“What do you mean?”
“I mean she was pretty mad about it and didn’t really let me apologize. So we never really talked about it.”
“Was it just hella awkward the rest of your visit?”
“I mean. No. Like she still wanted a good morning kiss the next day.”
Acacia gave a quick shake of her head like that would change Cassie’s words. “Wait, what?”
Cassie lifted her eyes to Acacia’s, her face still tilted toward her breakfast. “Me wanting to kiss her didn’t exactly surprise her ’cause we, uh, were kind of already hooking up by then.”
Acacia closed her eyes and took a deep breath. She ran her hands back and forth over her shaved head. Cassie chewed on her bottom lip and waited for Acacia to blow up. She’d been mad about this when Cassie had only slept with Erin once. This was bound to be worse.
But then Acacia opened her eyes, gave Cassie a humorless smile, and gently said, “Tell me what happened.”
Cassie had expected something more along the lines of Are you fucking kidding me?
“Uh.”
What happened? Nothing, really. They’d just gotten along. Things snowballed from there.
Cassie told Acacia a bit more than that, though. Swirling the juice around in her cup, she told her about Parker’s dad being all smarmy and patriarchal—“What a bag of dicks,” was Acacia’s take—about Erin stepping in, about Erin kissing Cassie later that night. She tried not to smirk when she got to the shower sex.
“I don’t need details.” Acacia grimaced.
“But they’re such good details,” Cassie said. Okay, fine, she didn’t try that hard not to smirk.
“So what’s happening now?”
“What do you mean?”
“Between you and Erin.”
“Nothing, obviously. We live like a thousand miles apart.”
“So after your airport make out you just never talked again?”
“Well.” Cassie didn’t want to lie to her. “I mean, I sent her flowers for Valentine’s Day.”
Acacia’s eyebrows went up.
“We’ve kind of been texting since then.”
Cassie took a bite of her breakfast quesadilla for something to do. She didn’t taste it.
Acacia chewed slowly. Swallowed. “Are you going to tell Parker?”
“What?” Cassie sputtered. “No. Why would I?”
“If you’re gonna date her mom, it seems like it’d probably be polite to tell her about it.”
Cassie almost did a spit take of her orange juice. Her body shook with silent laughter as she managed to swallow it.
When she caught her breath, she said, “Sure, Kaysh, I’m in a long-distance relationship with Parker’s mom.”
Acacia shrugged like she didn’t buy that at all, but she wasn’t going to fight Cassie on it.
“Look, I’m not gonna be a bad friend to you and not let you talk to me about her, but I do kinda feel like that makes us both bad friends to Parker.”
“I don’t need to talk about her,” Cassie said. “It’s literally not a big deal. And speaking of bad friends—when would I even tell Parker? I haven’t seen her in like a week. I know there’s a honeymoon stage or whatever, but it’d be cool if she didn’t drop her so-called best friends quite so easily.”
“Can you really call yourself someone’s best friend if you’re dating her mom?” Before Cassie could protest, Acacia corrected herself. “Or sleeping with her or whatever?”
“Parker told me I could bone whoever I wanted.”
“Sure, but she didn’t say you could do it in secret,” Acacia said. “If you were boning my mom, I’d want to know.”
Cassie grimaced. “Your mom is more my mom than my own mom. Sleeping with her would basically be incest.”
“And yet you made out with my brother.”
“I keep thinking there will come a time when you don’t bring that up and it keeps not being that time.”
Acacia grinned. “There will never be a time.”
“I hate you.”
“You don’t.”
“I don’t.”
Acacia walked Cassie to class, even though she didn’t have anything till noon. She hugged Cassie goodbye, big, the way Acacia always did and said, “You’re a dumbass, but I love you.”
“Love you, too, Kaysh.”
Acacia wasn’t finished. “I’m always going to have your back. I’m just not sure this is the best decision you’ve ever made.”