The Last Supplement

The vitamin C bottle sat on the counter like a small orange accusation. Maya swallowed three pills without water, the bitter taste coating her throat—the same ritual every morning for six months, ever since David stopped looking at her like she was a person and started seeing through her like she was made of glass.

"You're late," David said from the kitchen table, eyes fixed on his tablet. His voice had that flat, measured quality—the tone of someone who'd resigned themselves to being a zombie in their own marriage. Maya used to call him her rocket scientist, her brilliant meteorologist who predicted storms before they formed. Now he was just the man who shared her mortgage, moved through rooms like a ghost haunting his own life.

"Padel is at seven," she said, grabbing her racquet from the hall closet. They'd joined the club together last year, another couple's activity designed to fix what was already broken. Now they played separately. David never came anymore.

He didn't respond. The tablet probably showed weather models, atmospheric pressure systems, the things that used to make his eyes light up at dinner parties. Now nothing made his eyes light up. Nothing made her light up either, if she was honest. She existed between the vitamin supplements and the sleep that never quite came, between the padel court where she hit balls into the fence and the empty side of the bed.

On her way out, she paused. His left hand rested on the table, palm up—lines intersecting like failed predictions, like the weather maps he used to trace with such reverence. The padel racquet slipped from her fingers and clattered to the floor.

"David," she said. Her voice cracked. "When did we become this?"

He looked up then, really looked at her for the first time in months. The zombie quality flickered, just for a moment. Behind his eyes, something like recognition surfaced.

"I don't know," he said softly. "But I think I forgot how to stop."

Maya crossed the room and pressed her palm against his, skin to skin, contact electric and terrifying. His fingers curled around hers, hesitant, like someone remembering how to hold something precious after years of forgetting.

"Start here," she said. "The vitamins aren't working anyway."

Outside, the first real rain in months began to fall, and for the first time in half a year, neither of them checked the forecast.