Mistakes Were Made(4)

Erin smiled. “That was nice.”

“Definitely,” Cassie said, pulling her shirt over her head. “Next time I gotta get at your tits, though.”

Shit.

Next time. She should never be allowed to talk this soon after orgasm.

Erin wasn’t fazed, thankfully. “No next time, I’m afraid,” she said. “I’m only in Virginia for the weekend visiting my daughter at school.”

Cassie froze. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”

Erin gave her this confused brow furrow and head tilt and wow, Cassie really didn’t need to be wanting to kiss her again.

“Where’s your kid go?” There were other schools nearby; maybe Cassie was nervous for nothing.

“Keckley College,” Erin said.

Cassie stared at her for a moment. “Yeah,” she said eventually. “Me too.”

Erin slammed her eyes closed and huffed out a breath. Cassie stayed silent, let her work through this one on her own. Erin pinched the bridge of her nose. “Tell me you’re a grad student at least.”

“You want me to lie, or…?”

Erin opened her eyes to level her with a look.

“Senior.”

Erin groaned. “Christ. You’re barely older than my daughter.”

Keckley wasn’t a big school, and Cassie absolutely wanted to know who Erin’s kid was. But curiosity killed the cat, so she wouldn’t ask. She’d already said one dumb postorgasmic thing, anyway.

“So, uh,” she tried to head off any potential awkward silence, “good news, then. You know where my school is and could give me a ride home?”

Erin just looked at her. Awkward silence not avoided.

“I mean, you’re not going to make me take a Lyft looking freshly fucked, are you?”

Erin scoffed. “You do not look ‘freshly fucked.’”

“Um, I’m pretty sure I’m glowing right now,” Cassie said. “Sure as shit feels like it anyway.”

The compliment worked like a charm—Erin blushed and ran a hand through her hair, just like she’d done in the bar.

“Fine,” she said. “I’ll drive you.”

They moved to the front seats with as much dignity as they could maintain. Erin put the car in drive and Cassie turned up the radio. If she had to pick between silence, awkward small talk, and music, she was definitely picking music.

Besides, Erin’s phone was playing Beyoncé over the Bluetooth, and you never say no to Queen Bey.

“You ain’t married to no average bitch, boy,” Cassie sang along without thinking.

She cut herself off and cleared her throat. Singing in front of people she’d just met wasn’t exactly her thing. But out of the corner of her eye, she could see a grin spread across Erin’s face. Cassie swallowed, took a breath, and kept singing.

Neither said anything, even as they arrived on campus. Erin didn’t ask where Cassie lived and Cassie didn’t tell her. Maybe it was a coincidence, but the parking lot Erin pulled into was the farthest from the freshman dorms. Cassie wondered if her daughter was a freshman, before reminding herself that curiosity killed the cat, and enough pussy had been wrecked already that night.

The brightest light Cassie had seen Erin in was in the fucking bathroom, but even here, under the weak lights of the parking lot filtered through the windshield, the older woman shone. If Cassie were a romantic, she’d say Erin’s eyes were like the night sky—she’d never get bored tracing their constellations. But she was absolutely not a romantic, so mostly she was just proud of herself for picking up a woman this hot. And she was never gonna see her again, so Cassie figured she might as well take advantage of the goodbye. She kissed Erin as dirty as she knew how, waited for her to lean closer, over the center console, then pulled away, Erin chasing her lips.

“It’s been fun,” she said, and climbed out of the car without looking back.



* * *



Cassie wasn’t awake when her phone buzzed the next morning. She ignored it without opening her eyes. No one she wanted to talk to would call her this early. But it rang again, and again after that, and fuck whoever this was, she was gonna kill them.

“The fuck do you want?” she growled as she answered.

“I know it’s early, but I need you to come to breakfast with me.”

Parker.

Cassie rubbed at her eyes. “The audacity of you calling before eight on a Saturday. This might be the worst thing you’ve ever done to me, and yes, I’m including you sleeping with my boyfriend.”

Parker was quiet. She never seemed to know how to act when Cassie joked about how they’d met. Eventually, she said, “I’m serious, Cassie.”

“Acacia has got to be up by now.”

Acacia connected them a lot more than Seth, the now ex-boyfriend. She was Parker’s roommate and Cassie’s best friend since they were kids. She was also a morning person for some inexplicable reason.

“She and her brother are on a hike together,” Parker said and Cassie did a full-body shudder. “It’ll be a free breakfast—my mom will pay. I just need, like, a buffer. She’s too much sometimes, and I thought I could handle it on my own but now I’m spiraling. Please?”

Cassie resolved to never make friends with a freshman again. They were so needy.