The check still comes.

It always comes; that is what checks do.

But it no longer lands in front of me by default, and on the rare occasions that it tries to, I know now exactly what to do.

I slide it to the center.

I pay my share.

I slide it to the center without drama and without speech, because the gesture no longer needs either; it has become simply how I sit at a table, the way some people fold their napkin or push in their chair.

I bring my own plate, and I let everybody else bring theirs, and I have learned — late, expensively, permanently — that a table where everyone carries their own is the only kind of table worth sitting at for the rest of your life.