Cheri on Top

by Susan Donovan

  J.J. closed his eyes a moment. “You know I don’t believe it’s my story to tell.” He looked at his friend again, aware that he was scowling at Turner. “Cheri’s got to find out the truth on her own, by confronting her sister. She wouldn’t believe me if I told her, anyway. She’d just think I was doing whatever I had to do to get in her pants.”

  Turner’s eyes sparkled under his ball cap. “She’d be right. That’s exactly what you’re doing, man. You’re busting your ass so she feels needed at the paper and gets settled out at the lake house. And why are you doing all this shit?”

  J.J. considered his point. “To get in her pants.”

  “No wonder I make the big money around here.”

  Turner slapped him on the shoulder before he headed to his car. J.J. left soon after, with every intention of heading back to the newsroom. But he drove right on through the old downtown, past the Ace Hardware and the diner and the library and the courthouse, until the red brick Bugle building receded in his rearview mirror. And soon he found himself driving up the twists and turns of Randall Road, heading into the night woods.

  * * *

  She finished her nightly phone call to Candy a little after ten, thrilled that the lake house and the BlackBerry gave her the privacy to laugh and dish all she wanted, at normal decibel levels, and without having to hide in the bathroom! It was comforting to hear Candy’s voice, and laughing together about the events of the day had been just what she needed to unwind.

  Cherise changed into a pair of thick socks, her favorite drawstring pajama pants, and a camisole tank top that was past its prime. She added a cardigan sweater and headed out to the kitchen. After she’d boiled some water and thrown a tea bag in a cup, she took her hot drink out to the top step of the new porch and plopped down. She breathed deeply, getting a nose full of rich lake air and fresh sawdust. She pulled her sweater tight and let the night settle around her.

  Truth be told, Candy was the only thing Cherise missed about Tampa. Well, Candy and a decent cup of coffee. Everything else about the place seemed part of some faraway dream—the malls and boutiques, the sweltering heat, the gated neighborhoods she could no longer afford. It was fascinating how the memory of Tampa had already receded to a faraway place in her brain, reduced to a sun-bleached, flat blur, a barren strip of nothing special. Cherise took a cautious sip of her scalding hot tea and smiled to herself in the dark.

  Florida was about as different from Bigler as you could get—which was probably why she moved there in the first place. And with each year she had stayed away, her life here in western North Carolina seemed less and less real. Less and less a part of who she really was. When acquaintances would ask her where she was from, she’d answer, “Tampa.” If they persisted, noting her accent, Cherise would answer again, “Tampa,” and work even harder at ditching her Cack-a-lacky curse.

  But a thick black line had been drawn on that day J.J. showed up on her doorstep more than five years ago, all sweet and shy and sexy and telling her he wanted another chance with her, that he’d never forgotten her. Looking back, she felt sick to her stomach to think how close she’d come to falling for it, how she had started to believe him. Thank God Tanyalee called when she did.

  From that day forward, she’d referred to herself as Cherise. She no longer wanted one foot in her present and one in her past. She no longer wanted any ties to Bigler or J.J. or Tanyalee or that stupid, naïve girl who had been Cheri Newberry.

  So when she returned to Bigler for Tanyalee’s wedding, she returned as Cherise. And Cherise and Candy made a point of staying overnight at a B and B in Waynesville. Anywhere but Bigler. They’d promised each other they’d never again spend a night in this town. It all sounded ridiculously pretentious to Cherise now, but she had money in those days, with more money on the horizon, and it would have seemed preposterous then that she’d ever find herself in a position where she’d have to come home to Bigler for a paycheck, a hot meal, and a place of her own.

  After the wedding, the disconnect to her past was complete. She put most everything about her hometown out of her mind, the lake house in particular. That’s why she’d been surprised to see how solid its walls were. How the years of heat and sun and mountain air permeated the floors. How quiet it was here. Peaceful. Real. And as strange as it was to admit, Cherise found herself enjoying the beauty of the rolling green-blue mountain vistas and the lakes and the forests of Cataloochee County, its familiar roads, the particular quality of light in its sunrises and sunsets. It was almost as if she were seeing things for the first time, like how there was a moist and teeming world under all the stillness that she’d never noticed before. Insects. Birds. Wildflowers. Streams.

  This part of the South was intoxicating. It was a raw and boundless place, a magnet for songwriters, painters, and poets determined to capture the essence of its wild beauty. And try as she might to deny it, the story of this place was her family’s story, and, in turn, her own. She might not be proud of that fact, but it didn’t change it. So she supposed there was no shame in her taking advantage of her enforced stay here to take stock, make some changes, think things through, all while enjoying the view.

  But she knew she couldn’t hide here forever.

  Cherise sighed deeply, the familiar money worries pushing into her brain. She’d get her first paycheck in another couple of days, and it was already spent. She planned to send more than half of her after-tax earnings to Candy to pay her portion of their bills, even though her friend had expressed her desire to ditch the studio apartment and stay with an old boyfriend to save money.

  “Don’t panic—I’ll be sleeping on his futon,” Candy reassured her. “And when you get home, we’ll get a nicer place.”

  Cherise didn’t have the heart to tell her she’d imagined starting over somewhere new, somewhere that wasn’t Tampa. When Cherise had something specific to tell Candy, she would. Right now, that’s all it was—her imagination.

  Whatever was left of that first paycheck would go to groceries and savings, not to mention gas for the pimpmobile, an expense she hadn’t planned for. The gang down at the garage had dropped the bomb on Cherise that afternoon—the gas-friendly Corolla needed eight hundred dollars’ worth of work. They said something about a fried cylinder head and a complete valve job—conditions that Candy thought sounded vaguely pornographic. Porno or no, the two of them had opted not to fix the Corolla for the time being, and Cherise had it towed to Viv’s for storage.

  Cherise set her cup down and wrapped her arms around her knees, hugging herself tight. It was getting chilly, just as Tater predicted. She sure hoped she’d carted off enough of Viv’s blankets. She could always grab an extra armful tomorrow, she supposed, though she’d have to survive another of her aunt’s displays of raised eyebrows and pursed lips.

  Cherise closed her eyes, feeling it in her bones as the cold rose from the lake and the soil and slipped from the silent woods all around her.

  Food. Gas. Bills—the ones she could pay and the ones she couldn’t. And there was still the bankruptcy decision to make. All it would take was a phone call.

  She sighed. Sometimes she couldn’t even remember what it felt like back then, when she could drop a few hundred on a pair of shoes without thinking twice, or spend a fortune on restaurants and clubs. How many hours had she spent shopping, all in the pursuit of adorning herself and her house with baubles? To what end? What in God’s name had she been doing? Who had she been trying to impress? Her business associates? Loan officers? Herself?

  Was it possible she’d tried to use the money and stuff to build a wall between herself and Bigler?

  Her motivation aside, the lifestyle was addictive. There were plenty of times when she felt the need to spend just to spend, as if the act itself were the reward, the best thing about being alive. Looking back, Cherise knew that she believed nothing was more satisfying than getting exactly what she wanted whenever she wanted it.

  The ultimate high had been the day she and Candy closed on
their sweet little sixteen-storefront strip mall in a rebounding neighborhood. Sure, they may have paid a little too much for it, and yes, they leveraged everything they had to qualify for financing, but by that time, she and Candy could do that kind of deal in their sleep.

  They made it happen on a Tuesday afternoon, and she and Candy went out for mojitos to celebrate. Laughing, they’d clinked their glasses together and toasted to “a whole ’nother level” of success.

  By Thursday, a bit of startling news came out—median property values nationwide had suddenly dropped. Some even predicted the end of the housing bubble due to lenient mortgage lending practices. She and Candy decided to keep an eye on things, but refused to believe the naysayers. Real estate was the safest investment there was, and always would be.

  It wasn’t long before they’d hit a “whole ’nother level” all right—of disaster. The signs were confusing at first. Subprime lenders were folding while the Dow soared over 14,000 for the first time in history. Things couldn’t be that bad, right? But then the big boys started going under—Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers and Washington Mutual—and it was like a landslide. Tampa’s real estate prices imploded. Cherise and Candy suddenly owned property worth a fraction of what they’d paid for it. They started to go under—personally as well as in their business balance sheet—and they weren’t alone.

  They had held on longer than some of their social circle, but when the dust had settled, they were millions in debt. Desperate. Jobless. Stunned.

  Cherise took another breath of sawdust and let her forehead drop. In her heart she knew she’d fought off the inevitable as long as she could. Tomorrow she’d call her attorney and give the go-ahead for her Chapter 7 personal bankruptcy filing. With that, the party really, truly would be over.

  “Chit, chit, chit.”

  Cherise nearly fell off the steps as she scrambled to a stand, her heart racing under her sweater. “Oh, shit. Oh, God.” She clutched her chest as her eyes adjusted enough to get a good look at the source of the eerie sound. “No! Not you again! Shoo! Git!”

  The squirrel stared at her, his funny little face looking almost quizzical. His black marble eyes reflected what little light managed to spill from the kitchen. His whiskers twitched. He looked possessed, she thought. And most definitely rabid. Rabid, possessed, and probably looking to chew through some wiring.

  Slowly, Cherise backed toward the door, her hand reaching behind her for the latch.

  “I said go away!”

  With disbelief she watched the rodent scurry up the steps, pausing at the teacup. He touched his little squirrel lips to the edge of mug and recoiled.

  Great. That was one of only two cups she’d managed to lift from Viv’s kitchen, and now she’d have to throw it in the trash.

  “Chit, chit, chit.” The squirrel’s tail spun around over its back as it glared at Cherise, as if to complain about the evening’s beverage selection.

  “Scat!”

  It didn’t.

  “Git!”

  It didn’t.

  Cherise was about to slip inside and bolt the door when she heard the unmistakable crunch of car tires on the gravel lane. Who the hell would be coming out here at this hour?

  As the car’s high beams lit up the front yard and bounced off the water, a strange thought occurred to Cherise—she was alone out here in the middle of nowhere. It never even dawned on her to be concerned about her personal safety, squirrels notwithstanding. And now, it was too late for caution. Whoever was hell-bent on disturbing her privacy was about to pull up in front of the house.

  A midsized pickup slid to an abrupt stop. It was a truck she’d seen out here earlier in the day. Maybe one of the workers had come back for something he’d left behind.

  She nearly choked when she saw J.J. round the back of the truck, tuck his head down, and break into a jog up the porch steps.

  Chapter 13

  Cherise pressed her back against the door, flattened her palms to the wood, and braced herself.

  His boots made a lot of noise as they crashed against the floorboards, but he froze the instant he saw her plastered against the door.

  J.J. said nothing. Cherise watched his chest rise and fall like he’d just sprinted halfway across town. Suddenly, she realized she was breathing just as desperately. They stared at each other in the dim light. J.J.’s eyes looked hard. His face looked almost angry. For an instant, fear spiked through Cherise.

  What did this man want from her?

  “Chit, chit, chit.”

  J.J. paid no attention to the squirrel’s protests.

  “Chit! Chit! Keet-keet-keet-keet!”

  Slowly, he turned his head toward the noise, then looked back at Cherise. His smile was faint, but it was there. Then he let his eyes trail down the front of her body and back up again, from her socks to the exposed expanse of skin above her cardigan. She wondered if he could see her heart pounding just below the surface.

  “Why are you out here in your jammies? In the cold?”

  Cherise raised her chin. “Because it’s my house. I can sit out here in the cold, in my jammies, if I want.”

  J.J. nodded soberly, as if they were having a deeply philosophical exchange. “So,” he said, jerking a thumb toward the little noisemaker. “Do all Florida businesswomen get themselves a personal security squirrel these days?”

  “Of course not,” she said, slowly ungluing herself from the door and unclenching her spine a bit. “The stupid thing is stalking me. I hate it. I think it has rabies.”

  J.J. shoved his hands in his jeans pockets. “I think she sounds mad at you. What’d you do to the poor thing?”

  “I haven’t done anything to it!”

  J.J. shook his head in surrender. “You used to have a sense of humor, Cheri.”

  “You used to be a decent human being.”

  “Lord-a-mighty, Cheri!”

  “Cherise. My damn name is Cherise. What’s y’all’s mental block with that? And why’d y’all come out here? You weren’t invited. Nobody was invited! And I am so sorry to inform you that I’m not about to start hosting wild bikini pot parties out here, if that’s what you were expecting!”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Not as sorry as I am,” he said, dryly.

  “Just leave me alone.”

  J.J. opened his mouth to speak, then stopped himself. He winced. Obviously, it caused the man actual pain to be nice to her. God only knew what snarky comment was fixin’ to fly off his tongue.

  “All right. No wild parties—I can live with that. Your name’s not Cheri—I’m all over it. Now that we got all that out of the way, do you think you could take off the boxing gloves for once? Just temporarily?”

  J.J.’s voice had become softer and scratchier than usual, and his dark hair slipped down over his forehead, reminding Cherise of the seventeen-year-old he’d once been. “I came out here to talk to you. Do you think we could do that? Just talk? Like two grown-ups?”

  Cherise laughed. She hadn’t meant for the laugh to sound cold, but seriously—what a ridiculous question! There was only one immature jerk on this porch, and it sure as hell wasn’t her. “That’s up to you, J.J.”

  He shut his eyes and shook his head. “Nope. It’s up to both of us.” When his gaze connected with hers again, Cherise felt her cheeks flush. For just an instant, he looked almost innocent. Almost like he did back in middle school, when he’d pledged his undying love to her via permanent marker.

  “We’ve got to work together, Cherise. We need to reach an understanding. What we’ve been doing the last few days is just pure crazy. I’ll most certainly claim my part of it, but we can do better.”

  She held her breath, the tightness in her belly coiling tighter as she stepped away from the safety of the door. Of course they had to have this conversation. She’d even tried to start it before. But now that J.J. was here, standing in front of her, in the dark, taking the initiative and acting halfway decent, she felt scared to death.

  Then … she exh
aled and smiled. It occurred to her that her fear was ridiculous. How many iffy business situations had she breezed through in her life? How many deals had she made on a wing and a prayer, and how many times had she stared down her own cowardice? “You’re absolutely right,” Cherise said, summoning the savvy professional she’d been before she’d come back to Bigler. “Come on in, J.J. Would you like a cup of tea or something?”

  “Sure,” he said, holding the door for her and smiling down like an actual gentleman. “Mighty kind of you to ask.”

  * * *

  Don’t look at her ass. Don’t look at her ass.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have a couch or chairs—had to throw them all out because of the mildew.”

  J.J. ran a hand through his hair and tried to avert his eyes as Cheri walked ahead. Those drawstring pants were as thin as tissue paper. As she moved, he could see the slight jiggle of her flesh, the loose way her body swayed unobstructed, and, with the kind assistance of the harsh kitchen lightbulb, he could actually see the blush of her bare skin beneath. Bare thighs. Bare calves disappearing into thick socks. The bare, round, luscious globes of her ass.

  She wasn’t wearing any fuckin’ panties.

  Shee-it.

  “No problem,” he croaked out, looking around the room for something else—anything else—to focus on. He noticed a stack of wood next to the huge creek stone fireplace. “How about I make a fire? Hate for you to be chilly.”

  Seeing that you’re not wearing any fuckin’ underwear.

  “That would be great,” Cheri said.

  As he set about arranging the newspaper, kindling, and logs, J.J. had to admit to himself that he was glad most of the furniture was gone and the house seemed hollowed out. He’d spent the six longest months of his life living in this place with Tanyalee, and anything that didn’t summon those memories was thoroughly welcome.