Every day that week, he went to the shelter. Eventually Bart caught on to the fact that he was busy and stopped asking him out to social outings, which he was fine with - he preferred talking to Cassie and taking care of the animals.

By the second day, he's adopting the damn black haired kitten because all the other ones are ganging up on the little guy and he almost instantly feels like he made the worst decision of his life. The fucking thing eats his pillows.

Cassie gets relinquished from her duties of community service but he thinks she's fallen in love with mommy cats a bit too much because she keeps promising she's going to come back.

"I should celebrate this somehow," She says, looking at him curiously as he pulls his bag over his shoulder. When he glances at her, she whistles innocently while folding her community service slip so it'll fit into the pocket of her jeans.

"Party hard?" He asked, smiling a little.

She folded her arms, "Not really a party girl. I was thinking… ice cream." She smiled in what she hoped was a flirtatious manner figuring maybe he'd get the hint-

"Okay, well, have fun," Jaime said, and she groaned loudly, following him out the door.

"You know, it'd be way more fun if we went together, Jaime. We could get like strawberry or something-"

Jaime stopped, chewing on his lower lip before he shook his head. "No, I've got to go take care of Demon and I need to start a paper for French. Why don't you call some of your other friends?"

"Because," She stalled, waiting his face to break into a smile and tell her he was kidding and they could ride off into the sunset. Unfortunately, that didn't happen and she was standing there awkwardly with her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth. "Iwanttogowithyou."

Oh, fabulous job Cassie. You wonder why you don't have a boyfriend. "Uh, nevermind."

Jaime sighed, and she thought maybe for a second he had a fleeting change of heart. Or, maybe he didn't think she had any friends. "Okay, I'll go. But I really do need to go check up on Demon first, okay?"

"Yeah, cool, can I come too?"

Cassie sat on the wood bench, next to Jaime, eating the chunks of strawberry that had been inbedded in the vanilla ice cream. Jaime kept picking up new napkins and throwing the old ones out.

The awkward silence was starting to get to him while he messed with the spoon of his ice cream and attempted to ask a well thought out, intellectual question, and instead it comes out as the worst fucking thing that could ever be asked. "What's your favorite color?"

He's chastising himself for even saying something so freaking dumb, while Cassie answers. "I like blue and red the most I guess," She said, eating another strawberry. "You?"

His brain short circuited. He knew it was blue but he couldn't just grasp onto the right word to say. So he just blurted out the first color that came to mind. "Uh, blonde."

She giggled, and he realized too late that it wasn't a color.

"So what do you like to do when you aren't feeding baby cats?" She asked, smiling up at him.

"I work as a translator. And trust me, it is a lot more frustrating than it sounds."

Cassie smiled, licking off her spoon before throwing out the remainder of her blizzard. "What language? Spanish?"

"I'm working on French too - which is fucking terrible. But yeah, Spanish."

"Ooh! Can you show me some?"

Jaime hesitated, but did so, "Usted tiene ojos bonitos."

"What did you say?" She asked, but he only shook his head.

"So, what do you do when you aren't beating up guys?"

She tipped back on the bench. "I don't beat them up for fun! He was a douche." Cassie paused, thinking the rest of the question over. "In my spare time I read. I really like mystery novels."

"That's cool. What classes do you take in the college?"

She looked down awkwardly at her feet, "I haven't figured out what I major in yet. I'm just taking the basics, like English and Math."

"You'll get there," He said, then offered her the remainder of his ice cream. It was starting to get melty and it was getting harder to hide it in a napkin. And girls usually liked chocolate stuff when they were upset… right?

"You're sure you're done?" She asked, looking conspicuously at the chocolate chip and fudge mixture. When he nodded, she dug out a big spoonful, thanking him between cold swallows.

He threw his napkin out while they returned to the awkward silence they had previously been trapped in. Cassie finished up the cup of ice cream and shuffled her feet against the gravel.

"So-" He started, probably to offer to walk her home or something he hadn't -really made up his mind yet - when Cassie grabbed a vibrating phone from her pocket.

"Dad?"

Jaime wasn't sure why the entire atmosphere of nice-but-awkward had switched to get-out-while-you-can. There was a long pause while Cassie listened to the person on the opposite side.

"Yeah, thanks. Love you too."

She ended the call, stuffing her phone back into her jeans pocket. It took him several moments to notice she was crying. Not that bad, just silent streaks of tears down her cheeks, but he looped an arm around her shoulder and gently rocked her back and forth anyways. "What happened?"

"That was my dad. And, uhm, he called to wish me happy birthday."

"Why didn't you tell me? Happy Birthday." Now he knew why she wanted to go out for ice cream so bad.

Cassie shook her head. "Jaime, my birthday was three months ago," she whispered softly and he felt like an idiot.

"Well, he's a douchebag," He said, and Cassie giggled through her tears.