The Distance Between

Every morning at 5:30, Marcus swallowed his vitamin D supplement with tap water and laced up his running shoes. He told himself it was about health—doctor's orders, the brittle bones of middle age approaching like a distant storm. But really, it was about the distance. Six miles exactly. Three out, three back. The precise measurement of what he'd lost.

The golden retriever had gone with Sarah in the divorce. Marcus couldn't believe how much it hurt—the animal's choice felt like a verdict on his character. He was the person even a dog abandoned, someone creatures chose to leave.

So he ran.

The predawn streets held that particular blue uncertainty, the world not quite committed to existing yet. His breath formed clouds in the cold air. His knees clicked, a metronome counting down the years.

Sarah had kept the house. Marcus lived in a one-bedroom apartment where silence had weight. The cat—Barnaby, a calico with one ear and an expression of perpetual disappointment—stared at him from the windowsill as if Marcus's very existence were a sloppy error that required immediate correction.

The vitamins made his urine bright yellow. He'd read the body only absorbed a fraction anyway—the rest was expensive waste, processed through organs that would eventually fail, much like everything else. He kept taking them. Rituals were what remained when substance departed.

At mile four, he always stopped at the park where Sarah used to walk the dog. He'd stand there, hands on knees, heart hammering against ribs that felt increasingly fragile, watching other early risers with their obedient creatures trotting beside them. So much trust in those animals. So much faith in human goodness.

Some mornings he imagined Sarah had wanted the cat instead—Barnaby with his judgment and his missing ear—but Marcus had refused, and that small act of withholding was what had finally broken them. Or maybe she'd taken the dog because the dog would have chosen her anyway.

The running didn't help. The vitamins didn't help.

He finished his run on a Tuesday morning, the sun finally breaking through, and found himself standing outside Sarah's house. The retriever was in the yard, watching him through the fence. For a moment, Marcus thought the animal remembered him. Then the dog turned away, trotting toward the back door where Sarah stood with a coffee mug.

She didn't see him. He knew she didn't. But for the first time in six months, Marcus didn't run toward her or away. He stood there while his heart rate slowed, while his body processed the useless vitamin D, while the cat waited for him in an apartment that smelled like loneliness and dust.

Then he turned and ran home.