Cherish Farrah, page 13
Brianne and Jerry Whitman’s voices are faint, but I can hear them through the open door off the kitchen and I follow them to the outdoor great room.
A second dining table resides there, this one topped by thick glass and weatherproofed. Overhead, there’s a canopy of large canvas squares outlined by sun and sky, the metal frame they’re fastened to also home to unshaded light bulbs. Cushions adorn every seat, a host of them residing on the indoor/outdoor bench large enough for the entire family.
“Well, look who’s up and operating on two legs!”
I offer Jerry a sheepish smile. It’s such a dad thing to say, complete with mock awe and arms waving, barbecue tongs in one hand and his thick gold wedding band glinting on the other.
“I hope your appetite is as healthy as you look,” he says, turning back to the stationary grill, beside which there’s a metal countertop stacked with meat. It looks like he’s added links to the menu, and there’s a ridiculously huge jar of homemade sauerkraut nearby, like it was too anxious to wait in the fridge.
“Look at you!” Brianne beams at me, either as though she didn’t see me an hour ago or as though I look remarkably different after my shower.
“I feel like a new person,” I say.
“I’ll bet,” she says.
When she takes and squeezes my hand, I glance down to see, and when she keeps hold of it, it stops me asking where Cherish could be. It doesn’t matter.
“Well, you’re back to your beautiful self; that’s what’s important,” she says as though agreeing with me. “And I went ahead and made a little fruit salad.” She gestures toward the largest silver serving bowl I’ve ever seen. “Since I don’t want you to have to wait for the coleslaw that apparently may never come.”
“Drama.” Cherish’s voice appears out of nowhere, joined immediately by her presence, and the way both her parents coo and almost straighten up with delight, you’d think she’s the one who recently survived the plague.
She holds up a tub of store-bought coleslaw with a kind of petulant grimace-smile on her face.
“Baby,” Brianne whines, “I asked you to buy fixings, not coleslaw itself.”
“It literally tastes exactly the same as yours, Mom, relax.”
“Okay, ouch. And it’s the sodium and sugar content, you know I don’t like—”
But I tune out their sitcom bickering when Tariq steps out of the house behind Cherish. I haven’t seen him since the night I had dinner with my parents, but I can’t be sure he hasn’t featured in any of my fever dreams. I feel like I’ve seen him recently, but maybe not this exact Tariq. Like maybe he’s changed over the course of a few days somehow, and the Tariq in my dreams is closer to who he used to be.
“Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Whitman,” he says, and the corner of his mouth twitches like he’ll smile, only he doesn’t force it. Like Cherish’s disrespect, it goes completely unchallenged, and he receives salutations much more enthusiastic than he gave.
“How’s everything, man?” Jerry first slaps hands with the boy before casually transitioning between at least two other gestures that end with them putting their shoulders into each other’s chest.
I almost snort. I don’t know how guys always know what to do next in these complicated rituals, and I certainly didn’t expect Cherish’s dad to do it that smooth.
I almost snort because something gives me pause. Something looks strange about Tariq’s hand, even though it’s moving around too much for me to get a good look. It looks like he’s wearing something across his knuckles, but I can’t be sure.
“Stick around,” Mr. Whitman tells him, gesturing to the grill, and I hold my breath for his response.
“Yeah, I could eat,” Tariq says, and instead of nodding, he pushes out his chin to one side and then the other like a boxer pantomiming a bob and weave, to Jerry’s amusement.
I glance back down at his hands, but he’s got them under his shirt, holding the hem away from his body in one of those mundane but inexplicably sexy poses guys strike.
He’s doing it on purpose. I know, because the next place he looks is right at me. It’s as though one minute he didn’t notice me, and the next his gaze is fixed.
“Hey, Farrah,” he says, and then absentmindedly wets his lips.
Something falls into the bottom of my stomach—but not my stomach. I know enough about anatomy to know that’s not what’s directly above my pelvis, but I don’t know how watching Tariq’s mouth can give me a sensation that deep.
It’s a while before I can breathe out a simple “Hey, Tariq.”
It doesn’t seem like the adults take any notice, but Cherish is watching me from beside him, and there’s something off about her look. Which is when I realize she hasn’t said a word to me.
I crunch my brow at her in an unspoken question, and she blinks and turns to Tariq.
“You want something to drink?” she asks him, like she didn’t just punch me in the gut, and when the two of them turn back toward the house without her even glancing back, the deep gut sensation Tariq gave me a moment ago turns into a stone.
My heartbeat picks up immediately, and my neck is hot, but I keep my composure. Jerry and Brianne Whitman haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary. They seem oblivious to the way Cherish has snubbed me, so I wait a beat and choke down an inhale before I let myself casually walk back into the house after her.
“Che,” I say, while she’s still standing before the open refrigerator with her back to me.
It’s like I don’t exist. Her shoulders don’t tighten; there’s no slight tick in her neck like she almost turned to acknowledge me and then decided against it.
I spoke not five feet from her, and it’s like Cherish didn’t even hear me.
She closes the refrigerator door and coolly walks out of the kitchen, leaving Tariq and me alone.
I’m on the verge of hyperventilating at this point, the palms of my hands clammy against the island counter, which is miraculously clean. The detritus from Brianne’s “little salad” has been cleared away, the cutting board cleaned, and the blood of sliced fruit mopped up. If I hadn’t witnessed the carnage myself, I might not believe this counter had ever been used. But it isn’t unwelcoming and sterile like my parents’ place. Instead it’s easy to believe that food just magically appears, fully prepared, in this kitchen. In this house, everything you need simply appears, without cost or consequence, and—aside from Cherish—there’s never any mess to reckon with.
“Che,” I call when it’s much too late. She’s been out of the room for several beats and is probably halfway up the front staircase by now, but maybe the illness isn’t totally out of my system, because it took all that time to process this.
Or maybe being in my right mind isn’t enough to keep Cherish’s behavior from destabilizing me.
My Cherish. The Cherish I’ve chosen as my home. The one person I love even when I hate her. Even when the thought of her name makes me think of nails pointed skyward and blood pluming underwater. The one person I chose, the one I trust, who trusts me, even when I hold her down in the pool.
It sounds like I’m there right now, water packed against my eardrums so that if there is any sound in the kitchen I can’t hear it.
My hands are pressing too hard into the countertop, because my arms are starting to shake.
Cherish doesn’t walk away from me. She doesn’t act like I don’t exist.
My eyes roll up toward the ceiling as though I can see through it. I can’t hear her, either, but I know she’s in our bedroom, standing in the dead space where I’m not, because she didn’t plan anything past the intentional assault of refusing to acknowledge me.
She isn’t prepared for this. Not really.
She won’t know what to do next, whether to force a confrontation or broker a reconciliation.
She needs me to react.
My breathing starts to calm, and sound returns. Sensation, too, because I can feel Tariq’s hand against my back now, and I had no idea he’d come so close.
“Are you still kinda sick?” he’s asking me.
Because Cherish must’ve told him. My parents don’t know I’ve been deliriously ill, but my crush does.
“Do you need to sit down?”
His palm is warm, the heat bleeding through the brushed cotton of my summer-thin shirt and into my skin. Beneath his touch, I let myself buckle, just a little. Just enough for him to notice.
He holds me more securely now, his hand sliding across my back so his arm is against the whole of it, and his other one around my front, like I’m not already leaning on the counter.
“I think I just need some water,” I say, rationing my breath so that the words sound flimsy.
He’s hesitant to leave me, but after a moment of pause, he moves quickly to get a bottle from the fridge before supporting my weight while I climb onto a barstool.
“Better?” he asks, and puts the hand that was across my torso on the counter in front of me when he bends his knees slightly so he can look me over.
I was right about his hands. The knuckles are raised with thin scabs and it’s why it looked like he was wearing something over them. His skin is a handsome berry brown, but they’re dark purple, and then bright red where the scabs are cracked, and the healing is clearly coming slow.
“What happened?” I ask, my fingertips hovering over the skin I don’t dare touch.
“Oh.” He makes a fist with the hand on display, and then as though he’d mistakenly thought the gesture would hide the damage, he pulls it off the counter. There’s a smile on his lips that he keeps trying to pull down, and I pick it up without meaning to. “Nothing. You should see the other guy.” And he gives a kind of grunt laugh and pushes his dreads out of his eyes, only to have them fall right back across his line of sight.
“Oh, I see how it is,” I say, abandoning my previous weakness to convince Tariq I’m impressed. He smiles big and tilts his head back a little as though feeding on the attention.
Except I’ve seen him throw a punch. And if he was in another fight, why doesn’t it look like he took any?
“So who was he? This other guy?” I ask, my eyes still wide and doe-like, my lip still curling up on one side. I casually extract lint from his shirt and then brush the material like it hasn’t occurred to me that his chest is just beneath.
It doesn’t work. Instead of being taken in by my nonchalant inquiry and physical contact, Tariq flicks his eyes to mine, and then somewhere else. After that, he shrugs and gives a kind of smirk I don’t think I’ve seen on him before.
“It’s just an expression, Farrah,” he tells me, a grill gleaming on his bottom teeth.
I feel myself go rigid.
None of that was right.
“You should see the other guy” might be an expression, but bruised and scabbing knuckles are most definitely real. Something was on the receiving end of them. I’m not being silly—so why is he trying to make me feel like I am? And since when does Tariq wear his best friend’s grill?
Who is standing in this kitchen with me? Because it isn’t the eternally mellow, sometimes painfully reserved, and always adorably gentle Tariq. It isn’t the respectful and respectable Jekyll to Kelly’s Hyde, and it isn’t just the residue of delirium that’s making me suspicious. In fact, if I thought there was any possible way for Kelly to have stepped into Tariq’s skin, that’s what I would swear happened. I’d think there was some kind of astral possession at work, that Kelly was somewhere else, controlling Tariq like a drone.
I want to ask Cherish why she didn’t think it was strange that he’s wearing her boyfriend’s gear—which is when I remember that she ignored me. That’s what I should be worried about. I’ve gotten the confirmation I wanted about Tariq’s hands. I don’t have any more time to wonder about him today.
Unless his behavior has something to do with the way Cherish is acting. His bruises didn’t happen today, so I’m unsure how they could be related, but I also couldn’t possibly have upset Cherish. She was gone before I was even awake.
“Hey,” Tariq says when he’s leaning close enough that I can feel his breath against my cheek. “You wanna go for a walk later or something?”
I turn my chin so that I’m looking in his eyes.
“I’ve missed you the last few days.” He can’t say it all without glancing down, and I almost smile. He’s himself again, at least for a moment, so I nod.
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”
Brianne’s voice gets louder and she’s obviously closer to the door.
“Be right back,” I tell Tariq, and then slip out of the kitchen before she gets there, taking the stairs two at a time when I get to them, and then regretting it at the landing. My lung capacity isn’t what it should be, and I have to hold on to the banister and breathe deep outside our bedroom door.
Before I collect myself, it opens, and Cherish looks surprised to see me. Like walking away was more than an attempt to get me to follow her.
Like she meant it.
She starts toward the stairs like she’s just going to pass me—like it doesn’t matter how heavy I have to breathe—and I grip her wrist.
“What’s wrong with you?” I plead. “Why are you being like this?”
When she doesn’t answer, the fire in my chest threatens to go wild. She’s never been like this before—I didn’t even know she could be—and I don’t know what self-control is supposed to look like in this scenario.
“Che!” I pull down on her wrist to make her look at me. “Tell me what I did! What could I possibly have done to you while I’ve been sick out of my mind?”
She tries to wrench her arm back without answering me, and I tighten and twist, pulling it up between us now so that it hurts to resist.
Her expression goes from anger to something like heartbreak in an instant. It knocks me off-center. I don’t release her, but my mouth gapes in confusion.
“Cherish,” I almost whisper. “Tell me what’s wrong. Please. What did I do?”
“You’re doing it right now,” she replies, and she shakes her head before turning it away because there’s a tear she didn’t mean for me to see. She’s not strong like me. Eventually she was bound to break.
My hand springs open, dropping her wrist.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, and she cradles it like she wants me to feel bad.
“Yes, you do.”
“Cher-bear.” I let my shoulders wilt, ignoring the way Cherish’s brow cinches. “I’ve been virtually on my death bed. I’ve been sick for days—”
“And only on my side of the bed.”
My mouth snaps closed.
She keeps saying things I don’t expect.
“You didn’t think I’d notice?” she asks accusingly. “I always notice, Farrah.”
Nothing resonates but the way she says my name.
Farrah. Not RahRah.
“I’ve noticed the way no one told your mom and dad, too. Have you?”
“What are you doing?” I ask, my chin low.
“What am I doing?” she throws back at me, but quietly, and it’s all the time I need.
“What were you doing with Tariq all day?”
“What?” she asks, her forehead crinkling.
“Is this about what happened to Kelly? What Kelly did?”
“Farrah, we’re talking about you!” she hisses.
“I know he betrayed you, Cherish, but that doesn’t mean everyone will. It doesn’t mean I will.” And then I pause. “Not everybody is out to get you.”
Cherish isn’t me. I adore her, but she and I are very different people. It’s easy to disrupt her, to make it difficult for her to think. Just now, her face is caving. Under the anger that turned to confusion that became defeat, her resolve is crumbling. There’s no use turning her face away now; I’ve already seen her tears.
I take her wrist again, and she doesn’t resist when I pull her into my arms. Her chin’s against my shoulder, like her last act of defiance is refusing to put her head on my shoulder, but I rub her back anyway.
“Sometimes I’m not even sure you love me,” she whispers.
My hand stops.
“You don’t mean that.”
It’s me who ends up laying my head on her shoulder, because I need her to believe me. Because this part is true.
“I love you, Cherish,” I say quietly. “You have to know that. I’m not sure I love anybody but you.”
“Sometimes I think . . .” But she runs out of steam. She doesn’t finish, but her breathing calms, and I know she’s stopped crying.
None of what she said matters. It’s my Cherish. She wasn’t looking for answers, just to know I still care.
“Look at you two,” Brianne calls up from the bottom of the stairs. “You’re just precious! Come and eat before I eat you up instead.”
I kiss the soft skin of Cherish’s neck where Brianne can’t see and hold both her hands.
“Come on,” I whisper, and she nods against me.
“My darling girls,” Brianne Whitman coos, and she waits while we come down the stairs like a pair of Cinderellas entering the ball, and I wonder. If the fairy tale were true, and there could only be one of us . . . which would she choose?
Mr. Whitman and Tariq have set the patio table and displayed the grilled meat. When Brianne leads Cherish and me back outside, the two of them are huddling together over the latest patties, whose fat drips off and sizzles on the briquettes, sending up coils of smoke. It looks almost sinister, the way the white wafts in the limited space between them, and Jerry taps the backs of Tariq’s wrecked hands with his perspiring bottle of foreign beer. They’re both grinning, and whatever Mr. Whitman tells him—advice maybe on how to care for the scabbing knuckles, or else something more approving by the way their mouths split open a bit wider to let free a laugh—Tariq nods and gives a satisfied shrug.
