I want to ask Cherish why she didn’t think it was strange that he’s wearing her boyfriend’s gear—which is when I remember that she ignored me. That’s what I should be worried about. I’ve gotten the confirmation I wanted about Tariq’s hands. I don’t have any more time to wonder about him today.
Unless his behavior has something to do with the way Cherish is acting. His bruises didn’t happen today, so I’m unsure how they could be related, but I also couldn’t possibly have upset Cherish. She was gone before I was even awake.
“Hey,” Tariq says when he’s leaning close enough that I can feel his breath against my cheek. “You wanna go for a walk later or something?”
I turn my chin so that I’m looking in his eyes.
“I’ve missed you the last few days.” He can’t say it all without glancing down, and I almost smile. He’s himself again, at least for a moment, so I nod.
“Yeah,” I say. “Maybe.”
Brianne’s voice gets louder and she’s obviously closer to the door.
“Be right back,” I tell Tariq, and then slip out of the kitchen before she gets there, taking the stairs two at a time when I get to them, and then regretting it at the landing. My lung capacity isn’t what it should be, and I have to hold on to the banister and breathe deep outside our bedroom door.
Before I collect myself, it opens, and Cherish looks surprised to see me. Like walking away was more than an attempt to get me to follow her.
Like she meant it.
She starts toward the stairs like she’s just going to pass me—like it doesn’t matter how heavy I have to breathe—and I grip her wrist.
“What’s wrong with you?” I plead. “Why are you being like this?”
When she doesn’t answer, the fire in my chest threatens to go wild. She’s never been like this before—I didn’t even know she could be—and I don’t know what self-control is supposed to look like in this scenario.
“Che!” I pull down on her wrist to make her look at me. “Tell me what I did! What could I possibly have done to you while I’ve been sick out of my mind?”
She tries to wrench her arm back without answering me, and I tighten and twist, pulling it up between us now so that it hurts to resist.
Her expression goes from anger to something like heartbreak in an instant. It knocks me off-center. I don’t release her, but my mouth gapes in confusion.
“Cherish,” I almost whisper. “Tell me what’s wrong. Please. What did I do?”
“You’re doing it right now,” she replies, and she shakes her head before turning it away because there’s a tear she didn’t mean for me to see. She’s not strong like me. Eventually she was bound to break.
My hand springs open, dropping her wrist.
“I don’t know what you mean,” I say, and she cradles it like she wants me to feel bad.
“Yes, you do.”
“Cher-bear.” I let my shoulders wilt, ignoring the way Cherish’s brow cinches. “I’ve been virtually on my death bed. I’ve been sick for days—”
“And only on my side of the bed.”
My mouth snaps closed.
She keeps saying things I don’t expect.
“You didn’t think I’d notice?” she asks accusingly. “I always notice, Farrah.”
Nothing resonates but the way she says my name.
Farrah. Not RahRah.
“I’ve noticed the way no one told your mom and dad, too. Have you?”
“What are you doing?” I ask, my chin low.
“What am I doing?” she throws back at me, but quietly, and it’s all the time I need.
“What were you doing with Tariq all day?”
“What?” she asks, her forehead crinkling.
“Is this about what happened to Kelly? What Kelly did?”
“Farrah, we’re talking about you!” she hisses.
“I know he betrayed you, Cherish, but that doesn’t mean everyone will. It doesn’t mean I will.” And then I pause. “Not everybody is out to get you.”
Cherish isn’t me. I adore her, but she and I are very different people. It’s easy to disrupt her, to make it difficult for her to think. Just now, her face is caving. Under the anger that turned to confusion that became defeat, her resolve is crumbling. There’s no use turning her face away now; I’ve already seen her tears.
I take her wrist again, and she doesn’t resist when I pull her into my arms. Her chin’s against my shoulder, like her last act of defiance is refusing to put her head on my shoulder, but I rub her back anyway.
“Sometimes I’m not even sure you love me,” she whispers.
My hand stops.
“You don’t mean that.”
It’s me who ends up laying my head on her shoulder, because I need her to believe me. Because this part is true.
“I love you, Cherish,” I say quietly. “You have to know that. I’m not sure I love anybody but you.”
“Sometimes I think . . .” But she runs out of steam. She doesn’t finish, but her breathing calms, and I know she’s stopped crying.
None of what she said matters. It’s my Cherish. She wasn’t looking for answers, just to know I still care.
“Look at you two,” Brianne calls up from the bottom of the stairs. “You’re just precious! Come and eat before I eat you up instead.”
I kiss the soft skin of Cherish’s neck where Brianne can’t see and hold both her hands.
“Come on,” I whisper, and she nods against me.
“My darling girls,” Brianne Whitman coos, and she waits while we come down the stairs like a pair of Cinderellas entering the ball, and I wonder. If the fairy tale were true, and there could only be one of us . . . which would she choose?
Mr. Whitman and Tariq have set the patio table and displayed the grilled meat. When Brianne leads Cherish and me back outside, the two of them are huddling together over the latest patties, whose fat drips off and sizzles on the briquettes, sending up coils of smoke. It looks almost sinister, the way the white wafts in the limited space between them, and Jerry taps the backs of Tariq’s wrecked hands with his perspiring bottle of foreign beer. They’re both grinning, and whatever Mr. Whitman tells him—advice maybe on how to care for the scabbing knuckles, or else something more approving by the way their mouths split open a bit wider to let free a laugh—Tariq nods and gives a satisfied shrug.