Tom shook his head and kept them moving.
“I wanted to talk to you,” she said, “and you didn’t pick up.”
“I was in a meeting.”
“Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” he said. They were already to her car.
“I forgot how he is.”
“Yeah.” Tom was standing between Cherry and his dad. He wouldn’t look at either of them.
“Please can we talk?” Cherry whispered.
“Yeah,” Tom said, opening her door. Then he looked over at her and seemed to realize what she’d asked. “No. Cherry... what more is there to say?”
“I think maybeeverything.” She stepped closer to Tom. Away from the car. “I can’t imagine running out of things I want to say to you.”
He frowned down at her.
“Will you come home with me?” she asked. “So we can talk?”
Tom shook his head, still frowning. “No. I can’t keep going back there. I can’t handle having to leave.”
She grabbed the bottom of his T-shirt—not to yank on it, just to hold on. “I won’t make you leave,” she said.
Shewouldn’t. If things got terrible, Cherry would be the one to leave. She’d leave him the house and the dog.She’dmove to California.
Tom was staring at her face. Still frowning.
“Please talk to me,” she said. “Somewhere.”
Tom told her to meet him at a diner down the road. Cherry had never been there before.
When she got to the restaurant, it was closed. They didn’t serve dinner.
She waited by the door. Tom pulled in and parked.
“They’re closed,” she said, before he got to her.
“Oh.” He looked around, like something else might be open. But this wasn’t a business district. There was just this diner, and a car wash, and across the street, Abbie’s Road Beatles-themed pizzeria.
Tom looked back at Cherry.
She shrugged.
Abbie’s Road was still tiny. And still strange.
Tom held the door for her, and Cherry walked to the far end of the empty dining room, in the opposite corner from “Octopus’s Garden.” She sat down under a mural of Paul McCartney eating pizza with a walrus.
Tom stood by the table. “What do you want?”
“Whatever you feel like,” she said.
She watched him walk over to the counter. He ruffled the back of his hair.
Cherry needed to see him make that gesture again.
