Short Story: Cherry Hill
I wish for so many people to be where I’m sitting today. In a lofty, overly renovated high-end office on the 12th floor of a Broadway building. The central air is calm today, a silk cardigan resting on my shoulders, while the third Nespresso is more tasteful than the last two. Leyla the assistant finally perfected the oat milk to ice cubes ratio just as I needed it to be. My face, hair and hips are at peak refinement, so lucky that my eyebrows and acupuncture appointments were yesterday. If I knew that today was going to happen, I would’ve also managed a manicure. The gel is on day five, not looking its worst, but I don’t want to give her a slight of imperfections.
Arianne Sutton. She kept her maiden name. A deep scroll through her Instagram page, it might as well be locked. Her profile photo consists of a cream colored labradoodle puppy. Wonder if her dog is as well trained as my Rufus. Doubt it. Arianne sticks to landscape shots, promoting that she is well traveled. Copenhagen, old streets in Italy, a Napa winery, the stupid hand thing to look like you were scrunching the Eiffel Tower. Boring. One post from 2 months ago is pinned, it’s of her with back to the camera, she is facing a Montauk sunset. The caption reads ‘I can only look forward to better things #itgetsbetter’. First thought, cancer, but somehow the page doesn’t read that. Nor do any of the comments underneath the post lend a ‘get well’, ‘thoughts and prayers’ or anything remotely hinting to chemotherapy. No ‘you’ve got this’, frequent heart emojis, leaving me to wonder if it's some new start in her life or an end to one. Ding ding. New message from Leyla, it reads ‘10:30 Arianne Sutton is here’. Reply, ‘Send her in.’ I take in a deep breath, upon exhale grab the Chanel rouge allure lipstick from my drawer and quickly dab a few dots on the top and bottom lip.
She used to call me elephant hands. Even on warm and hot burning days, I would still wear long sleeve shirts and corduroy pants to cover my legs and ankles. I used to think that sweating myself through every school day would result in a few shedding of pounds, but I remained large. So much larger than everyone else in my class, except during gym where I was made to feel small and unimportant. Loudly she used to yell elephant hands! across the gymnasium. The 4 skinny, flat chested comrades would laugh and repeat after her. My only friend Ysenia, a new girl from San Juan who even with her beautiful, long wavy hair, because she chose to befriend me, had also been poked and belittled by the meanest girls in the class. We still but rarely keep in touch, our last face to face was at a Yale fundraiser three years back. She was about to move to London with her British fiance.
