“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?”
Erin smirked, and Carolyn’s cheeks went pink.
“I mean—not how did it feel, but how did you feel about it happening?”
“I know what you meant,” Erin said. “I … good. To both questions.”
“You felt good?” Carolyn asked.
There it was: surprise at Erin’s enjoyment of what was obviously a bad decision. She shouldn’t have—she knew that. She’d been waiting for Carolyn to agree, but it added weight to her shoulders anyway. She scratched at her neck.
“I don’t mean to imply that you shouldn’t,” Carolyn said. “But you don’t always let yourself feel good.”
“I sure picked a hell of a time to let myself, huh?” Erin gave a humorless laugh. “But I figured no one was going to know. It was just a dumb, fun thing I did for the weekend, and that was it. I hadn’t planned on Cassie visiting for winter break.”
“What happened then?” Carolyn asked.
She couldn’t look at Carolyn’s face. Couldn’t chance seeing judgment there, even while she hadn’t seen any in the entire four years she’d been in therapy. The thing was—she’d never said anything like this before. She talked around it, put it more kindly, but the gist was:
I knowingly and repeatedly slept with my daughter’s friend.
Erin laid it all out. The rules they made, then broke. The sexting. All of it.
When she’d finally run out of words, Erin’s fingers traced the decorative edge of the pillow she was holding. She glanced at Carolyn’s face. There was no judgment there.
“Okay.”
Erin practically guffawed. “Okay? That’s all? Okay?”
Carolyn gave her a look. “Do you honestly think two consenting adults sleeping together is the most shocking thing I’ve heard as a therapist?”
Okay, well, when she put it that way it didn’t sound quite so absurd.
“This is a little more complicated than just two consenting adults sleeping together!” Erin’s voice wasn’t quite shrill, but it was higher than she’d like.
“It always is,” Carolyn said. Then, “How did you expect me to react?”
Erin knew her answer wasn’t what she was supposed to say, so she didn’t say anything. When it became clear she wasn’t going to respond, Carolyn went on.
“My guess? You expected judgment. You assumed judgment. There are people in your life who conditioned you to constant judgment.”
Carolyn had treated Erin with kid gloves when she first started therapy. Erin had needed it—a chronic people pleaser trying to figure out how to put herself first. Eventually, once Erin got her feet under her, Carolyn figured out when she could push, when Erin needed her to push. She wasn’t pushing, here, but Erin was pretty sure she should.
“I want your honest opinion. Not your professional, sugar-coated, better-not-make-my-patient-have-a-breakdown opinion.”
“I’m not particularly worried about you having a breakdown.”
That made one of them. Maybe everything with Cassie was her breakdown. Or her midlife crisis or something.
“You know what I mean,” Erin said. “Tell me what you really think about this.”
“My honest opinion,” Carolyn said, steepling her fingers in her lap, “is that I’m glad you finally told me. You’ve been circumspect in the New Year. I’ve been wondering if I should confront you about it. This makes it a lot easier.”
Erin ducked her head. If she’d been that obvious with Carolyn, what was she like with Parker?
“I don’t want to ask you to tell me things you don’t want to,” Carolyn said. “But I can’t help you with the things you don’t share in our sessions.”
“I didn’t think I needed help with it. I thought it was over.”
Carolyn leveled her with a stare. “While you thought it was over, how did the fact that anything happened at all make you feel?”
Erin focused on the fringe of the pillow in her lap. “I … guilty. But also … proud of myself? I don’t know. That sounds ridiculous. It’s just—I know I’ve spent too long caring what other people think. I know that. It’s something I’m working on. It’s something I’ve been working on since I started seeing you. So yeah, I felt guilty because I know this never should have happened. But it felt good, too. To have done something … fun? Stupid? Both. Obviously this is something I did for me—anyone else would judge me for it. I judge me for it. But it feels like progress. I wasn’t exactly picking up women in bars a year ago.” She grimaced. “Is it weird to measure progress by propensity for a one-night stand?”
Carolyn chuckled at her. “No, I know what you mean. It doesn’t seem like your behavior has been driven by anything other than what you want, here.”
Phrasing it that way pointed out the selfishness, even though Erin knew that wasn’t how Carolyn meant it.
“When is the last time you did something for no other reason than because you wanted to?”
“Well, there’s the clinic.”
“Respectfully, no.” Carolyn shook her head. “The clinic is wonderful, and I know how long you’ve wanted it. I’m glad you’re finally working toward it. But it also objectively does good. There’s a lot more happening there than just what you want.”
Erin conceded the point. Most of her indulgences were food related, but even then, there were times she made dinner instead of ordering takeout because she knew it was what she should do. When was the last time she said “fuck should” before meeting Cassie?
Instead of thinking too hard about it, she changed the subject. “Okay, but what if Parker knows?”
“Why would she?”
“Because she didn’t call Sunday.”
Carolyn tutted at her. “That’s not the answer to why she would know. That’s the answer to what are you using to support the conclusion you already jumped to.”
So she’d stopped with the kid gloves then.
“Cassie could’ve told her.”