Prescribed Happiness

The iPhone lay between them on the kitchen table like a dead thing, its black screen reflecting two people who had forgotten how to look at each other. Maya stared at her spinach salad — wilted now, like everything else in their marriage — and wondered when exactly they'd started taking each other for granted.

"You're not eating," David said, not looking up from his own phone. His thumb scrolled through something infinitely more interesting than their十年 of shared history.

"Not hungry."

"You should take your vitamin. At least do that."

The vitamin sat in its orange plastic bottle — a prescription for happiness in gelatin form. Their therapist had suggested them. Dr. Klein's exact words: "Sometimes we need to regulate our bodies before we can regulate our relationships." Maya had wanted to scream. She didn't need regulation; she needed to feel something, anything, even if it hurt.

She remembered their friend Sarah's wedding last month. How David had held her hand during the vows, how for a moment she'd thought they might survive this. Then she'd seen him checking his work email under the table during the reception, and something inside her had simply... stopped trying.

"David?"

"Hmm?"

She reached across the table and placed her hand over his phone screen. "Remember when you used to tell me everything? When we were poor students and shared that crappy apartment in the city?"

He looked up, and for the first time in months, she saw him really see her. "That was a long time ago, Maya."

"Was it?" She pushed her spinach away. "Or are we just old before our time?"

The vitamin bottle stood between them like an accusation. They'd both stopped taking them weeks ago — but neither had mentioned it, another silence in a house full of them.

David's phone buzzed. Maya watched his eyes flicker toward it, then back to her. A choice, hanging in the air like held breath.

He turned the phone face-down.

"The spinach was always better at that old apartment," he said quietly. "Remember how you burned it every single time?"

"You ate it anyway."

"I was in love then."

The words hung between them, testing the air. Maya felt tears burning behind her eyes — not from sadness, but from the sudden sharp ache of hope, which was infinitely more dangerous.

"And now?" she whispered.

David took her hand across the table. His palm was warm, unfamiliar, and terrifyingly present.

"I think," he said, "I need to learn to be in love again. With who we are now."

The iPhone buzzed again, ignored. The spinach continued its slow collapse. And somewhere in the silence between them, something small but real began to grow.