Part One – The Text
“I’m stuck at work.”
Eric’s text was still glowing on my phone screen when I pushed open the glass door of the restaurant. It was a classic New York City spot in Midtown Manhattan, the kind with chrome edges, soft yellow light, and stainless-steel tables that always felt a little too cold. I hadn’t even cleared the notification when a server stepped toward me.
His voice was quiet, careful, the same tone you might use to tell a customer they’re out of their favorite dish. “He’s at table five,” he said. “With his fiancée.”
I let out a small breath.
“Ah.”
No embarrassment. No anger. It felt like hearing the ending of a story I’d known for a long time.
I just hadn’t seen it printed in full until that second. I looked up. The restaurant’s light slid across the stainless-steel tabletop nearest me, cold and flat.
Exactly how I felt in that moment. To understand how I got there, you’d have to go back a few months. My name is Vivian.
I do graphic design for a small studio downtown, the kind of place where we make logos for coffee shops in Brooklyn and websites for law firms in New Jersey. The job forces you to see details: a line off by a few pixels, a color that shouldn’t be there, a patch of empty space in the wrong spot. I’m used to catching tiny flaws people try to hide.
Unless the one hiding them is my husband. Eric was a project manager at a midsize tech company based in New York. He always looked a little too put together.
Flat shirt, flat words, flat smile. He knew exactly where to stand in any conference room to look like a man with direction. At company parties, he spoke with that calm, confident tone people in American offices admire.
He leaned in just enough when he talked, ready with a solution to anything. Anyone meeting him for the first time would think he was the type of man who would shoot straight to the top floor of a Manhattan high-rise. I used to think that was a good thing.
Ambition isn’t a crime—until that ambition needs a stage, and you start to realize you’ve become the backdrop. About three months before the night at table five, Eric started caring about his appearance more than usual. One weekday morning, he checked himself in the hallway mirror before leaving for work, fixing his collar for the third time.
The story doesn’t end here –
it continues on the next page.
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