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Cassie was ready to immerse herself in her Thanksgiving traditions—primarily getting stoned off good weed provided by Emerson and eating way too much food.
Because she needed her daughter to know that was how she should live, how she should make decisions. And Erin needed her to know it before she was thirty-five and almost fifteen years into a marriage that never should have happened to begin with.
But she still cared too much about what people thought. She was trying to teach her daughter not to, trying to teach her to do whatever the hell she wanted from the beginning, and not have to learn how when she was pushing forty. Erin was trying to teach her daughter the opposite of what her mother had taught her.
He’d always made her feel small when she tried to talk about problems. He was so certain in his own worldview, he made her feel like a fool for seeing things differently.
“When you raise a kid, it’s so easy to fuck up,” Erin said. “You don’t mean to, but you do. I can’t always control whether or not I do right by her. But in this I can. She feels bad, and I can make it a little better. She deserves so much more, but this I can do.”
The divorce? It was for Erin, yes, but for Parker, too. Erin learned to put herself first because she wanted to model that for her daughter.
“Fuck should. It doesn’t matter what I’ve been trained to think I’m ‘supposed’ to do. What do I want? What makes
me feel good? What will make my relationships stronger? Those are the questions that matter. Not what should I do.” “Yes, fuck, I love this.”
Flowers and an orgasm, from someone who gave them to her because they wanted to, not because they had to.
“My guess? You expected judgment. You assumed judgment. There are people in your life who conditioned you to constant judgment.”
“Honey. Sexting is not ridiculous. You were just in a passionless marriage for too long.”
“You want me to be happy, so you got a divorce? That’s really what you’re trying to say here?” “Yes.” She took another breath. It was simple, really. “How could I teach you to be happy when I wasn’t?”
“I want you to keep saying my name, Cassie. And I want to go down on you. You’ll get your turn, don’t worry.”
“First I’m gonna finger you on it in your garage, then we’re gonna take back roads and I’m gonna sit behind you and talk you into another orgasm while you grind on the seat, the engine making it vibrate right against your clit.”
Erin woke Cassie up with her mouth. Cassie came two minutes before she needed to be awake for work. “Good timing,” she said when she realized it. “I checked when your alarm was,” Erin explained. “And acted accordingly.”
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.
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.
