3. Lena
LENA
I set the table at seven.
Two plates. Two napkins folded beside them.
Two forks, two knives. A bowl of pasta in the center with steam still rising off it.
I'd made the sauce he used to ask for when we were first married, slow-cooked tomatoes with garlic and basil, the smell filling the whole house.
It was the kind of meal that took time, the kind you made when you wanted someone to stay.
The chair I'd set for him was empty.
I checked my phone. Seven-fifteen. He'd said he would be home by seven. I sat down and looked at the food getting cold. The light from the overhead fixture threw shadows across the table, making the second place setting look like a photograph of something that used to happen here.
Seven-thirty came and went.
I didn't touch my plate. I just sat there, turning my water glass in slow circles on the table, watching the condensation leave rings on the wood.
The pasta congealed. The sauce darkened at the edges where it was cooling too fast. The steam stopped.
The basil I'd torn fresh and scattered over the top started to wilt.
Outside, a car passed. Not his.
I smoothed the napkin beside my plate. Straightened my fork even though it didn't need straightening. Looked at my phone again.
Seven-fifty.
I told myself I'd give him ten more minutes. Then I'd eat alone and put his portion away and not say anything about it tomorrow because what was the point. We'd done this dance so many times I could choreograph it in my sleep.
When the front door finally opened at eight-ten, I straightened in my chair. My pulse kicked up before I could stop it, this stupid hopeful reflex that maybe this time would be different.
Theo came into the kitchen with his phone pressed to his ear, his jacket slung over one arm and his keys still in his other hand.
He looked tired, the lines around his eyes deeper than they used to be, his hair falling forward like he'd been running his hands through it all day.
His shirt was wrinkled at the elbows. His tie was loosened but not off.
He saw me at the table and lifted one finger. One minute.
I waited.
He paced to the counter, nodding at whatever the person on the other end was saying, his eyes scanning the room without really seeing it.
He set his jacket down on one of the barstools.
He put his keys in the bowl by the sink.
He opened the fridge, grabbed a bottle of water, twisted the cap off and took a drink without breaking stride in whatever conversation he was having.
Still on the phone.
I looked at the plate across from me, untouched. The napkin still folded in the exact triangle I'd pressed it into. The fork exactly where I'd set it an hour ago.
"Yeah, no, I agree," Theo said into the phone. His voice had that clipped efficiency it got when he was handling business. "We'll lock that in tomorrow. Send me the revised numbers tonight and I'll take a look."
He ended the call and finally turned to me. "Sorry. That was Marcus."
"I made dinner," I said.
He glanced at the table. At the two plates, the pasta, the food that had been sitting there long enough to go cold. He smiled, but it didn't reach his eyes. "That's great, Lena. Really. I just—" He gestured vaguely with the phone still in his hand. "It's been a day."
He didn't sit down.
Instead he stayed by the counter, leaning against it, unscrewing the water bottle and taking a long drink. He looked at me over the rim of it, and I could see him already half somewhere else. Thinking about the call. About Marcus. About whatever numbers he was supposed to review tonight.
His tie was crooked. I noticed that from across the room. The knot had slipped to one side and nobody had told him. Twelve years ago I would have walked over and fixed it without thinking, and he would have caught my hand and kissed me before I could pull away.
Now I just sat there and watched him drink his water.
"Theo," I said.
"Hmm?"
"Can we eat together? Just—just sit down for twenty minutes."
He set the water bottle down on the counter and ran a hand through his hair. "Yeah. Of course. I just need to answer a couple emails first, and then?—"
"Now," I said. My voice came out sharper than I meant it to. I softened it, tried to sound like I was asking instead of begging. "Please. I want to talk to you."
He looked at me. Really looked at me, for the first time since he'd walked in. And for a second I thought he might actually hear me. Might put the phone down, might pull out the chair and sit across from me, might ask what was wrong and wait for an answer.
But his phone buzzed in his hand.
He glanced down at the screen. His jaw tightened. He looked back up at me, and I could see him doing the math. Me or the phone. Dinner or work.
"What did you want to talk about?" he asked.
Still standing.
I felt something twist in my chest, sharp and bitter. "I was thinking we could go to the old diner," I said. "The one we used to go to after shifts. Remember? The one with the cracked booths and the terrible coffee."
He smiled, and this time it was real, just for a second. Surprised and fond. "God, that place. I haven't thought about it in years."
"I have," I said. "I was thinking maybe we could go this weekend. Just the two of us. No work, no phones. Like we used to."
The smile faded. He glanced at his phone again, then back at me. "This weekend's tough, Lena. I've got the Seattle meetings on Friday, and then I'm filming both segments back-to-back on Sunday, and there's the whole Denver launch coming up?—"
"So not this weekend," I said. "Next weekend, then."
"Maybe," he said. He said it the way people say maybe when they mean no but don't want to fight about it. "I'll have to check the schedule. There's a lot moving right now, and I just—I can't commit to anything until I know what Marcus needs from me."
I stared at him.
Maybe. Not yes. Not no. Just maybe, with his work as the reason, the same way it was always the reason.
"Right," I said.
His phone buzzed again. This time when he looked at it his whole expression changed. He swiped the screen and his body went alert, the way it did when something important was happening in his world. The world I wasn't part of.
"Hang on," he said. "I need to take this."
He wasn't talking to me anymore. He was talking to the phone, his finger already moving to answer a video call. The screen lit up, and I saw her before I heard her.
Bianca.
She was in her office, the city skyline behind her through the tall windows, the lights blurred into gold. Her desk was neat and organized, everything in its place. She looked perfect. She always looked perfect.
"Theo," she said, and her voice came through the speaker warm and smooth. "Do you have a minute? I need to go over the segment notes before tomorrow's shoot."
Theo moved to the side, angling the phone away from me, away from the table with the cold pasta and the two plates I'd set out. "Yeah," he said. "What do you need?"
"The producer wants to shift the Tokyo shoot to November," Bianca said.
She leaned forward slightly. "But that conflicts with the book launch, so I need you to make a call tonight on which one we're prioritizing.
And we need to go over your talking points for the investor meeting on Friday.
Can you get on a call with me in an hour? "
Theo nodded. "Yeah. I'll call you at nine-thirty."
"Perfect," Bianca said. She smiled at him through the screen, and it was the kind of smile that said she knew he'd say yes before she even asked. "I'll send you the notes now so you can review them first."
"Got it," Theo said.
The call ended. He slipped the phone into his pocket and looked at me like he'd just remembered I was sitting there.
"I have to go," he said. "I'm sorry, Lena. I'll grab something later."
He picked up his jacket from the barstool. He didn't look at the food I'd made. He didn't ask if I was okay. He just walked past me toward the hallway, already thinking about Bianca's call, about the Tokyo shoot and the book launch and Friday's meeting.
"Theo," I said.
He stopped in the doorway and turned back. Waited.
I wanted to say something. I wanted to ask him why he never sat down with me anymore.
Why Bianca got an hour of his night tonight and I got five minutes of him standing by the counter.
Why I was setting two plates and cooking the sauce he used to love and waiting here like some pathetic ghost haunting a life we didn't even have anymore.
But I didn't say any of it.
"Nothing," I said. "Never mind."
He hesitated for just a second, like he knew there was something wrong but didn't know how to ask. Then his phone buzzed again in his pocket, and whatever question might have been forming disappeared.
"I'll try to be home earlier tomorrow," he said.
Then he left.
I sat there, staring at the doorway where he'd been.
The house was quiet again. Just me and the cooling pasta and the two places I'd set out like this time would be different, like he'd actually sit down with me and we'd find our way back to being Lena and Theo instead of the celebrity chef and the woman waiting at home.
I stood up.
My hands shook a little as I picked up his plate.
The pasta had gone waxy and pale, clinging together in clumps, the sauce filmed over and dull.
I carried it to the counter and scraped it into the trash, watching it slide off in one congealed mass.
The fork went into the dishwasher. The napkin back in the drawer with the others.
The knife rinsed under hot water and set in the drying rack.
I wiped down his place at the table with a dishcloth, erasing the water ring his glass would have left if he'd ever sat down to use it. I put the cloth back. Pushed his chair in so it was tucked neatly under the table the way it always was, the way it stayed because nobody ever pulled it out.
When I was done, there was only my plate left. My napkin, still folded. My fork and knife, exactly where I'd set them ninety minutes ago, untouched.
The pasta in the serving bowl had gone cold and sticky. I covered it with foil and put it in the fridge. Maybe I'd eat it tomorrow. Maybe I wouldn't.
I looked down at my hand and realized I was turning my wedding ring, twisting it around and around my finger without thinking about it.
The gold was warm against my skin. Theo had put it there twelve years ago, in front of everyone we knew, and promised me something I couldn't even remember anymore.
I stopped twisting it. Pulled my hand away and pressed both palms flat on the table. Stood there for a long moment, trying to get a grip on whatever was unraveling inside me.
Then I sat down.
I looked at the chair across from me. At the space where he should have been, where he used to be back when we worked side by side at the family restaurant and split tips and went to that terrible diner afterward because it was the only place still open.
Before the first restaurant. Before the show.
Before Marcus and the investor meetings and Bianca calling at night to ask for his time and getting it without even trying.
He'd said maybe to the diner. Maybe, with his work as the reason. And he'd said yes to Bianca in half a second. An hour of his night handed over before she even finished asking.
God, what was I even doing?
Sitting here like everything was fine. Like this was normal. Like I hadn't just spent ninety minutes waiting for him to come home and he'd chosen a water bottle and a phone call instead.
I pushed my chair back and stood. I wasn't hungry anymore. The thought of eating alone at this table made my throat tight.
I grabbed my bag from the hook by the door. My keys from the bowl where Theo's sat. My coat even though I didn't need it.
I turned off the kitchen light. The table disappeared into shadow, the single place setting I hadn't cleared swallowed by the dark.
I left the house and locked the door behind me.
The family restaurant was only fifteen minutes away, back in the neighborhood where I grew up, where Theo and I used to work side by side before his name got big enough to buy the house I'd just left.
I could already picture Maggie in the kitchen, prepping vegetables for tomorrow's service, her hands moving through the familiar work the same way they always did.
She'd take one look at me and know something was wrong.
She'd ask me what happened.
I didn't know what I'd say. That I'd made dinner and he didn't come home? That I'd asked him to sit with me and he'd stayed standing? That Bianca had called and he'd said yes to her in the time it took him to say maybe to me?
All of it sounded small when I tried to put it into words. All of it sounded like I was making a fuss over nothing.
But it didn't feel like nothing.
I got in my car. The engine turned over and the dashboard lit up and I sat there for a second, my hands on the wheel, the ring on my finger catching the light.
Then I backed out of the driveway and drove.
Behind me, the house sat dark and quiet and empty. The table was still in there, waiting. The chair Theo never sat in. Tomorrow I'd do it all again—set two places, make dinner, wait for him to come home. And the day after that.
I knew it the same way you know a tooth is going bad—not because you can see it, but because it's been aching for so long you can't remember what it felt like before it started.