Cassie [9:35 PM]
What about you?
Erin [9:36 PM]
Pretty much the same
Cassie asked about Erin’s work week and talked about her classes. It should’ve been weird, not easy. Just like FaceTiming on Friday should’ve been weird. Sexting should’ve been weird. But Cassie was easy to talk to—she seemed to always be listening, like she cared what Erin had to say. That probably shouldn’t have been a high bar to pass, but somehow it was.
By the time Erin fell asleep, she’d forgotten that Parker didn’t call.
But then Parker didn’t call all week. It was probably nothing. The semester was in full swing now; Parker was just busy with schoolwork. Erin tried to not freak out, tried to give her space.
She spent the week texting with Cassie. Not constantly, but steadily. Cassie treated it like Snapchat, basically—which Erin had learned how to use only to monitor Parker’s usage in middle school—she sent random pictures: of her notes as she studied, highlighted in color-coordinated ink; of herself pretending to sleep after her morning class, head down on the desk; of her biceps when she was at the gym. Half her face was visible in that last one, and her smirk was unmistakable. Erin had never particularly liked taking selfies—she still didn’t, really, but she liked sending them to Cassie. Cassie sent back emojis: fire or heart eyes or once the sweating one.
Sometimes Erin wanted to ask Cassie if Parker had been acting strange, but there were unspoken rules. Don’t talk about Parker was one of them. Not that Cassie and Erin were particularly good at following rules when it came to each other.
By her Thursday therapy session, Erin was so ready to talk she didn’t even stumble over early conversation like usual.
“Parker didn’t call on Sunday.”
“Oh?” Carolyn said.
“It’s not a big deal,” Erin said. “I’m sure she’s busy. And we had spoken on Thursday, so it still hasn’t been a full week since we last talked. It just felt…” She sighed. She couldn’t tell Carolyn how it felt. “Bad,” she finished feebly.
“Why did it feel bad?”
“You know why,” Erin said. “Because what if she’s mad at me? What if she stops speaking to me again? What if this is the start of something worse?”
“Why would she be mad at you?”
If Erin were a better actor, she would respond immediately, instead of letting the question hang while she swallowed the real reason.
“I don’t know,” she said eventually. “I’m trying to be better at communicating with her.”
“Have you had a miscommunication recently?”
“I don’t think so. I don’t know. Maybe this counts as a miscommunication. Because probably she was just busy and forgot and yet here I am talking to you about it.”
Carolyn gave her an indulgent smile. “You’re allowed to talk about whatever you want. Talking to me about something doesn’t mean it’s bad.”
“Right. Of course not.”
What was bad was the thing she wasn’t talking to her about.
Like she was reading Erin’s mind, Carolyn asked, “Is there something else bothering you?”
“No. What do you mean?”
“You seem…” She did that pause where Erin was never sure if she was searching for the right word or letting the silence stretch so Erin would rush to fill it. “Jumpy.”
“I…” How did she explain this?
She watched the second hand tick a full revolution on the wall clock. She reached for a couch pillow and clutched it to her stomach. Then she started talking, eyes on the carpet in front of her so she didn’t have to look at Carolyn.
She’d thought about telling Carolyn before. Part of it, anyway. She thought she could talk about sleeping with someone new without talking about Cassie specifically. But what was there to talk about besides Cassie? It didn’t matter that Erin had slept with someone; it mattered that she’d slept with Cassie. That she liked her enough to do it again and again. She hadn’t wanted to deal with that, so she’d said nothing.
Now, she told Carolyn only part of the story, at first. Paused after the reveal: the woman she’d had the one-night stand with was her daughter’s friend.
“And then what happened?”
“And then I let her feel me up in the bathroom of Parker’s a cappella concert.”
That got Carolyn’s eyebrows to raise, just briefly, as she took in the information.
“How did that feel?”