The Antioxidant Theory of Regret

Marcus stood in the breakroom at 2 AM, the fluorescent hum of the vending machine matching the buzz in his skull. His divorce papers had been finalized exactly three hours ago. He was forty-two, alone, and staring at a sad wilted spinach leaf stuck to his upper left incisor in the mirror reflection.

'You're going to eat that whole bag?' asked Sarah, the night-shift auditor from Accounting. She appeared like lightning — sudden, illuminating, vaguely terrifying.

Marcus blinked. He'd been unconsciously clutching the bag of vitamin supplements his ex-wife had ordered three months ago, convinced they would fix everything that was wrong with their marriage. 'These expired the week after she left.'

'So did we,' Sarah said, not unkindly. She poured herself coffee from the machine that everyone swore tasted like despair and burnt plastic. 'Forty-two is young for an existential crisis, Marcus. Most people wait until their fifties to realize they've been following someone else's GPS coordinates their whole lives.'

'My father had his first heart attack at forty-five,' Marcus said, finally throwing the supplements into the trash. 'I'm just trying to... optimize.'

Sarah laughed, and it sounded like something genuine in a world of stock responses. 'You can't vitamin your way out of a life you didn't choose.' She paused. 'I hear the hiring manager at the London office is looking for someone with exactly your background. Sometimes lightning does strike twice — you just have to be standing somewhere different when it happens.'

The spinach on his tooth seemed suddenly hilarious, a tiny green flag of surrender. Marcus smiled, really smiled, for the first time in months. The fluorescent lights didn't seem so harsh anymore. 'London, huh?'

'The coffee's still terrible there,' Sarah said. 'But at least you'll be miserable in a different time zone.'

Marcus took his badge off the lanyard. He'd delete his spinach smoothie subscription tomorrow. For tonight, for the first time in years, he was hungry for something real.