can see the gears turning behind the redhead’s eyes, the truths and the white lies and the big fucking lies they seem to be constantly telling one another. She wants to lie right now, Amy can see it: the pucker of her lips when she’s trying to think of something clever, the frown lines between her eyes when she can’t quite muster something up, the twitch of her hands itching to fidget. It’s all classic Bad Karma. Amy huffs and fills in the blanks anyway.
“I was over you. Well. Getting there, anyway. Reagan is super important to me and I know Liam is important to you, too. If you were drunk or if it was the atmosphere or if it was a stupid freaking dare, you need to tell me now. You know you can tell me anything.”
And there it is. That Look. The New Look. The Look that has been plastered on Karma’s face for the last two months whenever they’re alone. Half way between confusion and constipation. It might have been funny in different circumstances. Amy had always assumed it was the Look Karma got when she remembered how much she knows about Amy’s feelings for her. Now, it seemed she was being proven very wrong in that assumption.
Karma sputters for a minute, scrambling for something good but obviously finding herself wanting, forcing herself to settle instead for the truth. “I’m -- I don’t know. I know, it’s a shitty a answer, but I really don’t -- I wanted to kiss you. Maybe it was the beer. Maybe it was this past year, I don’t know, but I --... I’m sorry. Okay? It won’t ever happen again.”
But that’s a lie too. Up until then, the mini-speech had been believable, but there are the wrinkles, the downturned mouth, the bitten lip, the shaky hands. She’s lying.
“Good.” But not good. Amy’s lying now too. Faking being relieved. To reassure herself more than Karma, she repeats it and lets out a long breath. “Because you have a Liam--”
The redhead cuts her off, “And you have a Reagan!”
“Right.”
“Right.”
“So - we’re good?”
“The greatest.”
And that lasts for three... two... one...
Three feet of distance has never been crossed so quickly.
Once again, it’s Karma; practically flinging herself across the room, yanking Amy down in to what could only ever be described to Shane as the hottest fucking kiss of my entire life. It’s unexpected. It’s incredible. It’s definitely longer than five seconds. There’s -- Christ, there’s tongue and it is exactly nothing like kissing Reagan, who is nowhere near this aggressive. Kissing Reagan is a September rain. A little stormy, a little dark and full of a tension that can crackle the night air before splitting open the sky. But kissing Karma? It’s an avalanche. A thousand acre blanket that covers the land in seven feet of heaviness, an untouched expanse that you’re dying to run through with both hands out, a freezing pulse that stops your heart in an instant and restarts it a moment later. It’s electric shocks from a downed cell-tower, it’s a three day blackout from top to toe -- it’s the feeling you get when fucking Thriller comes on the sound system at a party and everyone floods the dancefloor and tries to do the dance.
They don’t pull away. There is no whoaiknow. Just tongue and teeth and a desperation that is completely foreign to both of them.