She needed to keep seeing it, as his hair went gray.
Tom came back to the table and set a glass of ice and a can of Coke Zero in front of her.
He took off his peacoat—he must have grabbed it from the house before he left. He was wearing a nice brown pullover sweater underneath. It looked new. And expensive. Pendleton, maybe. Maybe a Christmas gift.
He sat down across from Cherry and sighed a little. Then looked up at her expectantly, like this was her show.
“I...” Cherry said.
Tom waited.
“I don’t know how to get through this,” she said.
He waited.
“Like—” She gestured between them. “I don’t know how to get through the part where I’m angry and hurt and I don’t trust you.”
Tom rested his elbows on the table.
“Iwantto get through it.” She was talking fast. “I want to be on the other side of it—I think I wanted you topullme through it somehow, with your bare hands. I wanted you to come home and bang down the door.”
Tom looked down at the table.
“But instead...” Cherry forced herself to keep talking. “Well, you acted like you’d been expecting it, Tom—like you were just waiting for me to end everything. Like you wererelieved.”
He looked up at her. “I wasn’t relieved.”
Cherry’s voice broke: “Why didn’t you come home?”
His shoulders twitched. It wasn’t even a shrug. “Because I didn’t feel like I deserved to be there. I started to think...” He looked in her eyes. “Maybe I never deserved to be there.”
Cherry shook her head. Her voice dropped to a murmur. “Don’t say that.”
He tilted his head. “Why? Because it’s true?”
She shook her head again. A tear slid down her cheek.
“If you don’t believe you deserve good things,” Cherry whispered, “how can I believeI’ma good thing?”
Tom’s eyes widened and started to shine. He pushed his jaw to the side, like she’d punched him. Neither of them looked away.
“Tom!”someone shouted.
For a second Cherry thought it was someone who recognized him, but it was just the girl at the counter.
Tom stood up. He wiped his eyes on the back of his wrist. A minute later, he came back to the table with a salad for Cherry and sat down.
“You were right,” Cherry said. She had to keep pushing forward. She had a list in her head, an agenda; there were things that she needed tosay. “I never let you apologize—because that would have made it real. I would have had to acknowledge what was happening.”
Tom nodded. “I get that,” he said gruffly.
“Do you still want to apologize?” she asked.
He looked surprised. “Now?”
“I mean...” Cherry lifted a shoulder. “Yeah?”
Tom studied her face—maybe to see if she meant it. Then he leaned forward on his elbows. “Cherry, I’m sorry,” he said. “I was lonely and depressed. And it had been so long since you and I... since we’d felt like ourselves. Together.”
