The Last Vitamin

Elena stood at the edge of the padel court, watching David serve. His hat had fallen off two points ago, revealing thinning hair that caught the harsh fluorescent lights. She remembered when he'd had none of this—no knee brace, no vitamin supplements scattered on his nightstand, no careful way he moved now, as if his body were something borrowed.

The match ended. David limped toward the bench where she sat.

"Water?" she offered, extending the bottle she'd been clutching like a lifeline.

"Thanks." His fingers brushed hers—deliberately, she thought, or maybe that was wishful projection. Five months of divorce proceedings, and she still catalogued every accidental touch.

They'd met on this very court three years ago. She'd been playing poorly, laughing at her own mistakes. He'd offered to give her lessons, and somewhere between the forehand drills and the post-match drinks, they'd tumbled into something that felt inevitable. Until it wasn't.

"Your backhand's improving," David said now, unscrewing the cap.

"Your serve has slowed."

He smiled—that rueful expression she'd once found charming, now just evidence of his concessions to time. "Getting old, El."

"You're thirty-eight."

"Forty in November. Started taking that vitamin D stuff the doctor recommended. My joints apparently forgot what decade we're in."

Elena looked at him. Really looked. The face she'd awakened beside for two years, now unfamiliar in its particulars. A new line between his eyebrows. The way his hair had started receding at the temples, something she hadn't noticed until she saw him across a table at mediation.

"Do you miss it?" she asked, before she could stop herself.

"What."

"Us."

David was quiet a long moment. The court had emptied. Somewhere distant, a door slammed.

"I miss who we were," he said finally. "Before everything got so complicated. Before the arguments started sounding like scripts we'd both memorized."

"Before I found the messages."

He flinched. "Yes. Before that."

Elena stood. She should go. The lawyer had warned her about these moments—when longing blurred into memory and she forgot the endings.

"Goodbye, David."

"See you next Tuesday," he said, because they still played padel together, because neither could quite let go of the one thing that had worked.

She walked toward her car, the water bottle still in her hand. Behind her, David bent slowly to retrieve his hat. His vitamin pills were waiting in his car. Some hurts healed into something bearable. Some just lingered.