“I’m not trying to talk you into anything, but let’s look at the facts.” Erin glared at her. “You spend time together, you spend all day texting—”
“We do not spend all day texting.”
Rachel ignored her. “I’m not trying to talk you into dating your daughter’s best friend because it seems like you might already be doing it. And you’re happier than I’ve seen you in a long time.”
“It’s not something that can work,” Erin said. The sharp edge in her words surprised her. “I don’t want to talk about it.”
Her voice cracked, then, and she was excruciatingly embarrassed.
“Okay,” Rachel said. “Okay, we don’t have to.”
There was a splash, and Erin looked up to see Cassie surface in the pool. Parker said something and Cassie laughed. Erin’s chest clenched.
She couldn’t talk to Rachel about it. She didn’t even let herself think about it. It was overwhelming. If she thought about it, she’d have to reckon with her choices. Her stupidity. The ways she’d failed her daughter.
Cassie made Erin feel good. Being with Cassie made her feel good. Being around Cassie.
Thinking about what she was doing with Cassie made Erin feel … horrendous. Awful.
She wanted to be a good mom. The moment she met Parker, sweaty skin-to-skin contact in the hospital bed, Erin had vowed to take care of her. To keep her safe from everything that could hurt her.
Lately, Erin was the one doing the hurting. She’d hurt Parker in the divorce, worked three years to make up for it, and spent the last nine months doing worse.
Erin didn’t deserve to have a good relationship with Parker. She acted like she wanted one. She’d worked to fix the ways it was broken. And then she threw it all away, for what? Sex? Cassie was Erin’s midlife crisis. She was a giant mistake.
That wasn’t fair—Cassie was great. Amazing, even. She was young and brilliant and hilarious, and she had her entire life ahead of her. She was going to change the world. Whoever she ended up with would be incredibly lucky. It was Erin who was the mess. The disaster.
Even when Erin was being gentle with herself instead of pointing out her flaws, this thing with Cassie hurt to think about. Not just in a What the hell are you doing? and If anyone ever found out … sort of way. In a No chance at a happy ending sort of way. What was the best outcome here? For Cassie to move across the country. It’d be better, probably—easier—if she and Parker didn’t keep in touch. Erin didn’t know if she’d be able to handle the occasional Cassie mention on Sunday phone calls. She certainly wouldn’t be able to handle another winter break visit. No, the best outcome would be Cassie out in California, telling someone new this wild story about how she’d spent a few months sleeping with her friend’s mom. The best outcome would be Erin throwing herself into work at the clinic, which was what she’d wanted, what she’d been working at for years, so it didn’t make sense that when she thought about it now, it seemed like a consolation prize.
Those were the only acceptable outcomes, really. There wasn’t another option. It didn’t matter that Erin had long since recognized the tug behind her sternum every time Cassie smiled. It didn’t matter that when she got good news about the clinic, Cassie was the first person she wanted to tell. Even if Erin could’ve ever brought herself to ask Cassie to go to MIT, to exert that much influence on the rest of this twenty-two-year-old’s life, they’d still be in the same situation—touching each other behind Parker’s back. This summer was perfect. She saw Cassie weekly, and she and Parker were closer than they’d ever been. Three months of this had to be enough. It was all they’d ever have.
Before she left, Rachel hugged Erin hard.
“I love you, you know?”
Erin nodded. She did know. It didn’t fix what she’d gotten herself into, though.
“It was nice to meet you,” Cassie said.
“You, too, Cassie,” Rachel said. “Take good care of my favorite girls, okay?”
Erin chanced a glance over her shoulder but had to look away when Cassie gave a half grin, standing a little taller than usual, like she was proud.
“I always do.”
Twenty-Three
CASSIE
Cassie hadn’t meant to eavesdrop. She had to go to the bathroom, and she was absolutely not the type to pee in a pool, and so she went inside. Overhearing Erin explaining just how much they were not dating was not Cassie’s intention.