She acted without thinking. She must have, right? Erin never would’ve gone into the bathroom while Cassie was showering if she’d thought it through. But that seemed too easy an excuse. Like if she could pretend she didn’t know what she was doing, it made it okay.
“Hello?” Cassie’s voice rose over the steam coming from the shower.
“Hi,” Erin said.
What was she doing? What the fuck was she doing? Who goes into the bathroom while someone else is in the shower?
“Is this okay?” she asked. “Or—I can wait, if you want. We can talk later.”
“Uh, no,” Cassie said. “It’s okay.”
Through the frosted shower door, Cassie was nothing more than a vague outline. She looked pink, like the shower was too hot. Erin looked away. She was not going to think about water running down Cassie’s naked body. She wasn’t going to think about tracing the rivulets with her tongue. About exploring just how wet Cassie really was. She needed to stop being horny and remember why she came in here. I’d love to come in here. Great, now she was making horrible puns to herself.
“Erin?”
Erin jumped when Cassie said her name—jumped, like she was surprised, like she had been so busy daydreaming about fucking Cassie that she had forgotten she was in the room—she jumped and smacked her elbow into the doorknob. “Fuck!”
“Are you okay?”
No. She was very clearly not okay.
“Fine,” she said, rubbing at her elbow. It was good to have something to do with her hands other than imagine them on Cassie.
The bathroom was a mess—Erin had made sure it was spotless before Cassie arrived, but Parker’s toothbrush hung over the edge of the sink, her toothpaste uncapped beside it. There was a hairbrush and no fewer than five hair ties strewn across the counter. Cassie’s rocket ship necklace was there, too.
Erin recapped Parker’s toothpaste, dropped her brush into the toothbrush holder inside one of the vanity drawers. Why Erin kept the toothbrush holder in a drawer when they had guests was anyone’s guess. Could no one know she had good oral hygiene?
“Did you come in here to clean?”
The hair ties escaped Erin’s hands and scattered across the tile floor. She bent to pick them up.
“No. No. I’m—no.”
She had no idea why she’d come in here. She couldn’t believe she had.
“I thought you wanted to apologize,” Cassie said.
Erin smirked as she looped the hair ties over the doorknob. “I thought you couldn’t hear me.”
Score one for Erin.
No, Jesus, not score one for Erin. She wasn’t supposed to be bantering with her kid’s friend. They’d already seen where that led.
Erin stood in front of the sink. The mirror was fogged up. Right. She’d come in because she wanted to get the apology over with. Now that she was actually in the bathroom while Cassie was naked in the shower, though, her mind was blank. She forgot everything she’d planned to say. The rocket ship necklace sat on the counter.
“I didn’t mean to make you feel—” She swallowed. Cleared her throat. “I did, actually. This morning, and before, too, when you called about Thanksgiving. The point was to make you feel bad. To push you away. But I didn’t want to.”
“That’s still not an apology.”
Erin took a breath and walked to the shower door. She looked at Cassie, who was still just a blob behind the frosted glass. She couldn’t tell if Cassie was looking back, but she must’ve been, right?
“I am sorry,” Erin said. “I brought up your mom, and you’re right. I know nothing about her or your relationship with her, and that crossed a line. It was cruelty for the sake of cruelty. You didn’t deserve that.”
It was quiet for a moment, no sound but the water hitting the wall, the floor, Cassie’s body.
“I’m sorry I called you a cunt,” Cassie said.
Erin normally wasn’t a huge fan of that word, but God, she liked hearing Cassie say it.
“I’m sorry I was being a cunt.”
“Is there a reason you couldn’t wait until after I showered to tell me this?” Cassie suddenly sounded like she had that first night at the bar. Erin didn’t know what had changed, but the smirk was back in Cassie’s voice. “You talked a big game on the phone about how I wasn’t that irresistible and you’d be able to control yourself, but you don’t seem to be.”
“Cassie,” Erin said, a warning or a concession or maybe both.
Cassie opened the shower door.
Erin looked only at her face, at first. Cassie didn’t break eye contact. When Erin finally dropped her gaze to Cassie’s body, she said her name like a curse word.
In the car, Erin had gotten a good look at her chest—as good as she could get in a dark parking lot, anyway—but Cassie’s pants had stayed on. Here, she was fully, gloriously naked. Here, the lighting was just fine. Here, Erin watched water run down Cassie’s body and her own mouth went dry. It was the body of a twenty-one-year-old. Erin thought of her crow’s-feet, of the soft pouch of her stomach she’d never gotten rid of after giving birth. Cassie had no such flaws.
“Cassie,” Erin said again. She had forgotten every other word.
Cassie said, “Please,” want dripping from the word, and Erin pulled her shirt over her head.
She didn’t have a bra on, nor underwear, as she stepped out of her yoga pants, and Cassie stared like her body was perfect. Erin didn’t let her look. The shower was not made for two people, but they fit like puzzle pieces, their edges lining up just right. With the shower door closed behind her, steam billowed around them. Cassie’s nipples were hard like it was cold.
Erin’s hands found Cassie’s hips and pushed until her back was against a wall. Cassie put her hands on Erin’s shoulders.
“This is a terrible idea,” Erin said. She kissed Cassie anyway.
This. This was why Erin couldn’t get Cassie out of her head. The way she bit at Erin’s mouth with no regret. The way she clung to her. Cassie didn’t cede an inch. She kissed Erin just as hard as Erin was kissing her.
Erin couldn’t stop, even though there were other things she wanted to do with her mouth. When she finally moved to nip at Cassie’s neck, the other woman let out a moan that made Erin pin her entire body to the wall with just her hips.
“Christ, Erin.”
Erin sucked hard at the junction where Cassie’s neck met her shoulder. Then she moved lower.
Cassie’s breasts were perfect. Soft but firm. Pert. Not dragged down by decades spent fighting gravity. Erin closed her lips around a nipple. Everything was wet and warm from the shower. Erin bit down harder than she meant to, but Cassie arched into her like she didn’t mind at all.
Erin was going to regret this. For so many reasons, but the one she thought of as she moved lower was that she was much too old to be kneeling in a bathtub. She’d have to pop a couple ibuprofen later, because now that she was down there, she planned to stay awhile.
She tapped Cassie’s left thigh, then got impatient, lifting the leg herself and draping it over her shoulder. Warm water cascaded down Erin’s back, but the heat from Cassie was warmer. Erin leaned into it.