Deficiency

The vitamin D bottle sat on her nightstand, a testament to three years of trying to optimize herself into happiness. Elena counted them out each morning—two little yellow capsules with breakfast, one with lunch—while Marcus watched from across the kitchen island, nursing his coffee and his resentment.

"You're going to be late for padel," she said, not looking up from her tablet. "Tom's waiting."

Marcus hated that she knew his schedule better than he did. Hated that she'd stopped asking to come along months ago, somewhere between the fertility treatments and the silent aftermath of the third negative test. Now she just tracked his movements like a scientist observing a particularly disappointing specimen.

The padel court was glass-walled and pristine, the kind of place where men in their forties pretended they were still competitive. Tom was already there, stretching in his expensive gear, his smile too bright for 7 AM on a Saturday.

"Rough week?" Tom asked as they warmed up.

"Same as always." Marcus smashed the ball against the glass. "She's got a new vitamin regime. New meditation app. New anything to avoid actually feeling anything."

A fox appeared at the edge of the court—lean, russet, watching them with unsettling intelligence. It moved with that predatory stillness that made Marcus's breath catch.

"Haven't seen one of them in years," Tom said, lowering his racket. "Used to be everywhere. Now they're all gone."

"Not gone," Marcus said. "Just hiding."

The fox held his gaze for a long moment before slipping into the undergrowth, and something in Marcus's chest cracked open. All those vitamins Elena swallowed, all the optimized routines and structured wellness—none of it mattered. They were both just pretending they could fix something that wasn't broken, just unfinished.

He drove home with the windows down, autumn air flooding the car. Elena was in the garden when he pulled up, on her knees in the dirt, her tablet abandoned on the patio.

"I saw a fox," he said, dropping to his knees beside her. "At the padel court."

She turned, soil under her fingernails, and for the first time in months, she really looked at him. "We used to see them all the time. Before we started trying so hard to fix everything."

Marcus took her hand, soil and all. "Maybe we can stop. Maybe we can just be."

She leaned into his shoulder, and he could feel her breathing slow, feel the vitamins and the schedules and the impossible standards finally, finally start to dissolve.