For ten years I woke before him. Ten years arranging his meetings, his meals, his travel. Ten years pausing my own ambitions “so he could succeed.”
And that evening, as I was placing dinner on the table, he said it casually — like asking for more water.
“Starting next month, we split everything. I’m not supporting someone who doesn’t contribute.”
I froze, serving spoon suspended in midair.
I waited for the punchline.
There wasn’t one.
“Excuse me?” I asked carefully.
He set his phone down in front of him with unsettling composure — as if he had rehearsed this speech.
“This isn’t the 1950s. If you live here, you pay your share. Fifty-fifty.”
I looked around the room.
The home I decorated.
The curtains I stitched myself.
The dining table we bought on installments when money was tight.
“I do contribute,” I said quietly.
He laughed lightly.
“You don’t work.”
That sentence cuts deeper than anything else.
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