Are there any words skipped in the phrase "picking up"?
Native speaker’s answer
Rebecca
Yes. "My dry cleaning" is omitted here. Since Tom is walking in to a dry cleaning shop, one can figure out that he is either dropping off or picking up his dry cleaning. This happens often in English. If something seems to be understood, many will just omit the rest of the sentence. A: How many doughnuts do you want? B: One please! (We know that Person B wants doughnuts, so the word doughnut doesn't need to be said again)