The Last Supper
The spinach quiche sat congealing on the counter, a vivid reminder of how thoroughly Julia had misread the evening. Marcus had texted at 5:00 PM—*something came up*—which she knew meant he was at The **Pool** Hall with Jaime, the new associate with the sharp laugh and lingering gaze. Julia had seen them together at the holiday party, Jaime's hand resting on Marcus's forearm, his **palm** pressed deliberately against Marcus's shirt sleeve.
Now it was 8:30 PM, and the quiche was cold, and Julia was drinking her second glass of **orange** juice mixed with cheap vodka because the good wine was for celebrating, not for sitting alone in your kitchen confronting the uncomfortable truth that your marriage had been hollow for months, maybe years.
She took another drink, stared at the spinach scattered across the ruined crust—green flecks like garden debris, like something that had started fresh and wholesome and now just looked picked over.
Her phone buzzed. Marcus: *Running late. Start without me.*
Julia laughed, a harsh sound that bounced off the stainless steel refrigerator. Start without him. She'd been starting without him for a long time. The mortgage payments, the dinner parties, the carefully curated Instagram life of a couple who had figured it out. Meanwhile, Marcus had been figuring out something else entirely.
She scraped the quiche into the trash, watching it collapse. Then she poured herself a third drink, sat at the island, and waited. Not for Marcus. For herself—to gather the courage to finally say what she'd known since that night at the pool, when she'd seen the way he looked at someone else.
The front door opened at 10:17 PM. Julia didn't turn around.
"Julia?"
"I'm leaving, Marcus."
"What? Why?"
She finally turned. In the harsh kitchen light, his face crumpled like wet paper. He looked so tired. So sorry. So completely unprepared for the woman he'd underestimated.
"Because," she said, "I deserve to be someone's first choice. Not the person you settle for when the pool hall closes."