4. Hannah
— ? —
Hannah
I’ve been here since six this morning, seventeen hours and counting.
The launch is in two weeks, and everything is falling apart.
The marketing team sent the wrong assets to the printer, which means an expensive reprint if I can’t fix it by tomorrow.
A vendor missed their shipping window, which means the product samples for the investor preview might not arrive in time.
Two of our developers quit on the same day, poached by a competitor, and now I’m personally reviewing work I barely understand to make sure the gaps get covered.
I’ve eaten half a granola bar and three cups of coffee.
I’ve answered sixty-seven emails. I’ve handled twelve phone calls, four of which involved someone crying.
I talked a crying junior designer out of quitting on the spot.
I personally drove across town to pick up replacement parts when our prototype malfunctioned during a demo.
This is my job. I keep the machine running so Griffin can be the face of it.
He’s in his office now, visible through the glass walls, leaning over a conference table covered in mockups and spreadsheets.
His sleeves are rolled to his elbows, his hair mussed from running his hands through it, and even exhausted and stressed he looks like he belongs on the cover of a magazine.
Every few minutes he glances at his phone, frowning at his screen before returning to the documents in front of him.
I’m at my desk outside his door, juggling three email threads and a call with our vendor in Taipei, when the elevator dings.
It’s almost eleven at night. Nobody should be arriving now.
Julie Myer steps out like she’s arriving at a cocktail party instead of a construction zone.
“Hello, everyone!” She’s carrying a pink pastry box tied with ribbon, her blonde hair perfect, her makeup fresh.
She’s wearing a silk blouse that probably costs more than my monthly car payment and jeans that look casual but definitely aren’t.
“I brought macarons! I know you’re all working so hard, and I just wanted to say thank you. ”
The assistants and junior staff who are still here, the ones too new or too desperate to have gone home at a reasonable hour, perk up at the sight of her.
Free food and a pretty face. Julie makes a show of distributing cookies, cooing over everyone’s work, asking questions she doesn’t actually want answers to.
“Oh my God, is that the new interface design? It’s so pretty!” She barely glances at the screen before moving on. “And you, what are you working on? That looks so complicated. You must be so smart.”
I watch her work the room and try not to grind my teeth into dust. This is what she does. She shows up, she sparkles, she makes everyone feel special for thirty seconds before forgetting they exist. It’s an act, and everyone is buying it.
Then she sweeps past my desk without a glance and lets herself into Griffin’s office.
“Griffin!” Her voice carries through the glass. “You look exhausted. Have you eaten? I brought your favorites, the pistachio ones from that place you like.”
I watch through the window as she sets the box on his desk and perches on the edge of it, crossing her legs. She’s positioned herself between him and the door, angled so that her body blocks his view of anyone else.
Of me.
Griffin looks up with a tired smile. “Julie. You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to.” She reaches out and touches his arm, her fingers lingering on his sleeve. “You’ve been working so hard. We both have.”
I bite my tongue so hard I taste copper.
We both have. Julie Myer has been to maybe six meetings in the past three months.
She showed up to one brainstorm and suggested we “make the logo bigger.” Her contribution to the product development has been exactly zero, unless you count the time she brought in a mood board she clearly ripped from Pinterest and presented it like she’d invented the concept of visual inspiration.
But sure. We both have.
I force my attention back to my screen, but I can’t help watching them through the glass.
Julie leans closer, laughing at whatever Griffin just said, her hand still on his arm.
She tips her head back, exposing the line of her throat, and I recognize the move.
I’ve done it myself, years ago, when I was young and flirting and trying to catch the attention of the handsome TA who would eventually become my husband.
The difference is, I wasn’t married to someone else at the time.
We built this office together, is the thing.
Before the glass walls and the conference tables, this floor was bare concrete and exposed wiring, and Griffin and I spent a whole weekend assembling desks from flat-pack boxes because we couldn’t afford the delivery fee, let alone the installers.
He put a bracket on backward and swore for ten minutes, and I laughed so hard I had to sit down on the floor, and then he kissed me right there in the sawdust and said, someday, Hannah, someday this floor is going to be full of people building our thing.
It is. The floor is full. And I’m the only one left who remembers the sawdust.
Griffin doesn’t pull away. He doesn’t even seem uncomfortable. He just talks to her like this is normal, like it’s totally fine for another woman to drape herself over his desk at eleven o’clock at night while his wife sits twenty feet away.
Julie glances through the glass. Our eyes meet.
She smiles. It’s not a friendly smile. It’s the smile of someone who knows exactly what she’s doing and is enjoying every second of it.
Then she turns back to Griffin and murmurs a thing I can’t hear, and he laughs, that real laugh, the one that crinkles the corners of his eyes, and I feel my whole body go rigid with anger.
An hour later, Julie is still there.
She’s moved from the desk to one of the chairs, her heels kicked off, her feet curled beneath her like she’s settling in for a slumber party.
Griffin has stopped working entirely. They’re just talking now, heads bent together, and I can hear the occasional burst of her high, bright laughter through the glass.
I’ve been watching the clock. Sixty-three minutes becomes sixty-four, then sixty-five, then seventy.
My email pings with a message from our Taipei vendor. I read it three times without comprehending a single word because I can’t stop looking at the two of them through that fucking glass wall.
She’s showing him something on her phone now. He leans in to look, his shoulder brushing hers, and she doesn’t move away. Neither does he.
Seventy-five minutes becomes eighty.
I answer three more emails. I finalize the catering order for the investor preview.
I send a passive-aggressive follow-up to the marketing team about the printer disaster.
I do everything I can to stay busy, to keep my hands occupied, to stop myself from marching into that office and dragging Julie out by her perfect blonde hair.
Finally, I stand. I cross to his door. I knock twice and push it open without waiting for a response.
“Sorry to interrupt.” I keep my voice professional, clipped. “Griffin, the Taipei call is in fifteen minutes. I have the brief here.”
“Thanks, babe.” He barely glances up from whatever Julie is showing him on her phone. “Just put it on my desk.”
Babe. He called me babe in front of her. Like I’m his girlfriend, not his wife. Like I’m some interchangeable piece of his life that doesn’t warrant a more specific term.
Julie’s smile widens.
I cross the office and set the folder next to his elbow. Up close, I can smell her perfume, expensive and floral and probably French, clinging to the air between them. It mingles with the scent of Griffin’s cologne, and my stomach turns.
“The timeline looks great,” Julie says, gesturing to one of the mockups spread across his desk. “It looks pretty!”
I wait for Griffin to point out that the timeline is actually a disaster, that we’re three weeks behind schedule and hemorrhaging money to catch up. That I’ve been working eighteen-hour days to salvage this launch while Julie has been doing exactly nothing.
“Thanks, Julie.” He smiles at her warmly, like she’s actually contributed anything of value. “Really appreciate you stopping by.”
The words land somewhere under my ribs and stay there.
“I should get back to work.” My voice comes out steady, which surprises me. “Lots to do before the call.”
“You’re such a hard worker, Hannah.” Julie’s tone is sugar-sweet, her eyes sharp. “I don’t know how you do it. I’d be exhausted.”
“Some of us don’t have a choice.”
I walk out before either of them can respond.
At my desk, I stare at my screen and don’t see anything. My chest is tight, my eyes burning with tears I refuse to let fall. Not here, not where she can see.
Some of us don’t have a choice. I meant it to sting. I’m not sure it landed.
My phone buzzes with a text. I grab it, desperate for a distraction.
Mom: Still on for dinner Friday? Dad’s making his famous ribs!
I’d forgotten about dinner. I’d forgotten about everything except this office and this launch and my husband laughing with another woman in his glass-walled office.
I type back: Actually, Griffin’s mother is coming into town. Rain check?
The response is immediate: Ugh. Good luck with that one. Call me after if you need to vent. Love you, sweetheart.
I almost laugh. My mom has met Rhonda Bloom exactly twice, and both times she came away looking like she’d survived something traumatic.
The first time, Rhonda spent the entire dinner critiquing my mother’s cooking.
The roast was too dry, the potatoes were underseasoned, the pie was store-bought (it wasn’t).
The second time, she suggested that perhaps my parents should consider selling their house and moving somewhere “more appropriate for their income bracket.”
My mother has never forgiven her. I’ve never blamed her.
“Oh, and Hannah?”
I look up. Griffin is standing in his doorway, Julie visible behind him, still in that chair, still smiling.
“Yeah?”
“Mom’s coming to dinner Friday. Can you handle the reservations? Somewhere nice. She’s been complaining that we never take her anywhere good.”
Of course. Because on top of everything else, I also have to arrange a dinner where my mother-in-law will spend three hours criticizing everything from my posture to my career choices to my apparently inadequate uterus.
“Sure,” I say, because that’s what I always say. “I’ll take care of it.”
“You’re the best.” He shoots me a wink, an actual wink, like we’re sharing a private joke, and disappears back into his office.
Through the glass, I watch Julie lean over to whisper something in his ear. He laughs again.
I turn back to my screen and start searching for restaurants that will be acceptable to Rhonda Bloom.
The reservations take forty-five minutes to finalize.
Rhonda has opinions about everything: the neighborhood (too trendy is gauche, too classic is boring), the cuisine (nothing too ethnic, nothing too experimental), the ambiance (quiet enough for conversation but not so quiet that it feels dead).
I call six restaurants before I find one that meets all her unspoken criteria.
Then I spend another twenty minutes on the phone with the ma?tre d’, confirming that they have her preferred brand of sparkling water, that the table will be in a quiet corner away from the kitchen, that the lighting will be flattering. Because of course she has opinions about lighting.
By the time I finish, it’s past midnight. Julie left an hour ago, pressing a kiss to Griffin’s cheek on her way out. On his cheek, like they’re old friends, like she has any right to put her mouth on my husband.
He didn’t pull away. He just smiled and said, “See you tomorrow, Jules.”
Jules. He has a nickname for her now.
I gather my things and stand, my back aching from hours hunched over my desk. Griffin is still in his office, phone in hand, typing out a message that makes him smile.
I don’t ask who he’s texting. I don’t want to know.
“I’m heading out,” I say from his doorway. “The Taipei brief is on your desk. Call starts in five.”
“Thanks, babe.” He doesn’t look up. “I’ll be home in a couple hours. Don’t wait up.”
I stand there for a moment, waiting for eye contact, a real goodbye, some acknowledgment that I’m his wife and not just another employee he can dismiss at the end of the day.
It doesn’t come.
I walk to the elevator, press the button, and ride down to the parking garage alone.
The garage is empty and echoing, my heels clicking against concrete as I walk to my car. I dig my keys out of my purse and unlock the door, then pause with my hand on the handle.
I’m so tired. Tired of working eighteen-hour days. Tired of managing everyone’s emotions. Tired of watching my husband smile at another woman while I fade into the background.
I get in the car and sit with my hands on the steering wheel, staring at nothing.
There was a time he’d have walked me down here.
Early on, even in the crunch years, he had a rule about it, said no wife of his was crossing a parking garage alone at midnight.
He’d ride the elevator down with me, kiss me against the car door until I was breathless, then go back up and work until dawn.
I never asked him to do it. He just did, because I mattered more than the ten minutes it cost him.
I can’t remember when the rule stopped. That’s the worst part. It didn’t end with a fight or a decision. It just quietly stopped being true, like so much else.
As I pull out of my spot, I glance up at the building. Griffin’s office light is still on, a bright square against the dark. I can see his silhouette behind the glass, pacing, phone pressed to his ear.
He’s probably talking to someone about the launch. The Taipei vendor, the caterers, one of the dozen other people who need pieces of him at any given moment.
Or maybe he’s talking to Julie. Maybe he’s saying things that would make me sick if I could hear them.
I don’t know anymore. I’m not sure I want to.
I drive home through empty streets, my hands tight on the wheel, and I try to remember the last time my husband looked at me like I was the most important person in the room, and I can’t come up with a single night more recent than our wedding.