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Dom
“Go clean your room before your grandma gets here.” I point down the hall just in case Cass thinks I’m talking about some mythical room in the video game that just shut off. Thank God for whoever invented screen timers, is all I can say.
Cass scowls at the now black device screen. “Why? She’s just going to tell me we have to clean it all over again. This way, she has more to work with.”
I bite back a grin because my eight-year-old daughter has her grandma pegged. What she hasn’t figured out yet is that my mom likes to use the cleaning together scenario to look under mattresses and inside tossed books so that there can be a ‘discussion’ if she deems it necessary. No big deal when you’re eight. Embarrassing as fuck when you’re fifteen. I had the cleanest room in the house as a teenager and from all visible appearances lived a life as pure as the driven snow. What I’ll be looking for when Cass turns that age is loose floorboards. Just sayin’.
“Why can’t I come with you? Your friends are more fun than Grandma.” Cass pouts, her fists resting on her non-existent hips.
“You can come for the Christmas party, baby. Your vocabulary still needs to recover from the last time you tagged along,” I remind her dryly. I had daily notes home from her teacher for a week after she whipped out a new word of the day for her school friends. Courtesy of Timmons, who is clueless that eight-year-olds aren’t supposed to say things like clusterfuck.
“Well, there’s no denying you two are a matched set,” my mom says cheerfully as she sets her purse down on the kitchen counter. Both Cass and I stare at her bewildered until she braces her hands on her hips and nods towards us. Cass and I look at each other and my daughter bursts into giggles. I reach down to tickle her mercilessly so she won’t see how my mom’s comment affected me. Mom is the only person that knows that Cass isn’t my biological daughter and it needs to stay that way until she’s eighteen. In every way that counts, she’s one hundred percent mine and despite the scowls, I love her to pieces.
“Go on, get out of here,” Mom says gently. “Cassidy and I will hold down the fort and get some girl time in.” Cass groans while my mom smiles gently. Girl time means manners and princess movies. Both things that Cass isn’t particularly fond of. But as my mom says she’s not trying to change Cass just expose her to the other half of the equation. Then inevitably she’ll remind us both that my sister had to learn to change the oil and tires on her car before she was allowed to drive it off the property.
So every Friday evening, my mom comes over to spend a few hours with Cass and I head off to IPDIESAC. She would rather I was out dating, but not being eight, I have a tiny bit of agency. Not much. Not nearly what I thought a thirty-six-year-old man would have when Iwaseight.
But I’m still grateful for my family, so I drop a kiss on my mom’s cheek before opening the back door. “Thanks, Mom. I’ll be back by nine.”
That’s usually just when things heat up at study group, but I don’t like my mom driving late at night and she refuses to stay over because her cat might get lonely. I wouldn’t go at all, but yeah, Mom’s made it clear girl time was happening with or without me.
Leanne
Despite the spicy romance novel propped against the napkin holder in front of me, I’m feeling glum. Three months into my new job in a new state and it’s clear my plans for a new image as well haven’t done me any favors. I thought taking a page out of my best friend Keiko’s book — dying my hair black and wearing black canvas combat boots — would make me edgier. All it’s done is make me weird. I get odd looks from just about everyone — I guess they can all see what a fraud I am. But how the hell do you undye your hair without the telltale stripe down your scalp? And since I’m a natural pale blonde, I promise everyone would notice. Besides, I refuse to go back to my life of floral print dresses with coordinated cardigans. That girl is gone. And those were my mom’s choices, not mine. So basically I have a conundrum because this clearly isn’t me, but I’m not at all sure what is.
My deep meditation on my fashion failings is interrupted by a young voice at my elbow. “Does that book mean you like to read? But if that’s true, why aren’t you turning any pages?”
I look up and then down. A girl of about eight or nine, dressed in jeans and a plaid flannel shirt, is standing at my elbow with a clipboard. I stare at her because I’m pretty sure Alpha Corps doesn’t start them this young.
“Uh, who are you and why are you asking?”
A tiny smile tugs at her lips. “I’m Cass and I’m the one asking questions. Do you like to read?”
Her pen is poised over the clipboard and since this is the most fun I’ve had all week, I’m embarrassingly curious to know more. “Sure,” I answer her slowly.
Cass makes a mark on her clipboard. “Are you over eighteen?”
My eyebrows shoot up at that one. For a start, that’s a first. I’m used to being asked if I’m over twenty-one but not sure what you need to be eighteen for except voting. “Yes,” I give it to her without arguing so I can find out where she’s headed next.
“Are you into princesses and tea parties?” Cass’s disdain for these pastimes is evident by the scorn in her voice. Now I have an inkling why she approached me.
“Not really.” That at least is honest. Having been told I look like a princess most of my life means I’ve never felt the need to lean into that. Hence the clearly-not-working all black look.
“What’s your name?” Cass asks firmly, her pen poised. I’m amused that this appears to be one of her last questions, not the first.
“Leanne.” I spell it out for her when she quickly pauses writing.
She sighs heavily. “My grandma says I have to include this one. Are you married or in a long-term relationship or only interested in women?” Her words blur together, so I’m left blinking as it fits together. She’s shopping for a date. Clearly not for herself, although the princess question threw me.
“Cass? I feel like I know you well enough to ask this now. What the heck are you up to?”
She blinks back, then a sunshiny grin scrubs the scowl off her face. “My grandma says the only way I can get out of girl time on Friday night is if my dad gets married. My dad says he already has too many interfering women in his life and he’s not looking for another one. So I’m doing it.”
I can’t hold back the smirk of amusement, but she’s so proud of herself I don’t have the heart to burst her bubble. But I kinda need to know which man I should work to avoid in the hallways from here on out.
“What’s your dad’s name?” I ask softly, but Cass takes this as an expression of interest in her project on my part.
