Dishes clatter, boats rocking waves of silence. Jerry cradles his head in his palm, watching the bartender from the corner of the room. He’s nonchalant to balance out the redness of my eyes. I watch the painting of dancing chili peppers, becoming small within myself, a Russian doll of flattened feelings. “And it was just the one time?” I ask. The question comes out quiet, needy, and desperate in a way I promised myself I’d never be to a man. I need him to tell me it was one time, one night, one fuck. As if that makes it easier. I don’t think about her hands on his body, her acrylic nails tracing the scar on his elbow.

“Just the one time.” He nods, still watching the bartender slip drinks to a group of chattering college girls. A bouncy blonde, still with youth and a fully-intact heart, throws her hair back as she laughs.

“And you feel bad about it?” I wager the consolation of his guilt. A belly ache feeling to ease the shaking of my hands.

“Yeah, of course.” His eyes flick to mine, just for a moment, and we are together again. A cascade of our fragmented memories, of late-night walks and phone calls where he begs me to forget my exams and come out to meet him, his breath on my hair in the backseat of his Ford Taurus, a whispered promise that he won’t be like the other boys I’d gone out with, all those assholes who can’t recognize how lucky they were. But then, he goes back to his own side of the table.

“Who was it?” I ask, my tone picking up frequency.

He winces. “Jesus, Julie, does it matter?” His hands drop lightly onto the table, but it’s enough to course the tears from the edge of my eyes. “Shit, don’t cry,” he said. “I said I was sorry.” But he’s already switched channels. He’s seen this one before. No time for reruns. The waitress comes over with our appetizers. Crusted mozzarella sticks and over-soaked chicken wings. Regular, shitty dive-bar food. She clocks my tears and she if I’m okay.

“I’m fine.” I mumble. “I just always cry at restaurants.” The blame shifts to me, and for a moment, the power, too. She leaves me to my salt-stained cheeks and overcooked cheese sticks, to the husband who would rather watch the bar than reckon with my disappointment.

“It won’t happen again.”

“That’s what you said last time.”

“And it didn’t.” He said, pulling in the tray of chicken wings. “At least, not with her.” The mention of her lingers like smoke, billowing and clogging up the air ducts.

“You were just so apologetic last time.” There had been the fuzzy warm feeling of penance, the way he threw his arms around my waist, like he couldn’t bear to lose me. It was enough to make a woman reconsider.

“I am apologetic, Julie.”

“But you’re cold. You can barely look at me.”

“I’m ashamed!”

“You’re angry.” My own blood boils and the air shifts. He winds up to flip this back on me.

“I mean, it’s just…this all could have been avoided. I wouldn’t have gone with the other girls if you would just—”

“No, fuck this.” I slam my fist on the table. The chatter in the corner halts and the college girls look at me. They see a woman twice their age crying at a tiny restaurant table—typical—and go back to their drinks. “You want to blame me because I won’t sleep with you, but why would I want to sleep with you? How could I possibly trust you again?” He’s knuckle-deep in buffalo wings, teeth smacking in that way that might have struck me as foolishly endearing ten years ago. Now I want nothing more than to overturn the tray of sauce into his face.

“It’s reasonable for me to feel…jaded.” He whispers the word, but it hits like a dagger so firm into my gut that it forces me to roll my eyes. Poor you, I want to hiss. Poor little baby who has to fuck the new-hires to feel some kind of comfort. How original.

Of course, I’d been more sympathetic the last time, and the time before that, and the time before. I did everything expected of a dutiful, desperate wife. My closet full of overpriced lingerie proved it. I siphoned off the gas tank of caring, and now that engine will no longer start. Instead, I wind my rage like a ball of thread, to unravel later at my convenience, in clumps of half-digested cheese vomited into the restaurant toilet. You make me so sick that I’m going to vomit.

“It’s reasonable for me to feel pissed.” I say, simply because it’s easier and more concise than the myriad of insults I want to hurl his direction. I remind myself that I want to be the fair one, even if he’s never really been fair to me. I cling to my scraps of understanding, reminding myself that I’ve never been the perfect wife, even though I’ve tried very hard.

“I know. I understand, Julie, really I do. I’d be pissed if you ran off with one of those bozos from your art workshop.” He says art workshop like his mouth is full of limes. There’s another argument there—how he thinks I’m too old to get back into my hobbies—but he keeps jabbing before I can process the first wound. “But I want you to understand me, too. Do you know how lonely it makes me feel when you would rather sleep on the couch than with me?” He raises his hands to plead with me, bits of chicken skin still stuck to his fingers.

“Do you know how lonely I feel?” I ask, voice breaking. The question is genuine, but he thinks it’s a deflection.

“How come you never talk straight? You’re so busy talking about my flaws that you never even mention yours.”

“And what, Jerry, are my flaws?”

The camera pans toward him, the spotlight hot on his clean-shaved face, and the stage is all his. He takes a bite of chicken wing, chews, and shrugs. “I guess, you know, that you won’t sleep with me.” I drop my hand onto the table again, more from exhaustion than anger, and I spill my glass of lukewarm sink water all over the table. It soaks the napkins and drips onto his buffalo-stained khakis. The waitress locks eyes with me, but she doesn’t dare to come over. Jerry and I clean up with stacks of soaked napkins and my wool sweatshirt. Together, we stack the napkins onto the plate of mozzarella sticks, left untouched.

“God, I can’t take you anywhere,” he says with a laugh. I look up to see the co-eds giggling, not at us, but in their own unbothered world, and I laugh, too. Jerry takes my hand.

“We can be okay, you know. I have my issues, but I want to put in the work for you.” He smiles half-crooked, boyish, his hair frazzled. I see us running across campus to steal a kiss below the stone lions, the moon as high as our spirits. His voice is an octave higher when he says, “I’m not like the other guys you go around with.” It was nice then, back when I still believed him.

“You said that last time.” The image evaporates into this, and we are old.

“And I meant it last time,” he said, wiping his lips with a wet napkin. “I just got all confused.”

I shake my head. I leave him to the waterfall table, chicken bones, and the dancing chili peppers. He calls my name, but I don’t answer. Switching again, he hollers to the waitress for the check. On the way out, I catch the eyes of the college girls, who turn to watch me make my exit. They look up at me and smile.