But Acacia was pretty busy, too, only having time for the occasional meal and never a hangout. It took till Friday night, when she and Cassie went to a party together, for them to get actual quality time. Even then, Acacia snuck away with Donovan eventually, and Cassie was not about to track them down.
In the beginning, Seth had always been Cassie’s closest friend at school. They’d hit it off during orientation week and grew their friend group together. Cassie had never been more embarrassed than in the dining hall the day after she’d broken up with him. She’d approached her usual table only to have none of their friends acknowledge her, much less move to make room. The ease with which her friends chose a cheating Seth over her had taken her aback. He’d always been the more charming one, but Cassie hadn’t realized she was so forgettable.
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.
“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.