“Well, I’ve been living in a fully furnished Airbnb.”
“Are you moving?”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’m getting my own apartment.”
“Oh.”Noneof this should be surprising. Tom had to live somewhere; they were getting a divorce. “Okay,” she said again, trying to ground herself. “Well... you’re going to have to buy new stuff. You can’t just take our stuff. I’m using it.” She sounded defensive.
“Are you using the juicer?” He sounded exasperated.
“When have I ever used the juicer, Tom?”
He was quiet.
Cherry heard him take a deep breath. “This is the sort of thing we can talk about when I come home,” he said. “I’m not going to take anything that you need. But I don’t want to justtakethings.”
“Yeah.” She rubbed her forehead. “Okay.”
“So—is there a day next week that works? It doesn’t have to be next week. I’ll be home for a while.”
“Where are you staying?”
“With my dad.”
Tom’s dad was a difficult person. To put it mildly. “Is that going to be okay?”
“It’ll be fine. It’s temporary.”
“You could come over Saturday,” Cherry said. “After lunch.”
“Great,” he said. “Thank you. I’ll see you then.”
“See you.” Cherry ended the call.
Then she closed her eyes and told herself that she wasn’t going to cry.
And then she cried.
And then she went back to work.
Chapter 16
Cherry didn’t know how to get ready for seeing her not-quite husband (and not-quiteex-husband) for the first time in almost a year.
Was she supposed to clean the house? Was she supposed to look good? As she liked to say to her team at work,“What’s our key message here? What’s the takeaway?”
Cherry didn’t have a key message for Tom. Did she want to remind him that he used to love her? Or reinforce his decision to leave?
Her sisters would want her to strike fear in his heart. They wanted Cherry to go hard after Tom’s new money and future earnings.
That seemed unnecessary. Cherry had talked to a divorce lawyer; she would almost certainly get half the publishing money. (The entireThursdayseries had been on the bestseller list for two years.) And she’d get half the movie money, at least for the first movie. The lawyer had been shocked that Tom wasn’t moving faster toward divorce, to cut off Cherry’s claim on his income.
Cherry had laughed. Tom had never rushed a decision in his life.
It was Cherry who’d decided they should get married. Cherry who’d urged Tom to say yes to the graphic novel editor who wanted to publishThursday. Cherry who told Tom to go to Hollywood and see what came of it.
And Cherry who told him not to come home.
Tom would be here any minute...
