Chipped Nails and Cheesecake

The table's too small. Her knees are close enough to touch his under the sticky veneer of fake wood, close enough to feel the heat radiating through denim. He shifts. She doesn't. His chair groans. Hers stays silent.

The menu sweats in his hands. Laminated plastic, corners curled from being gripped by the nervous, the hopeful, the already defeated. It reeks of industrial bleach trying to murder yesterday's mistakes. Each dish description reads like a marketing department's fever dream: "decadent chocolate eruption," "sinful bacon paradise," "mouthwatering fusion experience." The prices are in a font too small to read without admitting you care about money.

She's gnawing the corner of her lip, studying the menu like it contains the answers to questions she hasn't asked yet. The flesh goes white under pressure, floods pink when she releases. A tiny bead of blood wells up where she's been working the same spot. She doesn't notice. Or doesn't care.

Dead center: a battery operated candle, the kind bought in bulk for budget funerals and corporate events where nobody wants to risk actual fire. Its LED flame stutters through its programmed routine. Orange. Dim. Orange. Dim. A mechanical heartbeat that makes her face shift between beautiful and severe, between someone he might love and someone who might destroy him. Same person, probably.

"So..." The word drops from his mouth like a coin into deep water. No splash. Just gone.

"So." She bounces it back. Perfect echo. Zero emotion. The verbal equivalent of a mirror showing you exactly what you don't want to see.

Her nails. Black polish, but ravaged. Each finger sports a quarter moon of naked nail, pink and vulnerable, like she started painting over something and gave up when she realized the darkness wouldn't stick. Or maybe she picks at them. She traces the rim of her water glass with one chipped finger. The ice shifts. Clink. The sound is too loud in the space between them. One cube surrenders to entropy, melts into a perfect bead that tracks down the glass, pools on the paper coaster she refuses to use. The coaster advertises a beer that stopped existing three years ago.

His phone vibrates against his thigh. He doesn't check it. Her phone lights up face down on the table. She doesn't check it. They're both pretending this moment matters more than their digital lives. The lie sits between them like a third person.

He orders the burger. Safe. Predictable. Medium rare because he wants to seem interesting but not reckless. She orders the salmon. Twenty three dollars for something that was swimming last week. The waiter, nineteen and hollow cheeked with a neck tattoo spelling "SORRY" in gothic script, transcribes their choices like he's documenting evidence. His pen scratches against the pad. Behind him, the kitchen door swings open. Brief chaos visible: flames, shouting, someone laughing about something that isn't funny.

While they wait, she tells him about her last relationship. Three years. Ended four months ago. She doesn't say why, but the way her thumb unconsciously rubs the pale band of skin where a ring used to live tells him enough. He tells her he's been single for eight months, which is true if you don't count the thing with his coworker that lasted six weeks and ended with her transferring departments.

The plates arrive.

His burger bleeds on contact. The bun, brioche trying too hard, compresses under his grip. First bite: the meat is exactly the wrong temperature, warm enough to seem fresh, cool enough to suggest it's been waiting. Juice runs red. Not blood. Not not blood. Something between. It tracks down his wrist, follows the vein, drips onto the plate with tiny splashes that look like the world's most pathetic Jackson Pollock.

Her salmon grins up at her, skin crisped to bronze perfection, grill marks like prison bars. Lemon wedge at two o'clock, parsley at six, some kind of reduction sauce that looks like motor oil but probably costs more. She dissects it with surgical precision. Fork in left hand, knife in right. Each movement choreographed, mechanical. The fish flakes apart, reveals its pink interior. Steam rises. She takes one bite. Chews twenty-three times. He counts.

She laughs. Sharp. Sudden. Like glass breaking in another room.

He freezes mid chew, meat and bun creating cement against his palate. The napkin in his lap, white cloth trying to seem fancy, already bears the stigmata of his meal. He dabs at his wrist, spreading the grease more than removing it. She laughs again, softer this time, almost human.

"I read somewhere," she says, separating another piece of salmon from its skeleton, "that cows can smell the slaughterhouse from miles away. They know exactly where they're going. The whole ride there, they know."

He swallows. The burger tastes like iron and salt, like pennies soaked in seawater, like giving up. "That's... dark."

"Right?" Her teeth flash, porcelain white against lipstick the color of dried blood. The same color, he realizes, as the juice on his plate. "And salmon. They're basically programmed to die. Swim upstream just to fuck once and get their skulls crushed by bears. Nature's little suicide machines."

The word lands hard, deliberate. She takes another sip of water. He notices she's peeled the label off her water bottle while talking. Little white strips of paper scattered around her plate like shed skin.

He takes another bite. She's only had two forkfuls, but she's rearranged the rest into an abstract pattern on her plate. A spiral. Or maybe a question mark. He wonders if this is performance art. If he's supposed to decode it. If the salmon knows something he doesn't.

"Marketing," she says, answering a question he forgot he asked. "I convince people they're incomplete without things that will eventually disappoint them." She pauses, pushes a piece of fish from six o'clock to nine. "We call it brand storytelling. I'm good at it. Last campaign increased sales thirty seven percent."

"Accounting," he counters. "I explain to people why they're poorer than they think." He doesn't mention that he's been doing the same spreadsheet for three weeks. That his boss's boss doesn't know his name. That he drinks at lunch on Thursdays.

They laugh. It sounds like two people trying to remember how laughter works. Like an AI's approximation of human joy.

Through the window, he watches a couple arguing in a parked Corolla. The woman's hands move like she's conducting an orchestra of grievances. The man stares straight ahead. Their breath fogs the windows from inside. Soon, they'll be invisible.

Her workspace, he imagines, is all white surfaces and succulents that thrive on neglect. Standing desk. Ergonomic everything. Photos from trips to places where the water is too blue to be real. His desk is where paper goes to die. Coffee rings overlap like Olympic logos gone wrong. Three dead plants he hasn't thrown away because that would mean admitting they're dead. The permanent smell of failure masked by Febreze.

The waiter materializes. Nineteen years old with the eyes of someone who's seen every version of this date. "How's everything tasting?"

"Perfect," she lies, her salmon now completely deconstructed, a fish autopsy.

"Great," he lies, his plate nearly empty except for a puddle of pink juice that's starting to congeal.

Somewhere, a baby starts crying. The sound cuts through the restaurant's ambient mumble. Nobody looks. Everyone's grateful it's not their problem.

The dessert negotiation is brief. Predictable. He says yes because the silence needs filling. She says no because she's maintaining some boundary he doesn't understand. They compromise: his cheesecake, her coffee. Black. No sugar. No cream. No mercy.

The cheesecake arrives violated by raspberry sauce, a red spiral that looks like someone opened a vein over pristine white. The plate is too big. The slice is too small. The garnish, a mint leaf, seems embarrassed to be there.

She watches him slide the fork through it. The layers separate cleanly. Graham cracker crust crumbles. Cream cheese filling yields. Raspberry bleeds. The first bite is so sweet it makes his teeth ache, makes him think of cavities, of decay, of things rotting from the inside out.

"Good?" she asks, but her eyes are tracking the couple two tables over. The woman's crying silently, mascara drawing black rivers down her cheeks. The man's scrolling through his phone. Nobody's eating. Their plates sit untouched, food cooling into something accusatory.

"Yeah," he says. The cheesecake tastes like trying too hard. Like a metaphor that's too obvious. Like this date.

Her coffee sends up steam signals she ignores. One sugar packet sits beside it, unopened, a small surrender she won't make. Her attention fractures: the muted TV showing a car chase that ends the same way they all do, the waiter texting someone named Trevor about getting off work, the fluorescent light above them that buzzes every twenty seconds. He's counted. It's something to do.

"Want some?" He pushes the plate toward her. A peace offering. A test. A desperate attempt to share something, anything.

"I'm good." She wraps both hands around her mug like she's protecting it. Or like it's protecting her. Her knuckles are white. There's a scar on her left hand, between thumb and forefinger. Thin. Precise. The kind you get from something sharp you didn't see coming.

He eats another bite. She takes a sip of coffee and winces. Too hot. Or too bitter.

The check arrives in a black leather folder that's held more bad news than a doctor's office. The total is exactly what he expected and more than he wanted. He reaches. She doesn't. No dance. No pretense. Just the soft scratch of pen on paper, the tip calculation that says he's generous but not desperate, the signature that will show up on his statement like a scar.

They gather their things. She puts on lipstick without looking, muscle memory guiding the color back to her mouth. He pockets three mints from the bowl by the register. The hostess wishes them a good night in a tone that suggests she's said it ten thousand times and meant it zero.

Outside.

The air tastes like rain that hasn't fallen yet. Exhaust from the highway. Something rotting in the dumpster behind the kitchen. The neon sign buzzes and flickers.

She pulls her jacket tight. Military surplus, olive green, too big in the shoulders. Definitely an ex boyfriend's. He recognizes the particular way abandoned clothes hang on a new body. He shoves his hands deep in his pockets, finds a receipt from three weeks ago, a grocery list in handwriting he doesn't recognize, two Xanax he forgot he had. He leaves them all where they are.

The parking lot is archipelago of light. Each lamp creates its own island. They stand in one, both painted pink and desperate by the dying neon.

"So." Him. Final attempt.

"So." Her. Closing statement.

The hug is an accident of limbs. Quick. Loose. Like they're both afraid of what holding on might mean. She smells like funeral flowers and something chemical. The perfume sticks in his throat, coats his tongue. Tomorrow, he'll taste it when he brushes his teeth. Next week, he'll smell it on a stranger and feel sick.

"Thanks for dinner." Delivered like an automated message.

"Yeah." All he's got left.

She walks to her car. A Honda Civic with a dent in the passenger door. Rosary beads hang from the rearview mirror, which seems optimistic. Her boots crack against the asphalt. Each step a small violence. The car chirps when she unlocks it. The engine turns over on the second try. Taillights flare red, hold him in their glow for exactly three seconds, then disappear into traffic. She doesn't look back. He knows because he watches.

He stands there. The cold gnaws at his face, makes his eyes water. Or maybe that's something else. Inside, through the window, he can see their table. The waiter's already there, moving with practiced efficiency. The cheesecake, half eaten, gets scraped into a bus tub with all the other abandoned attempts. Their water glasses clink together as they're cleared. The fake candle keeps flickering. Orange. Dim. Orange. Dim. Waiting for the next couple.

A man and woman walk past him, heading in. They're holding hands. She's laughing at something he said. They look hopeful. They look like they believe in dessert.

He touches his wrist where the burger grease dried. It flakes off like old skin.

His phone vibrates. Three missed calls. One text: "how did it go?"

He doesn't answer. Doesn't know how.

In his car, the radio is playing something about love. He turns it off. The silence is better.

He drives home thinking about the salmon. How it knew where it was going. How it went anyway.

The taste of her perfume stays in his mouth the whole way home.