“Let me text her.” Cherry reached for her phone. “Hey—how’s your blood sugar now?”
“Normal,” Hope said.
“Wow,” Cherry said, instantly jealous again.
“Yeah...wow.”
Chapter 64
“I don’t know how I can ever believe him,”Cherry had said,“when he says that he loves me.”
That had been a figurative question; Tom almost never said that he loved her. But she’d believed it anyway.
In the beginning, she’d chased him.
She’d worried that he was too polite to turn her down—or too conflict-averse.
She’d read his hesitation as reluctance.
She’d read his hesitation as doubt.
She’d readThursday, and wondered if it was all a farce.
But then Tom had walked through every door that Cherry ever opened.
She was always the one who made the leap—but Tom always caught her. She always put herself out there first, but he always met her more than halfway.
At some point, Cherry had stopped seeing Tom’s uncertainty as a problem...
Maybe Tom fell in love with her because heneededsomeone who chased and pushed and opened. Maybe Tom needed a girl who was a verb. That was Cherry. (That was Cherish.)
Cherry never worried that Tom would cheat on her. Before he did.
Cherry never doubted that Tom wanted her. Before he didn’t.
Had he ever truly not?
You sort of stop noticing that someone never says “I love you” when they make you feel loved.
When they make you feelliked.
Tom always seemed so happy to come home to her.
All of the above made it worse.
Every good thing made it worse.
Every good memory was streaked with blood.
Places where Tom had kissed Cherry:
In line, at the grocery store.
In line, at the bank.
In line, at their polling place.
At Meg Jones’s Christmas party, every year under one of the arches.
