“Adam.” Erin’s spine was stiff. Cassie wasn’t sure she would’ve noticed if she hadn’t seen how Erin was earlier, loose and grinning and at ease. Now she was ramrod straight and unblinking.
Parker was still grinning like a thousand-watt bulb, hanging off her dad’s arm. “Daddy, you remember Acacia from when you dropped me off. This is my other best friend, Cassie.”
Best friend? They’d barely known each other a month. Then again, the only person Cassie hung out with more than Parker was Acacia. She’d gotten out of bed before 8 A.M. on a Saturday for Parker.
Everything with Erin seemed worse if Cassie and Parker were best friends.
“Nice to see you again, Acacia, and nice meet you, Cassie,” Adam said, running a hand through his shaggy hair. He was so not hot enough for Erin. “Are your families here?”
“My brother is running an errand,” Acacia said. “We’re going to meet up with him later.”
“And yours, Cassie?”
She didn’t want to talk about her family, or lack thereof, especially not to Adam, who looked like a mediocre white man who had never not gotten his way. “Nope.”
Adam’s smile faltered, just a little, at her lack of enthusiasm. “They didn’t make the trip to see their daughter for the weekend?”
“Nope,” she repeated.
She was an only child who’d never met her father and hadn’t seen her mom in almost a year. Adam didn’t deserve to know any of that. Parker didn’t even know all of that. Acacia stepped closer to Cassie, best friend instinct or something. Cassie didn’t know why, but she looked at Erin, whose face was creased with concern.
“Shoot,” Adam said. “I would’ve liked to take everyone out for a drink or something. Bond over the beautiful girls in our lives.”
“Well, my mom’s an alcoholic, so I’m sure she would’ve loved that, too.”
Cassie shouldn’t have said it. But well meaning or not, Adam was obnoxious, and Erin looked in pain, and Cassie really didn’t want to be here anymore.
Adam laughed like he thought it was a joke, and Parker finally let go of his arm.
“Anyway,” Acacia said, “it was nice to meet you, but we’ve got to go meet my brother. Great job tonight, Parker.”
“Thanks,” Parker said. She looked at Cassie. “I’ll catch up with you guys later, okay?”
“Sure,” Cassie said.
She considered asking about The BarBelles girl—Sam, she thought her name was—but some childish part of her wanted that to be a joke with Erin only. She said nothing instead, felt small and petulant. Acacia brushed their arms together and turned to Erin.
“It was really nice to meet you,” Acacia said.
“Thanks again for breakfast, Erin,” Cassie said.
Erin put a hand on her shoulder, and it took a lot of effort not to lean into it.
“Anytime, Cassie. It was great to get to know you,” Erin said.
Cassie had no idea what that meant. She didn’t know why Erin was touching her, either. Parker had been right at breakfast that Cassie didn’t usually like to be touched, but she liked the warmth of Erin’s hand through her shirt. Adam looked like he wanted redemption, somehow, like he wasn’t sure how the conversation had gotten away from him, and Cassie really needed to get out of here. Acacia tugged her away by an arm.
“C’mon, babe, the booze isn’t going to drink itself,” Acacia said once they were out of earshot.
“Kaysh, he was—”
“I know,” she said. Then: “Am I wrong, though, or is Parker’s mom kind of a MILF?”
Cassie sputtered. “Oh my God.”
“I’m just saying!”
“Can we talk about literally anything else?”
“Okay, okay. Let’s go get you drunk.”
“You’re my best friend,” Cassie said as Acacia pulled her toward the dorms.
Acacia was her best friend. She had been since they’d met on a playground before either had hit double digits. Cassie had been too young to be unsupervised, but that had never stopped her mom.
Their first meeting, Cassie and Acacia had battled to see who could swing higher. A year younger, Acacia’s little brown legs had already been longer than Cassie’s dirty white ones, but the extra height couldn’t overcome Cassie’s sheer will. She had pumped her legs like she was going to launch herself into the sky.
When Acacia’s mom had said, “You here all by yourself?” Cassie had crossed her arms and said, “So?”
But when Mama Webb—of course this was before Cassie knew her as Mama Webb—had offered Cassie a sandwich out of their picnic basket, she hadn’t said no. The Webb family had been a fixture in Cassie’s life ever since. Acacia, obviously, but Mama Webb and Mr. Ben and Emerson, too.
That was what Emerson was: a fixture. Like furniture that came with her dorm apartment. Always there. Cassie had never thought of him in any sort of romantic way, and she didn’t the night of the a cappella concert, either. It was just that she got good and plastered. That was why they ended up making out half the night. That and maybe the fact that she’d wanted to forget about Erin.
She expected Acacia to be pissed, maybe, but instead Kaysh spent Cassie’s entire hangover teasing her about it, which Cassie supposed was a slightly better outcome than her being angry. And making out with Emerson had been a much better way to spend the night than thinking about Erin.
Without distractions like Emerson, though, she ended up thinking about Erin kind of a lot. Not all the time, but enough that it bothered her.
It started with—well, Cassie had had a rough start to her week and she was looking for a little stress relief. It only made sense that she thought of her most recent super-hot experience to help her get off. That was what she meant to do, anyway, think of the experience, not of Erin specifically, but it all got a little muddled in her brain.
Then in her bio class, she wondered what kind of doctor Erin was. She thought through any conversations with Parker about her parents, but she didn’t talk about them much. Cassie only knew Erin was a doctor and Adam was an engineer, and they both had spent a lot of Parker’s childhood working. She wondered if that meant Erin was a surgeon, long hours and holidays on call.
When the professor released the class, Cassie realized she’d been zoning out thinking about Erin for almost ten minutes. Shit.
The next weekend came, and she found a party giving away free jungle juice. She went alone, without Acacia or Parker or anyone, and she didn’t plan on getting wild. But free jungle juice was free jungle juice.