Page 175 of With a Cherry On Top

She meets my eyes for a beat, but the warmth fades almost instantly. “I don’t think I can do this, Aaron.”

I pause mid-squeeze on the chocolate bottle. “Us?” My heart begins pounding. “You can’t do us?”

“No, not us,” she quickly corrects. “But everything else. I can’t move out, can’t apply for that job, can’t pay bills and cook dinner. I just...” Her voice catches, and she swallows hard. “I can’t.”

I set the bottle down.

“If you want to be with me,” she continues, “then you’ll have to just...take me with all my mess. Living at home with Beatrice, modeling and making clothes in my spare time.”

I can’t help but notice she hasn’t mentioned TOP. She said once that if she ever had a boyfriend, she’d stop camming, and the question burns on my tongue, but I save it for some other time, because it looks like she’s waiting for me to disagree. To tell her that she has to change, to be better, to fit into some version of a life she doesn’t have the strength for.

Instead, I nod. “I’d take you in any form. With whatever mess comes attached.”

“Yeah?” she asks, picking at her nail.

I hate that she’s still nervous about this. About me. “Charlotte, you feel like home in a world of strangers. So, yes. I’ll take your mess. Any mess.”

She smiles briefly. “Then forget about everything else. Amelie, and moving out, and the new job. Just let it go.”

I hesitate, wanting to tell her she’s more than this fear, more than the exhaustion weighing her down. But I also know she’s too raw for that right now. “All right.”

She dips her spoon into the sundae but just stirs absentmindedly, watching the ice cream mix into swirls of chocolate and vanilla.

“You know, I didn’t suggest it before because, well...it’s still early, and you’re so young, but...we could find a place together.”

She freezes with her spoon mid-air. “What?”

“I mean, this whole arrangement with Josie...it’s temporary. At some point, one of us will have to find another place, and I guess it’ll be me. So we could...find something together. I could help, you know. With whatever you need.”

She brings a spoonful of ice cream to her lips. “That’s...really sweet, Aaron. But I want you to be my boyfriend, not my babysitter.”

“No, it wouldn’t be like that. I?—”

“Would Sadie live with us?”

I shake my head, though it’s more of a “I don’t know” than a no. Nobody gives you parenting guidelines, but if they did, I’m pretty sure there wouldn’t be a how-to for this situation.

“She needs you, Aaron. Sadie and Josie need you to help them through this new situation.”

“We could?—”

“Just let it go,” she insists, voice sure. “Please?”

I nod, though I only intend to give her the night, because I’m hardly done with this.

“As long as you know...” My fingers graze her cheek before I let my hand drop back to the counter. “You don’t have to imagine some other life where things are different. A world where you’re someone else, somewhere else, to find peace.”

I stand and walk to the fridge, fish a cherry out of the jar, and place it carefully on the sundae.

When I catch her smile, I beam too. “We’ll get it, me and you. Everything you’ve ever wanted.”

“With a cherry on top,” she says wistfully.

Yeah. With a cherry on top.

“Well, starting tomorrow, you’ll need to stop feeding me this much junk food, orCherryandTOPis all I’ll have left once they stop booking me for shows.”

“Oh, no.” I quickly slide the sundae to my side of the island. “We wouldn’t want that.”