I was at a high school reunion dinner with my best friend, Lynn, when I snapped a quick photo of the table and sent it to my husband, Derek. He replied almost instantly. “Lynn’s there? Why didn’t you order the Nashville hot chicken tenders for her?” I typed back: “This is an upscale seafood bistro, Derek. They don’t do deep-fried hot chicken here.” Thirty minutes later, a DoorDash driver knocked on our private dining room door. He was holding a grease-spotted bag from that legendary hot chicken joint on the South Side. Inside was a piping-hot, double order of their signature extra-crispy hot chicken tenders. Right on cue, my phone lit up with a FaceTime request from Derek. “Babe! Make sure Lynn eats those while they’re hot!” his voice boomed through the speaker the second I picked up. “I had to tip the courier thirty bucks to get them across town in rush hour! If they sit, they’ll lose that crunch!” … Derek’s voice cut through the warm, chatter-filled room like a stone shattering a windowpane. The clinking of wine glasses and the laughter of my old classmates suddenly stalled. Half a dozen forks hovered in mid-air, and the room went completely quiet. Eyes darted from me to Lynn, and then to the steaming box of chicken resting on the table. Drew, our old track captain, leaned over to the guy next to him and muttered under his breath, “Wait, isn’t that Hannah’s husband? Why is he so keyed into what Lynn eats from miles away?” Lynn immediately stood up, her face flushed with a practiced, breezy smile as she slid the box toward the center of the table. “Oh, stop it, you guys! Derek is just being his usual, socially awkward self. He obviously ordered these for Hannah, but he’s terrible at expressing it. He tries to be the sweet husband and ends up doing it backwards. Come on, everyone dig in! Let’s not let his thirty-dollar tip go to waste.” I stared at Derek’s face on my phone screen. He still had that eager, puppy-dog expression, waiting for me to praise him for being so thoughtful. My thumb hovered over the screen for an agonizing second before I tapped the red end-call icon. I forced the corners of my mouth upward, nodding at the curious, pitying faces of my old classmates. “Yeah. That’s just how he is. He worries too much.” The tension in the air dissolved. Lynn was already using her fork to pass the tenders to the people next to her. “He really knows where to order from,” she said, practically hosting the table. “Taste this cayenne-honey glaze. It’s the real deal—perfectly sweet, fiery, and incredibly crispy. You can’t get this crunch anywhere else in the city.” Drew took a bite, sucking in air as the heat hit him. “Oh, man! That has some serious kick. I’m addicted already.” As the rest of the table joined in, the lively hum of the reunion resumed. Lynn nudged my elbow, pushing the remaining chicken closer to me. “Hannah, why aren’t you eating? They’re going to get soggy. You heard Derek—he specifically said to eat them hot.” I pressed my lips together and shook my head. “I’m okay. You guys go ahead.” Lynn tilted her head, tapping her fork against the edge of her plate with a small, patronizing sigh. “Oh, come on, princess. Who are you picking a fight with now? It’s just a basket of tenders. Derek was just trying to be sweet.” Across the table, Megan, our former class valedictorian, suddenly gasped and slapped the table. She pointed directly at my mouth. “Oh my god, guys, we completely forgot! Hannah just got her braces on last Tuesday!” “The ceramic brackets, right? Aren’t you supposed to completely avoid hard, crunchy, and fiery-hot things?” Lynn froze for a fraction of a second. Then, she slapped her own forehead and let out a loud, self-deprecating laugh. “Oh my god, of course! I’m so scatterbrained. I completely forgot. Well, Hannah, definitely don’t touch these then! Don’t worry, we won’t let them go to waste.” I looked down at the glistening, golden-brown chicken sitting in the cardboard container. The grease reflected the harsh overhead light of the private room, making my eyes sting. Yes, I had just gotten braces last week. The metal brackets were constantly rubbing against the inside of my cheeks, leaving them shredded with painful canker sores. Every bite of solid food felt like swallowing shards of glass. That was precisely why Drew and the others had chosen this soft-food-friendly seafood bistro in the first place. They wanted me to be able to enjoy the clam chowder and delicate baked cod, rather than sitting there starving while everyone else enjoyed heavy, crunchy meals. But Derek? He knew about the braces. He had watched me struggle to swallow lukewarm broth and oatmeal for three days straight. He hadn’t asked how I was feeling once. I had tried to make excuses for him in my head. “He’s stressed at work. He’s just naturally forgetful.” But I had sent him a single, casual photo of our table, and within seconds, he had noticed that Lynn’s favorite comfort food wasn’t there. He had cared enough to spend forty minutes and thirty dollars to have it hand-delivered to her. The rest of the night passed in a dull blur. Lynn, fueled by the hot chicken, was the life of the party. By the time we stood outside the restaurant waiting for our rides, the sky had turned a dark, bruised purple. My phone showed that the Uber Derek had booked for me was still three minutes away. But Lynn’s ride arrived first. She rolled down the window and waved cheerfully. “I’m heading out, Hannah! Tell Derek I made it in safe!” I forced a wave as the car pulled away. It was only when the taillights disappeared into the city traffic that the realization fully settled in: even when it came to booking a simple ride home, Derek had made sure her car arrived before mine. When I finally pushed open our apartment door, the entryway light was already casting a warm glow on the hardwood floor. Derek heard the door and walked out of the living room, naturally reaching to take my handbag and hang it on the coat rack. He had a soft, satisfied smile on his face. “You’re back? Did Lynn get home okay? I wanted to make sure her Uber got there first so she didn’t have to wait in the cold.” I slipped off my shoes, keeping my eyes on the floor. I didn’t answer. I walked straight to the couch and sat down, staring at my hands. He followed me, sitting close enough that I could smell his laundry detergent, leaning in to read my face. “What’s wrong? Was the food bad? I thought that seafood place had amazing reviews.” The silence stretched between us, thick and heavy. My throat felt incredibly tight, and the brackets in my mouth scraped against my raw gums. Finally, the words tore out of me, trembling with a quiet rage I couldn’t control. “Derek, why did you order those hot chicken tenders for Lynn? Why did you make sure her ride came first?” My voice cracked at the end, a pathetic, wavering sound. The smile on Derek’s face stiffened. In an instant, his expression shifted into that familiar, exhausted look—the “here-we-go-again” sigh. He leaned back against the sofa cushions, throwing his hands up in mild exasperation. “Hannah, are you serious? Didn’t you tell me yourself that a wife’s best friend is like a second mother-in-law? That I needed to go out of my way to win her over?” “I’m literally just doing what you asked me to do.” His words hit me like a splash of ice water, leaving me completely speechless. I “had” said that. Five years ago, when we first started dating and I introduced him to Lynn for the very first time. I remembered sitting in a crowded diner, holding his hand, and telling him, “I lost my mother when I was a kid. Lynn grew up with me—she’s my real family. You have to treat her like a sister. If she doesn’t approve of you, I can’t marry you.” Derek had nodded so solemnly back then, his eyes filled with a fierce determination. I had felt so incredibly loved, thinking I had found a man who truly understood my grief and respected my boundaries. But somewhere along the way, the boundaries had blurred into something grotesque. Derek’s office and Lynn’s office were in opposite directions of the city, yet he always “happened to be in the area” to drive her home on rainy days. Whenever the three of us went out for craft milkshakes, the “buy one, get one half off” promotional drink always ended up in Lynn’s hand, while I carried the full-price cup. On our wedding day, Derek was the groom, but he spent the entire reception acting like Lynn’s personal assistant. He adjusted the hem of her bridesmaid dress, handed her blotting papers for her makeup, and stepped in to block drinks and overbearing uncles during the reception games. Even on our wedding night, after the last of the guests had cleared out and we finally crawled into our hotel bed, the first thing he did was pull out his phone to play a mobile game with Lynn to help her rank up. He told me they had “scheduled it weeks ago.” For years, I had quietly rationalized it. “These are the two people I love most in the world,” I told myself. “It is a blessing that they get along so well. Derek is just a good, attentive man.” But that basket of extra-crispy hot chicken had popped the bubble of my comfortable denial. Derek wasn’t just a universally nice guy. He was selectively, meticulously attentive—exclusively to Lynn. He was so focused on her cravings that he could look directly at his wife’s bleeding, swollen mouth and see absolutely nothing. I looked up at him, the hot tears finally spilling over my eyelashes. “Derek, do you even know I have braces? Do you know I can’t eat spicy or crunchy food right now?” “When you ordered those tenders for Lynn, did it even cross your mind for a single second that your own wife wouldn’t be able to touch them?” Derek’s face went cold. He stood up slowly, towering over me, looking down with a heavy, deeply patronizing exhaustion. “Hannah, can you please stop being so incredibly dramatic?” “You asked me to make Lynn feel like family, and I did exactly that. Now you’re throwing a tantrum and getting jealous of your own best friend? What do you want from me?” “I work sixty hours a week, and I have to come home to deal with your paranoid delusions.” Before I could say another word, he turned on his heel, walked into our bedroom, and came out holding his pillow and a heavy grey blanket. “I’m sleeping in the study tonight. Let me know when you’ve calmed down.” The cold war between Derek and me lasted for eleven days. For nearly two weeks, we lived under the same roof like ghosts, speaking fewer than five sentences to each other. The heavy, suffocating silence was far worse than any screaming match. Every second in that apartment felt like walking on dry glass, my chest so tight I felt like I was going to shatter. And then, at two o’clock in the morning on the twelfth night, my phone began vibrating violently on the nightstand. I answered it in a daze, my voice thick with sleep. On the other end, my dad’s voice was trembling. “Hannah… I took a bad fall on the stairs. I can’t move my leg. The paramedics are on their way, the neighbor called them… don’t panic, okay?” I bolted out of bed, adrenaline surging through my veins. I kept talking to my dad, trying to keep my voice steady and soothing while scrambling to throw on a pair of sweatpants and a jacket. In my blind panic, I slammed my knee hard against the bedroom doorframe, but the pain barely registered. The noise woke Derek. He stepped out of the study, rubbing his eyes. “What’s going on? What’s all the noise?” “My dad fell,” I said, my hands shaking as I grabbed my keys. “I have to get to the ER.” Derek’s eyes widened, and his sluggishness vanished. He immediately grabbed his coat. “I’ll drive you. It’s too late for an Uber, and it’s pouring out there.” I wanted to refuse, but a loud crack of thunder rumbled outside, and sheets of heavy rain were already lashing against the windows. I swallowed my pride and nodded. We ran down to the garage and got into his sedan. As he backed out into the street, the storm hit us in earnest. The windshield wipers were on their highest speed, but the road ahead was still just a blurry smear of streetlights and dark asphalt. I sat in the passenger seat, staring straight ahead. My dad had texted me saying he was already at the hospital and was being wheeled back for X-rays. I let out a shaky breath, glancing at the profile of the man driving next to me. His knuckles were white on the steering wheel, his eyes locked on the treacherous road. The thick ice of the past eleven days began to melt, just a little. Maybe I was being too hard on him. Maybe we could talk this through. Maybe we could fix this. But at the third major intersection, while we were waiting at a red light, Derek’s phone buzzed in the cup holder. He habitually swiped it open. In an instant, his entire demeanor changed. His face went pale, his breath catching in his throat. “Lynn just posted on her Instagram story. Her neighborhood lost power. She’s home alone, and she’s terrified of the dark.” Before the words had even fully registered in my mind, Derek unbuckled his seatbelt. He reached across the console, opened my passenger door, and gently but firmly nudged me out into the pouring rain. The freezing wind and water hit me instantly, soaking through my thin jacket and making me shudder violently. Before I could even speak, he grabbed the emergency umbrella from the side pocket and shoved it into my hands. “The hospital is only about a mile from here, Hannah! You can just walk up the avenue, it’ll take you ten minutes!” “Lynn is having a panic attack. I don’t know what’s happening over there—I have to go check on her.” I stood on the flooded sidewalk, holding the cheap black umbrella, watching his red taillights make a sharp, illegal U-turn and disappear into the curtain of grey rain. The streetlights were watery halos in the dark. I didn’t have the luxury of sitting down to cry. I braced myself against the wind and started walking. A mile. A distance that usually took fifteen minutes of casual strolling took me nearly forty minutes in the freezing downpour. By the time I pushed through the heavy glass doors of the emergency room, my shoes were squelching and water was dripping from my hair. When my dad saw me walk into the observation room, soaked to the bone, his eyes turned red with anger and pity. He already had a thick white cast on his leg. “What happened to you? Why didn’t Derek drive you? If I knew you’d have to walk through a storm like this, I never would have called you!” I forced a weak smile and lied, telling him Derek had been called into an urgent emergency at work. The next morning, around ten o’clock, Derek and Lynn walked into the hospital room together. They were carrying a basket of fresh fruit and a box of organic milk. They stood side-by-side at the foot of my dad’s bed, looking like a perfectly matched couple. My dad leaned back against his pillows, his gaze shifting coldly between the two of them. His expression was grim, but for my sake, he kept his mouth shut. Lynn set the fruit basket on the bedside table and chatted with my dad for a few polite minutes, her voice dripping with sweet concern. Then, she casually caught my eye and motioned toward the hallway. “Hannah, come outside with me for a second. Let’s get some fresh air.” I followed her out without a word. “Hannah, please don’t be mad at Derek,” Lynn said the moment the heavy door swung shut. She reached out and grabbed my arm, shaking it gently in that cute, pleading way she always did when she wanted her way. “Last night was seriously so terrifying. The transformer blew, and you know how I’ve been deathly afraid of the dark since we were kids…” I didn’t say anything. I just stared at her hand on my sleeve. Derek stepped out of the room behind us, jumping to her defense. “I literally just drove over, flipped the main breaker for her, and made sure she was okay. It took ten minutes, Hannah.” I still didn’t speak. The patience on Derek’s face began to evaporate, replaced by a defensive, hard annoyance. He took a step closer, lowering his voice so the nurses wouldn’t hear. “Hannah, what more do you want from me? Your dad is fine, and I’m here now, aren’t I? Lynn actually had an emergency last night!” I finally raised my eyes, looking at his chest. “The shirt you’re wearing,” I said quietly. “It’s the exact same one you wore when we left the apartment last night.” “So tell me, Derek. Where exactly did you sleep last night?” The words hung in the sterile hospital corridor like a sudden drop in temperature. The easy, confident expressions on both of their faces froze instantly. “Hannah, let me explain,” Lynn stammered, her voice losing its airy, playful quality. “Derek was going to leave, but the storm got so bad, and the roads were flooded…” She reached for my hands again, trying to offer a sweet, reassuring smile. “We’re best friends, Hannah. We’re family. You can’t honestly think we would…” I pulled my hands back, placing them firmly in my pockets. “You don’t need to explain anything to me, Lynn. I didn’t misunderstand a thing. I was just asking a question.” “I can handle my dad’s discharge on my own. You two can go.” My sudden, quiet withdrawal seemed to finally register with them. Realizing they had crossed a line, they began a desperate, coordinated campaign to win back my favor. Derek started showing up at the hospital every evening after work, sitting quietly by my dad’s bed, trying to help. Lynn bombarded my phone with deliveries—craft milkshakes, artisan cupcakes, gluten-free pastries—along with endless, rambling text messages about how much she valued our lifelong friendship. The weekend after my dad was discharged, they practically forced me to go to the downtown shopping district with them, claiming I needed to “get out of the house.” Lynn linked her arm through my left, and Derek walked on my right. They kept trying to direct the conversation toward me, but their eyes kept drifting past me, locking onto each other over my head. Every time I slowed my pace, falling a few steps behind, they didn’t even notice. They kept walking, lost in their own shared rhythm, until they realized I wasn’t next to them and turned around with apologetic, performative smiles. I felt like a heavy piece of luggage they were both dragging along—unwanted, but too valuable to leave behind. We walked into the central atrium of the mall, where a massive crowd had gathered. In the center was a neon-pink stage. A host with a wireless microphone was shouting enthusiastically into the speakers. “Couples Kissing Contest! The couple who holds on the longest wins the limited-edition, giant Capybara plush pillow! Participation prizes for everyone!” Lynn’s eyes lit up like a child on Christmas morning. She turned to me, then to Derek. “Oh my god, that Capybara! Hannah, didn’t you say last week that you wanted a huge plush pillow for your bed? Derek and I will enter and win it for you!” Derek didn’t even look at me for confirmation. He grabbed Lynn’s wrist and pulled her toward the stage. “Come on,” he said, matching her excitement. “Let’s go win this for Hannah.” Neither of them asked what I thought. And the truth was, I had never once mentioned wanting a Capybara pillow. It was Lynn who had been obsessing over them on TikTok for months. The buzzer sounded. I stood at the very front of the barricade, watching my husband and my best friend lock lips on stage. They did it under the guise of doing me a favor, and they did it with an intensity that left nothing to the imagination. In front of hundreds of cheering strangers, they held on. One minute. Five minutes. Ten minutes. Forty-three minutes later, they were the only couple left on stage. The host blew the final whistle, declaring them the undisputed champions. When Derek and Lynn finally pulled apart, their lips were swollen and flushed. Lynn hugged the giant, four-foot plush toy to her chest, her face glowing with triumph. Derek stood beside her, pulling out his phone, squatting down to get the perfect low-angle shots of her posing with her prize. I stood in the middle of the roaring crowd, my hands and feet completely numb. I knew exactly how I looked to everyone else. The pathetic, invisible third wheel. The most foolish woman in the room. Once he was done taking photos, Derek finally walked over to me, taking the giant stuffed animal from Lynn and holding it out to me. “Here you go, babe. It’s yours!” Lynn jogged over, her voice dripping with sweet, breathless satisfaction. “We did it just for you, Hannah! Go on, hug it! It’s so soft.” I stared at the brown, plush Capybara. It had tiny, blank black eyes and a stupid, vacant expression. I reached out and touched its soft fabric. It was still warm. Warm from the heat of their bodies as they pressed against each other on stage. I pulled my hand back and looked at the two of them. There was no anger in my chest. No tears. Just a vast, hollow emptiness. “Thank you.” “But Derek, I want a divorce.”
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