Supplemental

The kitchen counter looked like a pharmacy. Rows of amber bottles—Vitamin D, magnesium, ashwagandha, something expensive that promised cellular renewal—lined up like soldiers. Maya had been taking them religiously since her thirtieth birthday, since her mother died of something preventable, since she realized mortality wasn't theoretical.

'Do you want the rest of this spinach?' Elena asked, gesturing to the wilting salad.

They were having their Tuesday dinner, as they had for seven years. Since college. Since before Maya's promotion, before Elena's divorce, before they became people who worried about antioxidants and retirement funds.

'No, you take it,' Maya said. 'You're the one always saying you need more iron.' She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. Something had been off between them lately—conversation that used to flow like wine now had awkward silences, like words being swallowed.

Elena hesitated, fork hovering. 'You've been eating a lot of takeout lately. That's not like you.' She set down the fork. 'Are you okay?'

The question hung there. Maya wanted to say: I'm lonely in my marriage. I'm exhausted by the performance of having it together. I haven't taken a single vitamin in three months because what's the point when you're just delaying the inevitable? I'm forty-two and I don't recognize the person I've become.

Instead she said: 'Just busy. You know how it is.' She reached for her wine glass. 'They're launching that new project at work. Lots of late nights.'

Elena's phone buzzed. She glanced at it, then away, then back again. Something flickered across her face—guilt, maybe, or calculation.

'What?' Maya asked.

'Nothing.' But her thumb moved across the screen, the gesture so practiced it made Maya's chest ache. 'Just work stuff.'

'May.' The nickname came out sharper than she intended. 'You've been checking that phone all night. Since when do we have secrets?'

Elena looked up, and for a moment Maya saw something she hadn't seen in years: the friend who once held her hair while she threw up cheap tequila, who cried with her when her cat died, who knew every terrible, beautiful thing about her.

Then the mask slid back into place.

'It's not a secret.' Elena's voice was steady. Too steady. 'I'm just... seeing someone. From work. I didn't want to say anything because it's new.' A pause. 'And because he's married.'

The spinach sat between them, turning to slime in the heat of the kitchen. The vitamins watched from their amber bottles, silent witnesses to the moment everything changed.

Maya thought about asking why, or how long, or what this meant for Tuesday dinners. She thought about the years they'd spent being each other's person, the promises made on futons in crappy apartments, the assumption that some things were permanent.

Instead she stood up, her chair scraping against the floor like an accusation.

'Okay,' she said.

'May—'

'No, it's okay.' She grabbed her purse. 'You should have the spinach. You're right about the iron.' She didn't say: we don't get to make things okay. We don't get to choose what breaks. She didn't say: I needed you to be better than this.

She walked out without looking back at the vitamins, without saying goodbye to her oldest friend, knowing some things, once broken, can't be supplemented back to health.