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“Whatever,” Cassie said eventually. “I was drunk. Were you? When your daughter suggested I come live with you for two weeks? That’s the only situation I can imagine where you would’ve thought saying yes was a good idea.”
Erin had considered saying no. She’dwantedto say no. If therewere any reason to say no besidesI’ve been thinking of her fingers inside me for a month and a half,Erin would’ve done it. As it was, she’d told Parker that of course Cassie could come stay, grateful her daughter asked over the phone instead of video chat. Erin definitely wouldn’t have been able to sell a realistic smile.
She wondered if she could sell the performance she was about to put on.
After a steadying breath, she forced herself to chuckle. “Seriously, Cassie?”
“Oh, excuse me for not wanting Parker to know I fucked her mom.”
“And you think she’ll know that if we sleep under the same roof? Are you so irresistible that I won’t be able to control myself around you, and I’ll give it away?” Erin put a cruel edge into her voice that shehated. “Honestly, Cassie, our past didn’t weigh heavily on my decision to give my daughter what she wants for Christmas. I haven’t exactly spent the last two months thinking about you.”
Erin bit the knuckle of the hand not holding the phone and waited to see if she pulled it off.
Cassie said nothing.
“The correct response to someone letting you stay in their house for the holidays isthank you,” Erin said. “It will be fun. There will be good food and presents and we will all act like adults. Think you can handle that?”
Cassie sounded exactly as small as Erin meant to make her feel when she said, “Fuck you, Erin.”
She hung up on her.
Erin let out her breath.Fuck.She shook her arms out like that would get rid of the feeling of disgust that had settled over her. She had to do it. She had to. Cassie was going to be staying with her for two weeks regardless of how either of them felt about it; Erin needed to nip it in the bud. Ruin it before they even saw each other, or who knew what they’d do.
Because Cassie was right. It wasabsurdthat she was visiting. Erin honestly didn’t know how they were going to manage it. How was Parker not going to realize there was… whatever there was between them. History and attraction—magnetism. The kind that pulled Erin toward Cassie even when she didn’t want it to.
Erin was working on her relationship with her daughter. It’d been almost four years since the divorce—the divorce Parker blamed mostly on Erin’s work. But they were okay. Better than okay, lately, with Parker at school. She called every Sunday and she always seemed excited about it, like she was doing it because she wanted to and not because her stupid, needy mom wanted her to. They hadn’t had a real conversation about the divorce. Erin had tried, when it was happening, but Parker had been too hurt, too emotional. Erin hadn’t tried again. She hadn’t explained that yes, she chose work over Parker’s father, but not for nothing. She chose a job that made her feel good over a man who didn’t. She chose her job the same way she chose Parker, back when she was twenty years old looking at a positive pregnancy test. She knew she wasn’t supposed to. She knew people would judge her for it. But she’d figured out what she wanted and she held tight to it.
She needed to have the conversation with Parker. Because she needed her daughter to know that was how she should live, how she should make decisions. And Erin needed her to know it before she was thirty-five and almost fifteen years into a marriage that never should have happened to begin with.
Erin was still working on herself. Actual therapy and the type of therapy Rachel gave her—encouraging Erin to put herself first and also fuck whoever the hell she wanted. It was helping. But she still cared too much about what people thought. She was trying to teach her daughter not to, trying to teach her to do whatever the hell she wanted from the beginning, and not have to learn how when she was pushing forty. Erin was trying to teach her daughter the opposite of what her mother had taught her.
The point—Erin took a long time to get to it, but it did exist—the point was she couldnotsleep with her daughter’s friend. Rachel’s advice aside—Erin could not sleep with Cassie again, and Parker could not find out it had ever happened in the first place. Erin was learning to hold on to things she cared about and Parker was what she cared about most. She couldn’t fuck that up.
Friday evening, Erin picked Parker up at Adam’s. Normally she would’ve texted from the driveway and waited for Parker to come out, but it’d been too long since she’d seen her. Erin met her daughter at the door and hugged her until she complained about it.
“Aren’t you going to be cold in that?” Erin asked.
Parker wore the coat Erin had bought her for school—a denim jacket lined with sheepskin. It was made for Virginia, not New Hampshire.
Parker rolled her eyes. “Oh my God, stop, I’m fine.”
Erin tugged once on Parker’s ponytail. Parker swatted at her hand, but smiled as she lugged her suitcase to the trunk of Erin’s Subaru Forester.
In the car, Parker asked, “How was working Thanksgiving?”
“Slow,” Erin said. She knew by now Parker didn’t want more information than that.
She couldn’t have told Parker more even if she had pressed. Normally Erin spent down time during slow shifts working on the free clinic she was campaigning the hospital to open next fall, but on Thanksgiving the shift had been slow enough Erin spent most of it zoning out while she was supposed to be charting, staring into space and feeling guilty about being rude to Cassie. Cassie didn’t deserve her derision.
It had been vindicating, actually, to hear Cassie was anxious about visiting. Erin had worried that this…thingwas one-sided. That would’ve been worse: to have an unrequited crush on a college student. Though Erin wasn’t sure it counted as a crush, exactly. “Crush” felt like too innocent a word. Her thoughts were anything but.
She wasn’t allowed to think about this anyway, especially not right now, on the way to dinner with Parker. She wasn’t allowed to think about it at all over Thanksgiving weekend, which had certain family traditions, even if they weren’t all a family anymore. Saturday night meant games at the Turners’. Erin had known Melissa and Jimmy since they were high school sweethearts, long before they had kids: Caleb and Noah, carbon copies of Jimmy with their tight coils of dark hair, and Mae, whose auburn waves favored her mother. Erin, Melissa, and Rachel had been friends for almost half their lives now. The first two took Lamaze class together when they were pregnant with Parker and Caleb, their kids destined to be best friends long before they were born.
Along the way, Adam and Jimmy had also become best friends. Adam was already at the Turners’ when Parker and Erin arrived. Rachel was, too, though, which meant Erin was handed a drink before she had to do anything more than wave at Adam.
“Aunt Rachel’s on top of it tonight,” Parker teased.
“I know,” Rachel said, wrapping her arms around Parker before she’d even taken her jacket off. “What would your mother do without me?”
