Hey there! The timeline might be a little off but I was on a roll and didn't want to go get my book.
Disclaimer: S.E. Hinton owns the Outsiders.
Bob could be real sweet.
Cherry loved it about him. Whenever the two would fight, she would think back to that pale gold day in August when she saw just how sweet Bob could be.
It was about a year prior and Cherry didn't know Bob real well. They ran in the same circles, obviously, and saw each other at school and parties down at the river, and would smile politely, eyes averted when they were close enough before moving along. Then Randy and Marcia started going steady. That made them the two best friends and everyone kept hinting that Cherry and Bob would be perfect for each other. Marcia and Randy were particularly fond of this idea and it was that August when Randy and Marcia thought themselves quite the matchmakers when they so subtly sent both Cherry and Bob down to the corner store to get some ice. Four times in a row.
Cherry strolled alongside Bob and bounced her clasped hands off her knees. With a sly quirk of her eyebrow she said, "oh how perfectly strange that I should meet you again, Bob!"
Bob's own hands were resting in his pockets, very casually as he bounced alongside her, vibrant in the dimming light of the sun that was setting behind them. "I'm beginning to wonder if maybe we've been set up."
"No!" Cherry gasped.
"You're right it-"
"It couldn't be," Cherry finished for him. Bob laughed, a light, charming sound, that chased all thoughts from Cherry's head. She ducked, biting her lip to hide the silly smile on her face. It was like those few moments when she sat on her dapple gray before the races started and for a moment, just a moment, she'd get scared, even though she'd been riding since she was a little kid. But then the crowd would disappear and the ice in her stomach would too and it would just be her and horse and a little notsoscaredbuthappyflutter in her heart.
It was just like that. And already, God save her and her mother's shame, she was imaging what it would be like to kiss this handsome boy. She could swear that she could feel his gaze on her. Oh, imagine! Shyly she looked up to catch sight of that handsome face but he was looking away.
And embarrassment flooded her, red going to her face to match her hair, because how could she be so stupid to think that Bob-
Was staring at something?
Anothergirlgirlgirlgirl, the thought raced through Cherry's head. She sidestepped and saw-
A little boy?
A little boy. A little boy, sitting with his back against the bricks of the Laundromat with his knees pulled up to his chest. And Bob was walking straight towards him.
"Hey, man," he said, as if he were speaking to a good friend and not a seven, eight year old kid. Cherry followed him, bewildered. As they got closer, Cherry saw what he saw. Though Bob pretended like he didn't.
Because the kid was crying.
"What's going on?" Bob asked. The kid, a little towheaded boy with freckles, hastily wiped at the tears. Cherry then figured out the cause of his tears: a nasty, red scrape across his knee. And furthermore she noticed the cause of the cause: a sniggering group of twelve-year-olds in white tee-shirts, crew cuts, and cut off shorts.
"Nothin'," he mumbled, staring at his shoes.
Bob stopped walking and nodded, staring at the sky. "Right," he nodded again. "Nothing. Cool."
So confused was the kid that for a moment he forgot his embarrassment of his tears and he gaped at Cherry, as if she might possibly know what this crazy guy was doing. She gave the little boy an equally confused look.
"Nothing," Bob repeated, interrupting his companions silent conversation. "Well it's getting pretty late to be doing nothing."
The little kid looked at him suspiciously. Cherry was sure that it was often that high schoolers ever spoke to him but to tell him move out of the way or to quit being a pest. "My ma lets me stay out till past dark."
It was getting dark and fast, the sun sinking behind the bright green trees faster than a greaser boy on a pony.
"Bet their moms do, too," he said, tilting his dark head in the direction of the boys. "And even if they don't, I bet they'll be waiting anyways."
The boy sniffled and scratched his nose. "Well what am I supposed to do?"
"Nothin', we'll just walk."
And they began to when suddenly the boy balked.
"You don't wear jeans," he said.
Bob laughed. "Not usually."
"M'brother said if anything ever happens- if anything happens to wait for a guy with jeans and ask if he knows my brother 'n if he knows my brother to ask if he'll walk me home." Cherry could tell that he had been told a lot.
"Where do you live?" Bob asked. Cherry felt like she knew the answer.
"Near the depot."
Bob smiled. "Well, I can meet your brother then."
They walked the baby greaser, as Cherry would always call the little boy in her head, home. Bob met the big brother, a big grown greaser with hair as blonde and twice as long as his baby brother's. Bob shook his head when the guy thanked him.
That night, later, when they finally made it back to the party, Bob kissed Cherry under the stars and whispered to her that he thought their friends were right and that together they'd be perfect. They met up every day that week and by the end of it everyone was begging to double with them to the movies.
Two week later, Bob beat up a kid greaser. Randy told Marcia and Marcia told Cherry. Bob had been drinking, Marcia said. Cherry quietly excused herself, begging off with claims of chores. And on the walk home, Cherry cried. Because she knew.
She knew that he could be real sweet.