Bree.
Louis’s happiness was a crucial piece of the perfect escape plan.
“Don’t worry, Cass. I took him to the café to cool off. He practically passed out when I let him pay for my chili cheese fries.” Bree picked up one of the many misplaced fidget spinners from Cassie’s desk and began spinning.
Cassie stared at her cup for one long moment, then looked to Bree, the girls, the computer.
It was time to call it.
“Well, on the bright side, I don’t think we have to worry about this happening again. I think I just had my last blind date.”
Bree halted the spinning spinner. “That bad?”
“Somewhere between the guy who shoplifted the stuffed dolphin and the one who ate through a pack of gum in five minutes and stuck every piece on the walls—”
Bree’s eyes widened. “No, Cass. Not Gum Man.”
“He was married.” Cassie set her cup down on the only available inch of table space in front of her. “The charming youth volunteer who stated loyalty was the biggest characteristic he was looking for . . . was married.” She shrugged. “So, I’m done. I think we can all agree I gave online dating more than a decent shot.”
Star and the others looked to Bree, who gave them a resolute, don’t-worry-I-got-this nod. “Let me see for myself. I’m hearing you, Cass, but let’s take a look before we try to cut the one cord that’s been sending men your way—mad as a March hare or otherwise.”
Cassie pushed the keyboard her way. “Be my guest. Username is ‘Cass0312.’”
Bree started typing.
“Password is ‘mrjeeves.’ No caps.”
Bree’s fingers typed the letters and then froze. She removed one hand from the keyboard and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Cass. Please don’t tell me you created a password out of your cat. Please tell me I misheard you.”
But sure enough, the pop-up disappeared, and a dozen male faces filled the screen. Cassie pushed herself up and slid over the desk, mulberry skirt and all. If she was going to be humiliated, she might as well get a little distance. While the girls scrolled, she moved to the window, taking her coffee cup with her. Across the street a fireman in full gear stood with his back to one of the trucks, talking to a group of kids.
“This guy seems nice.”
Cassie flicked her head back to see Star pointing to a message titled “READY FOR LOVE WITH SOMEONE LIKE YOU.”
“It’s spam.”
Star read aloud anyway:
HEY LADY,
READ ABOUT YOU LAST NIGHT. CAN’T STOP THNKNG ABOUT YOU. WANDERING IF THERE KOULD BE SOMETHING SPECIAL ABOUT US, SPARKS TURNING TO FIRE. MSGE ME BACK. CAN’T WAIT.
Cassie returned her attention to the fireman, now holding up his ax in demonstration. “Told you.”
Star pointed to the screen. “What about that one? He likes cats too.”
“Yes,” Bree began in an instructive voice, “but let us all remember there is a line between having a cat and wearing a cat on your head in your profile picture. Not a big line.” Bree threw Cassie a hard look. “But still, a line. And the goal here is to keep our girl from wandering entirely over to the other side.”
Five more minutes with no leads, and the girls began to sink back in their chairs.
“You can say it: there’s no hope.” Cassie took a sip of her lukewarm coffee. Across the street, the fireman was now lifting a toddler into the driver’s side of the fire truck, the child looking as though he was on the best rollercoaster of his life.
At least she’d have Bree to depend on the rest of her life. Bree, the free-spirited tropical fish without a care in the world. Bree never worried when she didn’t have a boyfriend. In fact, whenever she did have one, she tended to forget him.
Cassie flicked a new cobweb off the windowsill.
“What is this?” Bree pointed to the line halfway down her profile. “What do you mean you don’t want kids?”
Ah. Bree had found it.
Star unscrewed the cap of the large jar of pretzels on Cassie’s desk and dug a hand in. “You don’t like kids? Miss C, hate to break it to you, but you got the wrong job.”
“No, of course I want kids. I just can’t have them. Physically, I mean.” Cassie smiled, her tone upbeat though she kept her eyes on the world outside. “A few years ago, I was in an accident. As it turns out, sometimes you make things worse when you try to fix them.”
She trained her eyes on the firefighter settling another kid into the driver’s seat, trying hard not to think about the scar tissue presently sitting like a bowling ball in her uterus or the lines across her stomach from the surgeries she’d endured in attempts to repair it.
A loud honk erupted from the fire truck, and the fireman laughed while pulling the toddler’s hand away from an overhead cord. Cassie allowed herself a whisper of a smile.
“By that she means she should’ve sued the socks off the doctor. Then she could’ve bought herself a husband and we wouldn’t be having this conversation.” Bree paused, giving the memory the moment of silence it deserved. After all, she, too, had been there amid everything Cassie lost those years ago. She’d watched Cassie learn the hard way that not all scars were physical.
Suddenly, Bree stood and dropped her hold on the mouse and, along with it, the moment. She waved an accusing hand at the computer. “Well, that’s your problem, Cass. You’re attracting jerks because you put yourself in the jerk category. All the nice guys are on the other side. You need to get out of the ‘I love traveling, gourmet food, and myself’ world and move into the ‘Athletic man seeking companion to whisper sweet nothings to as he coaches beloved children’s little league.’ Now, of course you know I don’t want to be tied down to little life suckers, baking pies in floral aprons, but you, now . . .”
Several of the girls shot her a dirty look. Bree pressed her hand to her chest and amended herself. “Unless they came out fourteen and potty-trained, of course. But babe, aprons and kids are all you. All you have to do is change your preference in your bio.”
“Were it that simple, I would jump on the opportunity. But I had to check one way or the other: do or don’t want children. And I have no intention of leading someone into the wrong impression on a first date. Wanting kids is a big deal. Monumental.”
“And you do want kids.”
“And ‘by adoption’ wasn’t one of the options, was it?” Cassie shot Bree a meaningful look, the kind that warned her friend she was putting her hand too close to the fire. The kind that said, “Yes, but from personal experience, you and I both know that I know exactly what it feels like to be dropped—brutally—right when the man you thought was your soul mate finds out you can’t have biological kids. I won’t dare go that route again.”
“You know who I need?” Cassie turned her head again and this time pointed to the window. The firefighter was now lifting what must’ve been the fifteenth toddler into the driver’s seat. “That guy. Right there.”
They all watched him put a helmet on the little girl. The girl giggled as the protective gear wobbled on her petite head.
“That kind of guy wouldn’t be caught dead on a dating site. That guy, I just know, is making someone the luckiest girl in the world.”
2
Jett
The alarm rang through the building. Jett paused, chin tilted slightly upward as he held onto the blade.
“Medic 2–10, Ladder 2–0–2, med 1 response . . . 525 Skyline Drive. Female . . .” The dispatcher’s words came so quickly through the speakers that to anyone other than a firefighter it would’ve sounded like a foreign language.
His shoulders eased as the dispatcher rambled off the rest of the situation and address. He even managed to calmly set the knife down, scoop the halfway chopped onion onto a plate, and toss the unopened package of chuck roast back into the commercial-sized steel refrigerator.
No fire today, just Donna Gene needing her weekly visit.
“Bentley!” A man twice his age stepped out from a ba
throom, soap suds covering half his chin. He pointed a razor at Jett. “Give your lady friend your schedule. Tell her not to call on days you’re up for dinner duty.”
Jett smiled. The bushy mustache above Captain Ferraro’s half-shaved chin, however, didn’t so much as quiver. “Yes, sir.” Jett straightened his shoulders. I’ll tell her, sir.”
Jogging beneath the pulsing blue lights through the stark hall, down the stairs, and into the bay, he met Sunny squatted beside Medic 2–10, lacing up his boots. They were dressed in identical paramedic uniforms: navy-blue buttoned polos with fire-rescue patches, navy pants, black boots, black belt. The badges gave off a silvery shine, reflecting the morning light coming from the sixty-paned fire-station doors that held the four engines neatly inside.
Jett twisted the key of the gleaming Medic 2–10, and it began to hum.
Sunny hopped in the passenger seat beside him and hung his elbow out the window. A moment later, he slapped the door twice and yelled to the two men jogging into the bay. “Let’s go, ladies. Clock’s a runnin’.”
Jarod and Kevin gave Sunny looks that said well and clear they were not impressed. But then, Jett and Sunny weren’t the ones shrugging on Kevlar for what they all knew was a bust call.
“I like you, Bentley,” Jarod said, hopping into his boots and pulling up his suspenders. “You’ve been a good addition these past few months. But that doesn’t mean I’m not starting to think up ways to get you kicked over to Station 3. If you don’t get those two to stop—”
“Then what? You’ll complain to Captain that you’re missing out on beauty sleep when you’re supposed to be on toilet duty?” Jett patted the wheel. “C’mon. They’re just two lonely old ladies on a mountaintop looking for something to occupy the time.”
“Yeah?” Kevin slung his jacket around himself. “I have a neighbor who’s eighty-five. You know what she does for fun? Cross-stitches pillows. Drives a camper out to Utah. Goes to rock concerts with her grandkids. Won in her age group last year for the Turkey Trot 5K. Makes these little star-shaped cookies around the holidays filled with jelly—”
“Should I feel concerned by the depth of these details?” Jett’s voice rose as the station doors lifted.
“Does yoga on a little back patio surrounded by sunflowers she grows in her garden—”
“I’m definitely uncomfortable.”
Kevin yanked open the door to Ladder 2–0–2 beside him. “Notice nothing in that list included calling the fire department.”
The engine roared to life, drowning out any more disturbing details Kevin might’ve been planning to add. Jett closed his window.
Amid the muted noise, Sunny pulled out a Hot Pocket stowed somewhere inside his jacket. “My meemaw likes to catch raccoons sneaking in her chicken coop. She spray-paints their tails and drops them off ten miles past the river, just to see them track their way back.” He shrugged and bit into his Hot Pocket. Through his mouthful he added, “Everyone’s got a hobby.”
The trucks filled the narrow streets as they made their way through Gatlinburg, sirens reverberating off stores and churches. Soon they were surrounded by a landscape of rock and pine. Higher and higher into the mountains they went, and just when it seemed the asphalt had run out, the battered and tilted road sign for Skyline Drive peeked its head out from behind thick, wild bushes.
The airbrakes on Ladder 2–0–2 gave a squeal at the sign, and the massive engine plopped down in the middle of the all-but-abandoned road. Kevin leaned his head out the window. “Go meet your sweetheart, Bentley. Send for us if, miracle of miracles, you actually need our help.”
Gravel sputtered beneath back tires as Jett pressed his boot firmly to the floor and powered the much smaller emergency vehicle up the drive. Tree limb after tree limb snapped at the sides of Medic 2–10 until the one-bedroom house came into view, smoke curling upward from its humble chimney. Frail, eighty-four-year-old Mrs. Edna “Edie” Kolak, the one and only neighbor to Donna Gene in a five-mile radius, tightened her robe about herself as she stood from the rickety lawn chair on the front porch. Jett pulled into the driveway, and Edie grabbed the siding as she began to step off the porch.
Cold air blasted into his lungs as he opened the door.
Despite the mere twelve minutes it took to get to 525 Skyline Drive, he always felt like he was suddenly a hundred miles from downtown Gatlinburg. The air was crisper in these elevated parts, and what was a light dusting in the town below accumulated to well over three inches here, confirmed with a quick glance at the snow overlaying the old, forgotten array of lawn art in concrete shapes of rabbits and angels.
He slid on blue latex gloves.
Like a hesitant ice skater, Edie tested her unsteady slipper on the grass. “Oh, Law’, I am glad you are here.”
“Now, just get back up on the porch there, Mrs. Kolak. Let us come to you.” Jett slung the blaze-orange medic pack over his shoulder.
Edie obediently stepped back and waited. She rubbed at her gnarled, arthritic knuckles, fear powerful in her expression. “I know we weren’t supposed to call, and we’ve been doing so good until lately, but—”
A loud moan came from behind the screen door. A long moan. A moan so long it was a wonder the woman hadn’t run out of breath.
“It’s no trouble at all.” He smiled down at all four foot nine inches of the woman as he took hold of her frail elbow. “Now, why don’t we get out of the cold and see what’s going on?”
Edie all too willingly let herself be guided inside. Jett could gamble on the exact location—to the foot, really—where Donna Gene had taken a tumble. But even if he’d somehow blocked his memories of the last twenty-two times he’d been inside the house, he would still need no directions. They could simply follow the long, continuous moans interrupted only by millisecond breaths.
He led the way through the small, confined living room. On the large television covering the window, a woman yelled hysterically at a man, and the audience unanimously began to boo.
Donna’s backside was the first thing that came into view as he turned into the kitchen.
“Ohh, Jetty boy. You found me.” Donna held out a plump arm, reaching toward him as though he would pull her out of her grave.
Jett pressed his hands to his knees and squatted down to her level. The woman stared back from beneath the square card table. Somehow the three-hundred-and-fifty-pound, eighty-two-year-old woman always managed to fall off her chair and land on the yellowed linoleum, and she always twisted and turned until she’d firmly wedged herself beneath the table legs, caught like a mouse in a trap. “For the life of me, Donna Gene, I don’t know how you do it.”
“You think you can help her? You think she’ll be all right?” Edie’s voice warbled as she clasped her hands together at her chest. The elderly woman had been watching the paramedics pull her friend up from the kitchen floor at least once a week for over five months now, and yet every time, she genuinely seemed to believe Donna Gene was on the precipice of death.
“She’ll be just fine.” Jett smiled, stood, and began the routine. He picked up a pair of small crystal salt and pepper shakers from the table and moved them to the counter. Something smelled foul, but his glance around the room suggested too many contributors to locate the item at fault. A bucket of grease sat next to the range, along with a frying pan containing chicken pieces well over a day—or even three days—old. His boot slid the overflowing trash can a couple feet away, along with another bulging trash bag on the floor. The trash bag pushed into the litter box, forcing him to wonder: when was the last time he’d seen a cat in the house?
Sunny began fighting a defiant window.
“You boys are trying to kill us! It’s all but ten degrees!” Edie pulled her robe tightly around her thin neck and fumbled in her cardigan pocket for her hand sanitizer. She sprayed it over her face to, as she often reminded them, “ward off the germs of outside air.”
Sunny began his well-worn spiel as Jett emptied the containers on the table ab
ove Donna Gene’s head. A deep southern accent always magically appeared whenever he talked to elderly ladies. “Oh, Mrs. Kolak, you know how I get when up in these parts. It’s just like in the mountains of Colorado, so high up I can’t get ’nough air in my lungs to keep me from passing flat out like one o’ them faintin’ goats. I need the fresh air to keep on keepin’ on.” He flapped his button-up a few times as he drank in a few breaths from the open window. “And you do want us helping your friend here, don’t you?”
Edie resumed her trusty clutched-hands-at-chest position. “Oh. Most certainly.”
The table cleared, Jett grabbed both sides of the table and carefully began to pull. He met little resistance as he lifted and released the prisoner beneath. Together, he and Sunny unraveled the sheet from his pack, and in less than two minutes Donna Gene was cautiously lifted and settled back into her trusty living-room recliner.
The second her legs touched the burgundy fabric, she opened her mouth, continuing a conversation as if seven days hadn’t spanned their last meeting. “Now, as I was saying, Jetty boy, a solid specimen like yourself is wasting your days without someone nice to warm your toes with.” She lifted the remote and, with eyes glued to Jett, turned the volume down. “Frankly, your fear of rejection concerns me.”
Uh-oh. When Donna Gene used such highfalutin words as “fear of rejection,” he knew exactly where this conversation was going.
Sunny grinned and headed toward the door.
Donna Gene eyed Edie, who was slowly making her way to the couch. “It concerns us both. Makes us wonder if it has something to do with childhood trauma.”
Childhood trauma. Their phrase of choice.
The amount of Dr. Bob they watched in the span of twenty-four hours had done unusual things to Donna Gene and Edie, one of which was turn them into self-pronounced psychologists diagnosing anyone within a two-mile radius. As nobody actually lived within a two-mile radius, all their enthusiastic energy fixated on one of their favorites. Him. So far he was dealing with PTSD, middle child syndrome (he was, in fact, the oldest of two), dependent personality disorder, OCD, an overactive thyroid, and couvade syndrome—which he hoped meant something different to them than the usual definition. Otherwise he’d developed the pregnancy symptoms of an imaginary wife.
The Dating Charade Page 2