Surface Level

The vitamin D supplement sat on his kitchen counter, a small gelatin capsule of hope in a world that felt increasingly devoid of it. David swallowed it dry, like he did everything these days — without water, without ceremony, just getting it done.

He pulled the baseball hat lower, the brim casting a shadow across his forehead. At 47, his hair had started retreating like a defeated army, and the hat was his bunker. Sarah had always loved running her fingers through his thick curls. She'd called them her safety blanket. The curls were gone now, much like everything else.

The padel court gleamed under the midday sun. "Your backhand," his instructor said, a woman half his age with metabolism he'd forgotten existed. "You're thinking too much."

David adjusted his hat, shielding eyes that had seen too many spreadsheet rows and not enough horizons. This was his attempt: padel lessons three times a week, vitamins every morning, a new cologne that smelled like cedar and desperation. He was trying to become someone who might be interesting again.

"Your wife must love this," the instructor said during a water break. "You're really improving."

"Ex-wife," David said. The word still felt foreign, like speaking a language he'd only just started learning. "Six months now."

She nodded, with that practiced empathy people used when they didn't know what to say. "Well. You're doing something for yourself. That matters."

Was he? The vitamins, the padel, the hat covering hair that refused to stay — was any of it real, or just another performance? He thought about Sarah, about how she'd left because she said David had been slowly disappearing for years, replaced by someone safe and predictable and utterly invisible.

"Again," David said, stepping back to the baseline. He raised his racquet.

His hair, thinning and exposed between hat lifts, caught the light. The vitamin dissolved in his stomach, another tiny act of faith in a future he wasn't sure existed. But for now, the ball was coming, and he swung, and for a moment, he was just a man in motion, not a collection of losses and what-ifs.

"That's the one," the instructor said. And for once, David believed her.