What We Couldn't Swallow

The last time I saw Marcus, we were standing in his kitchen at 2 AM, both of us too drunk for this conversation but too sober to stop it. He was chopping spinach for some ridiculous omelette he'd decided to make, the knife rhythmically cutting through the leaves like he was trying to dissect something between us.

"You're like a sphinx," I said, leaning against the counter. "Always with these riddles, never a straight answer."

He didn't look up. "You want answers? Fine. I've been swimming in debt since January. The restaurant's been dead since they opened that new place downtown."

The orange glow of the stove clock illuminated the hollows under his eyes. I'd been blaming myself for months—thinking I'd become too demanding, too present, too something. Meanwhile, he'd been drowning alone.

"Why didn't you tell me?" The question came out smaller than I intended.

He finally looked up, and the exhaustion in his eyes knocked the wind out of me. "Because you would've tried to fix it. You would've sold your car, dipped into your savings, turned my problem into our project. And I needed it to be mine."

The spinach sizzled in the pan. I watched the steam rise between us, thick and suffocating.

"So you just shut me out instead?"

"I was protecting your dignity," he said quietly. "And mine."

I laughed, not because it was funny but because it was absurd. "You think there's dignity in this? In us standing here at two in the morning, pretending we don't both know this is the last time?"

He didn't answer. He just slid the omelette onto a plate, the spinach still bright green despite everything. Some things, apparently, could still hold their color.

We ate standing up, not looking at each other, the silence so loud it rang in my ears. When I left, he didn't walk me to the door. Some goodbyes don't deserve announcements.

That was three months ago. Yesterday, I saw him across the street. He was with someone else—laughing, unburdened. He looked like a man who'd finally come up for air.

I kept walking. Some sphinxes never do explain their riddles. Some stories, you just have to let remain unfinished.