Cherry on Top, page 22
More slow nodding from Lila. Cherry was starting to understand this was a nervous habit of hers. Or maybe something she did while she organized her thoughts. “I do data entry for a medical billing company. I work from home, which means I can work on the road, too. That’s how I’ve been able to be here indefinitely.”
That hadn’t even occurred to Cherry, and she took it in, the fact that Lila had been away from her home for weeks, judging by how many times she’d been in the diner before actually approaching her. “You’ve been here a long time.”
“Two months, actually.” Lila laughed, but there was an edge to it. “To answer the rest, yes, I am married. I also have a son. Noah. He’s nineteen and in college at NC State.”
I have a brother. Cherry blinked rapidly as her brain took in this information as well. Wow. “Do they know you’re here and why?”
More nodding. “They do. They encouraged it, in fact.”
“Really.”
“Yes. I’ve been…struggling lately. We all sat down and talked about it, and they pushed me to come here and try to meet you, try to explain, try to apologize.” Lila’s voice was quiet, barely a whisper, and her eyes filled.
Cherry swallowed down the sudden lump in her throat, annoyed that Lila’s emotion was affecting her. She absently sipped her coffee, then grimaced.
“Look. Cherry. I’m not asking you to forgive me. What I did to you was unforgivable. I’m not asking you for anything. I wasn’t even sure I’d get to meet you, and if I did, I wasn’t sure it would go beyond you telling me to fuck off and leaving. So this?” She waved a finger between the two of them. “This is so much more than I was even hoping for. And I want to thank you so much for sitting down with me. Twice now. I can never apologize enough to you, but I want you to know that I’m so happy and so grateful to be sitting across from you in this moment. You are more beautiful than I imagined. You’re smart and you’re creative, and I’m just so grateful.”
The lump was back. Bigger. Dammit. She cleared her throat. “How do you know I’m creative?”
“Are you kidding? I’ve been following Cherry on Top since the beginning. I love it. It’s so much fun.”
“You—” Cherry sputtered. Actually sputtered. Because what? “You have? It is?”
“How do you think I found you?” Lila smiled then, and for the first time, Cherry was struck by how much they actually really did look alike. A sip from her coffee and then Lila asked, “Can I ask you something, though?”
Cherry nodded, not trusting her voice yet.
“What’s the deal with the girlfriend you always referred to but never showed? All mention of her is gone now. Did you guys break up? I mean, I’m not surprised, because I’ve seen you with that blonde at the diner, and if you don’t mind me saying, you two have some off-the-charts chemistry.” She arched one eyebrow as she brought her cup to her lips.
OMG, does my mother think I was cheating? It was a ridiculous thought for so many reasons. So ridiculous that she suddenly burst out laughing. When she pulled herself together, she pointed at Lila. “Okay, first of all, I think I just got a taste of your Disapproving Mom face.”
Lila had the good sense to look sheepish. “Yeah. Noah calls it the arched brow of doom. Force of habit. Sorry about that.”
Cherry felt herself soften. Like, literally, all her muscles relaxed, and she smiled. “It’s okay. No need to apologize. So…” She took a deep breath. “I’m gonna tell you the story. The whole story.” And to her own very unexpected surprise, she unloaded all of it. She talked about Alyssa. About Andi. About making up a girlfriend. And mostly, about Ellis. A lot about Ellis. About their date. About how good it was with her. Even about how Ellis wrote the article. And even how Ellis came over, no questions asked, when Cherry had found the letters. How she’d sat with her the entire time she opened and read each one.
“Yikes, she wrote the article?” Lila’s eyes were wide as she asked the question.
“Yeah, that was rough.” Cherry sighed. “At the same time, I never should have kept that from her, so despite what it’s done to me, to us, I can’t really hold her responsible for a mess I helped create. I see that now.”
Lila was quiet for a few minutes and seemed to be searching for the next right thing to say. “Where do things stand with her now?”
“Honestly? I’m not quite sure. She was really supportive when I read all the letters. And it was kind of by unspoken agreement that we didn’t talk about us at that time, so I guess things were kind of left in her court.” A small shrug because she honestly wasn’t sure.
“Do you miss her?”
“God, so much. It’s ridiculous.” She shook her head and stared out the window at the passing traffic. “I haven’t even known her that long. How is it possible to miss somebody you’ve not spent a ton of time with?”
Lila smiled tenderly. “That’s the great mystery of love, isn’t it? Sometimes, you just find your person.” She seemed to stop herself, as if she wanted to say more but thought better of it.
Cherry cleared her throat. “Is…is your husband your person?”
Lila nodded, not elaborating, but the light behind her eyes was clear.
“That’s cool,” Cherry said, nodding. “I’m glad.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.” They were quiet for a moment before Cherry studied her empty cup and spoke. “Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“What do you think I should do?” Wow. Now that was a step. A laugh burst out of her as Lila smiled, confused. “Sorry. I just, I literally just asked my long-lost mother for advice on my love life. It’s kinda surreal.”
Lila’s smile blossomed wider. “You did, didn’t you?”
“So much for baby steps, am I right?” She gave a laugh-snort combination that had Lila’s eyes going wide. “What?”
“I make that sound when I laugh sometimes, too.”
They held each other’s gazes for a beat. And Cherry didn’t say the words because, yeah, way too soon for that. But she thought them. They were loud in her head.
Maybe this thing with Lila is going to be okay.
* * *
“This isn’t easy for me to say, so I’m gonna just say it.” Cherry cleared her throat as she looked directly at the camera. Her hair was pulled back off her face in a ponytail. Her cheeks were flushed. She visibly swallowed. “I’ve had some eye-opening realizations lately. They’ve been painful, to say the least. They’ve left me confused and sad and unsure of what to do. But I think I’ve figured it out. If you’re a regular follower of mine, then you know I often refer to my sweetie, my honey, my sugarplum who prefers to stay behind the camera instead of showing up in my photos and videos.” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Here’s the thing, loves. Yes, I posted about her a lot and told you all she was my girlfriend, but…” She hesitated for a beat, swallowed again. “That’s not true. It was never true. There is no sweetie, honey, sugarplum. I made her up because I thought that’s what you wanted to see. A happy, cheerful lesbian in a stable, enviable relationship. But that’s not me. Not right now.” She blew out a little breath, just a small puff of air, clearly relieved, then shook her head. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t set out to deceive you, but I won’t try to offer up some weak ass excuse. What I did was wrong. And worse, I messed up something really good because of it. I had somebody who is nothing short of incredible. And I kept the truth from her. Let me tell you, karma is no joke. She drives a big ass bus, and she’s got everybody’s address.” An uncomfortable chuckle. “I am truly, sincerely sorry.”
Ellis hit pause on the TikTok video, shocked by what she’d watched, what she’d heard, feeling like she needed to take a breath. She was really doing this, Cherry was. No. Not doing. Did. Done. The video was posted several hours ago. She’d really done this. First, she’d talked about how she was going to stop using filters and such. And now she’d admitted to her followers—and anybody else who happened across Cherry on Top—that she’d lied. That she’d deceived them, played them for fools. Surely she was gonna get clobbered. People were notoriously brutal online, especially when they felt like they’d been suckered. Nobody wanted to be made a fool of. Nobody liked that. Especially people who could let you know how pissed off they were by saying mean, hateful things and still stay anonymous. She didn’t want to think about what Cherry’s comments and DMs were going to look like after this. Colorful wouldn’t begin to describe it.
Ellis rubbed her chin with her fingertips as she sat in Michaela’s room, feet propped up on her bed, open laptop on the table next to her. It was hard because Cherry had brought all of this on herself by being deceptive. At the same time, Ellis hated the idea of people coming at her with torches and pitchforks. She wanted to shield her, protect her, keep her safe.
Still. After everything. All Ellis wanted was to keep Cherry safe.
What the fuck? She shook her head with a groan, her frustration bubbling to the surface. Cherry was doing the work. It was kind of impressive. She was putting everything on the line by admitting what she’d done. Her brand might never recover. She had to know that, yet she did it anyway.
She glanced at Mikey, on her side today, seemingly looking right at her, but not seeing her at all, she knew. She wished more than anything that they could talk, that she could get her sister’s take on what was happening right now.
With a sigh, she restarted the TikTok and continued watching.
“Anyway,” Cherry was saying. “I met somebody recently. The person I messed things up with. Somebody wonderful. Somebody real.” She stressed that word, Ellis noticed. “That’s the key phrase. She’s real, and she’s inspired me to stop trying to be what I think other people want me to be and just be me. And some of you will hate it, and I apologize in advance for that. But from now on, we’re gonna live life. Actual life. Real life. I’m gonna be open and unfiltered and as real as I can be for you. You might hate it, many of you will unfollow me I’m sure, but you also might be pleasantly surprised. I hope you’ll stick around to find out. Peace.” She flashed her signature two-fingers-up peace sign, and the video ended.
Ellis found herself with tears in her eyes, and she blinked in surprise. She hadn’t expected this.
What are you gonna do now?
She could almost hear Michaela’s voice in her head, asking her that question. Because that was the only question right now, wasn’t it?
What was she going to do now?
Chapter Twenty-five
July was not playing around, and being outside was like walking around inside an oven. Ellis was pretty sure she was just going to end up roasting like a red pepper. It was better in the diner, but not by much. The air-conditioning system was probably older than she was, and it did more groaning and straining than an old man trying to get out of a recliner.
Lately, she’d found herself doing something she never thought she’d do—scrolling the socials on a regular basis. Well, not so much scrolling as checking one place. That place being Cherry on Top. Cherry was everywhere: Facebook, TikTok, Tumblr, Instagram, and probably other platforms she didn’t know about. She stuck to Instagram, where she could see Cherry’s considerable talent with photography, and TikTok, because she could watch entire videos and they made it feel like she was close to her. And since Cherry’d posted about her fake girlfriend and about the something good she’d messed up, she hadn’t posted anything new.
Even Ellis knew that was dangerous, the kiss of death for an influencer. It was all about content, and to stay relevant, you had to post. Often. Two weeks with nothing new wasn’t doing Cherry’s desired career trajectory any favors.
Meanwhile, the comments Cherry had received had been harsh, to say the least. The very least. Yikes. She knew Cherry had thick skin, but brutal, mean, and downright cruel were all good ways to describe the words that some people sent her. Ellis didn’t understand it, couldn’t imagine saying such horrible things to a stranger. Publicly, where anybody and everybody else could read them.
They hadn’t talked since the day with the letters. It was clear Cherry was leaving things in her court, letting her set the pace, letting her do the reaching out, and she really wanted to know how things were going with Lila, if they’d talked or if Cherry had decided against contact. She had so many questions and even picked up her phone more than once, but always set it back down again, second-guessing herself.
She’s doing the work, though, isn’t she?
She was, and that thought kept reverberating through Ellis’s head at random times, like her brain was actually on Cherry’s side and was trying to sway her. Cherry was definitely doing all the work, and Ellis thought maybe it was time to let her know she’d seen it. She’d heard it. She appreciated it. It was time to let the poor girl off the hook, as Kendra had said the other day.
The thought brought unexpected tears to her eyes as she sat in her office in the diner, listening to the muffled hustle and bustle of the breakfast rush, and she realized there was only one person she wanted to talk to right then. Just one.
She picked up her phone.
* * *
Two weeks of no content was dangerous.
Cherry knew that. She hadn’t planned on it, but once the comments started to roll in on her last video—the one where she came clean about her deception—they’d nearly paralyzed her.
She’d expected them. Or, rather, she’d thought she’d expected them. She knew people would be mad. She knew they’d say mean things, that they’d unleash their anger on her. It was nothing she didn’t deserve. Besides, she was tough. She always had been. Shitty comments in her feeds had never really fazed her. That was part of the game.
Except they kept coming.
The bulk had shown up immediately. From how much she sucked to what a terrible role model for lesbians everywhere she was. That second one was rough, and that’s the one she got most often. How she’d let her people down. She didn’t care if some idiot troll of a guy slid into her comment section and talked about all the gross sexual things he’d like to do to her—she expected that, and blocking somebody took no effort at all. Sadly, it came with the territory and was almost normal, alarming as that was. What she hadn’t counted on was the Alphabet Mafia smacking her around and saying they always thought she was sus because everything was too perfect and how dare she deceive her people by making shit up, as one person so eloquently put it. Which she wanted to argue over, but it wasn’t exactly wrong, was it? She’d made a conscious decision not to reply to any of the comments. She was just going to let her followers get it all out of their systems while she stayed quiet.
She didn’t expect to still be getting snarky comments two weeks later, but maybe she should have.
Also, she’d lost a good fifty percent of her followers. A full half. That was sobering.
Ellis wasn’t aware of what she’d done—they hadn’t talked. Cherry didn’t feel it was right to tell her, to make it seem like she’d made some heroic choice. She hadn’t. Besides, she didn’t do it for Ellis—she did it because it was the right thing to do. Ellis had held up a mirror—a real one, devoid of filters and airbrushing and such—and Cherry hadn’t liked the reflection she’d seen. Maybe one day, she’d be able to thank Ellis for that. She definitely should because she felt different. And that was another thing she hadn’t expected.
She’d taken a sick day from work. There was no way she wanted to deal with Amanda and her pinched face and her demands today. Despite her bank of sick days, she hesitated, but Shea convinced her maybe she should take a couple. Just to clear her head.
Besides, it was time to start again.
“Ready?” Shea, having also taken the day off, appeared in her doorway with a smile and two cups of coffee.
“Yes.” She crossed the bedroom and took one of the cups, held it in both hands, and closed her eyes as she inhaled the aroma. “Bless you, my child.”
“You’d never know it was a million degrees out by the way you’re clutching that mug.”
“Well, if somebody in this apartment didn’t set the air-conditioning to Arctic Tundra, I wouldn’t have to.”
Shea snorted a laugh, and they got to work. Fifteen minutes later, she was holding Cherry’s phone and videoing her as she sat on her bed.
“Hi, loves. It’s been a while, I know,” Cherry began, giving a small wave to the camera. “I took a little time off. I needed it. Had to get my head on straight, so to speak.” A wink. “But now I’m ready to visit with you again.” She lifted her arms as if presenting the room. “This is my bedroom and where I shoot a lot of my videos.” She got up and moved around to various points, stopping in one corner. “Here’s where I’ve done my clothing try-ons. And then down this hall…” She left the room and headed toward the bathroom, Shea following her with the camera. “This is where I do the makeup samplings. And that lovely person you see in the mirror behind me is my roommate, Shea.” Shea peeked out from behind the camera and gave a little finger wave. “No, not quote-unquote roommate.” Cherry made the air quotes. “’Cause we’re being real and honest now, remember. Shea is my BFF, the most amazing person on the planet, and sorry ladies, she’s straight.” She looked at Shea. “And gorgeous. And I don’t know what I’d do without her. I hope you loves have a BFF as awesome as mine.” Their eyes met in the mirror, and she blew a little kiss to Shea. Then they walked some more, Cherry displaying different parts of the apartment. “This is where I live with Shea and our other roommate, Adam, who’s at work right now. I don’t have a fancy town house or an expensive condo. Our furniture is old and needs to be replaced, but we’re all too busy to take care of that.” She flopped down on the worn couch. “We eat dinner at this coffee table in front of the TV while we watch The Bachelor or Dateline or marathons of The Office or Gilmore Girls. My point being, I’m just a regular lesbian with a regular life, and if you followed me before and you stuck around, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. And if you’re new here, welcome to Cherry on Top, real life of a real lesbian. We’ll talk again soon. Peace.” She flashed a peace sign.
