Page 47 of The Dating Charade

With a pound of peppermints, Tootsie Rolls, bubblegum, and church flyers with attached candy canes in their baskets, Kennedy and Deidre hung on to a street lamp and leaned out with their baskets as far as they could as kids from the YMCA passed. A girl not much older than Deidre poured a handful of Hershey’s Kisses in both baskets.

Then, finally, her new favorite vehicle came into view, and for once it wasn’t sounding the sirens. “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree” played loudly through the crowd, the electric guitar echoing cheerfully back from brick buildings. String-lit garland draped across ladders the width of the fire engines, and firemen dressed in bunker gear waved heartily to the crowds.

Cassie’s heart momentarily paused as Jett—with arm hanging out of the front passenger seat—spotted her. Lifting his Santa hat off his head, he waved it and winked at her. She felt her cheeks heat as she waved back.

Both Donna Gene and her elderly neighbor turned in their chairs.

“Why, do you know that man, Patsy?”

“If I’m not mistaken, I’d say he was sweet on you.” Mrs. Kolak crossed her frail arms across the blanket on her lap, and it was hard to tell just then if that was a compliment or criticism.

Cassie tugged on the red scarf wound around her throat. “My name’s Cassie. And yes, Ms. Donna Gene, I’ve just started seeing him, actually.”

The wrinkles on her forehead shoved up as she lifted her brows and looked at Cassie as if it was the first time she was really seeing her. “Why, that’s a fine piece of man right there, I daresay.”

“Anybody would be lucky to have ’im,” added Mrs. Kolak tartly, facing straight as an arrow ahead while a group of accordion players passed.

“Don’t mind Edie,” Donna Gene said, patting her neighbor’s lap. “She’s just mad the boys don’t trip over themselves to light her cigarette anymore.”

“They used to too,” Mrs. Kolak muttered.

Donna Gene pushed her bags off an empty lawn chair. “Anyway, indulge us. Tell us all about you two.”

Both women seemed to have forgotten completely about the parade. Instead, they watched her as though she were now the man riding the oversized unicycle.

With traces of warmth still on her cheeks, Cassie glanced at the retreating fire engine well down the block. In her line of work, this type of nosiness was standard. In fact, she kind of preferred it.

Day and night she had been focused on the kids’ needs, trying desperately to tiptoe around potentially disruptive conversation topics, trying to make them feel happy and at ease. It was exhausting work, physically and mentally. Frankly, besides sitting down with Jett himself, there was nothing she’d rather do at that moment than talk about him—even if it was with two odd ladies. Not to mention, being a friend to a shut-in was the point of the Leadership Club’s outing tonight. If she had to talk about him, she had to talk about him.

Cassie glanced around to her charges: the fourteen teens seated beside their companions, Deidre and Kennedy circling the lamppost. She sat down.

Donna Gene, looking pleased, patted her knee.

“Well,” Cassie began awkwardly, crossing her boots at the ankles, “his name is Jett. He’s twenty-nine—a little younger than me, I admit—and works with the fire department.”

“Tell us something we don’t know,” Edie chirped. She sprayed hand sanitizer in front of her face.

“Of course he’s a fireman, she means. He was sitting in the truck.” Donna Gene laughed and gave Edie a hearty, slightly startling slap on her frail shoulder. “Anyways. What else?”

“Why do you think you deserve him?” Edie added.

Cassie laughed. “Well, given I deserted him on the first date and almost deserted him on the second, I’d say I don’t deserve him, really.”

“Oh?” Evidently this was more what Edie wanted to hear. With perked ears she leaned forward while Cassie, with their prodding, went into full details of their meeting, of his relentless pursuing, and where they finally were today.

“And what about those two?” Donna Gene pointed her umbrella at the girls jumping at the finale of the parade, Santa aboard his luminescent sleigh, perched atop a float carried by Billy’s Tow Services. “They yours?”

Cassie hesitated. It was the first time anyone had asked. “They’re . . . with me. Yes.”

“And how’s he taken to them?”

“There’s three of them, actually,” Cassie said. “And he doesn’t know.”

“Tell him after the wedding.” Edie was nodding, the sequins of the belt buckle around her wool hat jostling. “I did the same thing, and I was married forty-two years.”

“The same thing? What do you mean the same thing—”

“Take it from Edie.” Donna Gene waggled her finger. “As Dr. Bob says, we must learn from the experienced, or we’ll never find our way. She was happily married—”