The Last Supper

Elena stood at the counter, chopping spinach with rhythmic violence. The kitchen was quiet except for the knife hitting the cutting board — thock, thock, thock. Marcus sat at the table, his face illuminated by the glow of his iPhone, scrolling through emails even though it was 8:30 on a Friday.

"The cable guy's coming tomorrow," Marcus said without looking up. "Between nine and one."

Elena kept chopping. "You told me Tuesday."

"Tuesday got rescheduled."

"Everything gets rescheduled," she said quietly.

She turned to the fruit bowl and grabbed an orange, peeling it aggressively. The citrus spray hit her eyes, stinging. She blinked rapidly. Marcus still hadn't looked up from his phone. They'd been here before — this precipice, this moment when the distance between them felt less like a gap and more like an abyss.

"My mother called," he said. "She's worried about us."

Elena's laugh came out bitter. "She should be. We haven't had sex in three months. We haven't talked about anything real in longer."

Marcus's thumb stopped scrolling. For the first time, he looked at her — really looked at her. His eyes were tired. "I know."

The silence stretched, heavy and suffocating. Outside, the neighborhood kids played baseball, the crack of the bat echoing through the open window. Such a normal sound, for such a profoundly broken moment.

"Remember when we used to play?" Elena asked. "In college? That terrible coed league?"

A small smile touched Marcus's mouth. "You hit that home run and broke the windshield of the chancellor's car."

"We ran so fast," she said. "I kept thinking: this is what it means to be alive. Your hand in mine, running from something we'd done together."

"We should run again," Marcus said.

"To where?"

He set down the iPhone, finally. "From here. To somewhere else. Or — maybe toward each other instead?"

Elena looked at him, at the man she'd loved for seven years, the stranger across the dinner table. She'd been preparing to leave. She had a bag packed in the closet, another life waiting in the wings. But his hand was resting on the table, palm up, an invitation she hadn't expected.

The spinach wilted in the pan, forgotten. The orange peel lay curled on the counter like a question mark. In the distance, the baseball game continued —孩子们 laughing, someone calling out a play, the ordinary, beautiful noise of being alive.

"Running toward sounds harder," Elena said.

"It usually is."

She didn't take his hand. Not yet. But she sat down at the table across from him. "Okay. We can start there."