#tannerisms

The first lame joke people liked to make was I bet he was your favorite customer. Tanner always let her tell the real story because it sounded less fake when she recounted it for people: one night after midnight, some of us were like, okay, let’s go with these guys someplace. And they were all douches, bro-y douches, but they seemed okay enough, and they were buying, so okay, let’s go to this town just outside Tacoma. I know! Tacoma. They’re in with some big crowd. In Tacoma. On a Thursday. So okay.

But everything’s closed down and that sucks except there’s supposed to be this party. So we go there. Fancy house. I like it. And, like, one them he says hey to the man in charge, and the other goes with Siena to the bar, and everything’s good for, like, a college house party or whatever. They even have one of those poles, you know, the portable ones. So I get on one and I do my thing. And Siena does her thing, and we’re getting a crowd, and I go back up. And when I do, it–she swiped her hands together quickly–like that. Just like that.

Suddenly, there’s this guy. And he’s got me and he’s like, Jesus fuck, did you just fall?

Cherry would pause at this point in the retelling. She’d throw her arm around him, or if she could reach, kiss the side of his nose, which was a habit particular to her. If she was outside, she’d have him light her cigarette.

This guy, she’d say. Like even he didn’t even know what just happened. Caught me anyway.

You were that fucking hot. 

It was so very out of a fucking fairy tale that he ignored a lot of the other shit that went down in the eight months that composed their relationship. The division went: 40% good. 50% weird and uncertain cycle of suspicion, accusation, consolation, and reconciliation. 10% bitter betrayal. She was the first girl he ever dated under 5′6″; the first girl who was older than him, twenty-five to his twenty; she was the first girl who cheated on him and the first girl that he left.

We’re not married, she had said in order to defend herself. You don’t pay my bills.

I only asked for one fucking thing, Tanner had said. He shook with his rage. He could only think: Lil had been right. He’d ignored her and she’d been right. Tan, that’s not a girl who really cares about anyone–you know? Lilith hadn’t liked Nic, either.

God, you’re just such a fucking baby about this stuff, Cherry said. He remembered her last words to him in stark clarity. Later, he looked back on the exchange and realized that she had been fucking afraid, because she was so small and he was angry and strong, and she knew, because he’d told her, one night, cooling off after sex–

Sometimes I just fucking lose my shit. Anything to prove shit. I can’t, it’s like, I can’t stop …

The other guy she’d been with was someone from her school. They’d both been proud of her education. Going for her doctorate. One day, he would walk into a RiteAid and she’d be there in a white coat. He, in his naivete, used to joke about it. Her parents had no idea. She loved that punchline so well.

But in the end all anyone really remembered was that she had been a stripper. Tanner did not mind. He maligned her himself, afterward, when he mentioned her, if he mentioned her. He did not object to Oliver’s making things hard for her. He helped, even, when it was convenient for him and painless. He did not talk about the guy from her school, or the things she had said, or their problems, his hopes or her actions. When he mentioned her at all, it was in this context: