Page 39 of The Dating Charade

He hung up the phone and turned back to Cassie. She was on the opposite end of the room, shoving her phone in her pocket, walking toward him.

How on earth could he avoid explaining himself? A man didn’t just step back from a near first kiss and dash out the door. So sorry, I’ve got to kiss and run. I know we were going to eat dinner, but . . .

But . . . what?

But his niece had a pickle stuck up her nose.

If she ended up asking him about it, he’d just have to tell her.

Fine.

They stepped back toward each other.

“I’m so sorry. I have to head out.”

He couldn’t tell who’d said it first, but somehow they had managed to speak the words at once.

They both smiled, both seeming to be bitterly aware of the broken mood.

“Okay, then.” Cassie rubbed her hands together. “Thanks for the game, Jett. I’ll see you around.”

Jett started nodding. “I’ll call you.”

As they walked to their cars, it was difficult to tell who was walking faster.

11

Cassie

“I don’t know. She shut herself in and locked the door almost—” Cassie’s mother checked her watch, her hand trembling slightly. “—forty-five minutes ago now. I’m so sorry to break up your big date, sweetie. I just didn’t know what to do.”

Her mother crossed her arms tightly over the chest of her Christmas sweater. Her toe nervously tapped the floor as if to wear out the floorboards.

“It’s fine, Mom.” Cassie jiggled the knob. “These things happen.” And of course they happened now, not in the other twenty-three hours of the day when she wasn’t with Jett. Of course they happened just on the tip of a very romantic kiss. What felt at the time like it could’ve been the kiss of a lifetime, she might add.

But, no, thank goodness Deidre and Kennedy hadn’t waited until she was home to lock themselves in a room full of staplers and scissors and thumbtacks—all of which she realized in hindsight weren’t the best things to leave around. Other parents got a year of figuring these rules out before a baby got their feet beneath them and walked into major messes. Even when they were walking, they were only a foot tall and there was time to figure out what to do with dangerous things on higher ground.

But for her? She’d become a parent overnight and all of a sudden was having to think about both parental controls on the computer and hiding bleach. It was incredible how many oversights were possible. Locks? On doors? She couldn’t understand how any house in America had locks on its doors when there were so many millions of children running around just waiting to lock their parents outside.

“Girls?” Cassie bent down to the brass knob, peering inside the lock. The hole was small and round. Basically, if she was going to try to be a lock picker, her observational skills started at ground zero. “Girls? Can you unlock the door?”

Silence fell on the other end, and her mother started worrying with her hands. Cassie looked to Star. She was still wearing the purple, destroyed-at-the-knees jeans Cassie had dropped her off in this morning, her face still carrying the zest of hanging out with friends. “Please tell me you just got here, Star. Please tell me Keely just dropped you off and you haven’t tried getting them out yet.”

Cassie’s mother put a hand on Star’s shoulder. “She tried talking to them—”

“I told them I was going to whoop them to Tuesday morning if they didn’t come out—”

“I’m sorry, sweetie,” Cassie’s mother interjected, clearly uncomfortable with teenage words and ways. “The girls weren’t eating dinner, and I was nudging them along, but then . . .” She waved a hand toward the door. “They bolted and sealed themselves inside. I thought I was just giving them a little encouragement, but I believe they felt pushed too hard.”

“It’s okay, Mom. They hardly eat for me either.” Cassie straightened, looking up and down the sides for a hinge. That was a thing, wasn’t it? Slide it out with a screwdriver somehow? The point was moot, however, as the hinge must’ve been on the other side. “Girls? Deidre? Please open the door.”

Cassie pressed her ear to one of the panels. Sure enough, the drawers of the desk on the opposite wall made a sound as though being slid open and closed. Cassie mentally went through all the items they could possibly be touching, all the horrendous things they could possibly be doing. Taking out the scissors. Cutting each other’s hair. Spilling five hundred thumbtacks around them so that every precious step became a real-life game of Don’t Step on the Tack (what on earth was the point of buying those colorful needle puncturers anyway?). Having a sword fight with sharpened pencils. Making paper airplanes out of all her tax returns. Seeing how much lead they could fit up their noses.

Cassie jiggled the doorknob once more. She slid her fingers over the sturdy, beautiful, five-paneled door. “Stand back.”

“Oh, honey, you can’t be serious.” Cassie’s mother held on to Star and pressed them both to the wall. “What about a window?”

“The window’s on the second floor, Mom. And even if I did get a ladder, you think they’d let me in out there? I’d have to break a window.” Cassie moved until her back touched the door to her bedroom.