I was sitting in the restaurant I liked. I was looking at my husband from across the room, sitting with another woman.
It wasn’t the first time I had doubts, but this was the first time I saw it with my own eyes.
The man I spent two decades of my life with, his hand resting on the table, lightly touching the hand of a young woman. She was laughing, and he was leaning towards her. Not too close, but close enough for everything to be said without words. It was a “business dinner.”
I couldn’t ignore reality any longer. I asked him a thousand times to have dinner here, in a place I liked. But each time he had an excuse: a deadline, a client, a migraine. Eventually, I stopped asking.
The waiter came up to me and asked if I wanted to order anything. I looked at him and asked for a few small things without emotion. Then I stood up without saying a word and walked calmly, my heels sounding on the marble floor. I approached the table of my husband and his mistress.
They were shocked, but I wasn’t. What I gave them left them speechless. Then I left with a smile…
Before approaching their table, I paid for their dinner, for the dinner of my husband and the lady with him.
When I got to their table, I handed them the bill, told them it was all paid, and included a note that simply said, “It’s over.”
Their gazes were frozen, as if time had stopped around them.
He, with his eyes wide open, and she, with trembling lips, as if the irony of the had situation struck them right in the heart. He did not know what to say, he searched for words, but nothing came out.
I didn’t give them time to react. Without a single glance back, I turned and left the restaurant, my footsteps a bittersweet melody on the cold floor.
A fresh breeze greeted me outside, bringing me back to reality.
That moment, as brutal as it was, marked a new beginning. I had said everything I wanted to say, without anger or vengeance. Just an end. A new chapter that I could finally begin.
