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 diditfeel, but how didyoufeel 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 alwaysletyourself 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 quiteshrill,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, soshe 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 Erinneededher 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.”