Chapter 25
Tom had told Cherry about Thursday the first night that they met.
They were talking about what they liked to do when they weren’t working, and Tom said that he had a webcomic. Cherry hadn’t
known what a webcomic was, exactly.
Later, when they were dating, he mentioned it again and gave her slightly more detail: “It’s a stupid comic strip that I write,
that lives online.” She asked if she could read it, and Tom made a face like she’d asked to read his diary. “Nobody reads
it,” he said.
“How would someone find it if they wanted to read it?”
“They wouldn’t. Nobody wants to read webcomics except for other people who write webcomics. And even then . . .”
“I want to read it.”
“Trust me. You don’t.”
It felt like what he was really saying was that he didn’t want her to read it.
So Cherry didn’t go looking for Thursday. She figured he’d let her see it someday . . . In the meantime, they were falling in love.
Tom spent most nights at Cherry’s apartment. He’d come over after he made dinner for his dad. Sometimes he’d bring dinner
for Cherry, too.
They went for walks. They watched TV. They got up early on weekends and went to estate sales—they found a hundred-year-old
couch for $650. Tom paid for half.
They talked about work—a lot. They didn’t work together directly, but they worked with some of the same people. Cherry did funny impressions of all their managers. It was the only thing that ever made Tom laugh out loud.
They slept in Cherry’s room, on her mattress on the floor, and had started having clumsy, eager sex. Cherry was pretty sure
that Tom had never done it before, but she didn’t feel like she could ask him directly. She never wanted to embarrass him
or scare him back into his shell. She liked him so much—too much, probably.
Tom was so smart.
He was so funny.
He was an effortless artist. A good thinker. She’d quickly realized that Tom had a hand in all the best pieces of the railroad’s
more recent advertising.
He liked to solve problems and fix things. When Cherry’s car radiator was leaking, Tom bought a repair manual on eBay and,
after a few tries, patched it up.
He was so handsome . . .
She wasn’t sure whether other people thought so. Tom was heavier. His hair was too short. His head was a block.
Cherry kind of hoped that no one could see him like she did. She’d never be able to keep him if other women caught on to how hot he was. Tom was all shoulders.
He was all thighs. He was a minotaur. Cherry liked to hold her hand up to his, to see how short her fingers were in comparison.
She was constantly rubbing up against him like a cat, just to feel how solid he was. Just to get his attention.
Now, when Cherry got Tom’s attention, he kissed her. It didn’t really matter where they were or what they were doing—it was
like he was making up for that first, failed kiss. It made Cherry insatiable.
It made her rash. She told him that she loved him after just a couple of weeks together. Cherry was like a drinking glass
sitting under a faucet—she’d said “I love you” as soon as she’d felt full, and then she kept saying it, as her feelings slopped
over the edges.
Tom had looked startled the first time. And concerned the second time. And then he’d started kissing Cherry every time she said it—tenderly—which was just incentive for her to say it more.
Cherry’s sisters knew she was dating someone, but she was nervous about bringing Tom to a family event. Her sisters were a
lot. Her mom was a lot. Cherry was afraid that Tom would realize that Cherry herself was a lot if he saw her in that context.
At Easter dinner, when her sisters were badgering her about meeting her boyfriend, Cherry googled Tom from Honny’s desktop
computer, trying to find a photo to show them. (He covered his face whenever Cherry tried to take his picture.) Tom wasn’t
on Facebook, but he had a distinct last name—Valentine.
She found his photo on the ad agency’s website.
“He looks young,” Honny said.
“He’s twenty-four,” Cherry said.
“Oooh,” Joy said. “You’re robbing the cradle.”
Cherry was only twenty-five. “Coates & Branch almost never hires people right out of college, but they hired him because he’s
so talented.”
She backed out of the page to look at the other Google results. There was a MySpace page. She clicked on it, thinking there
might be photos of Tom from college. (She’d love to see those.)
There were no photos—but there was a section for his comic strip. Thursday.
“Go back to his photo,” Joy said. “Make it bigger.”
Cherry quickly, guiltily, clicked back.
Tom wasn’t smiling in his work photo. His face looked flat. He never looked like that with Cherry—when Tom looked at Cherry,
there was always a smile hiding out in the corners of his eyes and the corners of his lips.
“I guess he’s cute . . .” Joy said.
“His hair’s too short,” Honny said.
“Oh my god,” Cherry said, closing the browser window. “I’m never introducing him to you people.”
Tom was staying at his dad’s house that night because Cherry hadn’t been sure how late she’d be. She got home a little after midnight and went straight to bed, already missing him. She lay awake awhile, listening to the radiator turn off and on . . .
Thinking about Tom.
And how diligent he was about his webcomic.
On Wednesday nights, Tom wouldn’t come over until he’d finished Thursday. (It posted once a week.)
Cherry stared up at the popcorn ceiling.
She chewed on her lip.
She got out of bed and went to get her laptop, settling on the mattress with her legs crossed.
Tom had apparently launched Thursday on MySpace during college and then moved it to a webcomics site. You could read the entire run of Thursday there, starting with Tom’s very first post.
Thursday was usually five panels long. At the beginning, the subject matter was all over the place. Campus life. Absurdities. Politics.
There weren’t any recurring characters.
After a few dozen strips, a main character emerged. It was Tom, obviously. He drew himself square and hulking. Always wearing
the same hooded sweatshirt. And almost completely silent. The character didn’t have a name.
The strips fell into more of a groove over time. The guy who was clearly Tom went through his life silently observing things
and experiencing things. Meeting people. Finding himself in complicated, uncomfortable situations. None of the strips were
funny on their own—but they built on each other. And sometimes they snuck up on you and made you laugh out loud. Once, Cherry
found herself crying.
It would be hard to explain to someone why Thursday was great . . .
There was no plot. There weren’t any traditional jokes or sight gags. And Tom’s art was deceptively simple. Cherry knew he
could draw realistically, but his comic lines were loose and cartoonish. There was a Bloom County quality. And some early Disney vibes. (Like—what if Berkeley Breathed had worked on Snow White?) Thursday was sweet. It was funny. It was sharp.
It was great, undeniably. Ineffably. Cherry was falling deeper in love with Tom, panel by panel. She stayed up for hours, paging through
his old strips . . . Tom’s main character graduated from college. He got a job. He started working for a railroad.
Cherry’s stomach started to tense as she got closer to the present. How autobiographical was this comic?
She got to December.
Just before Christmas, Tom had posted an unprecedented extra-wide, single-panel strip. On the left side, he’d drawn a woman.
A very fat woman.
Wearing black jeans and a low-cut black sweater. Black high-heeled boots. A heart-shaped pendant around her neck.
Her breasts were extremely large.
Her hips and thighs were comical.
There was a curved line giving her a double chin and another curved line giving her a belly.
She had long dark hair and bangs, with slashes on her cheeks for dimples and three freckles on either side of her nose.
She was smiling with one side of her mouth.
She didn’t say anything.
Tom’s character was facing the woman, so the reader couldn’t see his face. There was a rare thought bubble hanging over his
head:
“I just met the most beautiful girl.”