Citrus and Saltwater

Marcus stood in the pharmacy aisle, staring at the neon-orange bottle of vitamin D supplements. His doctor had called them 'essential for bone health,' but Marcus knew they were really just proof that he'd spent too many years indoors, working in a windowless office, eating lunches at his desk while the world rotated without him.

'You're running yourself into the ground,' Sarah had said three months ago, the night she left. She'd been packing her suitcase with ruthless efficiency, folding clothes into tight squares. 'I love you, but I can't watch you do it anymore.'

He hadn't argued. That was the problem—he never did. He just kept running: running to meetings, running deadlines, running away from conversations that mattered. Now his condo echoed with a silence that felt accusatory.

The phone in his pocket buzzed. David, his oldest friend, asking if he wanted to grab dinner. Marcus declined with practiced ease. He wasn't hungry. Instead, he drove to the marina where his father's old boat was docked—a neglected vessel that David kept threatening to help him restore, but they both knew Marcus never would.

The ocean was rough tonight. Marcus stripped to his boxers and waded in, the saltwater shocking his skin like electricity. He wasn't much of a swimmer—Sarah had been the one who loved the water—but tonight he needed to feel something besides the dull ache of his own inertia. He kicked hard against the current, lungs burning, muscles screaming, until he flipped onto his back and floated, staring up at a sky scattered with stars that had been there all along, even when he hadn't bothered to look.

Back on the dock, shivering and towel-less, his phone lit up again. Sarah. 'I'm seeing someone,' the message read. 'I needed you to know.'

Marcus typed a response: 'I'm happy for you, Sarah. Truly.' Then he deleted it and wrote: 'Good.' Then he deleted that too and simply pressed the heart emoji.

He opened the orange vitamin bottle and dry-swallowed two pills, standing naked under the marina lights, feeling nothing at all, which was, he supposed, its own kind of progress.