When Katie Met Cassidy Read online

  Cassidy heard herself exhale, like a release valve had been pulled. “Positive.” She placed her hand on Katie’s back. It was a consolation touch, no different from any friend comforting another in an hour of need. “I’m glad you’re here.”

  Katie lifted her head from Cassidy’s shoulder, looked her right in the eyes. “I am, too.”

  Cassidy didn’t entirely trust herself to not pull Katie in closer. She’d ingested far too much alcohol to judge for certain what was happening in this moment, if the spark she felt between them was real or not.

  “I think you should stay here tonight,” Cassidy said, before Katie could say anything else. “In my guest room. You can hang out, do your thing, but I’m going to go to bed now. Okay?”

  Katie’s expression changed in a way that Cassidy couldn’t read. For a second she thought Katie might start crying again, or lean in to kiss her, or both.

  “I don’t—” Katie said, and then stopped. “Okay.”

  “Great.” Cassidy launched off the couch in the direction of the guest room, which no one but Gina had ever slept in—girls who spent the night usually did so in Cassidy’s bed.

  She detoured into the bathroom, flipped on the light, and waited for Katie to catch up to her. “There are towels there if you want to take a shower. New toothbrushes here.” She opened a drawer below the sink.

  Katie peered into the drawer. “Why do you have so many?”

  Cassidy searched her hazy brain for a second. “I like to replace them fairly often,” she said. “Easiest to buy in bulk.”

  A lie. They were one-night-stand toothbrushes, of course.

  Cassidy continued on into the guest room. “The cleaning service just came yesterday, so the sheets on the bed are fresh.” She untucked the bedspread to reveal the freshly laundered sheets.

  Katie grazed her hand across their surface. “Soft.”

  “They’re Italian,” Cassidy said. “A thousand twenty thread count.”

  “Who knows their sheets’ thread count?” Katie said. “I guess you’re as into textiles as you are toothbrushes.”

  “Pajamas.” Cassidy snapped her fingers. “You’ll need pajamas. Be right back.” She jogged into her bedroom, realizing that she was sweating gin. She could smell it on herself as she dug through her dresser drawers. She returned to the guest room with her only pair of sweat pants neatly folded on top of a white T-shirt.

  Katie was sitting on the edge of the bed. “Those look normal enough,” she said.

  Cassidy handed her the clothes. “What were you expecting?”

  “I don’t know. Some silk getup Hugh Hefner might wear?”

  “Good night, Katie.”

  “Hold on.” Katie held up the sweat pants. “Are these cashmere?”

  Cassidy nodded.

  “Who buys cashmere sweat pants?”

  “Good night, Katie,” Cassidy said again, this time making her escape and closing the door behind her.

  * * *

  Cassidy couldn’t sleep, not with Katie in the next room just a few feet away, so she did what she always did when she needed to burn off some energy in the middle of the night—crunches, followed by push-ups, followed by crunches, followed by push-ups, until there was nothing left in the tank.

  The repetition soothed her, and the pain would eventually be strong enough to force out every last thought, like whether Katie was awake, if she was twisting and turning and wondering what would have happened if Cassidy hadn’t retreated.

  Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three . . .

  Would anything have happened?

  Twenty-four, twenty-five, twenty-six . . .

  It couldn’t all be in Cassidy’s head that they had a connection, but she’d done the right thing, putting a stop to it. The wrong thing would have been to take advantage of Katie. To be led by her own desire when she knew the girl was a mess and in a total tailspin. The best Cassidy could do was duck out of the way.

  Thirty.

  Cassidy sprang up with one knee and planted her hands firmly on the floor beneath her shoulders. She lowered her body down, careful to keep her back flat.

  One, two, three . . .

  Then again, wasn’t Cassidy also being taken advantage of? It was Katie who probably wanted to use her as an experiment, as a distraction, as a painkiller.

  Since when did Cassidy not want to be used?

  She lived for the agony of doomed erotic collision, for self-sabotage, for I know this is going to hurt but I’m going to do it anyway, in fact that’s why I’m going to do it.

  Cassidy’s phone dinged with a text, and she jumped to standing. What if it was Katie from the next room, asking for company, asking for more?

  She tugged the hem of her boxer briefs down from where they’d ridden up on her thighs, then reached for the phone.

  It was a text from Gina: Heard you booked it out of the met like a maniac. WTF?

  Christ. WTF was right.

  Another text: Who wuz the girl?

  Cassidy sat on the edge of her bed and wrote back: Which girl?

  You’re sleeping with her. I know you are.

  Who?

  You know who.

  I wish, Cassidy wrote, and then deleted it. I’m not, Cassidy wrote instead. But she’s sleeping in my guest room.

  Gina wrote: She’s staying over and you’re not gonna sleep with her? This is worse than I thought.

  Cassidy chucked her phone aside. This was worse than she’d thought, too, which was why she had to keep her guard up. She had to protect herself. She needed to stay the hell away from Katie. Do the opposite of what her impulses told her to do.

  She dropped back down into a plank.

  Not only for Katie’s good. But for her own.

  One, two, three . . .

  For once she would do the right thing.

  NINE

  Katie woke up and yawned her way into Cassidy’s kitchen, following the scent of fresh coffee. There she found Cassidy wide awake in jogging shorts and a sweat-wicking tank top. Katie was startled by the sight of so much bare skin—Cassidy’s calves, thighs, and shoulders.

  “Wow,” Katie said. “You are really fit.”

  “You’re up early.” Cassidy appeared surprised to see her, like she’d either forgotten Katie had spent the night or was trying to sneak out unnoticed. “I was about to go for a run,” she said. “There’s coffee for you.”

  Katie poured herself a cup. Something about the way Cassidy was looking at her, or refusing to look at her, brought a knot to her stomach. There had been a moment of weirdness last night. Katie hadn’t been sure of it at first, but Cassidy’s avoidance of her now confirmed it.

  Though it was possible Cassidy was just too embarrassed for Katie to look at her. If she were Cassidy, she might have a hard time looking at her, too. What had she been thinking, calling this almost stranger in tears—and then spending the night in her spare room and her pajamas?

  “Hang out as long as you like,” Cassidy said, while stretching her quads. She may as well have put up a wall between them.

  “Can I come with you?” Katie asked.

  She’d surprised herself by asking. A final apology and walking her embarrassment home would have been much more appropriate, but the idea of dashing through sunlight and fresh air—not alone with her sadness, but with a friend—was too enticing to pass up. Its appeal trumped Katie’s shame.

  Cassidy clasped an exercise watch to her wrist. “Do you run?”

  “Yeah I run,” Katie said.

  Cassidy appeared dubious. “I usually do seven miles on the weekends.”

  Katie chugged some coffee, then set down the mug. “Let’s make it eight.”

  “I’m not one to decline a challenge,” Cassidy said. “But you don’t have any sneakers. And, no offense, but I’ve seen you try to run in high h
eels before.”

  “I’m a size ten,” Katie said. “Do you have a pair I can borrow?”

  Cassidy closed one eye, no less dubious. “I wear a ten.”

  “That makes sense.” Katie gestured toward Cassidy’s body. “We’re kind of the same size. You’re just . . .”

  “Careful,” Cassidy said.

  “What? I was going to say you’re more muscular. And I have more . . .” Katie drifted off, understanding now about being careful. “I am going to need a sports bra. Can I wear one of . . . yours?”

  “Right, okay.” Cassidy averted her eyes and moved toward her bedroom. “It’ll probably be too small.”

  Katie almost followed Cassidy into the bedroom, but she stayed put, sensing she was not welcome there. “That’s okay,” she said, trying to sound nonchalant. “I like to keep ’em nice and cozy when I run.”

  Cassidy was silent. All Katie could hear was the opening and closing of drawers. She was tempted to ask if it would be weird for Cassidy to have Katie wearing her bra, or if it was weird for Cassidy to wear a bra at all. It was kind of weird for Katie to imagine Cassidy wearing a bra, or anything so female beneath her clothes. Did she keep her bras in the same drawer with her men’s underwear?

  Cassidy returned from the bedroom with a pair of sneakers, shorts, socks, and a T-shirt. A sports bra was hidden somewhere in the middle of the pile.

  Katie went to the guest room to change, noticing this black pair of shorts and charcoal shirt were definitely not from the Nike women’s department, where almost every article was splashed with hot pink or baby blue and the shorts lacked this under-layer that she assumed was for genitalia holding. But the clothes fit Katie fine; they were just a little less formfitting than she was accustomed to.

  She returned to the living room dressed and ready to go.

  “Looking good,” Cassidy said.

  Katie smiled. “I feel like I look like you.”

  “Not quite.”

  Outside, the morning was crisp and bright. They jogged west to Chelsea Piers, then south along the Hudson all the way to Battery Park, talking about waterfront real estate and climate change and the preposterousness of waterfront real estate prices in spite of rising sea levels. On their way north again, they addressed the faults of the federal government’s legislative branch. Katie also learned that Cassidy had an aversion to raw carrots and anything lavender scented. And Katie shared with Cassidy how she despised goat cheese and loved pickles, and sometimes she went to the dog park even though she didn’t own a dog.

  There was a strange comfort that came from talking while not facing each other. Katie could look out over the water at the Statue of Liberty, or focus on not colliding with other runners or getting run over by a tourist on a Citi Bike, while telling stories about herself she might not have told otherwise.

  What they didn’t talk about was the moment of weirdness, and the more Katie thought about it, the more she wanted to talk about it—the more she wished Cassidy would be willing to talk about it. But each time Katie made a feeble attempt to bring it up, Cassidy redirected their conversation.

  When Katie said, “I know I seemed totally out of it last night, but just so you know, I wasn’t drunk or anything,” Cassidy said, “It would have been okay if you were. How’d you like the Evan Williams? Good as back home?”

  When Katie said, “I called you last night in such a state because I tried to go on a date with a guy I met online,” Cassidy said, “Good for you for getting yourself back out there. Which dating sites do you use?”

  Maybe it was better this way, just letting it go, chalking it up to confusion.

  Cassidy was doing her a favor by refusing to let her overthink it.

  Katie scanned the horizon, straightening her neck and back. Her shoulders, she noticed, were creeping up on her ears, and she was clenching her fists, so she dropped her arms to her sides and shook them out to release the tension.

  “We’re coming up on eight miles.” Cassidy showed Katie her watch.

  “Already?” Katie said. “I feel like I could keep going.”

  Cassidy seemed equally unwilling to rest, so they kept running, pushing themselves, delighting in the exertion. Eventually they stopped talking, but their legs continued on in sync, paced to one another.

  With the sun on her face, endorphins coursing through her brain, Katie was reminded of the thrill she felt on her walk home from dinner with Cassidy, of the carelessness Cassidy embodied, the buzz of selfish freedom.

  They finally stopped to walk after ten miles, when they found themselves back at Chelsea Piers. Spent and breathing hard, they bought some water from a pushcart, chugged it, and then threw themselves onto the grass blissfully exhausted.

  The grass was cool and prickly on the backs of Katie’s arms and legs. She could smell the rich dirt beneath it. “I can’t remember the last time I lay on the ground like this,” she said. “Without a sheet or blanket or anything.”

  Cassidy’s eyes were closed, but Katie could see her chest rising and falling with her breath. “Me neither.”

  “Why is that?” Katie said. “It’s wonderful.”

  Cassidy smiled, still with her eyes closed. “I don’t know.”

  * * *

  There was no good reason for Katie to remain at Cassidy’s once her purse and keys and last night’s dress were in hand, but when Cassidy asked her to stay for lunch, she agreed before she could think of a reason not to.

  Katie was the first to shower. In Cassidy’s spectacular bathroom, she turned on the showerhead and closed her eyes as a steamy waterfall rained over her shaky muscles. On a narrow shelf at eye level was a black razor that sat on a silver shaving stand. Alongside it was a small jar labeled Crème à Raser. Katie left the razor setup alone, but she lathered each aching limb with Cassidy’s luxuriant anise-scented soap and cleansed the sweat from her hair with Cassidy’s European shampoo, newly sentient of her living, breathing, thriving body.

  There was that heat again, that throbbing that would not quit.

  What would she do, she wondered, if Cassidy opened the bathroom door right then and slipped into the shower with her? How would her body react?

  But what kind of thought was that to have?

  Katie seemed to be all out of whack. She was reminded of the way some of the horses in the stables back home would act up at the change of season. Late fall would approach, and a usually calm and steady mare would start behaving like she’d been possessed, walking with a heightened awareness, overalert to every sight, sound, and smell. This was how Katie felt here in Cassidy’s shower, wholly in the power of her bodily urges, spooked by an almost imperceptible change in the air.

  Katie revved the faucet hard and to the right for a surge of icy cold, and then stepped out of the shower onto the slate tile floor one foot at a time.

  She wrapped herself in Cassidy’s soft terry-cloth robe. On her way to the living room, her dripping-wet hair left a trail of droplets behind her.

  Cassidy was seated on the couch bent over her laptop, still in her exercise clothes. She looked up at Katie, then immediately back down.

  Katie watched her and tried to name exactly what it was that she felt toward Cassidy in that moment. Affinity? Attraction? She was objectively attractive, gender aside. Striking even, and a charmer when she cared to be. If Cassidy were a man, Katie might have crawled onto the couch, let her robe fall open, and seen what happened.

  But she wasn’t a man.

  “I’m ordering us some lunch.” Cassidy turned her laptop around and shot up to standing. “Just pick out whatever you want and then hit send. I’m going to hop in the shower.”

  “Are you sure I’m not overstaying my welcome?” Katie asked, while blocking Cassidy’s route to the bathroom.

  Cassidy smiled at Katie’s refusal to let her by. “I’m not even going to dignify that question with a res
ponse.”

  “I’ll head home after lunch,” Katie said.

  “You don’t have to.” Cassidy remained still, no longer making any effort to pass. “I like having you here.”

  “Do you have big plans tonight?”

  Cassidy took a half step backward. “I wouldn’t call them big. There’s a barbecue at Metropolis every Sunday. Tonight’s the last one of the season.”

  “Is it fun?”

  “Why do you ask?”

  “I don’t know,” Katie said. “Maybe I’ll come by.”

  Cassidy seemed to consider this. “You keep showing up at Metropolis, and people might get the wrong idea.”

  In spite of herself, Katie felt a thrill shoot up her spine. She shrugged her shoulders and stepped aside then, allowing Cassidy to make her way to the shower.

  * * *

  Katie stood in front of her closet wearing nothing but her black lace bra and underwear, trying not to think too much about where she was headed and why. She wanted to go to the bar, so she was going to go to the bar. It was as simple as that. She preferred to focus on her outfit. A barbecue called for casual, but she didn’t want to go so casual that her lace undergarments felt bullied or out of place.

  Of course this was the moment her mother chose to call her. She swore the woman had a sixth sense for whenever Katie was doing something she wouldn’t approve of.

  “Hey, Mama,” Katie answered, in a tone of voice that she hoped in no way revealed that she was standing in her underwear preparing to go to a barbecue that would blow her mother’s head right from her body.

  “I told you I want you checking in more often, now that you’re living alone again,” her mother said, not bothering with a hello.

  “Sorry . . . I’ve just been busy.”

  “Busy doing what is what I want to know.”

  It was a mixed blessing that her mother knew nothing of FaceTime or Skype. On one hand, it allowed Katie to continue getting dressed during her mother’s inquisition, but on the other it might have helped with her mother’s relentless inability to visualize Katie’s New York life. If she could actually have seen that Katie was okay, she might have worried less.