Her mornings are a blur of packing lunches, signing permission slips, and squeezing into business casual. Her afternoons are a race from the office to after-school activities. Her evenings are dinner, dishes, homework, and exhaustion. Somewhere in the margins, her own desires—for adventure, for intellectual stimulation, for sexual novelty—have been taped over with to-do lists.
Then, one evening, a late night at the office. He asks if she’s eaten. She admits she forgot lunch. He offers to grab takeout. They eat across from each other in the empty break room, and she realizes no one has asked about her day in months.
Discovery may come through a text notification at dinner, a suspicious credit card charge, or a coworker’s loose lips. Or she may confess, crushed by the weight of her own compartmentalization.
She tells herself: We’re just friends. We support each other. It’s harmless.
She looks at her sleeping husband. At the crayon drawings on the fridge. At the calendar marked with dentist appointments and soccer practice. And she thinks: What have I done?
Her mornings are a blur of packing lunches, signing permission slips, and squeezing into business casual. Her afternoons are a race from the office to after-school activities. Her evenings are dinner, dishes, homework, and exhaustion. Somewhere in the margins, her own desires—for adventure, for intellectual stimulation, for sexual novelty—have been taped over with to-do lists.
Then, one evening, a late night at the office. He asks if she’s eaten. She admits she forgot lunch. He offers to grab takeout. They eat across from each other in the empty break room, and she realizes no one has asked about her day in months.
Discovery may come through a text notification at dinner, a suspicious credit card charge, or a coworker’s loose lips. Or she may confess, crushed by the weight of her own compartmentalization.
She tells herself: We’re just friends. We support each other. It’s harmless.
She looks at her sleeping husband. At the crayon drawings on the fridge. At the calendar marked with dentist appointments and soccer practice. And she thinks: What have I done?