Tom stayed where he was.
Cherry walked to him. His head slowly tipped down, tracking her, as she came closer. It took him a second to reach for his phone.
She said her number out loud while he typed it in. It was embarrassing—Cherry had never forced her phone number on a man before. She’d never even offered it. But she’d never had a night likethis. A night that had gone asrightas this. Cherry had never liked someone so immediately. And so completely. Her attention still felt tethered to Tom, like he would drag her behind him if he walked away.
Tom slipped his phone back in his pocket.
“You don’t have to call me,” Cherry said, trying to be brave. “But... this was such a great night. And I’d love to see you again.”
“Really?”
She laughed, still embarrassed. “Yes, really. Why are you acting like I’m being weird?”
Was this about her weight? Tom was bigger, too. Not as big as Cherry, proportionally. He hadn’t seemed to mind her weight whenthey were inside, even in front of all his coworkers. Sometimes bigger guys only dated wraithlike women. Maybe it was one thing to talk to a fat girl at a party and another thing to call her.
“Do you have nights like tonight all the time?” Cherry asked. She didn’t want to give up. “Do you click with everyone like this?”
Tom shook his head. “No,” he said softly. His eyes drifted down from her eyes to her mouth... and maybe to her breasts. Back to her mouth.
Cherry lifted up her chin, just in case.
They stood parallel to each other. Looking up and looking down. If Cherry were to draw them, she’d draw their bodies in an arch.
She felt Tom’s attention on her like vibrating light.
“So call me,” she said after a few seconds.
Tom nodded. “I will.”
He did.
Chapter 22
On their first date, Tom took Cherry to a tiny pizza place near his house called Abbie’s Road. “The pizza’s fine,” he said, “but the theming’s extraordinary.”
The restaurant was crammed into an acute angle where two roads converged. There were only seven or eight tables inside, and the whole place was Beatles-themed—and also, for some reason, ocean-themed?
“Because of ‘Octopus’s Garden,’ I think,” Tom said. He was sitting under a net filled with plastic fish.
Tom and Cherry shared one of the house combos—“Lucy in the Pie with Onions”—and also their life stories, greatly abridged.
Tom grew up on the north side of town. Cherry grew up on the south side. Neither of them grew up with much money.
Tom’s dad worked in building maintenance at the state medical center—it meant Tom got free tuition in college. Cherry’s dad hardly worked. She went to school on scholarship—she was the only one in her family who’d gone to college so far.
Tom had one sibling, an older sister. Cherry told him about her own four sisters. He didn’t laugh at their names, but you could tell that he wanted to—his forehead crumpled, and he shook his head like he couldn’t take it all in. “Who started calling you Cherry?”
“I don’t know—it’s the only thing I’ve ever been called. Even my mom doesn’t call me Cherish.”
Tom’s mom died when he was eight. He told Cherry this incidentally: “We moved over here when I was eight, after my mom died. I think this used to be a doughnut place.”
Cherry had to roll the conversation back. “Your mom died when you were eight?”
“Yeah. Breast cancer. Then lung cancer.”
“Oh my god.” Cherry sat back a little. “I’m so sorry.”
He smiled gently. “Thanks. It’s okay.”
