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iii. we pulled too many false alarms.
There isn’t a scale for the sex. Good, great, mind-blowing - every positive adjective she can think of doesn’t quite measure up, even the ridiculously overblown ones, the ones she always misspells in third period English vocab tests. If their kisses were hot, the sex was the surface of the sun and threatened to burn her up from the inside out; and she gets the feeling that she isn’t alone in that opinion. Seventeen, she can already tell, is going to be a hell of a year for her.
Hate watching Twilight is suddenly the least interesting thing about Saturdays.
And they still aren’t talking about it.
Not about the kisses, not about the insane amounts of sex, not about the guilty as shit looks they share at lunch over Liam, and not about how Amy has blown Reagan off three times this week whenever they got close to intimacy with the excuse that it’s her time of the month. It’s all pretty convincing - or at least they think it is, right up until Shane drags them both into the ladies, locks the door and gives them the ‘I know, don’t bullshit me’ Veronica Mars look.
Fuck.
“It just happened--”
“It was just one time--”
They both turn. Look. It’s like this: Amy, wounded. Karma, sorry. Shane? Smug. Because twenty seconds after they opened their mouths and blurted out the first thing in their heads, Amy is turning tail and stalking down the hallway. Karma makes to go after her but Shane catches her arm before she can get out the door, and the blonde is sure there’s an uncomfortably too-close-to-home conversation behind the locked door. She can’t tell. She’s already in the courtyard by the time Karma gets out of Shane’s grip.
The bell sounds like an alarm of impending doom and Amy doesn’t stick around to see the destruction follow through; instead, she forces Theo (mid-picking up Lauren) to give her a ride home and she ignores her mother asking if she’s okay as she storms through to her room. Fuck this.
Lauren was right.
Karma was a bitch.
And that stays the sentiment of the evening, right up until a soft knock sounds at her door, Karma cautiously stepping past the threshold. “Hey,” she says with a gentle look. Amy almost throws her out, almost begs her to just leave because this push pull is something she can hardly stand anymore. It was easier to fake it before she ever had a taste of the real thing, before she knew skin and reactions and breathlessness (christ alive), but she cannot go back to just friends anymore. They fucked their way past that rubicon in their friendship and waved joyfully as they did so; if it’s over, it has to be over totally. Painful as it might be. Amy opens her mouth to speak, but it’s Karma that beats her to the punch.
“It’s not nothing to me.” The blonde keeps quiet, waiting for more, and Karma delivers, stepping up the edge of the bed and sitting, sliding her hands neatly into Amy’s. “It’s crazy. And confusing. And I’m not even sure if I feel this way about anybody but you right now, but it’s not nothing. I do love you.” A small smile is coaxed out of that and Karma grins in victory, dropping a hand long enough to tuck a blonde curl behind Amy’s ear. “Like. A lot, a lot.” This time it’s a laugh. Tiny. Barely there. Karma shifts closer and leans in for a far too short kiss. “I’m just... still figuring this whole thing out. I care about Liam, I’m not going to pretend I don’t. But he’s not who I want to be with.” Another kiss, then another. Amy fights giving in entirely, pulling back a fraction.
“Who do you want to be with?” Eyes full of doubt and just the slightest sliver of hope, she waits for the sledgehammer blow of I don’t know, or something else equally none committal. But what she gets is not that.
Karma scoffs, rolls her eyes and kisses her properly.
“Shut up.”
They turn the volume up on House Hunters and don’t talk for the next hour.