Dialing
Cherry
//call received//
Cerise: Hi...
Devin: Hey, Cherry. Did I wake you?
Cerise: No. No, you didn't. Couldn't sleep?
Devin: Yeah.
Cerise: Me, neither.
Devin: What were you doing?
Cerise: Just getting myself ready for another full day at home...
Devin: Oh, okay...
//silence on both ends//
Cerise: [sighs]
Devin: What's up?
Cerise: Nothing... [after some time] Can't say I'm eager to go to school on Monday, but I kinda am because I don't wanna stay at home too long... and yet, I don't really want to go to school either. [quickly] Does that make sense? God, it doesn't.
Devin: It does.
Cerise: Does it?
Devin: Yeah. I get what you're saying. I deal with the same feeling every fucking day.
Cerise: I see... why--
//"Cerise Jane Miller, who are you talking to at this time of the night?!"//
Cerise: No one! I was just rehearsing--
//call disconnected//
***
Dialing
Cherry
//call received//
Cerise: Hi.
Devin: Hey.
Cerise: I'm sorry. I should've called back but Jenny Horseface is like a surveillance camera. She didn't buy the school drama club rehearsal lie I told her...
Devin: What about my messages?
Cerise: I kept deleting them. I don't want Jenny to see anything... I mean, she'll tell dad and then he'll... he'll--
Devin: [cutting off] It's okay. I get it.
Cerise: Yeah... it's all a bit turbulent at home.
Devin: How come you received my call now?
Cerise: I'm at work, on break. Clarisse finally let me come in today.
Devin: That's good.
Cerise: Yes, it is. Helps me stay busy, keeps me away from home, tires me out enough to sleep at night... I like working.
Devin: Me, too. But I hate my coworkers.
Cerise: You work? Where?
Devin: [chuckles] My clever Cherry. My clever, clever Cherry.
Cerise: Oh, no. It's not like that. [hurriedly] It's a genuine question. Like, I really wanted to know where you worked, not... not who you are.
Devin: Whatever. Still not telling you.
Cerise: [makes an exasperated sound] Fine, then. Let me make up for the other days' questions I never got to ask?
Devin: Alright. Fire away.
Cerise: You said you feel the same. About hating home and hating school, but still, sometimes preferring one over the other.
Devin: Yeah, I do.
Cerise: I know why you hate school. You just hate every student there, you hate the teachers, you hate the system, and the rules and regulations and the social hierarchy--
Devin: [sarcastically] You know me so well, Cherry.
Cerise: Actually, quite the contrary. I wanna know why you hate home, if it's my place to ask?
Devin: It's not your place to ask, but I have nothing to hide so, I'll answer you. My dad's a drunk piece of shit, this place fucking reeks of beer and vomit, and my mother is dead, it was in this house that we got her late diagnosis.
Cerise: [apologetically] I didn't mean--
Devin: Don't bother. It doesn't matter.
//heavy, uncomfortable silence//
Cerise: [clears throat] So, um... Cigarette, I gotta go now... my break's over.
Devin: Okay.
Cerise: I'll call you when I can.
Devin: Mm-hmm.
//call disconnected//
***
YOU ARE READING
🗸 the quintessences of cherry & cigarette
Short Story|| in which a broken boy takes interest in a broken girl and they realize that neither of them require fixing when they fall in love with each other's pieces, flaws, frayed ends, and quintessences || [ love unconditionally ] [ adore irrevocably ] 𝓬...
