The Last Supper at Midnight

Elena stood in the harsh fluorescent light of her office kitchenette at 11:47 PM, staring at the sad contents of her vending machine. The spinach and feta wrap had expired three hours ago. A papaya sat on the counter — someone's abandoned lunch, now brown and softening, like a forgotten promise.

She'd taken a vitamin supplement that morning, the one her doctor prescribed after her emergency room visit for exhaustion. 'Stress,' he'd said, like it was a diagnosis instead of a lifestyle.

Her phone buzzed. Marcus.

'Coming to the court? We have a padel match in twenty.'

Padel. Of course. The new obsession he'd developed three months into their marriage, around the same time he developed a new obsession with his colleague, Sophie, whose Instagram was full of sunrise matches and post-game brunches.

'I'm still at work,' Elena typed. 'The merger.'

'The merger that was supposed to close yesterday?'

'It's complicated.' Everything was complicated now.

She filled a paper cup with water from the cooler, watched it ripple. In the reflection, she saw herself: thirty-four, successful partner at a firm that demanded her soul, wife to a man who demanded nothing because he'd already checked out. They hadn't had sex in six weeks. They hadn't had a conversation that wasn't about logistics, schedules, or whose turn it was to buy almond milk, in eight.

The water trembled in her hand.

She remembered their honeymoon in Costa Rica, how they'd laughed trying to open a coconut on the beach, how the ocean had felt like baptism. Now everything felt like drowning.

'Marcus.' She typed, then deleted.Typed again: 'Are you sleeping with Sophie?'

Her thumb hovered over send.

Instead, she poured the water into the sink, watched it spiral away. The papaya had started to smell. Tomorrow she would make an appointment with a divorce lawyer. Tomorrow she would tell her firm she was taking that sabbatical they kept offering. Tomorrow she would buy actual groceries — fresh spinach, whole foods, ingredients for a life she wanted to live.

Tonight, she would go home to their empty apartment and sleep alone in their bed, and for the first time in years, she wouldn't pretend it was enough.