The Dinner We Didn't Eat

The spinach lay wilted on our plates, steam rising in pathetic little ghosts. David wouldn't meet my eyes. He'd been staring at his water glass for ten minutes, watching condensation weep down the sides like he couldn't bring himself to cry.

'You've been swimming in lies,' I said, my voice steady despite the hollow ache in my chest. 'How long, David? How many laps before you drowned?'

He finally looked up, and I saw it then—the same sly hunger I'd seen in the fox that used to raid our garden back in Ohio. The one that would steal whatever it wanted and vanish into the night, leaving only paw prints and ruined tomato plants as evidence.

'Six months,' he said. 'It wasn't supposed to—'

'It never is,' I cut him off. 'Remember when we went to that baseball game? Last summer? You bought me that overpriced beer and told me you wanted forever.'

His face crumbled. 'I did. I do.'

'No.' I stood up, knocking my chair back. 'You wanted what you couldn't have. Then you got it, and you still wanted more. That's not love, David. That's just—you're like a child who eats dessert first and ruins his appetite for anything real.'

The restaurant hummed around us—laughter, silverware against china, the mundane music of other people's intact lives. I thought about our first anniversary, when he'd cooked me dinner and burned everything but the spinach. How we'd eaten on the floor, drunk and happy, saying things we meant then.

Now I was swimming through the wreckage of those promises, and the water was deeper than I'd ever imagined.

'I'll stay at your brother's tonight,' I said, already reaching for my purse. 'In the morning, we can talk about what comes next. But I'm done eating meals with someone who's already feasting elsewhere.'

The fox had returned to our garden three times that summer. Each time, we'd patched the fence higher. But some things, I realized, don't stay out just because you build walls around them. Sometimes you invite them in yourself, and call them love.