“This is nice. The two of us having dinner like old times.” She looked down the length of the unreasonably large dining table Sat directly across from her was a beautiful man in an emerald suit.

“Do you remember when you proposed? You weren’t nervous at all.” She chuckled, slicing through her steak. “And I had absolutely no idea! We were supposed to be seeing a movie downtown that night but I rolled my ankle a block away from the theatre” grinning, she didn’t seem to mind the juice dripping from the bite of rare beef, onto her form fitting white dress. “One weekend off in a month and of course I roll my ankle! But you were great. My sidewalk savior” Her smile grew bigger,and she took a drink of her malbec “you got down on your knee, looked me deep in my eyes and said-“ She paused. “Do you remember what you said Tim?” The man in green shifted slightly in his seat. But didn’t respond.

“Need a lift?”

“HA!” Shrieking with laughter she slammed her hand on the table. Causing the near empty wine bottle to fall over rolling onto the floor. The sound of shattering glass replaced the laughter and the room fell silent. After what seemed like an eternity, the woman gently cleared her throat and finished the remainder of the contents in her glass. She looked away from the man, “you gave me a piggy back ride all the way back to our apartment. And wrapped my melon of an ankle with one of your old tshirts and a freezer burned bag of sliced carrots… you put on our favorite trash tv show and made some popcorn. We spent the next four hours laughing and riffing on the property brothers until I fell asleep. It was like three in the morning when you woke me up.” She turned her head to look at her husband again.They had been through so much together. Ups and downs. Friends weddings, more funerals… too many funerals. From Traveling the world together to hating themselves after finding out they lacked the basic essentials for creating a family of their own. Been through hell and back. Always finding each other in the chaos.

“So.”The woman in white continued, fidgeting with the ring on her left hand. “You nudged me awake and as I’m sitting up you start to get on your knee, and I’m there, half asleep, most likely a dried up drool trail on my face” another small chuckle, “ and I started to move towards you thinking, oh he’s gonna carry my lame self to the bedroom. “ The man looked at his wife, tears starting to form in the corners of his eyes. She looked at him, but her eyes were dry. And cold..”And before I could latch my arms around you, you had pulled out a little black box. I’m pretty sure I stopped breathing, and you took my hand and asked me the most important question of my life. The question that lead us to where we are now.” She had taken her ring off completely by this point.

“Will you marry me?”

“Please, I’m sorry.” The man begged. “ Let me explain-“

“ENOUGH!” She screamed, “I don’t want your reasons. I don’t want you to tell me you love me. Or that you made a mistake. Not anymore. God knows I’ve heard that all too many times before.” She got up from her chair and started to make her way slowly across the dining room. The overhead lights illuminating her features as she walked. She was tall and curvy. And her skin pale and porcelain like so pale in fact that,. Under the warm glow of the lights she appeared almost translucent. She made it to the end of the table and continued around stopping behind her husbands chair. “What I do want to know is, how could you do it? After everything, after all that time… I mean sure, she’s young and gorgeous. And can probably give you a million kids if you asked… But why didn’t you just ask for a divorce. Or a break? You never even tried to talk to me!” Composing herself she turned and started towards the back of the room. The man, clearly in distress, reached shakily for the glass of ice water in front of him. He clumsily gulped down the entire glass before he heard foot steps approaching from behind him. The foot steps stopped and there was that laughter again. A quiet but satisfied snicker. “You know, I can see why you used it. Especially when you know they arent expecting anything. Although I do have to admit, not a pleasant way to go.” The man clutched at his shirt collar, panic on his face. The woman moved to face him “ don’t worry babe, It’ll be over soon. Oh but you know that already. I mean you barely had time to finish your old fashioned before dumping me in the garden out back.” He was starting to convulse now, blood trickling from the corners of his gasping mouth. “Turns out revenge is a pretty powerful motivator, even with limited use of all the helpful corporeal functions. its just enough to tip a bottle of that secret ingredient into, say, a pitcher of water for example.” She took his hand, stiff and cold now. and said, “In way, this is a happy ending for the both of us.”