Chapter 15
“Come on, pick up,” Cherish muttered into the phone as she paced her apartment.
She was proud of her apartment. It mixed the life she lived now with a few touches of home. Things that she would never take to the office or show anyone. Not even Febe had seen the objects that littered her home and told of her past.
“Hey, baby sis.” Stuart’s voice came over the line, a breathless chuckle in his tone.
“Finally. Twenty-seven rings, Stuart. Twenty. Seven,” Cherish snapped out and shook her head back and forth, feeling the pucker in her lips. She huffed out her frustration as she perched on the edge of her couch, ready to stand up and pace again.
“You could have hung up, you know.” Stuart laughed. He was more than a little used to Cherish and her directness. That was what he always called it.
But her brother had always been able to temper her mood. No one else could melt a bad mood like he could, except maybe Haylee. A lump formed in Cherish’s throat, and she questioned her decision to call Stuart after all.
“What’s up, Cherry?” Stuart asked, obviously having noticed the silence had stretched beyond any normal sort of time frame.
“Don’t call me that.” Cherish’s relief surprised her as a small chuckle unexpectedly escaped with her words and the lump in her throat dissolved. Despite her protest, she had always loved when Stuart called her that. She had only insisted on dropping the nickname when she had moved to the big city. It did not give the professional vibe she knew Febe demanded.
“Okay, something is definitely wrong.” Stuart’s playful tone shifted in a heartbeat. “Is Febe okay? She called me a while back. Told me you’d suggested it.”
“It’s fine.” Cherish bit back her retort. She’d called him for a reason, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t going to take her ten minutes to work up to the actual conversation she’d called for.
“Cherry.”
She grasped for straws as she stood up and walked into the kitchen and back again. “I made a stupid bet with the new office admin, and now I don’t know what to do with myself.”
“A bet?” Stuart sounded surprised. He should be. It was so unlike Cherish to do something like that.
“Yeah. Because the gala is coming up again, and I need Febe to not flip out like last year.”
“Oh.” Instantly, he understood what she wasn’t saying. Which was perfect, because Cherish really didn’t want to have to think about that night. Holding Febe while she bawled when Bernie had died would have been enough, but to do it in public?
“Anyway, so I made a bet to try and get Haylee to help me keep Febe in line and protect her from this because she has to be there, and it can’t be a disaster because we won’t get the funding—”
“Cherry.” Stuart stopped her in her tracks. “You’re talking a mile a minute. Are you worried about the bet? Or the gala? I can’t quite tell.”
She grimaced. Of course he would get straight to the point when she was avoiding.
“Both?” Her voice wavered. She was more worried about the fact that she’d kissed Haylee. But she had no idea how to even tell Stuart that. Standing up again, Cherish paced the length of her living room, then into her bedroom.
“Why do I get the feeling there’s more to this story than you’re telling me?”
“There isn’t. The bet. I shouldn’t have done it. Haylee wants to know what happened last year, and I don’t want to tell her. It’d break Febe’s confidence.”
Stuart sighed heavily. “Cherry, you’ve got to stop that already.”
“Stop what?” Cherish froze in the middle of her hallway.
“Febe is a grown-ass woman. Let her make her own mistakes.”
Wrinkling her nose, Cherish started pacing again. “That’s not the issue. It’s really not.”
“Then what is it?”
She could tell by his tone that he was losing his patience with her. Cherish swallowed the lump in her throat. She had called him for this. She needed to get it out.
“I kissed Haylee at work up against the printer.” Cherish rushed out the words, knowing if she gave herself any more time to think about it, she would talk herself out of saying them. And talking about Febe was a whole other minefield she couldn’t add to her already confused thoughts and actions.
“What?” Stuart’s voice would have been emotionless except for the tilt of confusion at the end. Confusion, mixed with doubt and just a dash of concern. “Did I hear you wrong?”
“No.” Cherish clenched her fists and her eyes with a deep breath before letting it out slowly. She had to move. “You probably didn’t. I kissed a coworker at work, in the middle of the day and now… Well, now I think I’m going entirely crazy.”
“To be fair, you’ve always been a little crazy.” The words were right, but the delivery lacked any jovial tones. “And going might be a little like closing the barn after the horse bolted.”
“Shut up and help me, Stu,” Cherish whined like she used to as a child, begging her big brother to help her with some chore or a part of homework she couldn’t figure out.
“Well, it must be serious if you are pulling out the Stu card.” Stuart’s voice hadn’t entirely returned to the calm nature Cherish knew as his baseline. But at least now some of the tension had slackened.
“It is.” Cherish’s lips curved in a small smile imagining Stuart rubbing the back of his neck as he tried to process this rather incongruous information. “Febe could fire me for this.”
“All right. You have my attention. Lay it all out for me. What happened?”
“That’s it. We kissed.”
“I’m going to need a little more detail.”
“Ew. No.” Cherish’s face scrunched up. She stepped up to the window and looked outside, a steady rain falling, which only served to remind her of that very heated kiss on the sidewalk. In hindsight, that kiss was everything the second one wasn’t. That one had been bare and vulnerable, and she’d seen Haylee for who she really was—kind, protective, generous. Sacrificial even. Cherish hadn’t seen that in a woman other than Febe.
“Not those kinds of details.” His laugh helped Cherish more than any of his words had so far. “These things don’t just happen. There’s a buildup.”
“Oh Christ, are you watching those Hallmark movies again? I told you those were bad for your outlook on romance.”
“Of course, I’m watching them. But there’s a reason they’re so popular. Art mimics life, dear sister.” He chuckled.
“All right, fine. Just shut up about the movies. It was just a moment. I don’t know, but Haylee said she couldn’t stop thinking about kissing me again, and I…basically told her to do it.”
“You dared her?” Stuart sounded interested now. Dishes clattered in the background along with the sound of the kitchen faucet running full force. He was probably doing a late-night kitchen clean while they talked—he often did that, keeping his hands busy instead of idle.
“I guess? I don’t think so, but it was insane.” She wished she had another word for it. “I’ve never felt something like that before.”
“Like what?”
“I don’t know how to explain it.” Cherish started to shut down again. She wasn’t good at the emotions thing like he was. He could pull an emotion out from a mile away, but Cherish would stumble through them like a field of landmines. She was convinced it was the only reason he’d never figured out she had a crush on Febe all those years ago at the height of Febe and him dating. “I didn’t want to stop her.”
“You stopped her?”
“Yeah. We were in the office.”
“Is this the first time you two have kissed?” Stuart asked as though he sat at the dining table taking notes of all the pertinent information. Silence met Stuart’s question, with the sink turned off and dish noise gone. Cherish panicked as she realized he probably was doing exactly that. He was a hopeless romantic, but they had both gotten their structure and note-taking obsession from their mother.
“Cherry, when did you first kiss? You said again before…” His voice lost some of its clinical tone, and she swore she heard the click of a pen through the phone line.
“Umm…” Cherish’s face grew warm as she sat back on the couch, allowing herself to settle down and enjoy a side of herself she never knew existed until recently. “In the rain. She stopped me from getting splashed by a passing car and then we were kissing.” All right, so that wasn’t the full story, but it was all Stuart needed to know. Cherish wasn’t even certain about that. She wanted to keep these moments with Haylee sacred. And worst of all, she knew what his reaction was going to be.
“And you’re still trying to convince me this isn’t like the movies?” He laughed with satisfaction.
Cherish groaned and pinched the bridge of her nose, but realized she didn’t have a headache this evening. That was a new and strange sensation.
“All right, all right. I’ll move away from the movies side of all of this.” Stuart was obviously not okay with this, but he did as promised. “What does Febe think about her top two assistants making out in the middle of the office?”
“It wasn’t in the middle of the office. It was in the printer alcove.” Cherish cringed as soon as her defensiveness leaked through her words.
“Deflecting, deflecting.” Stuart still had far too much of a smile in his voice for Cherish’s liking.
“Deflecting from what?” Cherish asked, knowing even as the words left her mouth that the last thing she wanted was to get into a conversation about Febe, especially over this.
“What did Febe say?” Stuart asked.
“I haven’t told her.” Cherish wanted to lie but knew she wouldn’t. She never lied to Stuart. She might not always tell him the truth, but an outright lie had never slipped from her lips to her brother.
“Why not?” Stuart asked, as though the idea of telling Febe about her crush on Haylee would have been the most obvious and natural thing in the world to do.
“Aside from the fact that she’s our boss and would definitely not be happy about her two office managers kissing, she has enough on her plate.” Cherish wasn’t lying. It was the truth. The gala was racing toward them, and the last thing Febe needed was to deal with Cherish having a little crush on her coworker. Even if maybe it wasn’t just a little crush.
“Bullshit.” Stuart didn’t sound angry, but he made sure Cherish knew he wasn’t buying it either.
“You said she called you? Did you actually talk about anything important?” But Cherish couldn’t keep her own anger at bay. She pursed her lips and knew her nostrils had flared. She no longer wanted to talk about Haylee. It wasn’t nearly as important as making sure Febe was okay. She had too much faith in Stuart being able to help Febe, and now here they were with the gala looming too close, and again it was her responsibility to protect Febe. How stupid was she not to notice? She had been too focused on Haylee—too distracted.
“About a month ago,” Stuart replied.
“Exactly.” Game, set, match. Cherish leaned back into the couch, exhaustion overtaking her previous calm. She didn’t imagine Haylee’s arms wrapped around her this time. The headache began as a steady pulse at the base of her skull.
“What’s that got to do with you not telling Febe?”
“She has enough on her plate.” Cherish spoke slowly, because he clearly didn’t understand the first time. Maybe if she said it slowly, he would this time. “I figured you would know that since she called you.”
“Febe isn’t fragile. She’s not going to break. And we aren’t her keepers.” The only fight the two of them had was when Stuart had broken up with Febe. Cherish had screamed at him until she lost her voice, and he had lashed right back at her. “But you do know the real reason you haven’t told her.”
“She doesn’t need to know. She’s shut herself off since Bernie died.” Tears welled in Cherish’s eyes. She hadn’t realized how badly she missed her best friend until moments like this when she couldn’t avoid it. “I’m not going to pour salt into her wounds.”
Cherish sniffled and wiped her nose on the back of her wrist. She hated that she was crying, and if Stuart was in the room with her, she would be sobbing. She counted both Stuart and Febe as her best friends. Hell, she’d moved to Portland to be with Febe all those years ago, and now Febe was just gone from her life.
“What would I say? Oh hey, I know you’re still grieving from your wife dying and all, but I’ve been checking out your other assistant, and we like making out during work hours. What are your thoughts about the situation?”
“Cherry.” Stuart’s voice held that air of big brother knowing all and demanding an honest answer. But despite how she felt at the start of the conversation, Cherish was not the sixteen-year-old in need of help. Not when it came to Febe. She only ever had Febe’s best interests at heart.
“No. You don’t know what it’s like here. You don’t know how broken she is.”
“Maybe she’s not the one who is acting strange and distancing herself.” Stuart spoke as though Cherish hadn’t said anything. “And maybe, just maybe, you don’t want to tell her about Haylee because you still haven’t worked through your own feelings for Febe.”
An instant lump in Cherish’s throat clogged up all those words she had never had the courage to say. How had he known? Why did everyone know?
“Of course I have feelings for her. She’s my best friend!”
“You know that’s not what I meant. But seeing as you brought it up, have you actually been much of a best friend to her lately?”
“Excuse me?” Cherish wasn’t playing around, shards of ice at the edges of her tone. Her breath came a little faster, and the heat of fury burned beneath her skin.
“Think about it.” Stuart didn’t back down, and the condescension that dripped from his voice was like showing a red rag to a bull.
“How dare you!” And just like that the heat burst into a raging inferno with Stuart in the direct path. “Who do you think you are, telling me what a crappy friend I am? When was the last time you even bothered to visit, or to call her? You aren’t the one helping her keep her head above water. You aren’t the one making sure she’s getting through each and every day knowing someone has her back and knowing someone gives a flying fuck. You aren’t the one who’s here.” Cherish all but screamed the last word. She breathed raggedly, her chest rising and falling. Her face was so hot. The pulse of her headache throbbed through her skull.
“And I’m not the one treating her like she might break.” Stuart’s voice was so calm it was infuriating.
“You have no idea what it’s like.” Cherish rarely raised that wall to her brother. The one that protected her from getting hurt. She couldn’t remember the last time she had shown him her icy facade, but she wouldn’t let herself be broken, not even for him. “You haven’t been here.”
Cherish hung up without a goodbye.
The phone rang four times, and each time she ignored it, sending Stuart’s call to voicemail. Eventually a text came through.
Stuart: Just think about what I said.
Then another.
Stuart: I love you.
Stuart: Both of you.