It was weird making new friends as a senior. Mostly she relied on Acacia and Parker making friends and including her by default. This group would probably abandon her at the drop of a hat, too, but Cassie didn’t mind. She was getting out of here soon, and she’d have Acacia beside her no matter what. Who cared about anyone else?
Well, okay, she did, she guessed, because it was fun to have dinner with the whole group Sunday night. Sam and Gwen even joined, flanking Parker, who sat on the other side of the table from Cassie. Both of the girls gave Cassie unimpressed looks, then paid more attention to Parker. The only reason Cassie didn’t roll her eyes was she didn’t want to piss off Parker the only time they’d hung out in a week.
She figured she could always give her trouble at Monday morning breakfast instead. Except the next morning:
“No Parker?”
Acacia shrugged. “She was working late on something. Wanted to sleep in.”
It was one thing to see Parker sparingly for a week. But this was the second Monday breakfast she’d missed in a row. None of them had missed two weeks in a row since they’d started.
“How does she have another project due already?” Cassie asked while they waited in the food line.
“Might be the same one?” Acacia answered distractedly. She craned her head to see past the four people in front of them. “Nice! They have breakfast quesadillas.”
It couldn’t have been the same one—Parker had missed last week because she was desperately trying to finish so she could turn it in on time. Supposedly, anyway. It wasn’t that Cassie thought Parker was lying, it just didn’t feel right. Cassie had barely seen her since she’d started dating Sam. Dinner last night was the only meal they’d shared, and even then, Sam was there, with her blank stare and perpetual frown for Cassie. Her face lit up like a fucking Christmas tree when she looked at Parker, but Cassie was barely worth a glance.
Whatever. So what if Parker was lying about having a project because she wanted to sleep in with her new girlfriend who couldn’t give two fucks about Cassie?
The breakfast quesadillas Acacia and Cassie loaded onto their plates were the perfect level of toasted, the tortillas evenly browned. This early on a Monday the dining hall was mostly empty. Everyone seemed to be shuffling around, unable to pick up their feet before coffee. Acacia, who’d already been on her morning run, marched across the cafeteria to a table in the corner by a window. She sat down a good fifteen seconds before Cassie made it to the table. Just because her best friend was a morning freak didn’t mean she had to be.
“Hey, know what I was thinking about on my run?” Acacia said. She didn’t pause for Cassie to respond. “You know how at New Year’s we FaceTimed, and I accidentally talked about how you wanted to kiss Parker’s mom, not knowing she was there? I still feel so bad about that, like, it had to be so messy. And I realized I never even asked how you got out of the situation. Like what could you have possibly said after y’all hung up?”
Cassie blinked at her. Acacia wasn’t even paying attention to her, already digging into her quesadilla, talking about this like it was no big deal.
“You were thinking about Erin on your run?”
“Yeah, I don’t know how I got there—” She looked at the ceiling as she chewed. “It was kind of a chilly morning so I was thinking about Christmas in Chicago, and how I wore this miniskirt to the New Year’s party Emerson took me to, and I refused to wear tights because my legs looked great, but it was fucking freezing, and obviously since I thought of Emerson I thought about how y’all made out, and then—”
“Okay no, yeah, I don’t need to know your running thoughts. I would rather not acknowledge you run at all because I’m fairly certain willingly getting out of bed when it’s dark out so you can exercise means you’re the devil.”
“Okay, so whatever. Yeah, I was thinking about Parker’s mom on my run. What happened with that?”
Cassie focused on dunking her quesadilla into the pile of ketchup on her plate so she didn’t have to look at Acacia.
“I truly cannot believe you would call me the devil when you’re dipping your breakfast quesadilla in ketchup, by the way.”
“People eat ketchup on eggs. This is normal.”
“More people like running than like ketchup on eggs. Pretty sure I’m the normal one.”
Cassie took a bite. Dipped it in ketchup again.
“I didn’t, uh, really get out of the thing at New Year’s,” she said.