Erin watched Parker’s car pull away and then kept watching, like Cassie was going to immediately show up again. She bounced her leg. The street was empty.
After a minute or two, she convinced herself to finish making dinner instead of staring out the window.
A watched pot never boils.
Twenty-Five
CASSIE
Cassie drove too fast and left her helmet visor open. She couldn’t cry with the wind stinging her eyes.
She didn’t know where she was going. Took roads she hadn’t taken before. She just wanted to get away. Riding usually cleared her mind, but her thoughts were too messy.
The whole semester. Parker’s distance. Their fight. Acacia, stuck in the middle. None of it was what she’d thought it was.
The way Erin didn’t disagree with Parker’s claim they were dating.
That one made even less sense than the rest.
Cassie knew it looked like they were dating. Acacia had been telling her that for months, and Cassie could see it. They enjoyed each other’s company and liked having sex. It took Cassie until this fucking week to realize it was anything other than that. But Erin didn’t want to date her. That was what she’d told Rachel.
Maybe not in those specific words, but that was the gist.
She pulled off the road at a park.
This was so messed up. She needed to talk to her best friend.
Acacia picked up the phone with: “Did Parker get ahold of you?”
Cassie twisted her ponytail around her fist and yanked, the pressure and pain grounding her. “Not until after Adam walked in on me and Erin making out in her kitchen.”
“Shit.”
“Tell me about it.”
“He didn’t kill you, at least. Unless this is your ghost calling me.”
Cassie laughed quietly at that. Dialing Acacia, she’d been ready to cry, but she couldn’t help herself when it came to this idiot.
“Still alive, unfortunately,” she said.
“Agree to disagree on the fortunateness of that fact.”
“Okay but it’d be easier to be dead than deal with this.”
“It’d be easier to be dead than to figure out what to eat for dinner every day, too, doesn’t mean it’s unfortunate to put a frozen pizza in the oven for the third night in a row.”
“Forget Adam,” Cassie said instead of admitting Acacia had a point. “How’d you convince Parker not to kill me?”
“Yeah, that took some work,” Acacia said. “And almost two months.”
“So she wasn’t just like, really obsessed with Sam after Valentine’s Day?”
“No, she definitely was. She just also wanted to murder you.”
Cassie huffed out another laugh. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”
Acacia made everything easier. Everything was still a mess and Cassie was still going to have to figure her shit out, but talking to Kaysh, it didn’t feel as impossible.
“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you,” Acacia said. “She knew—on Valentine’s Day, she figured out that I’d known. I don’t know, my face or something when she told me about the texts. But I didn’t tell her any specifics, really, just that you were kind of hung up on her mom.”
Cassie tugged on her ponytail again. “Understatement of the year, it turns out.”
“Yeah,” Kaysh agreed. “Honestly, I wasn’t surprised Parker came to terms with y’all dating before you did.”
Cassie wasn’t sure they had yet. Erin didn’t want to date her, right?
There was a beat of silence, and then Acacia’s voice was quiet as she asked, “You’re not mad at me for lying to you?”
“I’d love to be,” Cassie said. “But it’d be a little too much pot calling the kettle, so nah.”
“That’s very mature of you.”
“Yeah, I’m trying.” Didn’t feel like she was mature enough for Erin, though. “Except I did basically run away from Erin and Parker because I got overwhelmed.”
“That’s okay,” Kaysh said without an ounce of judgment.
Things had gotten, if not scary, then at least intense, and Cassie had fled. Then again, when had she done anything else? This spring, she’d let Parker pull away from their friendship with almost no fight. And at the beginning of the school year, when her friend group had chosen Seth, she’d just … let them. It was easier to let people go than to admit you wanted them in your life. At least that way you wouldn’t have to chance rejection.
The only thing Cassie had ever admitted to wanting was Caltech. But that was …
Caltech had always been her dream, but not for the school itself. It was about getting away from home, from anyone who looked at her with pity. It was about a whole new life, sunshine and palm trees and no one who even knew enough about her to pity her. She’d been trying to run away from her life since she literally ran away from her mom’s trailer at twelve. She’d slept on the floor of Acacia’s closet and they’d told no one where she was. It was three days before her mom had even realized she was gone. The Webbs bought Acacia a trundle bed after that.
Cassie didn’t want to escape anymore.
She’d found a life worth staying for.
“You wanna talk about it?” Acacia asked.
She did. She wanted Acacia to tell her what to do. How to handle this. How to fix it. Kaysh would know. She had always been better with people than Cassie.
But Cassie needed to figure it out herself. She’d gotten herself into this mess. Acacia had already done enough work getting her out of it with Parker. If Cassie wanted to stay, she had to prove it.
“I think I gotta do this one on my own, babe.” She doubted herself even as she said it.
“It’s okay to need other people, you know?”
“Good, ’cause I’d be a fucking disaster without you.”
“We’re both disasters anyway,” Acacia said. “But you got this, okay?”
Cassie tried to believe her. “Okay.”
Her phone buzzed in her hand. She switched Kaysh to speaker to check her messages.
Parker [6:34 PM]
You okay?
Cassie stared at the text. She had no idea if she was okay. She answered with what she knew.
Cassie [6:34 PM]
I’m sorry for lying to you
Parker [6:34 PM]
Thank you
“You gonna pick me up at the airport tomorrow with Parker?” Acacia asked.
“She just texted actually,” Cassie said. “I’m still pretty fucking lost on how she doesn’t hate me, but it seems like she doesn’t, so yeah, I’ll be there tomorrow.”
The last six months of her life had been turned upside down in the past week. All of it—what she’d been doing with Erin, what happened between her and Parker, all the shit she’d put Acacia through. But she was on the other side of it now. And she still had Acacia to give her a pep talk over the phone. She still had Parker texting her to check in.
Parker [6:35 PM]
We’ll talk about it tomorrow, yeah? Rn I gotta go calm my dad down, and you’re gonna go back to my mom’s, right?
Did Cassie still have Erin? Maybe she could, if she actually talked to her about it.
“I should probably head back to Erin’s,” Cassie said, sending a text to Parker along the same lines.
“You know what you’re gonna say?”
Cassie didn’t. “Not yet.”
“You got this,” Acacia said again.
“I’ll figure it out, anyway.”
“I love you.”
“I love you.”
“See you tomorrow.”