Page 11 of Letting Go

I exhale so hard it shakes my straw wrapper. “I’ve suspected for a while. They’re always… close. Too close. The giggling. The looks. He’s been distant. And yesterday…” I pause, stomach clenching, “I think she was in the house.”

Hannah blanches. “Wait, what?”

“He said he was at work. But I know he wasn’t. Something was off. Like, the bed had just been used, his car was there, but somehow, he wasn’t.”

Hannah’s silent now. Not dismissive. Not sceptical. Just quiet. Processing.

I want her to tell me I’m crazy. I want her to laugh it off and call me paranoid and tell me I’ve just beenthrough a lot lately and my brain is inventing shadows where there aren’t any.

But she doesn’t.

She just reaches for my hand, warm and steady. “So, what are you gonna do?”

“I have to confront him, right?” I say it more to myself than to Hannah, like maybe if I say it out loud, it’ll feel more like a plan and less like impending doom.

“You do,” she says, nodding, calm like she’s talking about returning a pair of shoes and not detonating my marriage. “But I get it if you need to wait until you’re ready. Just… don’t let it eat you alive.”

Too late.

She leans back, takes a sip of her stupidly perfect cappuccino. “So… what happened at work?”

My heart stutters. “What?”

“You’re not at work,” she says, eyes on me, too level. Too knowing.

I stare at her, caught, my spoon dangling mid-air like it forgot its job.

“I quit,” I finally say, forcing a shrug. “Leonard made a very bad handshake deal in a strip club where, I obviously was not invited. Once he sobered up, he started blaming me for not being there.”

“Seriously?” she asks.

I nod.

“So, you are gonna be home for a while, huh?” she asks looking not so pleased.

“Does that bother you?” why should it?

“No,” she quickly shakes her head, “I just hate that a sexist like Leonard can take your job, just like that.”

We fill the rest of lunch with harmless nothings. Trending Netflix shows. Some new bakery near her place. One of her sister’s kids learning to say “fuck” at the dinner table. I laugh in the right places. I nod when I’m supposed to.

But everything feels… fuzzy. Off-kilter. Like the table’s slanted just enough that everything I say keeps sliding sideways.

And I feel like a paranoid jerk. The worst kind. The kind who creates drama in her head, then starts connecting dots that maybe weren’t even part of the same picture. The kind who spies on blondes in cafés and reads into door latches and unanswered texts and suddenly decides her whole marriage is built on lies.

But.

What if I’m right?

What if this is the beginning of the end and I’m just dressing it up in self-doubt because it’s easier than facing it head-on?

I look at Hannah, laughing at something on her phone. Happy. Glowing. And I want to cry. I want to disappear under the table and curl up next to the crumbs and wait for someone to put me back together.

Instead, I sit up straighter. Smile tighter. And say, “We should do this again soon.”

Because if I can’t fix anything else today, I can at least pretend to be okay for another fifteen minutes.

On the way home, I make a detour.

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