She got under the covers again, lying on her side, facing him.
He wasn’t smiling anymore.
“Oh no,” Cherry said. “Did I give you too much time to think?”
Tom smiled and looked down at the mattress between them. “Maybe.”
She exhaled. Bracing.
“Cherry...” he said. “I know you’re seeing someone.”
“No,” she said, surprised. “No.Tom, I’m not.”
He looked up at her, even more surprised. “But you said you were.”
“I was,” she said. “I’m not anymore.”
“Oh...” he said, processing.
Cherry was processing, too. “Wait, you thought I was seeing someone? And that didn’t give you pause? Last night?”
“It gave mepause...” he said. “Not a long pause.”
“Really?”
“You’re mywife,” Tom said. Half fierce. Half indignant.
Cherry huffed out a laugh. She tried to be offended by it all. She couldn’t. Shewashis wife. She had been, all along.
(And that wasn’t to say that she agreed with her sisters. Or that she felt guilty about Russ, or believed that she’d done something wrong. It was just to say—she’d never stopped wanting to be married to Tom.)
“You’re my wife...” Tom said, more brokenly.
Cherry nodded.
“Cherry, I want to come home.”
Chapter 57
“Go to Los Angeles,” Cherry had told Tom. “Stevie and I will be fine.”
They weren’t fine.
Stevie was getting too big to manage, and she didn’t listen to Cherry.
“She will,”Tom texted.“She just sees you as her litter mate right now.”
“Her *litter* mate?”
“She thinks I’m the pack leader... which speaks to her limited cognitive ability.”
Tom said that Cherry should read one of the books he’d bought on dog training. Cherry didn’twantto read a book about dog training. She didn’t want to train adog.
Stevie had been good for Tom. Indisputably. It was like someone had turned on a small light in his everyday darkness.
But even that got under Cherry’s skin—the way Tom walked around dead-faced and sullen, and only came alive for this giant lunkheaded puppy.
Tom was in California for so long, he rented an Airbnb. It wasn’t just the movie keeping him away. He was promoting aThursdayomnibus. (CalledEvery Thursday.) And he’d launched a streetwear collaboration with Supreme. (Cherry was the one who told him to say yes. Tom toldHypebeastthat he“wouldn’t wear any of this stuff.”They loved it.)
