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.”
About the Author
Taylor Meo Photography
Melissa Ferguson lives in Bristol, Tennessee, where she enjoys chasing her children and writing romantic comedies full of humor and heart.