With that, she gave one nod and headed across the floor and out the front door. She must have been parked out back because Cherry couldn’t see her get into a car.
Wow. That was a lot of information in a short amount of time. She wasn’t sure what to do with it all, so she stayed where she was, sipped her now-cold coffee and felt it hit her stomach like a punch of acid, and stared out the window at the street beyond. The day was hot but overcast, and the dull sky reflected her mood at the moment.
There had been letters?
What the actual fuck, Dad?
She knew he’d struggled after Lila left, and she knew she’d reminded him of her, which made his life hard. But had he actually kept it from her that her mother tried to connect with her?
If nothing else, Cherry Davis prided herself on her toughness. On her ability to let emotional things bounce off her. TikTok was rife with endless trolls and people who had nothing better to do than crap on others. She had her fair share of them in her comments. She laughed them off. Growing up, she’d had to have a steel exterior to survive her father’s mood swings. His temper tantrums. And she’d done it. She’d survived. Some would say she’d even thrived.
But this?
A car pulled out of the parking lot then, and she could see Lila behind the wheel, and that shone a spotlight on this current crisis she’d been handed.
This was heavy. This felt like weight on her shoulders that she wasn’t sure she could hold. Her knees were buckling because, holy shit, her mother had sent her letters that her father had never let her see.
What the hell was that?
And suddenly, the tough exterior cracked some more. It was almost like she could feel it, the shell surrounding her beginning to weaken, the knowledge that it would soon crumble completely and leave her open and vulnerable almost as bad as the cracking itself. Her eyes filled with tears. A hard lump took up residence in her throat, and she was glad she had her back to the rest of the Dunkin’ so nobody could see that she was on the verge of tears.
She felt lost. Lonely. Hurt. And the only person she wanted to talk to about it didn’t want anything to do with her.
And that just made it all so much worse.
* * *
Ellis had submitted the article late—and with a slight hesitation—but she’d sent it.
The fallout for Andi had been swift and harsh. Ellis had watched, she hadn’t been able to help herself, checking in on Andi’s socials every couple of hours. And she felt guilty as she watched the numberof followers get smaller and smaller, as if it was Andi’s fault and she shouldered the blame for having an unfaithful wife. True, she had a huge number of followers, and she did get many messages of support, but she’d lost, like, a lot of them. Ellis grimaced as she closed out of Instagram on her phone and tried to ignore her own hand in the whole mess.
She’d checked on Cherry on Top as well, the big red cherry with the stem looking so happy and cheerful, and more guilt set in. Cherry had definitely lost some followers, too, and Ellis wondered at that. Guilt by association? Because they were friends and somebody decided they no longer liked Andi, did they not like Cherry as well? Ellis didn’t think she’d ever understand this influencer community.
Interestingly, as of this morning all the posts that featured Cherry’s girlfriend were gone, and all captions referring to her sweetie or honey or better half had all been edited. Somebody had been hard at work cleansing her accounts.
Cherry hadn’t been in the diner all week. Ellis knew because she’d checked. This morning, she’d pretended she needed to look at the walk-in fridge, and Kitty totally called her out.
“She’s not here.” Kitty didn’t look at her as she wiped a coffee mug dry and set it on the shelf.
“Oh, I wasn’t…” She let her words trail off because it was clear by Kitty’smm-hmmthat she was on to her like white on rice. She’d hurried back into her office.
The lunch rush had died down, and the doors had been locked, and her staff were doing their final cleanup before they knocked off for the day. She was sitting at a table in the dining area with a laptop, working on orders and paperwork. Her office in the back had no windows, and sometimes, it made her feel better to sit out front and absorb some daylight. She was doing just that when her phone rang. Evan.
“Hey, loser,” she said by way of greeting.
“Sup,” he said, and she could tell by the background noise that he was driving.
“On your way to a meeting?”
“Out of town,” he told her. “Just wanted to check in, see how you’re doing. I saw the article.”
“Yeah.”
“It’s a good one. Nicely written.”
“Thanks,” she said, and a niggling feeling began to gnaw at her stomach.
“I checked her accounts after I read it. Man, she’s hemorrhaging followers.” He didn’t accuse her, but the tone was there.
