Cherry Bomb (2 page)

"It's too bad you don't have any children," Amanda told her.
"Being a mom is really the best thing in the world."

"Of course," Penny said.
They were supposed to be jealous, damn it!
No wonder Jessica didn’t want to come back.
"Jessica is doing a play right now," she said quickly.
"That's why she couldn't come.
She's playing Katharine
in a feminist reconstruction of
The Taming of the Shrew
."
They gave her blank looks.
"She's doing really well," Penny finished lamely.
"And sends her best."

“You two aren't lesbians, are you?" Amanda said in a near-whisper.
"That’s what everyone thought when the two of you ran off like that right after graduation.
Is that why you aren't married?"

"Is that why you wouldn’t give Kenny your cherry, Cherry Bomb?" Matt demanded.
Ten years, and he just couldn't drop it.

Penny closed her eyes to try to keep from crying.
Fine.
"
We
are not lesbians," Penny assured.
"Just Jessica." She took some small satisfaction in watching Amanda's eyes grow wide and Matt drop his fork on the table.

"Well, Amanda sniffed.
"Of course you must have to hang out with lesbians.
You chase all the men away, don't you Cherry?"

Penny got up, not feeling like eating any more.
(No one had even brought her a drink at that point anyway.)
"Well, at least I still had a cherry," she told Amanda, talking quietly so the crowd wouldn't hear her.
She wasn't like them.
She didn’t get off on public humiliation.
"Honestly, I'm shocked you made it until graduation without popping out baby after baby, which is all you seem capable of doing."

She turned and walked out the door.

*****

Penny stopped at the new gas station and bought a hot dog and a bag of chips before going back to her motel room and eating with the television for company.
She stared at the Christine Douir and kicked herself for thinking that these people would care.
And she'd outed poor Jessica.
Not that Jessica would care.
She hadn't left the city in the ten years they’d been there.
All of the people in Greenbrier might as well not exist.
Penny should have listened to her.

She lay back on the bed and looked up at the ceiling.
She'd had a few boyfriends (and one girlfriend, but they didn’t need to know that) since she'd left.
Lots of sex.
But that urge to settle down had never come.
She thought about Kenny Lorry, something she did more than she would ever admit to.

He'd tried to apologize all the way up to graduation, when everyone was hanging out in Jessica's back yard, beer and long graduation gowns a bad match with the bonfire.
She was sitting on her black gown in the grass, watching the flames, wishing she could burn her yearbook (she was listed as Penny "Cherry Bomb" Carter) when Kenny sat down next to her.

"Please listen to me," he begged once again.
"I didn't know he would blast it over the school like that.
I was drunk when I told him. I never would have--I didn't want--I love you."
She didn't look at him.
"I got into Penn State.
With my grades, not baseball.
I thought you'd like that.
I'm not like Matt you know.
I'm not like the rest of them."

She didn't say a word.
Just stood up and walked away.
Three days later she and Jessica loaded up her old Jeep and took off to the city, where it broke down in the middle of Time Square.

He was the only guy who had ever said he loved her.
He was the only guy she had ever dated that she didn't feel smarter than.

At six-thirty Penny got up and put on her borrowed Christine Douir.
She left her hair down (normally it was pulled into a pony-tail or a braid) and put in her contacts (normally it was too much hassle), and with a stomach like lead she went down to her rental car and drove to the high school.

Not everyone was mean to her.
The teachers that had shown up were especially impressed with her credentials.
Everyone called her Cherry Bomb.

"Hey Cherry Bomb." Dana, her unfortunate lunch mate until Kenny had swept her away to the middle of the table (after they broke up she took to eating in the library), greeted her.
He was wearing a suit and tie, which was more than most of the guys had bothered with.
Only the women had taken the effort to dress up.

"Hi Dana," she said.
"How are you?"

"Good--I'm good."
He was grinning at her.
"I work at the school now--I'm the assistant custodian."
He announced it like it was the greatest thing in the world, and she had to smile.

"That's great," she told him.
"I'm a journalist in New York."

"I went there once," he told her.
"I saw The Lion King."
Dana was the most pleasant person she had spoken with so far.
Eventually she escaped a step by step of his NYC vacation and got a glass of punch.

"Penny."

She knew it was Kenny Lorry immediately.
She turned around slowly and gave him a long look.
He looked the same, but his hair was longer and he was wearing glasses.
He had on a sports coat over a t-shirt and jeans and honestly, looked even better than he had in high school.
“Hi,” he said, and she still continued not to say anything.
“Oh come on.
We haven’t seen each other in ten years.
Can’t you drop the silent treatment for once?”

“Cherry Bomb,” she said.
She avoided saying it herself.
“They didn’t forget.”

“I know.
I yelled at Matt for bringing it up again.
He got kinda fat, didn't he?”
He gave her a hopeful smile.
“Come on, Penny.
We do stupid things when we’re eighteen.”

“And you’re older and wiser now?” she asked him.

“Oh yes,” he replied.
“I’m a professor at The Brooklyn Institute of Arts
.
English.
I live in Queens.”

“You’re in New York?
I live in Manhattan.”

“Yeah, I know.
I went to NYC to do my masters
because the last I’d heard, that’s where you were.
And then two years ago I started seeing your name popping up in my newspaper.
Congratulations, Penny.”

“Are you stalking me or something?” she asked, setting her punch down on an empty table.

“Not really,” he said quickly.
“Maybe a little.
I found Jessica online and she told me you were coming to this thing.
So I thought I would come too.
I’m not married, my credit is good, and my therapist just took me off my meds—that last bit was a joke.
I don't even have a therapist.
Want to go out sometime?”

“Maybe I’m seeing someone,” she said.

“Well, yeah, I might have heard something about you being a lesbian…so did you bring your girlfriend?”

Penny finally laughed.
“I don’t have a girlfriend,” she told him.
“I’m not seeing anyone.”

“Good.”

Across the room Matt was sipping from a flask and pretending to be as cool as he’d been in high school.
“Hey,” he shouted, noticing them.
“Kenny and Penny!
Double Cherry Bombs!”
And a few people laughed and some whooped.
Penny gave Kenny a dirty look.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, and she let him grab her by the hand and lead her out.
It was a lame party anyway.
“I don’t suppose your Grandmother’s house is still for sale?”

“I think they tore it down,” she said.
“Where are you staying?”

“Well, Matt offered to let me crash on his couch, but I got a room at the motel.”

“Me too.”

“Wanna meet me there?
We can talk, get to know each other again.”
She nodded.

What are you doing?
She thought to herself as she drove.
He made the last year of your high school life a living hell.
It was just talk though.
Nothing was going to happen.
That was their track record.

She got to the motel first, Kenny pulling up about ten minutes later in the red pick-up she had almost sideswiped earlier that day.
“You don't strike me as a truck type,” she said, walking towards the truck.

“It’s a rental,” he replied.
“I thought I’d blend in better.”
He got out and brought a brown paper bag with him.
“Your room or mine?”

“Yours is fine,” she said, remembering she had left her dirty clothes strewn across the floor.

His room was two down from hers, and it didn't look like it had been touched except for the open suitcase on the bed.
Kenny handed her the ice bucket from the counter by the sink.
“Here.
Do you want to get some ice?”
He pulled a bottle of eight dollar wine from his bag.
“This was the nicest stuff Mike’s Market carries I’m afraid,” he told her, and she laughed, and went back down to the ice machine inside next to the check-in desk.

She had to knock when she got back and gasped when Kenny let her in.
The hotel room had been transformed.
The only lights came from several dozen tea lights set out everywhere, even on top of the television.
The room boasted a small table and two chairs, and there were even more candles there, along with the bottle of wine, the plastic cups that came with the room, and a box of Ho Hos.
“I hope they’re still your favorite,” he said.

They weren’t—but the very gesture touched her, and she found that she might have actually forgiven him.
They sat down at the table and ate Ho Hos until the wine had chilled enough to drink.
“So.
You’re an English professor.
That’s impressive.
You might have done the best out of our whole class.”

“Nope,” he said.
“Harry Rasmussen is a rocket scientist for NASA.
You’ll notice that
he
isn’t here
.
Anyway, you’re just getting started.
Eventually you’ll win the Pulitzer Prize and then they’ll be sorry.”

“For calling me Cherry Bomb?”

“For everything,” he said, and she got the feeling he wasn’t talking about the rest of their class.
“You know I wrote a book?” he said, and got up to fetch something from his bag.
It was a hardback, the words
Cherry Bomb
written in red across the white cover.
“It’s not about you or anything,” he said.
“Not really.
It’s pure fiction—a coming of age story blah blah blah.”

“I think you owe me half the royalties.”

“Funny, that’s what Matt said.
They called me it too, you know.
They guys on the team did.
They knew I’d kick their asses if it got around the school.
I know that doesn’t make up for it.
I should never have said anything to Matt.
I regretted it immediately and it’s been haunting me ever since.”

She handed him back the book.
“I guess I’m over it,” she said.
“But I shouldn’t have come back.
Jessica was right.
I hate this place.”

“Me too.”

“Let’s skip the twenty year.”

“Definitely.
At the twenty-year we’ll do this again.
Only at my place.
Preferably naked.”

She smiled.
“You weren’t able to get into my pants in high school.
What makes you think you have a better chance now?”

“Like you said.
I’m older and wiser.
I’ve learned a few things.”

He stood up and pulled her out of her chair.
She was caught off guard and fell into him, fell into his kiss.

She could still remember the first time she kissed him, and also the last.
She wasn't sure if her memory had gone fuzzy, or if he had improved, but she found herself opening her mouth to deepen the kiss, and wrap her arms around his shoulders.
He smelled like aftershave and tasted like chocolate and wine, instead of campfire smoke and bad beer.

It was easy for him to tumble her onto the bed and follow suit.
She never imagined she would ever kiss him again, let alone roll around on the bed in a cheap motel room with him.
"I always liked your hair down," he said as he pushed it out of the way to kiss her neck.