Chapter 6 #2
The clasp opened, and Russ made a noise like “ha!” Cherry’s breasts fell loose. (She wasn’t worried about this reveal—her breasts were very good. Round. High. She’d spent all of her teen years worrying about stretch marks and then her
first boyfriend had made some rude comment about her nipples—but now that the internet was full of bare breasts, Cherry had
seen enough to appreciate her own.) She made room for Russ to pull the bra away.
“How am I different?” he asked, already kissing her naked shoulder.
She touched his hair again. “You’re sweeter.”
He stood up, pulling away from her. Her bra was hanging from his hand. “You didn’t expect me to be sweet?” His eyebrows twitched
down. “Wasn’t I sweet to you?”
“You . . .” Cherry looked at him. At his first-rate face. His expensive hair. Those deep-set blue eyes—even more arresting
now that there were some lines around them. “No, you were sweet.”
He was. Always thinking of Cherry. Asking about her life. Bringing her coffee and treats whenever he brought something for
Stacia. And he was so sweet to Stacia.
“I don’t know what I expected,” Cherry said. “I guess I didn’t expect this at all.”
“But . . .” Russ dropped her bra. He still looked serious. “. . . did you want it?”
Cherry’s mouth clicked open. Her mind went blank. There were tears in her eyes, she was pretty sure. Did she want it?
She nodded her head.
Russ clenched his teeth, and a little muscle jumped under his eye. He pulled Cherry against him with both arms and kissed
her, hard. It was still sweet somehow. Tender. His hands were on her back. He was kissing her like . . . like . . .
Well, he was kissing her like he wanted her. Not just this. Like Cherry was a very specific person. To him. In his arms. At this moment.
She kissed him back.
When Russ eventually took a breath, they both got a little frantic. He bit her neck. He squeezed her breasts. She started unbuttoning his shirt, and he shook it off, then yanked his undershirt over his head with one hand. (He was the sort of guy who wore undershirts.)
She smiled at his bare chest. At the dark hair across his pecs and down his belly. He was pale. A different shade of pale
than Cherry. Than Tom. “Russ . . .”
He pulled her toward her bed. Cherry unbuckled his belt.
They fell, then climbed, onto the bed. Cherry was on her back. Russ went for her fly. The waist of her jeans cut into her
belly. He moved away a little, kneeling over her. “Take them off, yeah?”
“Yeah,” Cherry said, lying back and sucking in her gut to unbutton her jeans. She hated this next part, but there was no avoiding
it. This was the big reveal. She couldn’t have sex with Russ without showing him exactly how fat she was. (Well, maybe she could—on
a dark night with no moon. Or in some sort of glory hole situation.) Her vagina was very inconveniently located for subterfuge.
Cherry pushed her jeans down and decided to grab her panties, too. Russ helped, pulling everything down her legs, pushing
it off the bed. Then he looked up at her. Cherry was sitting up a little. Creasing at the waist.
She still had a waist. Her sisters all lost theirs after their pregnancies, but Cherry was a blown-out hourglass. Wide hips. Heavy thighs.
A belly that hung a little.
“I don’t want to hear you complain,” her sister Joy would say. “You’re built like a Lane Bryant lingerie model.”
“Wait till she has kids,” Honny would say.
And Cherry would think, That’ll be a long wait.
“Cherry,” Russ said, moving toward her. His eyes were big. His glasses were smudged. “You’re so . . .” He touched her hip.
“Okay,” he said, “we’ll just, um . . .” He started kissing her, stupidly, his mouth loose and open. “Jesus, okay.”
Cherry swallowed. Still nervous. Kissing him back. “Okay.”
“You don’t know,” he said.
His chest was against hers. She reached up to his face, cradling it. “What don’t I know?”
“How bad I wanted this,” Russ said in a husky voice. “How much I . . . You’re so . . .”
He moved away and got rid of his pants. Got back to kissing her. They were both naked now. Their legs and arms were tangling.
He lifted his head up to take off his glasses. Cherry took them from him and reached over to set them on her nightstand. He
kissed her ribs as she stretched. He looked younger without his glasses. Open. She laughed.
“What?”
“I’ve never seen you without your glasses,” she whispered.
“I’m a bad candidate for Lasik.”
She laid a palm over his cheek. “That’s the strangest thing anyone has ever said to seduce me.”
Russ laughed. She laughed with him. “You laugh a lot during sex,” he said.
“We’re not having sex.”
“Okay, you laugh a lot during foreplay.” They were both whispering.
Cherry laughed again. She wrinkled her nose. “I think I’m just glad that you’re here.”
Russ was lying half on top of her. She could feel his cock on her hip. Hard. A little wet. He kissed her again—like he was
glad, too. She could feel him smiling. He took a breath and whispered, “What’s our plan for birth control?”
“Oh.” Cherry realized that she hadn’t thought about it. How had she not thought about it? “I’m not on anything.”
Russ ran his hand up the inside of her thigh. “We could just . . .”
His fingers got to her vagina. (Cherry was old enough to call the whole area “vagina”; she hadn’t gotten on board with modern
precision labeling.) She braced again for him to feel how fat she was. Every part of her, even this one. (Cherry’s vagina
was substantial. She wasn’t one of those women with just a hint of lip. A sliver of labia.)
His hand curved around her, and his eyes closed. “Fuck,” he said—like he was cursing, not suggesting. “Cherry.” And then, “We could just . . .”
She hummed. He was rubbing along the seam, feeling how wet she was. Feeling the split. His fingers slid back and down into
the canal, the vagina proper. Cherry groaned. “Fuck,” Russ said again.
She opened her legs, and his fingers sank deeper.
He looked up at her face. Cherry was still holding his cheek. She kissed his nose. He pumped his fingers, and she made a noise
that was half sigh, half whine.
“We could just . . .” he said again, swallowing.
“Oh.” Cherry sat up. Suddenly. Her shoulder hit Russ’s forehead.
He jerked back, surprised, and pulled his hand away.
“I think I have . . .” Cherry leaned toward the nightstand again, opened a small drawer, and came back with a strip of condoms.
She and Tom had used condoms, and period tracking—Cherry didn’t do well on the pill. But it had been a long time . . .
She squinted at a packet, looking for an expiration date. “A-ha,” she said. “We’re in business.”
Russ laughed and grabbed the strip out of Cherry’s hands. He pulled her close again, levered her back onto the bed, and pushed
his hand back into her pussy. Less gently this time. He rubbed his palm into her clit. “Oh,” Cherry said.
“Good?” he asked.
She nodded. It was good. She could maybe come like this. Eventually. It wasn’t what she was used to. She was used to Tom’s thick fingers. Or
her own. Not the flat of an unfamiliar palm.
Cherry was worried suddenly that she wouldn’t be able to come, not on demand like this, even though she really wanted to. Even though she really wanted Russ.
Had the clock already started? This was the thing now, right—the woman comes first?
Back in college, it had taken several tries for Cherry to work out an orgasm with the guys she slept with.
And coming was come-and-go at first with Tom.
Tom’s approach to her body had changed over time, as he got to know her better.
As Cherry felt more comfortable giving direction, and Tom felt more comfortable taking it . . .
(Cherry knew that she shouldn’t be thinking about Tom right now, but how could she not think about him? She’d been married to him for eight years. He was the only man her body recognized. This was his bed, for god’s sake.)
“Cherry,” Russ whispered, kissing her cheek. He pushed his fingers in deeper, giving her clit a break.
Cherry groaned. This was a less complicated feeling—she liked being fucked. She wanted more of it. She tried to think of a
way to say so that wasn’t “Just do it.”
She pulled Russ’s body closer, spread her legs wider.
He got the message. “Yeah,” he said, lifting off of her to put on a condom.
Cherry had one more discordant moment when Russ slid into her. Another Tom! Tom! Tom! moment—
Cherry wasn’t supposed to be doing this with someone else! No one else was supposed to be in her body like this! She belonged to someone!
But he was gone.
Tom was gone.
“Cherry,” Russ said. Between her legs. Holding himself above her torso. His eyes were half closed. “You’re so . . .”
“Russ,” she said, arching up into him.
Russ looked gorgeous. Flushed. Alive. He was already thrusting into her with purpose. It felt amazing.
Maybe the universe knew that Cherry needed the most desirable man in her personal history to fuck her back to life again.
(“Stop saying ‘the universe’ when you mean God,” she heard Honny say again. But would God have sent Russ Sutton to have sex with Cherry? He did move in mysterious ways . . .)
Russ’s head was hanging over hers. He still looked like Bono. He grinned down at her, and Cherry grinned back. Both of them were panting.
He reached down between their bodies, but there wasn’t room for his hand. He lifted up to make space. Found Cherry’s clit
again, rubbed it. His forearm was pressed into her belly. He said, “What do you need, baby?”
Cherry froze. “What?”
Russ’s hand stopped moving. “Does that hurt?”
“No. No, it’s good.”
He rubbed her clit again, more gently. “You feel so good . . . I want you to feel good.”
“I want . . .” Cherry said. “Can I come after?”
Russ smiled. “You can come whenever you want.” He pulled his hand up and dropped onto his elbows, rocking his hips forward. His flat stomach pressed into hers. Cherry
felt bigger than him in every way like this—but she felt good. She moved with him. Held him.
Russ was still sweet, even now. Looking in her eyes. He raised his eyebrows like, Isn’t this great? and Cherry nodded.
Once, back in college, they’d all gone to the grocery store together, and Stacia had left Russ and Cherry in the freezer section
to pick out ice cream while she went to get tampons—“Stay with Cherry, I need to do some lady shopping”—and a Billy Joel song had started playing over the store speakers. “Leave a Tender Moment Alone.”
Russ had grabbed Cherry’s hand and pulled her close, wrapping his other arm around her waist. They knew each other so well
by then that Cherry didn’t even ask what he was doing. She just smiled up at him as he rocked her back and forth to the music.
She loved the way Russ moved. She loved the way he moved her. He swept her all the way down the aisle, to frozen vegetables,
and Cherry was completely at ease when he tipped her back over his arm into a dip.
“I wanted this so bad,” he said now. He was breathing harder.
Cherry nodded again.
“I wanted you,” he said. “From the moment I saw you. Cherry.”
Cherry touched his face.
He kissed her wrist, then lifted up onto his hands. “Did you . . . Tell me you wanted this, too.”
“I . . .”
Russ’s face was flushed. His hips were insistent. “Tell me you wanted it.”
“I wanted it,” she said.
“Tell me.”
“I wanted you.”
He shook his head, like he was trying to hold back. “From the moment I met you, Cherry.”
“Russ.”
He pushed in hard. “In that goddamn sweater.”
“I always wanted you,” she said. Guilty. Thrilled. “I was crazy about you, Russ.” Honest.
Russ bit his bottom lip when he came.
Then he went soft all over and affectionate. Puppyish. Kissing her neck and chest with his mouth open. Cherry didn’t expect
it. The unabated sweetness of him.
He lifted out of her and fell on his side, kissing her shoulders, smiling. Catching his breath. “Is now ‘after’?”
Cherry nodded her head. She was still reeling.
He touched her with his fingers and then with his palm, and whispered her name in her ear as she came. Then he kissed her
so furiously that she thought they might start all over, but instead they kissed each other half to sleep.
Cherry drifted off with her cheek on Russ’s shoulder.
She woke up at three a.m.
Russ was dressed and standing by her bed. He said he had to get home, that he had his kid first thing in the morning. He wanted
Cherry’s phone number.
She gave it to him, and he kissed her cheek and told her to go back to sleep.