***
Then one evening, I was scrolling through my phone on the couch when a notification came in.
It was from Facebook: a new friend request.
Mark.
A notification came in.
A message sat right underneath it, already waiting.
“Hope you don’t mind my adding you.”
I stared at the screen until it went dark. Then I locked my phone, set it facedown on the cushion, and told myself I was overthinking. He was just being friendly. He was Lisa’s husband, for God’s sake.
I picked the phone back up.
A message sat right underneath it.
I ignored the friend request and the message. I told myself he’d get the hint and move on.
He didn’t.
The second message landed on a Tuesday morning, just as I was pouring coffee.
First came the compliment: “You have a beautiful smile.”
I stared at my phone as if it had bitten me. I locked the screen, shoved it in my drawer, and pretended I hadn’t seen it.
I told myself he’d get the hint.
***
Two days later, another one.
“So is there a lucky guy in the picture, or is Lisa keeping you too busy for a love life?”
My stomach twisted. I closed the app without opening the thread.
***
Then came the one that made my hands go cold.
“Don’t tell Lisa I messaged you. She’d get the wrong idea.”
I read it three times. That single sentence told me everything I’d been avoiding.
My stomach twisted.
***
I called my older sister, Rachel, that night from my car, still in the parking garage.
“Your boss’s husband is asking about your dating life?” she said. “Cindy, screenshot every single message as evidence.”
“I don’t want to make it a thing.”
“It already is a thing! You just haven’t decided what kind yet, and the last thing you want is a he-said-she-said situation where YOU lose your job.”
“I don’t want to make it a thing.”
I saved the screenshots in a folder I labeled “Receipts” and then buried it three folders deep so I wouldn’t have to look at it. I still didn’t reply to Mark. I hoped, in the stupid way you hope when you’re young, that silence would bore him into leaving me alone.
It did the opposite.
***
My boss’s husband started finding excuses to show up at the office whenever Lisa wasn’t there or was busy. He’d stroll in around 3 p.m., when he knew she had her Thursday client meetings across town, and lean against the doorframe of the little kitchen as if he owned the place.
I saved the screenshots in a folder.
“Just dropping off her charger,” he’d say.
Or, “Thought I’d surprise her with lunch.”
He never had a charger, and he never had lunch.
I started checking the parking lot before I left my desk. If I saw his black SUV, I’d wait. Sometimes for 20 minutes. Sometimes, until my shoulders ached from sitting stiffly in my chair.
He never had a charger.
***
