Cherry - S01 E13

Story 1 year ago

Cherry - S01 E13

Read Story: SEASON 1 EPISODE 13

never realized before then a habit that I had. When deep in thought, I evidently had a habit of running my hand over my head and down to the back of my neck as a way of self-massaging away tension. I became suddenly aware of the habit because every time my hand reached the back of my head, I found a bunch of staples with no small level of pain. The resulting effect was two- fold. For one, it rudely ended my minor relief of tension. Second (and worst of all), it served as a reminder about Katie, thus adding to my stress. It was almost like a cruel joke: when you have something unpleasant in the back of your mind-well, I had a literal reminder on the back of my head causing me both physical and mental pain. I couldn't wait to talk to Cherry.

Just before 2:30 my phone dinged with a text message from the prettiest girl in the world. Cherry said that she needed to tell me some things and wanted to know if I could talk. I texted back 'of course and waited for her call. Fifteen minutes later, my phone rang, but rather than a phone call, Cherry was calling with FaceTime.

Once the video came into focus, I answered by asking how her day was. She said it was 'fine' but she struggled because there was so much she needed to tell me. She spent the next ten minutes telling me what I had already discovered from her mom; including that as long as she was in school and living under her mom's roof, that she was not allowed to date.

Finishing her 'confession' she apologized for not being completely honest about everything from the beginning. Explaining that she wanted to tell me but was worried about how I might take some of the news, Cherry said that ultimately she knew she had to tell me because she didn't want our relationship to be built on any lies.

I let her finish all that she had to say and told her about how my day went. She was mortified to learn that her mom knew that she spent the night with me and even more so that she came to my apartment to confront me.

Cherry asked, "What I'm I going to say to her? She's going to kill me

I said, "My advice is to tell her exactly what happened: that you answered the call of a friend in need and spent the night on the

couch-just like told her you did."

Cherry smiled and said amused, "You liar!" "Defending myself I said, "If had been honest, I'd be an honest dead man!

Cherry laughed and agreed with my assessment. I gave her some more advice on what to say and what not to say when she got home and was confronted by her mom. To try and reduce how long she was going to be grounded-our stories needed to match perfectly. Just as we were finishing getting our stories straight, a girls voice from out of my view called out to her and said, 'come on; we have to go or we'll be late!"

Cherry said with an exaggerated frown, "I have to go to practice!" "I understand: you have to have your priorities," I teased her, implying cheerleading was evidently more important than me. "HEY! That's not fair!!!" Cherry protested while pretending to have been insulted.

I smiled and said, "You go practice! When can I see you again?" She thought for a second and asked, "What are you doing Friday?" I shook my head 'no' to indicate 'nothing' and she continued, "We have a home game: come and watch it! I'll be cheering for it, of course, but we'll get a few minutes at least..."

I said, "I'll be there! What time?"

"Be here at 6:007"

"I'll be there," I said.

A voice off camera screamed, "CHERRY! NOW!" She nearly jumped out of her skin and said quickly, "Gotta go!" before she kissed the camera on the phone and disconnected the call.

The conversation only lasted about 20 minutes, but felt like I just got home from vacation. I felt so good that I decided to go and see how the guys at the firehouse were doing. On the drive there, my shirt was irritating my stitches and it had me once again thinking about little Katie. I parked on the side of the fire house and walked in to the shock of the other guys there. They were asking me how I was doing and I assured them I was 'ok' as we went on to talk about what was going on. A few minutes passed and Chief came passing through, stopping dead in his tracks when he saw me. I suddenly felt like the teenager sneaking out of his window late at night only to find his dad waiting for him on the other side.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Chief asked. I said, "I was feeling ok and wanted to see what was going on." He barely waited me to finish talking before he said sternly, "My ass-you feel ok"

The rest of the guys melted into the background and slinked away to find other things to do rather than witness what they thought was about to be an ass chewing (their feelings matched mine at

that moment).