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Bob stares up at the ceiling for all five minutes before he works up the nerve to whisper, “Cherry.”
It’s one in the morning; the only light in the room comes from the glow-in-the-dark stickers he’d stuck on his ceiling when he was younger, and Cherry’s head is laid on his chest because they’re meant to be sleeping since tomorrow’s a school day.
Except Bob can’t fall asleep. He’s been trying for at least two hours now to no avail. He’s tried counting sheep and the stickers on the ceiling, but he can’t seem to get his mind to stop thinking long enough. “Sherri? …Sher, are you sleeping?” She probably is. She hasn’t spoken since they told each other goodnight. Plus, Cherry always seems to be in control; she’s probably never stayed awake at night unless she wanted to.
With a huff, Bob shifts and places a hand on Cherry’s head. He can’t see it too well in the dark, but he loves her hair. He loves its stark redness and how it bounces and lays after she curls it every morning. Cherry complains every time, though; she says it takes an hour every day just to get it to lay the way she wants it to.
Once, when she was getting dressed the morning after spending the night with him, and Bob got the chance to just sit and watch her, he offered to help her do her hair. Sitting on the toilet lid with a dopey smile while watching Cherry in front of the bathroom sink, Bob doesn’t think he had ever been so genuine about helping someone else. At the time, though, Cherry had laughed, given him a quick kiss, and said, “Maybe next time.” Bob is eagerly awaiting that next time.
Presently, he can hear Cherry take a deep breath before responding. “Yeah, Bob, I’m sleeping.”
Oh. “Sorry,” Bob whispers with a frown. He pauses momentarily, about to let her sleep in peace, before he gets red-faced and blurts out. “Can I just tell you something real quick?”
Cherry’s still for a moment, and then she sits up, digging an elbow into his chest. “Sure, angel. What’s up?” Almost pathetically, he gets a wave of butterflies in his stomach when she calls him angel, and he has to fight to keep a dopey grin off his face. He can’t see her all too well, but Bob’s positive Cherry has the most adorable bedhead. He’s heard her tired voice a million times before, but if he could, he’d bottle it up to listen to it a million times more.
He doesn’t want to tell her how much he loves her right now, though. There’s something else that’s been plaguing his mind tonight.
Bob sighs and blinks back up at the ceiling. He’s got to speak now, or else he never will. If he doesn’t, this will be just another heavy thing weighing on his chest, another thing for him to panic, drink, and start a fight over. “Sher,” he licks his lips, and suddenly, he can feel tears pricking at the corners of his eyes. “I love you a lot, you know that, but — not but, and,” He furrows his brows and shakes his head. “It’s not a conditional thing: my love for you— sometimes, though, you scare me.”
“I- What do you mean I scare you?” The confusion is evident in her voice. He can hear the hurt as well, and, fuck, that was not at all his intention.
“Not like that!” God, he’s really screwing things up. “I mean,” The right words are stuck in his throat, and it’s a lot harder to speak for some reason. He can feel a few tears rolling down his temple, and he sighs heavily. “I just mean, well. You know how you put your foot down and shit? You tell me when you don’t like what I’m doing, like when I’m drinking, and you tell me “no” and shit like that.”
Minutely, he shakes his head, closing his eyes. Why would he bring up his drinking? Cherry hates when he drinks; he probably pissed her off just by mentioning it. Marcia was wrong; he screwed it all up. He’s never trying this heart-to-heart shit again.
Slowly opening his eyes, he can feel Cherry moving to look at him directly, trying to look him in the eyes. “What’s so scary about that, Bob?”
He shrugs listlessly before trying to turn over on his side, “I don’t know, actually. Never mind, Cher, forget I said anything.”
With a frown on her face and suddenly wide awake, Cherry sits straight up, flicks the lamp on his bedside table on, and places a hand on his shoulder. “Bob, I don’t want to forget anything. Please tell me what I’m doing wrong so I can fix it.”
Now, she’s blaming herself; nice going, Robert. He pretends to groan at the sudden light and pushes his face into his pillow to hide the way his voice shakes. “It’s nothing, Sher, I promise. Go back to sleep.”
He shouldn’t have said anything in the first place; he’s just gone and embarrassed himself. Something he does often enough during the daytime, one would think nighttime would be his reprieve, but no. Feeling the tears fall, he clumsily wipes at his face and reaches to turn the lamp back off when Cherry speaks.
“Angel.”
The thing about Cherry Valance is she’s usually soft-spoken. Even when she’s being rude or demanding something, the soft infliction of her voice always makes it seem as if you have a choice; it makes you want to tell her your whole life story. So, in his humble opinion, Bob really can’t be blamed for the abrupt way he sits up, glances at his door to make sure it’s locked, and looks back at Cherry with a quiver on his lips. He doesn’t think he can be blamed for the way he spills his innermost thoughts when he makes eye contact with her.
“I don’t know, Sherri! My folks, they’re great, don’t get me wrong, but they let me do anything I want, and they give me everything I could ever want, and sometimes it’s a lot,” once he starts speaking, his voice breaks; and it’s almost as if an invisible damn broke as well when the words seem to start pouring out of him. The words and the tears. Bob’s not quite paying attention, but he knows he’s never been a real pretty crier, not like her, and yet Cherry’s not looking at him with disgust.
“It’s too much sometimes. So, I do things that I know will make them mad. Or at least that should make them mad, but my mom gives me this- this disappointed look, like the other day when I went out with Randy, and I totally wrecked my car. I thought for sure Dad was going to tear me a new one. But instead, when he picked me up, he took me to the dealership!
Good parents don’t do that! There’s supposed to be some punishment for wrecking your car for the third time in as many months, right?” His voice is high and bordering on desperate as he struggles to breathe right. Cherry still has a hand on his shoulder and is looking at him with a look that he can’t really place, but at the moment, he thinks it might be pity. Bob’s never hated anything Cherry wears, but right now, he hates that look on her face.
He holds his breath and presses his palms against his eyes to block the image. He holds it long enough for Cherry to pull him against her chest to remind him to breathe. They sit there together, Cherry running her fingers through his hair and him trying his best to listen to her heartbeat over his muffled sobs; for a while, neither saying anything.
When he finally speaks again, it’s in a soft and shaky whisper, like if he spoke any louder, this bubble of a safe space would be broken. “I don’t mean to sound like a brat or anything, but when you tell me “no,” it frightens me. ‘Cause my parents never tell me “no,” they let me do whatever. I don’t know what “no” means, but then you go and say it, and suddenly I don’t want to know what it means as much as I thought I did. I don’t want to learn what consequences come after it anymore.
Whenever you say “no,” I can feel my heart pounding and my blood pumping, and- I don’t know. I guess I get scared that I fucked up for real, and you’re going to leave me. And, Sherri, I can’t-“ his voice breaks off again, and speaking through his sobs is much harder. “I can’t begin to imagine a life without you. And I’m terrified I’m going to have to, but I don't want to.”
“Bob…” she stops stroking his hair and instead looks down at him. God, he thinks, choking back a sob, she must hate him now. He hates himself; he’s a man. He’s not supposed to break down like this, seeking comfort from his girlfriend’s arms. With a sniffle, Bob tries to push himself off Cherry’s chest, but to his surprise, she returns to herself and pulls him into a deep hug. “Look, angel,” she says with a solemn voice. “I can’t promise that we’ll be together forever-“
“Why not?” he mutters. Then, shrugging, he adds, “I can. My mom has already given me her engagement ring. I'm just waiting for a good time.”
“What, really?” he nods. “Oh… Wait, no, Robert, stay on topic!”
“Right, sorry, Sher,” he says with a small smile. He’s not all too sorry; he basically just soft-launched a proposal and didn’t get shot down. If he weren’t so exhausted from his breakdown, he’d be on cloud nine.
He feels Cherry squeeze him twice before continuing. “Like I was saying. Even though we probably will, I won’t promise we’ll be together forever,” she pulls away from him and grabs his face with both hands. That’s another thing he’s always liked about Cherry; she runs warm, and on nights like this, when Bob isn’t feeling too stellar, his favorite thing is to hold Cherry close. “And if we ever break up, you have to promise me you won’t get stuck. You’ll have to move on, Bob. Besides, we could still be friends if we broke up.”
Bob scoffs, “Sherri, get real! Every chick says that before they cut off all contact with their ex and switch schools.”
Cherry lets go of him and crosses her arms indignantly. “And when have I ever been dishonest with you, Robert?”
Never is the correct answer. Instead of saying so, Bob rolls his eyes and leans forward to fall onto Cherry. She gasps and stifles a scream, something his parents wouldn’t even flinch at before she giggles and returns to combing her fingers through his hair. For once, his brain is quiet enough that he's almost fallen asleep when Cherry speaks again.
“My angel?” she whispers. His stomach does those weird flips again, and he can feel his cheeks getting hot. Shifting for a moment, all he can think of is that he really ought not be lying on Cherry.
“Yes?”
“I know it scares you to find out, but because I love you wholeheartedly and because I get to love and know the real you, I am never going to stop telling you “no.” I don’t want you to have to imagine a life without me; I don’t want to imagine a life without you, but to get there — to have a forever — we have to have the consequences or conversations that follow whenever I put my foot down and say “no,” okay?”
His voice is stuck in his throat again; all he can do is nod.
“And I won’t be like your dad. If you screw up or ruin something, I’m going to be mad, but there will be a way to fix it. You just have to find it, alright?”
Alright? Yeah, sure, it sounds easy in theory, but Bob gets so caught up in his head most days that he probably won’t realize he’s fucking up until things are already screwed to hell.
Still, he thinks, squeezing his eyes closed and giving a slight nod; if Cherry’s giving him a chance, if she’s not willing to give up yet, then neither will he. He opens his eyes and gives a much firmer nod as he replies, “Alright, yeah.”
They lay there for about a minute when Bob realized their conversation was over, and he sat up to turn off the lamp. A stark difference to earlier that night, before this whole ordeal, is how exhausted he is now. Once the light’s turned off and he could see the stickers glowing bright on his ceiling once more, he tucked himself under the cover.
He’s just getting comfortable when he hears the pout in Cherry’s voice. “Are you not coming back?”
“Back where, Cher?”
“Down here! We were lying down together, and I was comfortable, Bob.”
Bob blinks. That can’t be right; Bob’s a reasonably heavy guy, so there’s no way she liked having all his weight on her. Then again, she’s never been dishonest with him before, so why start now?
He huffs, and if his cheeks were warm earlier, they are positively on fire now. “Sherri! Can we at least get under the covers, then? I’m cold.”
He doesn’t need to look at her to know she’s grinning wide when she moves to lie next to him. “C’mon,” she says, patting her stomach. “I need my angel to fall back asleep.”
Despite the butterflies taking flight in his stomach, his face absolutely explodes. “Sherri!” He’s whining, but he does roll over to lay on her again. It’s uncomfortable at first, between her laughing and him trying to hide his face in her shoulders, but once they settle down for the night, exhaustion hits them once more.
“Sherri?” he whispers.
It takes a second, but in between yawns, she responds. “Yeah, Bob?”
He wants to say thank you—thank you for loving me, thank you for a whole lot of things—but it’s two in the morning, and it’s hard to find the right words. So, instead, he settles with a simple, “I love you.”
He’s fallen asleep before Cherry responds, so he doesn’t see her smile nor does he feel her per his hair as she says, “I love you more, angel.”