Cherry on Top, page 17
Kendra nodded, as Ellis had already given her the gist. “Yeah, that’s a piece of work right there, isn’t it?” She shifted her dark gaze to Ellis. “What’s she gonna do? She decide yet?”
Shaking her head, she told her no.
“That’s a tough call, for sure.” Kendra glanced at her husband. “You ready, baby? I feel like I got run over by a semi, and then it decided it forgot something, shifted into reverse, and ran over me again.”
“That’s a rough day, right there,” Ellis said with a grin.
Evan got to his feet and gave Ellis a hug, then took his wife’s bags off her shoulder.
“Chivalry is not dead,” Ellis said.
“Not in my house,” Kendra agreed. Then she, too, hugged Ellis. “Don’t you stay too late, missy.” She walked around the bed and pressed a kiss to Michaela’s forehead. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” she whispered. With a wave to Ellis, the Jacksons headed home, and it was just Ellis and Michaela.
A glance at her phone said it was just after nine. She thought she’d have gotten her next 11th Commandment assignment by now, but sometimes the info didn’t come until after midnight. She needed to head home. Nugget would be hungry for his wet food, but he had plenty of dry, and she wasn’t ready to leave Mikey just yet. That happened sometimes. Every so often, there’d be a day when she was visiting her sister and just felt like she should stay. There was never a particular thing that happened, just a feeling. A tug. A pull on her heart, and more than once, she’d wondered if it was somehow some form of Michaela talking to her. Telepathically or mentally or psychically. There was no real proof, of course. Having a feeling didn’t mean anything concrete. But whenever she felt that tug, she stayed. She didn’t wonder over it, didn’t question it. She just stayed.
She got out her laptop and made herself comfortable in the chair next to Michaela’s bed, stretched out her legs, and used the rolling table as a desk. Her phone pinged and indicated a text from Cherry.
Hi cutie! Doing ok? Met Adam’s guy 2nite. Still here. Nice. Might b kinda drunk. The text was followed by a couple of drink emoji and one with a goofy, overserved-looking expression. She grinned. In the almost two months she’d known Cherry, she’d never seen her intoxicated. And if your long-lost mother showing up out of the blue wasn’t reason enough to get plastered, she didn’t know what was.
As long as ur home, she texted back. All good here.
The dots bounced for a few seconds, then stopped, then bounced some more, then stopped. Cherry was clearly trying to find her words. When they finally arrived, they were simple.
I don’t know what to do.
Ellis didn’t need to ask what she meant or who she was talking about. Then you do nothing. Until you do know. She wished she had an easy answer for her, but it was the best she could do.
Right.
No more dots came, and Ellis assumed she’d gone back to her guest and roommates, which was okay. She was feeling a little in her head, as Michaela used to say when she got all pensive and quiet.
“What would you do, Mikey?” Her voice was soft but still felt a little loud in the silence of the room. She inhaled slowly and let it out bit by bit. “It’s a tough call for us, isn’t it? God knows I’d give anything at all to be able to talk to Mom one more time. Wouldn’t you?” That had been the first thought she’d had when Cherry had told her. You have your mom back! You’re so lucky! But then she remembered that their situations were, in fact, not the same. That Ellis’s mom had left unwillingly and Cherry’s mom had chosen to leave. Huge difference there.
“What if Mom had left us? Just woke up one day and decided she didn’t want to be our mother anymore? Can you imagine? Can you even begin to imagine? ’Cause I can’t. Not even a little.”
And maybe that was the reason she was having trouble watching Cherry waver. It wouldn’t—for one single second—occur to Ellis not to want to connect with her mother. However, she had zero idea what it was like in Cherry’s shoes. Not just to be abandoned by your mother, but to be left with your father who was, in Cherry’s words, not a nice guy. No, she couldn’t even begin to imagine what that must feel like. And because of that, she had no right to judge. Or even have an opinion. “Nope. My job is to be supportive of this person I care about.” She turned to look at Michaela, whose blue eyes were watching something unseen on the ceiling. “Right? It’s not my decision to make. I know that.”
And she did. Didn’t make it any easier, but she knew.
Half an hour later, she’d drifted off in the chair and her phone pinging woke her up. A good night text from Cherry.
Sweet dreams. Mtg tomorrow, so no diner. Boo. And a crying emoji.
Sleep well, she texted back, and an emoji blowing a kiss. Then she sat up and stretched her arms above her head. She’d stayed later than she’d intended, and guilt settled on her when she thought about her poor cat.
“Gotta go, Mikey.” She gathered her things together, then gave her sister a kiss. “See you soon.”
Out in her car, she found herself thinking about Cherry again, about how it hadn’t taken long at all for her to become such a huge part of her day. Hell, of her life. She started the engine, then pulled out her phone and texted once more.
I missed you today.
She added a heart emoji, and then headed home, smiling big.
Chapter Nineteen
Tuesday was already a bear, and it was only eleven thirty in the morning. For whatever reason, lots of people had crashed their cars in the days before, and Cherry found herself driving all over town to check claims, examine damage, go over details.
She’d managed to send a text off to Ellis midmorning to see if she could meet for a quick lunch. Because honestly? Seeing her face even for just five minutes would go a long way in helping Cherry get through the rest of her day. Maybe they could do dinner or something.
Driving from client to client was when she did most of her thinking, and luckily, she’d been able to shove Lila to the side for the moment because Ellis had been on her mind a lot lately. She’d used the previous night—meeting Jared and spending time with him, Adam, and Shea—as sort of a test for herself. Not that Ellis spending time with her sister meant Cherry wasn’t allowed to see her. She totally could’ve pushed the issue—she knew that already. Ellis would’ve made time for her, like she had when Cherry had called her back from Cleveland. She’d dropped everything because Cherry had asked her to. That spoke volumes about her reliability and trustworthiness. Not to mention it was a pretty big clue that Ellis was feeling the same way Cherry was about them. No, she had wanted to test herself last night. Spend the evening away from Ellis, on her own with her friends, and be fine. And she had. She was. But she’d missed Ellis like crazy. More than she’d expected to. And that had been eye-opening. When had she become this person, this girl whose most prominent thoughts revolved around the person she was seeing casually?
That was the important word, right? Casually. They were seeing each other casually. Okay, Cherry could admit that she was dying to have sex with her again. Because OMG, they were good at it. Playing it cool was much harder than she thought it would be. Part of her just wanted to dive headfirst into Ellis, into a relationship with her, be her girlfriend, spend holidays together, all that stuff couples do, and that was surprising. Given her upbringing, the whole idea of the happy life, white picket fence thing tended to be kind of a joke. But part of her thought about it. Often. The other part? Yeah. The other part knew there was much more they needed to deal with. Talk about. Take apart.
She noticed the little red number one on the screen in her car, meaning she had a text, and she hit the touchscreen so the car would read it to her.
“Ellis Conrad said, Near the lake across from diner twelve fifteen.”
Cherry chuckled at the lack of inflection or emotion in the robotic car voice. It made it sound like Ellis was clipped and stoic, two things she definitely was not.
At twelve ten, she pulled into the diner’s parking lot, which was only half full. Sunny Side Up served lunch, and it was good, but not nearly as popular as breakfast, so she wasn’t surprised by the lack of customers. It was likely why Ellis had time to meet her.
She trudged across the little street to the lakeshore, the area busy with other folks walking or meeting up or having lunch. There were lots of shops and little businesses in the area, and summer was prime time for lakeshore activity. She found Ellis sitting alone on a bench that faced the water, and even just seeing the back of her blond head made Cherry’s stomach do a little flip-flop of gleeful anticipation.
“God, am I glad to see you,” she said as she sat next to Ellis, close enough so their thighs touched.
Something was wrong.
She could tell instantly. The air felt off. The atmosphere. The energy Ellis radiated.
“What’s the matter?” she asked, then immediately added, “Is Michaela okay?”
Ellis didn’t look at her, just at the phone she held. “My sister is fine,” she said quietly, then did some scrolling and held the phone toward Cherry. “Who’s this?”
Cherry took the phone and squinted at the photograph, which was slightly grainy. Two women were sitting at a small outdoor table in a restaurant, their hands clasped across it. Both were brunette.
“Scroll. There are several.” Ellis’s voice held no emotion at all, weirdly similar to the car’s robot voice. What the hell was going on?
She scrolled and very clearly felt the bottom drop out of her stomach. The second photo was less grainy, much sharper. Sharp enough that she recognized one of the women, and this time, they were kissing. It was Julianne, Andi’s wife. She didn’t recognize the other one.
“Um,” Cherry swallowed, and her stomach churned, “I think that’s Andi’s wife, Julianne.” Oh, poor Andi.
“It is. I had to do some research last night. Your friend Andi has a significant online presence.”
Cherry could hardly breathe.
“Interestingly, when I wandered through her social media accounts, I found several posts that tagged an account called Cherry on Top. And I was curious, so I took a look.”
Oh fuck.
Cherry felt sick and was almost certain she could hear walls crumbling down around her.
“Let me ask you a question.” Ellis continued to stare out at the water, and her voice was low. Quiet, but not in a soft way. In a steely way. In a clearly angry and hurt way. “Do you have a girlfriend?”
“What? No!” Cherry blurted before she had time to think. Then, “No, I don’t have a girlfriend.”
Ellis looked her in the eye for the first time since she’d sat down, and her blue eyes widened in disbelief for a split second before her whole face shuttered again. “Not according to Cherry on Top.” The sarcasm was clear.
“I can explain that,” she said, but Ellis was clearly having none of it.
“You can explain what? How we’ve been seeing each other for nearly two months—eight whole weeks—and not only did you neglect to tell me that you’re an LGBTQ+ influencer with several thousand followers, but you have a girlfriend, and you talk about her all the time on your socials?”
“No, that’s just it. I don’t. I don’t have a girlfriend. She’s pretend. I pretend to have one.”
“I’m sorry, you pretend to have a girlfriend?” Ellis’s eyes were almost comically wide. “Why the fuck would you do that?”
“To get more followers,” she said quietly. Miserably. “Andi gets so many views on her posts that feature her wife…” She sounded ridiculous and she knew it.
“Yeah, well, Andi’s wife is clearly banging somebody else, so something’s not working.”
She had no idea what to say to that, and then her eyes welled up, which was all she needed. She felt helpless as she literally felt everything she’d wanted slipping through her fingers. And it was her own fault.
“I can’t believe you didn’t tell me any of this.”
“In my defense, you’re not exactly a fan of influencers and social media in general.” Okay, that came out a bit too snarky, and she grimaced.
“Did you just think I’d never find out?” Ellis was clearly incredulous. “Were you just never going to tell me?”
“No, I was.” Ellis shot her a look that said she clearly didn’t believe that. “I planned to, but I kept putting it off and putting it off and then…” She shrugged because she didn’t really have an acceptable ending to that sentence.
“And then two months went by.”
“I’m sorry,” she said and was annoyed when her voice cracked. “I’m so sorry. I just…I didn’t know how to bring it up after you talked about your sister.”
Ellis gave a small nod. “I scrolled through your pages. I spent a lot of time last night and this morning doing that after my assignment came and I saw the pictures and recognized your friend with the purple hair.”
“Your assignment?”
A nod. “I write for The 11th Commandment.”
Cherry gaped at her in disbelief. “That online tabloid rag that airs people’s dirty laundry? You never told me that.”
Ellis’s eyes flashed at her. “I guess we’re even then.”
Cherry felt her own anger zap through her but managed to keep her mouth shut because no, they weren’t even.
“Your posts are…” Ellis shook her head as she looked off over the water. “They’re not even you. They’re…altered. Filtered. Airbrushed. And fake. Way too perfect. And”—her shoulders dropped, and she sighed and looked completely defeated—“maybe that is the real you, and the one I’ve spent two months with is the fake version. I don’t even know at this point.”
“No, no, that’s not true.” Cherry sounded desperate, and she knew it, but she didn’t care. Because she was. She was desperate. Desperate to keep from losing this woman who sat next to her with the most disappointed eyes she’d ever seen.
“Which isn’t?”
“The online version. I doctor that up so much. I use filters and editing and airbrushing and—”
“Fake girlfriends.”
“And a fake girlfriend. Yes. One.”
Ellis looked at her then. Held her gaze. And Cherry felt like she was searching inside her, looking for her soul, coming up empty. “But why?”
How could she answer that? The truth made her sound horrible. Vain. Self-centered. And she couldn’t lie. Not again. She could never lie to Ellis again. She would never lie to Ellis again. She lifted her shoulders and let them drop, then sighed. “It’s what I’ve wanted to do for a long time.”
“Be a phony?”
Ouch.
What could she say to that? Ellis didn’t understand, couldn’t. And Cherry couldn’t blame her, after what happened to her sister. Grasping at straws, she tried to explain. “Be better than me. I grew up with not a lot of money and not a lot of love. Nobody saw me. I kind of floated through school. I don’t think my teachers could’ve picked me out of a lineup. I kinda thought that was going to be my entire life. Just floating through, disturbing nothing, being noticed by nobody. Then, I managed to get partially through college, and I became friends with Shea and Adam, and they helped me build some confidence. Shea especially helped me…be less hard on myself. She turned me on to Instagram and Snapchat and TikTok, and I really got into social media. I followed different influencers, and Shea told me all the time that I could easily do that. So I gave it a shot, and I was surprised to find out that I really loved it. And I was good at it. I am good at it.”
Ellis said nothing, looked completely unimpressed, but was listening, so Cherry went on.
“As time went by and I gained followers, I started to realize that it was something I could do more. Maybe actually make a living at, down the line. A career. This may come as a surprise, but working at an insurance company isn’t my dream job.” The stab at humor fell short. Way short. Cherry continued, “I met Andi at a beerfest. I’d been following her for a while and tried to emulate things she did. She’s kinda my idol in all of this.”
“Influencing is not really doing her any favors, though, is it? If her wife is cheating on her?”
Yeah, that was an extra bit of information she hadn’t even begun to digest yet. Poor Andi. “I guess not,” she said quietly and the wind was suddenly completely gone from her sails. Explaining anymore just seemed silly. “I’m really sorry, Ellis.” A beat of silence went by, then another. “I don’t know what else to say. I’m so sorry I kept this from you.”
Ellis had barely looked at her this whole time, and that continued. She stared at the water, at the people walking by, at the dogs on leashes. Anywhere but at Cherry. Her throat moved as she swallowed. It was when her eyes welled up that Cherry reached over and put her hand over Ellis’s. Ellis pulled hers away.
Another ouch.
“I don’t…” Ellis shook her head. “I don’t even know what to do with all this. It’s about the last thing I ever expected.”
Cherry nodded, words leaving her head like dissipating steam. The lump in her throat felt huge, the size of a peach, just stuck there.
Ellis continued to shake her head, just slightly, like it had become a tic. “I just…I don’t know.” And then she stood up. Again, she didn’t look at Cherry, and that really started to sting. “I think I need some time, Cherry.”
And that was it.
She sat there as Ellis rounded the bench and walked away. Just walked away.
Get up. Get. Up. Chase her. Don’t let her leave.
The thoughts shot through her brain like bullets, but her body remained still. Seated. Because she knew this was on her.
The best thing that had ever happened to her, and she’d blown it.
She’d blown it.
Story of her life.
She was used to this. Used to finishing at the end of the pack. Used to being overlooked. Used to having an average—sometimes less than average—life. This was just par for the course.
