The Last Supper at Gino's

The **bear** of a man sitting across from me—my soon-to-be ex-husband, David—picked at his wilting **spinach** salad with the delicacy of someone defusing a bomb. We'd chosen Gino's for our breakup meal because it was where we'd had our first date, back when the future had looked like a gleaming **pyramid** of possibility instead of the rubble it had become.

'I've been doing a lot of thinking,' David said, not meeting my eyes. 'About us. About everything.'

I watched his left hand, the one I used to hold, his **palm** pressed against the white tablecloth like he was grounding himself. Outside, rain streaked the windows like tears we'd both run out of.

'Thirty years,' I said. 'And you're doing your thinking now?'

He finally looked up, and I saw it—the thing he'd been hiding. Not another woman. Not a midlife crisis. Something else entirely.

'I sold the business, Sarah.'

The words hung between us, heavier than all the unsaid things of three decades. The company my father had built, the one I'd run since his death. David had been my financial advisor, my trusted second-in-command.

'Without telling me?'

'The buyers were... persistent.' His voice broke. 'And I owed people. Gambling debts, mostly. I thought I could win it back.'

I remembered him coming home late, claiming to be at the gym. **Swimming** laps, he'd said. The gym membership receipts I'd found last month made sense now—there was no gym membership. Just a casino two towns over.

'You sold my father's legacy to cover your losses?'

'The new owners—they're keeping the staff. They promised—'

'Get out.'

'Sarah, please—'

'Get the fuck out, David.'

He left without finishing his spinach. I sat alone in the booth, surrounded by couples laughing, touching, planning futures they'd never keep. The waiter came by, offered a dessert menu. I ordered the largest chocolate cake they had, something sweet to cut through the bitterness.

Some stories don't have happy endings. Some endings don't have stories worth telling. This one just had a bill I'd be paying for the rest of my life.