I spent all day cooking her favorite meal — roasted garlic chicken, creamy risotto, and those lava cakes she always begged for. Hours of effort, every detail perfect. But when she called, her voice was cold.
“Can you pick up pizza?”
I laughed, thinking she was joking.
“I already cooked,” I said.
She smirked through the phone. “I already threw it away.”
That was the moment everything inside me cracked.
I stood there in the diner’s cold storage room, my phone still in my hand, trying to process what I’d just heard. I didn’t know she’d been cheating for months. I didn’t know the woman I’d built my world around was already gone — long before she said it out loud.
That night, I drove home slow. The smell of garlic still lingered in the air, mixed with the cardboard scent of a Domino’s box on the counter. The dinner I made sat untouched — a symbol of everything I’d given and everything she threw away.
I didn’t yell. Didn’t cry. I just packed the food into containers because somehow, throwing it out myself felt like losing twice.
Two days later, I packed a small bag, left a note that said, “Gone for a while. Don’t wait up.” Then I drove — back to my hometown, Willowsend.
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