“Yeah, you appropriated it fromme! I should charge you a licensing fee.”
“Last I checked, you were getting fifty percent.”
Cherry snorted. Then remembered something—“Oh my god,Tom.” She set down her fork. “Do you know who’s on Ozempic?”
“Everyone who makes more than a hundred thousand dollars a year?”
“Hope.”
“Your sister Hope?”
“Yes. It’s a whole thing. Honny and Joy are freezing her out, like she’s a traitor to the cause.”
“How’s she doing on it?”
“I don’t know,” Cherry said. “She’s skinny, so I guess it’s working? She looks like a different person.”
“She must have really good insurance.”
“Dan probably does.”
Tom nodded. “Firefighters union.”
“I think Joy’s jealous, underneath it all. But Honny feels judged.”
“I get it,” he said.
“I get it, too! If Hope doesn’t like the wayshelooks, she doesn’t like the wayanyof us look—and she always seemed so confident! She was our role model for what it meant to be fat and beautiful and happy.”
Tom’s smile had gone gentle. After a second, he looked down at his food.
Cherry looked down, too. “Anyway,” she said, “you must still be excited about the premiere. It’s a big deal.”
“I’m not going.”
“What?” She looked back up at him. “You have to go.”
He cocked his head, peering up at her from the top of his eyes. “Contractually, I do not. I’ve checked.”
“Tom...”
“I just want it to be over, so I can get back to my life. Or you know—alife. Whatever my life is now, I don’t want it to be all this Hollywood shit.”
“Then maybe you shouldn’t move toLos Angeles,” Cherry said.
Tom laughed, defeated. “Maybenot. I don’t know...” He shrugged. “I like the weather. I like the ocean. Good comic book stores. Plus, it’s very, very far from my dad.”
Tom and Cherry had talked about moving to the West Coast. Before Cherry had been promoted.
She took another bite of saag. It was getting cold. It was still good. “I think you should go,” Cherry said. “To the premiere. It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing. Even if it all sucks.”
“Pfft.” Tom had gone back to eating, too. “Who would I even go with?”
The saag got stuck at the back of her throat.
Tom shook his head. “Yeah... no thanks.”
Cherry wiped her hands on a napkin and started packaging up the leftovers. Tom seemed to take her cue. He stood up and gathered their dirty dishes. They took things into the kitchen together. The dishwasher was full and clean, so Tom started to unload it. Cherry helped.
