The Best Vitamin

My morning routine was sacred: exactly 47 seconds of tooth-brushing, eight ounces of room-temperature water, and a precise lineup of supplements—omega-3, magnesium, and a multivitamin that promised to transform me into someone who actually understood quadratic equations.

Then Maya moved in next door and ruined everything.

"You need a vitamin D supplement," she announced, inspecting my pill collection like she was a pharmacist who'd caught me self-medicating with chewable Flintstones vitamins. We were sitting on my bedroom floor, supposedly studying for finals, but mostly watching her carefully curated TikTok feed about "glowing up" before sophomore year.

"I literally just took one," I said, already defensive. Maya was the kind of person who made friends by osmosis—she'd just show up, and suddenly you were best friends, and you were doing things you'd sworn you'd never do.

"Not the pill kind," she said, scrolling past a video of someone doing a choreographed dance in an aisle at Target. "I mean the sun kind. The actual going-outside kind. You're practically translucent, Jordan. I can see your heartbeat through your forearm."

I squinted at my arm. "That's not—that's not how bodies work."

"Padel," she said suddenly, like she'd just received a transmission from a distant galaxy. "We're playing padel tomorrow. My cousin's boyfriend has a court membership and he's out of town, so he said we could use it."

"Padel? Is that like pickleball?"

"No, it's like tennis but shorter and with walls, and apparently it's what all the hot European exchange students play, so." She shrugged. "Pick you up at 10. Bring sunscreen."

I showed up with SPF 50 and a sort of dread that settled in my stomach like a rock. The padel court was smaller than I expected, enclosed in glass like some kind of very expensive terrarium where teenagers would be observed in their natural habitat. Maya's cousin's boyfriend turned out to be named Diego and he was very much not out of town—tall, with curls that defied gravity and a smile that made my knees feel like they'd forgotten their job.

"You must be Jordan," he said, handing me a racket. "Maya said you were—"

"Anal?" Maya supplied helpfully.

"I was going to say 'detailed-oriented,' but sure." Diego grinned, and I felt my face go hot in a way that definitely had nothing to do with the mid-morning sun. "So, padel. It's like tennis if tennis was actually fun and you didn't have to be good at it to enjoy yourself."

I was terrible. Absolutely, hilariously bad. I kept hitting the ball into the glass walls, and one particularly enthusiastic swing sent my racket flying across the court. But Diego laughed every time I messed up, which was somehow better than if he'd been perfect, and Maya kept shouting encouragement even though we were playing against each other and technically she was supposed to want me to fail.

After two hours, I was sweating through my shirt, my hair was a disaster, and I had somehow managed to score exactly three points—all by accident. But I felt lighter than I had in months.

"So?" Maya asked on the ride home, cranking the air conditioning despite the fact that it was only 72 degrees outside. "Better than vitamins?"

I thought about my regimented morning routine, about how I'd spent the past six months trying to optimize my life into something that could be managed on a spreadsheet. Then I thought about Diego's genuine laugh when I'd somehow served the ball backward, and the way Maya had high-fived me like I'd won Wimbledon instead of barely avoiding total humiliation.

"I don't know," I said, grinning despite myself. "I think I might need another dose tomorrow."