Just Dinner
Just Dinner
By the time evening began to crawl in, the sky outside the windows had turned a dull steel color, heavy with rain that never quite fell. The apartment smelled faintly of rosemary and butter.
Adelyn was in the kitchen. He hadn’t even noticed her return.
“Hey,” she said softly, without turning. “You’re awake.”
He froze at the doorway. She looked serene, humming under her breath, her hands moving with careful precision. A tablecloth he’d never seen before was spread out, white with a delicate gold trim. Candles — two of them — flickered at the center.
“What’s all this?” Ethan asked.
“A dinner,” she said. Her tone was light, but her eyes, when she turned to face him, held something unreadable. “You’ve been… distant lately. I thought you could use a night that feels normal.”
Normal. The word sounded foreign.
He looked at the table. Roast chicken. Mashed potatoes. A bottle of wine with two glasses already poured. Everything too perfect. Too intentional.
“You didn’t have to—” he started.
“I wanted to.” She smiled, and it was the kind of smile that didn’t quite reach her eyes. “You’ve had a rough few weeks, Ethan. I know how much you’ve been hurting. I thought maybe… this would help.”
He felt an odd mix of guilt and unease stir inside him. The food smelled incredible, the table warm and inviting, yet all he could think of was the way her hand trembled slightly as she adjusted the napkin beside his plate — like someone trying too hard to appear calm.
He sat down slowly.
Adelyn poured him more wine.
“You shouldn’t—”
“It’s just one glass,” she said. “It’ll calm your nerves.”
He stared at the dark liquid for a moment. Something in his stomach tightened.
“Adelyn,” he said quietly. “We need to talk.”
Her expression didn’t change. “About what?”
He hesitated. The words sat like stones in his mouth.
He had rehearsed this in his mind a dozen times — how to end things gently, how to be clear without cruelty. But now, sitting across from her, he couldn’t find his voice.
“About… us.”
She tilted her head, feigning confusion. “What about us?”
The room seemed too quiet. He could hear the faint hum of the refrigerator, the ticking of the wall clock.
“I think we’ve made things complicated,” he said finally. “You and I — it was never supposed to—”
“Never supposed to what?” she interrupted softly.
He swallowed. “I just think we’re not good for each other. You deserve—”
“Someone else?” she said, a hint of amusement curling her lips.
He froze.
“I heard you last night,” she said. “Talking to Jonathan.”
Ethan’s heart stopped for a moment.
She smiled faintly, almost kindly. “You said you’d end things with me. That you’d be free.”
“Adelyn, I—”
Her eyes shimmered in the candlelight. “Do you love him, Ethan?”
He stared at her. “This isn’t—”
“Do you?” she asked again, quieter this time.
He didn’t answer.
Her smile faltered, then returned, softer now, almost sad. “I made dinner for you,” she whispered. “Because I wanted to remind you that I love you. That I’ve always been here. Even when he wasn’t.”
He opened his mouth to respond, but she lifted her glass. “To love,” she said.
He raised his reluctantly. “To closure.”
The glasses clinked.
He took a sip — a small one. The wine was rich, heavy, slightly metallic. It coated his tongue, warm and deep.
Adelyn watched him. “You okay?”
He nodded, though the room already felt heavier. His vision swam slightly when he looked up at her.
“You know,” she said, her voice distant now, “you’ve been drinking a lot lately. Sometimes you don’t even remember what you say. What you do.”
“What?”
“You told me that night,” she continued softly, “that you loved me. That you couldn’t live without me.”
He frowned. “That never happened.”
She smiled sadly. “Of course it did.”
“I’d remember that.”
“You don’t remember a lot of things lately,” she whispered.
He blinked. The room shifted, light bending slightly. His hand felt numb around the stem of the glass.
“What… did you…” His voice slurred.
Adelyn stood, leaning close enough that her perfume — lavender and smoke — filled his lungs. “You need to rest,” she murmured.
He tried to stand, but his knees buckled. The chair scraped loudly against the floor. His heartbeat thundered in his ears.
“What… did you… do…”
Her face blurred. She crouched down beside him as he collapsed sideways, catching his head before it hit the ground.
“I told you,” she whispered near his ear, her tone calm, almost affectionate. “You’ve been so tired lately. You need sleep.”
His vision narrowed — the candlelight stretching into thin streaks, her voice echoing and fading like something underwater.
He tried to reach for her arm, but his body wouldn’t obey.
“Sleep, Ethan,” she said again, brushing a hand through his hair.
And then everything went dark.
In the silence that followed, only the faint ticking of the wall clock filled the room.
Adelyn stood slowly, adjusting the cuffs of her blouse. Her reflection in the window was serene. The faintest smile lingered on her lips.
She reached for his empty glass, turned it once in her hand, then placed it neatly beside her own.
The wine bottle — half-empty — gleamed faintly in the candlelight.
Outside, thunder rumbled.
And from the floor, Ethan’s breathing slowed to a soft, uneven rhythm.
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Morning came with no mercy.
Light pressed against the edges of Ethan’s eyelids, a pale, sterile glow that sliced through the haze in his head. His tongue felt thick, his throat dry, and when he tried to lift his hand to rub his face, it trembled. The ceiling above him looked unfamiliar — slightly off-white, a faint water stain in the corner. He blinked several times before realizing that it was, in fact, his own ceiling.
He sat up slowly. Every muscle resisted, and the world tilted slightly as if gravity had forgotten how to behave. His shirt clung to his skin with cold sweat. The clock on the bedside table blinked 11:37 AM.
He couldn’t remember when he’d gone to bed.
He remembered… dinner. The table. Adelyn’s voice — low and soothing. Something about wine. The glass catching light.
Then nothing.
He pressed his temples hard, trying to squeeze memory out of the fog.
Had he been drinking? He didn’t think so — at least, not much. But his head felt like it had been soaked in static.
When he staggered into the bathroom, the mirror offered him a stranger’s face — pale, eyes sunken, lips slightly swollen as if from biting them in his sleep. He stood there, watching his own reflection, the silence broken only by the faint hum of the refrigerator from the next room.
And then — faintly — he remembered saying something.
A call.
Jonathan.
He gripped the sink. “Shit,” he whispered.
Had that been last night or… earlier? His phone was lying on the kitchen counter when he found it, the screen smeared with fingerprints, battery at three percent. He opened his call log — yes. There it was.
Jonathan. 10:46 PM. Duration: 18 minutes.
He felt his chest tighten.
He remembered saying he’d end things with Adelyn once and for all.
Only, he hadn’t.
She must have known.
A shiver passed through him. The apartment was cold, but not that cold.
Ethan spent the next few hours moving through the day like a man underwater. His mind wouldn’t quiet. Each time he tried to work, his thoughts looped back to fragments of the previous night.
The clink of the wine glass.
Her voice saying, “You need someone in your corner.”
The way her hand lingered on his wrist a second too long.
He told himself he was imagining things — stress, grief, the pressure of everything collapsing around him. He’d been drinking too much lately, sleeping too little. Memory lapses weren’t uncommon in people under extreme emotional distress. He’d read that somewhere.
And yet, when he stood in front of the wine cabinet later that afternoon, something about it unsettled him. Two bottles missing. He didn’t remember opening the second one.
He called Jonathan again.
No answer.
He texted instead:
Can we meet tomorrow? Need to talk. Things got weird.
He deleted it before sending. He didn’t want to sound paranoid.
But what did happen last night once they started having dinner?