Read Online Cherry Money Baby by John M. Cusick - Free Book Online

and
vicarious
— a word she’d picked up from TV — and Stew getting stoned and somehow always guiding the conversation back to a favorite song lyric or the universe or the unconscious.
    In the evenings she saw Lucas. Watching movies, going for long drives, and hanging out at the park hadn’t changed, a fact Cherry needed to verify constantly. She was nervous that “engagement” would somehow alter their relationship. She didn’t want Lucas to start acting “husbandly” any more than she wanted to be his “little woman.” She wanted them to go on being best friends exactly as before. An engagement was a promise that nothing would change and no one would ever leave. She’d hoped it would ensure her present happiness would last forever. Instead, it was all about planning for the future and the least happy topic of all: money.
    “I have some savings,” Lucas said Wednesday evening. They were lying on their backs in the gazebo in Aubrey Park. It was sunset, but some little kids were still making the miniature merry-go-round go ’round. “Maybe enough for first month’s rent on an apartment.”
    “I mean, we can’t live at home,” Cherry said. “Right?”
    “I don’t think it works that way.”
    She closed her eyes, imagining that the conical roof of the gazebo was focusing her thoughts and shooting them into space.
This will all be all right. This will all be all right. This will all be all right.
    As an alternative to thinking and planning and worrying, she and Lucas made out. Like, a lot. More than usual. A car meant mobile privacy. The Spider’s hard leather seats were inferior to the Gremlin’s spacious, cushiony rear, which was the only thing the old girl had over her prettier little sister. Cherry hadn’t planned to save herself for marriage, but since they’d be tying the knot so soon, wasn’t it better to wait and make it Super Special? In the meantime they were trying some new stuff, exploring new territory, at her pace and her insistence. Lucas was affectionate, but Cherry discovered she preferred to be the one in the driver’s seat. She was less comfortable when the focus was on
her
body. She didn’t like being the center of attention. She was much better as
caretaker,
making sure a good time was had.
    He offered to go down on her more than once.
    “Verboten,”
she said Thursday after her German quiz. They were parked in a secluded corner of the Aubrey High lot, behind the outbuildings.
    “But I want to,” he said. “Believe me, it’s hot. I’m into it.”
    “No. It’s weird and it’s gross.”
    “Would it be gross to go down on me?”
    From anyone else, that would have sounded like a request. But her boy was more concerned with her comfort than his own pleasure.
    Cherry couldn’t keep the smirk off her face.
    “No,” she said, letting the word linger in the corner of her mouth. “And maybe
that’s
something I can give you for your birthday.”
    “What about
your
birthday?”
    “Ice-cream cake,” she said, kissing his neck. “And
you, you, you.
”
    Fridays and Saturdays Lucas was a late-shift busboy at Willie’s family restaurant, so weekend nights were Vi territory. The girls had barely seen each other since news of the engagement. Vi answered her phone with, “Who is this? The name Cherry sounds familiar, like someone I used to know. But it’s been
soooo
long —”
    “Har-har,” said Cherry. “You want to do something?”
    “Yes, I do.”
    They caught an early movie, another romance-zombie mash-up called
A Walk to Dismember,
and cruised the main “strip” in the Spider, enjoying attention from Worcester college boys and guys in lowriders who whistled and wanted to drag race. They buzzed Shabooms, and Vi pointed out that some of the kids in line were dressed too fancy to be local. Cherry wondered whether the movie people might actually deign to visit Aubrey’s only nightclub. They didn’t see anyone they recognized.
    Around ten they stopped for eats at