Hydration

The prescription sat on the counter: prenatal vitamins, folic acid, something called CoQ10. Emma had been taking them for eighteen months. Marcus still remembered the way she'd stopped swallowing them three weeks ago, the orange plastic bottles arranged like silent accusations on the bathroom shelf.

He'd started playing padel at the club across from his office — enclosed court, walls you could use, games that finished in forty minutes. Efficient. Contained. His partner was Sarah from accounting, who smelled like expensive candles and always brought them both cold water from the club's dispenser. They'd won three matches last Tuesday. The plastic cup had sweated in his hand, condensation dripping like a timer counting down something he couldn't name.

Emma had taken up watching old baseball documentaries, curled around herself on their beige sofa. The ritual of it, she'd said. The patience. The way nothing happened for innings and then everything did, all at once. He'd come home smelling of Sarah's perfume and clay dust, finding his wife asleep to the crack of bats and stadium crowds from thirty years ago.

Tonight, the kitchen was dark except for the refrigerator's hum. Marcus pressed a glass of water to his forehead, condensation cooling the skin where his headaches lived now. Behind him, Emma stood in the doorway, watching.

"Sarah texted you," she said. "About tomorrow's game."

"I'm not going."

She moved closer, bare feet on tile. "You love it. The winning."

"No." He set the glass down. Water ripled, catching the kitchen light. "I loved that it didn't ask anything. That I could finish and walk away. That nobody expected anything when it was over."

Emma reached for the vitamin bottles on the counter, spinning one between her fingers. "Marcus, we can't just —"

"I know." He met her eyes. "I stopped playing padel. I called the club this afternoon."

She stood very still. Outside, something — wind, maybe — struck the siding with the sound of a ball finding sweet center field. Summer heat was coming. The air already felt heavy with it.

"I was thinking," Marcus said, "we could go to the lake. The one you liked. Just sit by the water. Not fix anything. Just — be there."

Emma set the vitamin down carefully, like something fragile. Then she was crying, not making a sound, just tears cutting through sunscreen and exhaustion. He pulled her into the kitchen's blue light, both of them standing there while the refrigerator hummed and the house held its breath around them, waiting for whatever would happen next, whatever they'd finally let happen next.