The Last Supper at Mercado

You ordered the papaya, scooping out its black seeds with clinical precision. The fruit sat innocent on your plate—yellow-orange flesh that somehow reminded me of us: exotic on the surface, rotting from the inside.

"I never meant to hurt you," you said, not looking up from your breakfast.

I traced the rim of my coffee cup. "You didn't mean anything. That's the problem."

Your orange linen dress billowed in the morning breeze from the open window. You looked like something from a painting—golden, luminous, utterly false. Three years of Sunday breakfasts at Mercado, and I was just now realizing you'd been performing love the way you performed everything: with breathtaking technique and zero soul.

You'd been so clever about it. That fox-like quality I'd once found charming—the way you could navigate any social situation, how you always knew what to say—had revealed itself as something else entirely. You'd been testing me. Collecting data. When I lost my job last month, you didn't ask how I was feeling. You asked about my savings.

"Don't be bull-headed," you said now, using the phrase you knew would make me flinch. "I'm trying to have an adult conversation."

"An adult conversation about why you've been slowly pulling away for six months? Or about why your phone is always face-down now?"

The papaya forgotten, you finally looked at me. And there it was—that flicker of calculation. You were already gone, already rehearsing the speech you'd give your friends about how we'd simply grown apart. How I was too intense, too demanding, too something.

Outside, a car backfired. A child laughed. The world continued with or without us.

"I met someone," you said.

The words hit like something physical. Not the fact—that I'd suspected—but the relief in your voice. The release.

"His name is Marcus. He works in private equity."

Of course he did.

"He doesn't know about us yet," you added, and something broke in my chest.

I stood up. Left money for both breakfasts. At the door, I turned back. You'd already picked up your phone, that orange dress glowing in the shaft of morning light, papaya seeds scattered across your plate like abandoned prayers.

Some hunters don't use weapons. They just wait for you to expose your throat.