The Absorption Rate

Maria stood in the vitamin aisle at Whole Foods, staring at rows of supplements that promised to fix what she'd broken through years of neglect. She was thirty-eight now, and somehow this had become her Saturday routine—running errands that felt like running away from the silence of her apartment.

She picked up a bottle of Vitamin D3. "For mood support," the label claimed, as if her melancholy were nothing more than a nutritional deficiency. She'd been taking them for three months. Her phone buzzed—David, again. Three months since he'd moved out, and he still couldn't seem to absorb that some things didn't have a cure.

A flash of movement caught her peripheral vision. A man in an orange beanie, examining the protein powders with clinical intensity. Her stomach performed that familiar, unwelcome somersault. Liam. The architect from her firm who'd made that terrible joke about her spinach salad at the office holiday party two years ago. The joke had landed poorly, but something about his awkwardness had stayed with her.

He hadn't seen her yet. Maria considered making a run for it, literally running toward the exit like she did each morning on the treadmill, going nowhere fast. Instead, she pulled her hat down lower and turned toward the produce section, remembering too late that she'd left her favorite running cap at home.

"Maria?"

His voice was warmer than she remembered. She turned slowly, clutching a bag of organic spinach like a shield.

"Liam. I didn't expect to see anyone from work here."

"I could say the same." He gestured to her basket. "The vitamin gospel still hasn't saved you from the green stuff, I see."

She laughed before she could stop herself. "Some of us actually like the way spinach tastes."

"Some of us are lying to themselves." His orange beanie slipped as he shook his head, revealing dark hair that needed cutting. There was something endearing about how unkempt he looked on a Saturday.

They stood there in the produce section, surrounded by vegetables that had never hurt anyone, and Maria felt something shift inside her chest—not the old ache of David's departure, but something lighter, more tentative. Like absorption finally happening after years of malnutrition.

"You running later?" Liam asked, and the question held more weight than it should have.

"Every morning," she said. "But I could be persuaded to change my schedule."

The spinach in her hand felt suddenly significant. Some vitamins, she realized, came in unexpected forms.