Page 2 of The Dating Charade

Then, at last, she began the incomprehensible—and, it should be noted, utterly meaningless—show of charades. To the innocent onlooker, it looked positively seething.

“You sure? Old girlfriend, perhaps? Did your wife take up diving?”

“No, I . . .” His eyes were glued to the glass, his neck reddening to match his thin polyester collar.

But Cassie was already melting into the crowd of onlookers, sharks, and spotted eagle rays. Her eyes never left his now babbling form as she moved backward like a chessboard knight, slipping around parents and kids and disappearing before he’d even realize she’d gone. At the private, staff-only door, she gave Bree a salute and slipped through it.

Married.

Both her smile and energy melted as she shut the door and leaned against it. For a brief moment she let the slime of the date slip off her, imagining it oozing down her mulberry velvet skirt and knee-high boots to the water drain in the middle of the floor.

Married.

To be honest, she’d really hoped for good things with this one. He was educated, good looking. His pictures avoided posing with toilets in the background. His interests followed the same strain as hers: running, cooking, festive gatherings with friends. He even claimed to volunteer with the residential kids at Wears Valley Ranch. She’d been particularly interested in talking with him about that one.

But what had happened? Where was she now? Back in her trusty panic room beside a rack of wetsuits, cleaning tanks, and a bucket of squeegees.

Cassie let herself indulge in one more minute of pity partying before kicking off the wall and heading for the exit door. Gold and persimmon maple leaves danced around her boots as she stepped around the backside of the building to her car. She dropped her purse into the passenger seat and, with the engine humming, sorted through her choices for the suddenly free hour. It didn’t take long before she shifted her car into Reverse.

Back to work it was.

Eight minutes and twenty-three seconds later, she pulled into her parking spot with its rusted sign: Crazy Boss Parks Here: All Other Cars Will Be Sold on the Black Market. (Sure, she probably shouldn’t have kept the sign the Haven girls gave her a handful of years ago—encouraging delinquent behavior and all that. Still, it made her smile.)

Two large pots of orange mums sat on either side of the otherwise dull entrance to Girls Haven. It was a typical government building: all sharp brick corners and long-paned windows. The cobwebs adorning said windows were about as permanent as the emotionless beige paint on the inside walls—and not for Cassie’s lack of trying. She’d vacuumed the webs from her office window at least five hundred times in the seven years she’d been director at the center for disadvantaged girls. As punishment for unruly moments, girls had been guided to her office window with a vacuum and bleach bottle more times than she could count. And yet somehow the webs always grew back overnight, wafting in the breeze as if laughing each morning at her return.

“What’re you doing back already, Miss C?” Star’s Chucks rhythmically slapped the brick wall she sat on, her feet swinging as she watched Cassie ascend the concrete steps. “Don’t tell me. You got another flake.”

“Oh, quite the contrary,” Cassie replied, reaching the top step. “I’d say he was quite keen. Maybe by our third date he would’ve had all three of us out for dinner—him, me, and his wife.”

“Hey, at least you would’ve made it to a third date.” Star laughed, then dropped off the wall. Pausing, she looked Cassie up and down, then rested her fist resolutely on her hip with all the sass a fourteen-year-old could give. “You know what, Miss C? You’re too picky.”

Cassie gave a blunt laugh. “Is that so?”

“And I think it’s about time you let us girls have a shot at finding you a man.” The wind picked up, making the beads at the end of her dreadlocked ponytail clatter together. “Because let’s admit it: you’re cute, but you’re not getting any younger.”

“Cute but not getting any younger. How did you know exactly what I needed to hear today?” Cassie smiled, her eyes catching a glimpse of the rows of fire trucks parked across the street.

At least once a month someone asked if she was married. Had kids. Once she was asked if she had grandkids. She was just thirty-three. But anyone age twenty-five or older was the same to these girls—lumped into a giant bag labeled “ancient.”

“Nice ’do.” Cassie took in Star’s new locks. A silvery blue string weaved through it, all the way down to the bare, bony shoulders Star was sporting in thirty-degree weather. “You do it last night?”

“Yeah.”

Cassie looked closer, and her smile faded as her antenna rose.

Star stepped back, slipping the craftily spun lock through her fingers.

It looked good. Too good. “You do it yourself?”

Star’s eyes darted to Cassie’s boots, then the mums, before finally resting on the basketball hoop on the aged concrete pad beside the building. “No.”

Cassie crossed her arms. Waited.

Seven years on the job at Girls Haven, and she was a master of the teenage standoff. People from nonprofits around the nation sought her advice and expertise on the teenage standoff. She practically led conference workshops on the teenage standoff.

Finally, as though the words had been extracted by pliers, Star spoke. “Ershanna did it.”

Cassie’s lips pursed. The times Star let anyone experiment with her hair were few and far between. Whenever she showed up with something worth keeping, you could bet a dime it was because Ershanna had taken her in. And the only time the nineteen-year-old, barely-an-adult-herself neighbor took Star and her sisters in was because something bad had happened at home.