Russ’s kisses were just like the rest of him: Clever. Confident. Surprisingly sweet. He brought one hand down her thigh and then up her skirt. He stroked her tights with his thumb...
After a few good minutes of kissing, he pulled away and hopped to his feet. Cherry had to lean back so they didn’t hit heads. “Come here,” he said. “I want to show you something.”
She stood up. “Do you want me to put my dish somewhere?”
Russ was on the way to the living room. “Leave it.”
Cherry followed him.
He walked over to a very crowded bookshelf—if you ever needed toborrow the biography of a Democratic politician, Russ Sutton was your man—and motioned toward the couch. “Sit down.” She did. “I went looking for this yesterday,” he said. “I knew I had it. I save everything.” He grabbed a piece of paper—an eight-by-ten photo—and sat down on the couch right next to Cherry, handing it to her.
It was a black-and-white snapshot of the two of them, dancing at the Galway on the night they first met. Russ was holding Cherry close in the picture—he’d probably just reeled her back into his arms. They were both smiling, but they looked surprised, too, like they were completely in the moment, delighted, unsure what would happen next.
Russ looked young and gorgeous. That hair. Those dark lips. His eyes shining.
And Cherry...
She felt slapped in the face by how good she looked in this photo. It was like she was looking at someone else, someone objectively beautiful. Her hair was dark. Her eyes were bright. Her breasts were practically touching her chin. This was a peach of a girl.
“Where did thiscomefrom?” she asked.
Russ put his arm around her shoulders. “One of my friends was a photographer for theCreightonian. He took his camera everywhere.”
Cherry stared at the picture. “I can’t believe this exists.”
He squeezed her. “It’s kind of magical, right? How often do you have a photo of the moment you met someone?”
“This isn’t the momentwemet...”
“Close enough.”
What she meant was, it wasn’tjustthe moment they met—it was the moment he met Stacia, too. His friend’s camera had been pointed in the wrong direction. Russ himself had been pointed in the wrong direction.
“I remember everything about that dance,” Russ said.
Cherry shook her head, still hardly believing the photo was real. “We look so young...”
“You look exactly the same.” He kissed her neck.
She shook her head again.
Chapter 13
Stacia’s son was turning three, and Cherry was invited to the party.
This was when Cherry saw the adults in her life now, when their kids had parties. Between her nieces and nephews and all of her friends’ kids, she could eat cake almost every weekend if she wanted.
A three-year-old’s birthday party was still mostly for the parents. There were more adults than kids at this one. Stacia and her husband, Jim, were serving wine spritzers.
They’d rented a ball pit with a slide and set it up in their family room. (The family room washuge. The whole main floor was open plan.) Jim and a few other dads were standing over the pit like lifeguards.
Cherry was sitting at the bar in the kitchen, eating spinach dip and grain-free tortilla chips. Stacia and Jim didn’t do gluten. The party had been spritzing for a couple hours already.
Stacia came to lean on the other side of the counter. She sighed. She was wearing white pants and a cropped white sweatshirt. All her jewelry was gold. “Sorry I haven’t said hello.”
“You said hello,” Cherry said.
Stacia glanced around them. “I wasn’t expecting all thesepeople—I don’t know why Jim invited his sand volleyball team.”
