Page 9 of In This Together

‘I guess it’s my turn again then, huh?’

Hannah tossed back the bedsheets and staggered to TJ’s nursery, feeling her way rather than opening her eyes. He was four months old and had been sleeping in a cot in his own room for two, very long, weeks. They had originally moved him from their bedroom and into Jackson’s room, but their eleven-year-old had tried to silence the baby on their second night together by throwing Buzz Lightyear at him as he wailed. So Jackson was now in the ‘big boy bedroom’ with their eldest, seventeen-year-old, Luke, who basically wanted to kill him all the time – a little to do with personal space and a lot to do with raging hormones, she figured.

Opening her eyes as far as was strictly necessary, Hannah picked TJ from his crib and held him to her chest.

‘Are you hungry, little fella? Shhh. Mommy’s here. There now. There now.’

The ear-piercing, satanic screaming relented to more of a painful, body-chugging sob as they made their way downstairs to the kitchen. Hannah warmed milk as she tried to convince TJ to be quiet for just a second, before he made himself sick again. Minutes later, she sat down on a kitchen chair and turned TJ onto his back in the crook of her arm. He latched onto the bottle teat and gulped down milk.

And there it was, the best sound in the world.Silence.

Her eyes opened wider as the sky outside became lighter. Her baby boy pinned her with his big teddy bear brown eyes that were a match with his dark skin, like his daddy’s. Her exhaustion was momentarily forgotten as she stroked his tight black curls and smiled at her boy.

‘You’re a pest. Do you know that? But I wouldn’t change you.’

TJ had been almost as unexpected as Luke. You might have thought she’d have learned her lesson when the star of the college football team knocked her up at twenty-one. Or again, six years later, after that same football star had recovered from his broken back enough to walk but never play again and gone through a phase of needing to have a second child to reaffirm he was a man. But no, despite having no space for a third child, no money to buy enough space for a third child and both parents working their butts off to make ends meet, Hannah had fallen pregnant for a third time – not quite an accident, since she and Rod were being sporadically lackadaisical when it came to protection, but far from planned.

TJ drained his bottle and gave her an almighty belch across her shoulder before she took him back to bed. It was now four forty-five and she would have to be up in a little over an hour to sort out the kids and commute into New York, where she had, barely two weeks ago, resumed work post-maternity leave as Andrea’s executive assistant at XM Music Group.

Rod had told her to find another job after her short maternity leave, to lessen her commute, but the fact was she couldn’t earn as much with her experience and skillset as she could in the city. Plus, she liked working in the city. It made her feel like there was more to her life than just being a mom.

Lately, she had felt increasingly like she did needmore. And, truth be told, she wasn’t sure she could ever leave Andrea to her own devices. Her friend liked to play tough but Hannah might be the only person in the world who knew that sometimes, being called a cold-hearted bitch by asshole men in the industry who were jealous of her success could actually pierce that harsh exterior Andrea showed to everyone else.

With her slippers scraping the carpet as she dragged her feet along the hallway, Hannah let her eyes begin to close again and felt her way to the bathroom. Half-asleep, she lowered herself to the toilet and…

Her butt sank into the toilet. Water sloshed up her cheeks and thighs. ‘Mother effer! How many times have I told you to leave the goddamn seat down, Rod?’

She wiped off her skin with a towel, which she threw into the wash basket as she attempted again to take a pee. She sank down, this time onto the toilet seat, and from nowhere, tears pricked her eyes. As water came out of her down below, it poured out of her up top too. She covered her face in her hands and sobbed. ‘I just want to sleep.’

Going back to work was already proving harder with child number three than it had been with either of the others.

* * *

Coffee. Just one strong coffee and she was sure she would feel human again.

Hannah dumped her purse in a drawer underneath her desk outside Andrea’s office, one of a pod of four connected desks where she sat with the other assistants.

A number of XM Music Group’s labels were housed in the Williamsburg high-rise across various floors of the building, but all of the executives had offices on the twelfth floor, ergo, so did their assistants.

Since Andrea’s promotion to CEO of Stellar label, she and Hannah had been relocated. Andrea now had a large plush office and Hannah had a shitty desk with no view to the outside world except via the glass walls of Andrea’s office. Still, it was the prestigious twelfth floor and no one was crying, or sticking putty in her hair or chocolate fingerprints on her blouse, or leaving up the toilet seat when she had repeatedly asked them not to. Plus, the twelfth floor came with a pay rise and she could certainly use one of those.

Hannah was shortly followed into the office by the three other assistants.

‘Ladies, I’m going to make coffee, anybody want one?’ she asked.

She received three resounding yeses and was handed three mugs, which she popped on a tray to take to the kitchenette. Sanctuary was near.

‘Oh, good, you’re here.’ She turned to see Andrea coming out of her office toward her and in a split second was able to read the look on her friend’s face that saidI’m in a take-no-prisoners kind of mood.

‘I need you to bring me the sales figures for every artist at the label. I also want to see a list of the best-performing artists for XM in Europe who aren’t currently being pushed in the US. Rock only. Preferably country rock. Oh, and I need you to find me a dress for the Presley John commemoration concert at Madison Square Gardens on Thursday. Something sophisticated with an air of sexy but nothing revealing. I’m happy to try on up to three outfits. I don’t have time for more. Can you bring my schedule for the rest of the week, too?’

Hannah raised one brow. ‘Morning, Hannah. How was your weekend? The family okay?’

Andrea smiled. ‘Morning, Hannah, and please and thank you.’ Then she turned and walked right back into her office in her perfectly tailored and expensive-looking pantsuit.

Hannah took a breath. Andrea had become very different to work for since they moved to XM Music Group two years ago, increasingly so since Hannah had returned from maternity leave. It was as if she had more to prove than ever before. She smiled less, snapped more, and often forgot that she and Hannah were friends first and colleagues second. Hannah wasn’t sure if she was simply noticing it more since returning to work, if her tiredness meant she was less willing to overlook it, or if the promotion to CEO had gone to Andrea’s head. Regardless, it certainly felt like something was more off than usual.

Hannah looked to the other assistants. ‘Anyone else want to get those coffees?’

---