Still. After everything. All Ellis wanted was to keep Cherry safe.
What the fuck? She shook her head with a groan, her frustration bubbling to the surface. Cherry was doing the work. It was kind of impressive. She was putting everything on the line by admitting what she’d done. Her brand might never recover. She had to know that, yet she did it anyway.
She glanced at Mikey, on her side today, seemingly looking right at her, but not seeing her at all, she knew. She wished more than anything that they could talk, that she could get her sister’s take on what was happening right now.
With a sigh, she restarted the TikTok and continued watching.
“Anyway,” Cherry was saying. “I met somebody recently. Theperson I messed things up with. Somebody wonderful. Somebodyreal.” She stressed that word, Ellis noticed. “That’s the key phrase. She’s real, and she’s inspired me to stop trying to be what I think other people want me to be and just be me. And some of you will hate it, and I apologize in advance for that. But from now on, we’re gonna live life. Actual life. Real life. I’m gonna be open and unfiltered and as real as I can be for you. You might hate it, many of you will unfollow me I’m sure, but you alsomightbe pleasantly surprised. I hope you’ll stick around to find out. Peace.” She flashed her signature two-fingers-up peace sign, and the video ended.
Ellis found herself with tears in her eyes, and she blinked in surprise. She hadn’t expected this.
What are you gonna do now?
She could almost hear Michaela’s voice in her head, asking her that question. Because that was the only question right now, wasn’t it?
What was she going to do now?
Chapter Twenty-five
July was not playing around, and being outside was like walking around inside an oven. Ellis was pretty sure she was just going to end up roasting like a red pepper. It was better in the diner, but not by much. The air-conditioning system was probably older than she was, and it did more groaning and straining than an old man trying to get out of a recliner.
Lately, she’d found herself doing something she never thought she’d do—scrolling the socials on a regular basis. Well, not so much scrolling as checking one place. That place being Cherry on Top. Cherry was everywhere: Facebook, TikTok, Tumblr, Instagram, and probably other platforms she didn’t know about. She stuck to Instagram, where she could see Cherry’s considerable talent with photography, and TikTok, because she could watch entire videos and they made it feel like she was close to her. And since Cherry’d posted about her fake girlfriend and about the something good she’d messed up, she hadn’t posted anything new.
Even Ellis knew that was dangerous, the kiss of death for an influencer. It was all about content, and to stay relevant, you had to post. Often. Two weeks with nothing new wasn’t doing Cherry’s desired career trajectory any favors.
Meanwhile, the comments Cherry had received had been harsh, to say the least. The very least. Yikes. She knew Cherry had thick skin, but brutal, mean, and downright cruel were all good ways to describe the words that some people sent her. Ellis didn’t understand it, couldn’t imagine saying such horrible things to a stranger. Publicly, where anybody and everybody else could read them.
They hadn’t talked since the day with the letters. It was clear Cherry was leaving things in her court, letting her set the pace, letting her do the reaching out, and she really wanted to know how things were going with Lila, if they’d talked or if Cherry had decided against contact. She had so many questions and even picked up her phone more than once, but always set it back down again, second-guessing herself.
She’s doing the work, though, isn’t she?
She was, and that thought kept reverberating through Ellis’s head at random times, like her brain was actually on Cherry’s side and was trying to sway her. Cherry was definitely doing all the work, and Ellis thought maybe it was time to let her know she’d seen it. She’d heard it. She appreciated it. It was time to let the poor girl off the hook, as Kendra had said the other day.
The thought brought unexpected tears to her eyes as she sat in her office in the diner, listening to the muffled hustle and bustle of the breakfast rush, and she realized there was only one person she wanted to talk to right then. Just one.
She picked up her phone.
* * *
Two weeks of no content was dangerous.
Cherry knew that. She hadn’t planned on it, but once the comments started to roll in on her last video—the one where she came clean about her deception—they’d nearly paralyzed her.
She’d expected them. Or, rather, she’d thought she’d expected them. She knew people would be mad. She knew they’d say mean things, that they’d unleash their anger on her. It was nothing she didn’t deserve. Besides, she was tough. She always had been. Shitty comments in her feeds had never really fazed her. That was part of the game.
Except they kept coming.
The bulk had shown up immediately. From how much she sucked to what a terrible role model for lesbians everywhere she was. That second one was rough, and that’s the one she got most often. How she’d let her people down. She didn’t care if some idiot troll of a guy slid into her comment section and talked about all the gross sexual things he’d like to do to her—she expected that, and blocking somebody took noeffort at all. Sadly, it came with the territory and was almost normal, alarming as that was. What she hadn’t counted on was the Alphabet Mafia smacking her around and saying they always thought she was sus because everything was too perfect and how dare she deceive her people by making shit up, as one person so eloquently put it. Which she wanted to argue over, but it wasn’t exactly wrong, was it? She’d made a conscious decision not to reply to any of the comments. She was just going to let her followers get it all out of their systems while she stayed quiet.
She didn’t expect to still be getting snarky comments two weeks later, but maybe she should have.
Also, she’d lost a good fifty percent of her followers. A full half. That was sobering.
Ellis wasn’t aware of what she’d done—they hadn’t talked. Cherry didn’t feel it was right to tell her, to make it seem like she’d made some heroic choice. She hadn’t. Besides, she didn’t do it for Ellis—she did it because it was the right thing to do. Ellis had held up a mirror—a real one, devoid of filters and airbrushing and such—and Cherry hadn’t liked the reflection she’d seen. Maybe one day, she’d be able to thank Ellis for that. She definitely should because she felt different. Andthatwas another thing she hadn’t expected.
She’d taken a sick day from work. There was no way she wanted to deal with Amanda and her pinched face and her demands today. Despite her bank of sick days, she hesitated, but Shea convinced her maybe she should take a couple. Just to clear her head.
Besides, it was time to start again.
