He liked to do it before she even asked. He liked to anticipate her wants. To show up with lunch. To fix something before she’d thought to complain about it. To discover something she’d never heard of that would make her smile.
In Tom’s perfect world, maybe they never spoke at all. Or maybehenever spoke. (InThursday,The Guy went months without a dialogue balloon.) Tom was foundationally, maybe fundamentally, reticent. And Cherry didn’t want to pull feelings and memories out of him like teeth.
She still didn’t know whether Tom had dated anyone before her—she’d never asked him. It felt...intrusiveto ask Tom questions like that. (It felt heretical, to mention anyone who came before.)
The first time they’d had sex, Tom had been so hesitant ... Cherry had to undress herself. She had to take his hand and put it on her breast.
He had been soreverent. He made Cherry feel like she was something rare and brand-new. A first edition.
But she didn’tknowthat it was his first time. Even now.
Stacia couldn’t believe that Cherry didn’t justtalkto Tom about things. Cherry was normally so forthright.
“I just... can’t,” Cherry would say.
“What’s he going to do? Yell at you?”
“Of course not.”
“Snap at you?”
“No. I can just tell that it makes him uncomfortable.”
“Oh, ‘uncomfortable.’ Perish the thought.”
“You don’t understand. Making Tom uncomfortable is like... making a mountain uncomfortable. Or a volcano.”
“Like, he’s going to erupt?”
“No.” Tom never erupted. “More like he’s going to get bigger and stonier and change the entire landscape in a way that affects weather patterns for years to come.”
“Cherry, that doesn’t make any sense.”
“Not to you.”
Stacia wasn’t married to the kind of guy whose moods affected the weather.
That wasn’t a useful memory.
That didn’t get Tom right.
That was leaving out thelightness.
The everyday magic of living with Tom—of Cherry and Tom, together.
“Just get them.”
“What are we going to do with a full set of china?”
“Eat off of it. They’re just dishes.”
“We already have dishes.”
“Cherry, we don’t go to estate sales because we need things. We go to estate sales because welikethings.”
She picked up a dinner plate and watched the gilt flash in the light. “They’re so pretty, with the roses, and the absinthe green...”
Tom had heard enough. “We’re getting them.”
