Cherry on Top, page 18
All of that ran through her head, train cars of negative thoughts, chugging away like they always had. But it wasn’t the same as always because she knew that this was on her.
Her eyes welled up and the tears spilled over, rolling silently down her cheeks as she sat there looking out over the water, wanting to scream at the people who were laughing and enjoying their day while she sat there, her world crumbling.
This was on her.
Chapter Twenty
Shea somehow managed not to say I told you so. Not when Cherry initially told her what had happened. Not when she told her she’d texted Ellis several times and had gotten no response. Not at all. Cherry had no idea how she wasn’t bursting at the seams to say it—it was certainly warranted. But she didn’t, and for that, Cherry was grateful. She knew Shea had been right all along. She just didn’t need to be reminded of it.
She had texted. She knew it was risky, but it was better than stomping right into Sunny Side Up and demanding to talk to Ellis. She’d said she needed some time, and Cherry had no choice but to respect that.
But she’d texted.
Three times.
All apologies.
Zero responses.
Now she sat in her room, flopped back on her bed, her phone in her hands, scrolling through her own stuff, then Andi’s stuff, then her own, then Andi’s, then to The 11th Commandment. She found three articles written by an E. Conrad. Mystery solved. She wanted to click off, but she was curious and ended up reading all three articles.
Ellis could write.
It was another thing she’d had yet to learn about her, and that only served to remind her how very new they were and how much there was left to get to know. And how she’d likely blown her chance.
The articles were good. Very well-written. Neutral and not at all judgy, which was surprising for the type of site it was, but not surprising given what she knew about Ellis’s mind and, now, her ability to write.
She hated The 11th Commandment and all similar ilk. It was one thing to expose a company’s lies to the public, but shining a spotlight on somebody’s personal life was just not cool. And with that thought, she clicked over to Andi’s Instagram, scrolled her photos, especially the ones that featured Julianne prominently. She knew Andi was on her trip to the Adirondacks, not due back for another couple days, and this was certainly going to change things if she was having a good time. She wondered if she should call her. Warn her.
Shea chose that moment to rap on the doorjamb and come in with a plate of cheese and crackers, and a glass of ice water. “Hey,” she said as she took a seat on the bed next to Cherry’s hip.
“Hey.”
“I know you’re probably not hungry, but I need you to eat a little something, okay?”
Instead of answering, she asked a question. “Should I tell Andi?”
Shea set the plate and glass down on the nightstand and then met her gaze. “Would you want to know?”
Cherry sighed.
“I mean, if I was married, and you found out my husband was cheating on me, wouldn’t you tell me?”
“Would you want me to tell you?”
“Hell, yes!” Shea’s eyes were wide, and her eyebrows rose toward her hairline. “I’d be pissed at you if you didn’t.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.”
“Why?”
“Because how the hell do I tell Andi this?” Cherry pushed herself up so she was sitting and grudgingly took a cracker. When Shea didn’t respond, she said, “I’m serious. What do I say? Specifically. Like, what words do I use?”
Shea sighed and gave her a nudge to move over. When they were both sitting side by side on Cherry’s bed, backs against the headboard, Shea shook her head. “I think you just be as gentle as possible. Right?”
“I mean, I guess?”
“But you have to tell her before the article comes out. The last thing you want is for her to be caught off guard, scrolling along on her phone, and catch it in her mentions. Or worse, find out via a comment from a follower. Which is most likely how it would happen, right?”
Unfortunately, Shea was right about that. The speed with which information—especially negative information—traveled online was staggering. There was no way Andi wouldn’t hear the news as soon as the article posted. No, Shea was right. She was Andi’s friend, and as such, she needed to protect her as best she could. She had no idea when Ellis would deliver the article, and if she already had, when it would be posted. Realistically, that could happen at any moment.
“Goddamn it,” she muttered. “I hate this. I hate all of it.”
Shea wrapped an arm around her shoulders. “I know, sweetie. I’m sorry.” And if there was a perfect place for her to insert an I told you so, it was right then. But she didn’t.
Cherry leaned her head against Shea’s shoulder. “I’m such a fool.”
“We all are at some point. I still love you,” Shea said with a squeeze, and she pressed a kiss to her temple.
They sat there in silence for several minutes, just being together. Cherry’s brain had been a whirlwind of thoughts and excuses and blame and pleas and everything in between since lunchtime that day.
Shea reached toward the plate and grabbed a cracker topped with cheese. “Eat.”
“Yes, ma’am.” She put the cracker in her mouth, chewed it, and hardly tasted it at all. When her phone pinged a text announcement, her head snapped toward Shea’s. Could it be Ellis? Finally?
Slowly, she picked up her phone and turned it so the screen faced her. Not Ellis. Lila.
Shea was looking over her shoulder and blurted, “Holy shit, I totally forgot about her. But…didn’t you ask her not to contact you?”
“Yup.” Cherry sighed. “The one I want to contact me won’t. The one I don’t want to deal with is texting. What the actual fuck, Shea?”
Shea squeezed Cherry again. “Oh, honey, you’ve got a hot mess going on, don’t you?”
Cherry set the phone down with a groan because truer words? Never spoken.
* * *
Michaela’s room was quiet.
Not that it wasn’t always quiet. But usually, Ellis talked more to her. Or Kendra came in to chat. Or Evan hung with her for a while, and they talked. But Kendra was off that night, and she’d texted briefly with Evan earlier, and she just wasn’t in the mood for chitchat.
Cherry had sent a few texts apologizing. God, so much apologizing. Which Ellis both appreciated and was annoyed by. Because why do such a thing in the first place? If Cherry hadn’t lied, if she hadn’t hidden a huge part of her life from her, she’d have nothing to be falling all over herself apologizing for now. So, yeah. Ellis was irritated.
The article was written. All she had to do was give it a quick proof and send it to the editor. Turned out that Cherry’s friend Andi—that was her name, finally!—was pretty well-known in social media circles. A few hundred thousand followers on TikTok, more on Instagram. She was the news here. Seemed her vids about being a lesbian in today’s world prominently featured her wife and how happy they were, how wonderful their life together was, and they offered marriage advice. Ellis had scanned Andi’s socials for over an hour. The vids had descriptions like How to listen to your partner better, How to make a romantic dinner in less than thirty minutes, Keeping the lines of communication open, and Honesty is the best policy. She’d snorted at that last one, said to Mikey, “Yeah, Cherry must’ve missed that one.” She was relieved that Cherry wouldn’t be mentioned in the article because the focus of it was on Andi, not her fellow influencers. It was one time Cherry would probably be glad she only had a fraction of Andi’s followers.
“Seriously, how do you toss your advice around like that and not know your wife is cheating on you?”
She knew she was concentrating her irritation on Andi’s situation in order to keep from looking more closely at Cherry’s. She was aware. She’d spent much more than an hour on Cherry’s page. Cherry on Top, it was called, and apparently, that was her brand. Ellis had to admit that she did a nice job with photos and vids, and she sat there in Mikey’s room watching video after video, scanning photo after photo, and the thing she noticed the most was that none of them even seemed like the Cherry she knew.
Or did they?
She scrolled a bit more, noticing the filters used on Cherry’s selfies, her skin unnaturally smooth and pink. She paid extra attention to shots that mentioned the mysterious FG, as Ellis had started calling her in her head: Fake Girlfriend. If she went way back, she found posts with somebody named Alyssa who seemed to be an actual girlfriend, and commenters loved her. Asked questions about her. Commented on how pretty she was, what a cute couple she and Cherry made. Then, about two years ago, she seemed to simply disappear. Wasn’t mentioned. And the comments were relentless. Where’s your hot girlfriend? Did you guys break up? What happened? Your posts are boring now, bring back Alyssa! Ugh. Poor Cherry. Ellis was surprised to find herself feeling sorry for Cherry when she thought about her reading through all the things her followers said. God, people could be so mean.
Then several months ago, Cherry started mentioning her sweetie pie taking the picture, now and then. There were a couple videos where she appeared to be talking to somebody off-screen. More photos taken by my honey. And the tone of the comments changed, too. Now, the followers wanted to see the new girlfriend. Wanted to know if she was as hot as the last one. And Cherry’s number of followers started to increase quickly. Significantly.
It was kind of ridiculous, really, how nosy people actually were.
How did Cherry not notice that? Or did she, and she didn’t care? These people didn’t care about her. They were entitled assholes who got off on spying on other people. A sliver of sympathy slid into Ellis’s heart, and she thought about how sad it was to think you had to invent somebody to love you for the sake of appearances.
She scrolled some more, stopping on shots she’d breezed by the first time, and that’s when she realized that the shoes Cherry had worn on their hike together were given to her by the sporting goods company that made them. She could see that now, could see Cherry’s review of them. She recognized some of the shots from the park that day, the sun coming through the trees, Cherry’s feet in the water, and that sliver of sympathy vanished. Seriously? She’d been working that day and didn’t think to tell Ellis.
“God, so many lies.” She shook her head, feeling nothing but utter sadness.
She knew she should probably talk to Cherry, but she wasn’t ready. She knew that. She was too mad. Too hurt. Too disappointed. The last thing she was in the mood to do was talk to Cherry. Saying something she couldn’t take back would be a definite possibility.
Still.
Cherry had her mom to deal with. That was gonna be rough, and she could probably use somebody to lean on.
A shake of her head.
“No. She’s got roommates. She can lean on them.”
That was cold. Harsh. She knew that, knew she’d said it out loud because she was trying to be mad about it. But there was no fire, no anger. Just defeat.
Chapter Twenty-one
Cherry sighed as she scrolled through Andi’s TikTok. Since the article had gone live on The 11th Commandment’s website, Andi had lost over a third of her followers. In a twenty-four-hour period. Wow, lesbians hated infidelity. She’d told Andi who Ellis was, that she was the person she’d been seeing, and she’d tried to apologize for not being able to stop Ellis from writing the article.
Andi had been understandably shocked, and Cherry hadn’t spoken to her since. Thinking about their friendship wasn’t something she could do at the moment because it made her sad. Even though what had happened wasn’t her fault, she was inextricably attached to it all. She hadn’t been obliged to tell Andi who E. Conrad was, but she felt like she should. She knew Andi was going to need time to recover, but she hoped their friendship would still be intact afterward. It had been on her mind for hours.
And don’t even get her started on the subject of Ellis. Another person who hadn’t returned any of her texts. It had been three days now, and she was shocked by how much she missed her. It was a literal ache in her heart, and she didn’t know what to do with it. She’d cried. She’d thrown things. She’d screamed into a pillow. And now? Now, she was simply numb.
Unfortunately, she had to set all of that aside because she had more pressing issues to deal with as she pushed through the Dunkin’s double doors.
Lila was already at a table, tucked in the corner, her hands wrapped around a cup. Cherry didn’t know her well enough to be able to tell from across the store if she was nervous, but she kind of hoped she was. Because Cherry definitely was.
It was late morning on Friday, and for whatever reason, her workload was lighter than usual, but she hadn’t told Lila that. Rather, she’d scheduled this meeting at ten thirty in the morning so she could use her job as an excuse to leave. This was gonna be short and sweet—that was the plan.
Seeing Lila sitting at the corner table made the butterflies in her stomach grow until it felt like she had boomerangs bouncing around in there. Which pissed her off because she was the one with the control here. She stopped at the counter and ordered herself a cup of coffee she was reasonably sure she wouldn’t drink and tried to remember what Shea had said.
You’re in control. You set the pace. You can stand up and leave anytime you want to. Remember that.
She gave a slight nod to herself as she paid for her coffee and grabbed the cup. She glanced down at her feet, took in a slow breath, counted to five as she let it out, then headed toward where Lila sat.
Lila’s face lit up. There was no other way to describe it. Her smile grew. Her eyes sparkled—dark eyes just like hers, Cherry noticed again. She stood partway up, like a gentleman standing in a lady’s presence, then sat back down.
“Hi, Cherry,” she said, and Cherry was surprised by the softness of her voice. The gentleness of it. “I’m so glad you came.”
“Well, I thought twice.” She gave her head a twitch and corrected herself. “No. I thought about seventeen times.”
Lila smiled sadly. “I understand.”
“Do you?” It came out snarky, and Cherry only felt bad about that for a split second, but Lila nodded.
“Absolutely. You owe me nothing, and I’m very aware of that.”
“Good.”
Silence reigned for a moment or two. Finally, Lila inhaled a huge breath and let it out very slowly through her nose before saying simply, “What do you want to know?”
Wow. Carte blanche, huh? Not what Cherry was expecting, but she was up for it. She could feel twenty-eight years of pent-up anger, hurt, and resentment starting to bubble up.
“Why?” It was all she said. All she needed to say.
A slow nod, as if that was exactly the question Lila had expected. “Well. None of it is a good excuse now that I look back. And I doubt any of it will make you feel better, but I promise to be as honest as I can.” She cleared her throat. “I was young. Too young to be a mother.” She held up a hand, stopping Cherry’s protest on her lips. “No, it’s not an excuse, and it shouldn’t have mattered. But I was lost. I was selfish. I was terrified.” She stared at her cup as she added the next part very quietly. “I felt trapped.”
“Excuse me,” Cherry said, as she stood and hurried to the ladies’ room. Once there, inside a stall, sitting on the lid of the toilet, she gritted her teeth so hard her jaw started to ache. “I will not cry, I will not cry, I will not cry…”
God! Her mother was a selfish bitch. Oh, she had a baby and then felt trapped? Too fucking bad. You don’t just run out on your kid. She snorted a sarcastic laugh. She hadn’t even made it through five minutes of Lila talking before she’d bolted, and that wouldn’t do. She was not a wimp. She was tough. She was strong. She’d made it this far without a mother—she wasn’t about to let one fact clobber her.
She gave herself a shake, exited the stall, fixed her makeup in the mirror, and headed back out into the shop where Lila still sat at the corner table, looking out the window. When she turned her head and met Cherry’s eyes across the room, she smiled sadly and waited until Cherry came back and reclaimed her seat.
“I’m sorry,” Lila said softly.
Cherry nodded. “Where did you go?”
Lila tipped her head. “What do you mean?”
“When you left me with Dad. Where did you go?”
“Oh. I went south. I didn’t really have a plan. I just…ran. Ended up in Durham. In North Carolina.”
Cherry nodded again, slowly. “And what did you do there?”
Lila turned her eyes toward the window and gazed out. “I floundered for a while, bounced from shelter to shelter until I found a job, then another job, then ended up the office manager for a dentist.” Cherry found it easier to look at her when she wasn’t gazing back. She was fifty if Cherry remembered correctly, but she looked a bit younger. Great skin and gentle eyes and young-looking hands all contributed. Her hair was a much lighter red than Cherry’s, but the short cut was stylish, hip even. She turned back and caught Cherry looking. “Once I was making money and had an apartment, I called your father. I wanted to see you.”
Cherry blinked at her several times as she frowned because what? When? When had she called? Her father had never told her that. According to him, she’d run away, and he’d never heard from her again. End of story. “What?”
Lila nodded. “Yeah. I called several times.”
“He never told me that.”
“I suspected that.” Lila cleared her throat. “He said that you were doing great and that I’d disrupted your life enough by leaving, and I had no right to disrupt it again by popping back in.” And that’s when her eyes welled up, unshed tears shimmering in the late morning sun beaming through the window. “And I was only twenty-three at that point. Young and stupid and decided he was probably right. So I wrote the letters instead.”
