The Papaya Protocol

She found him in the kitchen at 3 AM, precisely measuring out his vitamin supplements into those little plastic compartments Monday-through-Sunday. The fluorescent light caught the silver in his hair, making him look older than thirty-six.

"Can't sleep?" she asked, leaning against the doorframe in her robe.

He didn't look up. "New protocol. My trainer says I'm not absorbing nutrients properly."

"Your trainer. Right."

They'd been swimming around each other for months—since the miscarriage, since she stopped drinking, since he started spending four hours a day at the gym and another two researching longevity supplements on Reddit. The distance between them had become oceanic.

He held up a capsule. "This one's for cellular repair."

"And that one?" She pointed to the orange oval.

"Papaya enzyme. Digestion."

Papaya. She remembered buying papayas together in Hawaii, that trip where they'd promised to try for a baby. They'd eaten them on the balcony of their hotel room, juice running down their chins, laughing about how messy life was. How good.

Now he measured out his life in milligrams and macro ratios, while she measured hers in the minutes between crying spells.

"I'm going for a run," he said suddenly, capping the bottles.

"It's 3 AM."

"Better cardio on an empty stomach."

He laced up his shoes in the living room while she watched from the kitchen doorway. She considered telling him what she'd decided yesterday—that she was leaving, that the apartment was hers until the lease ended in three weeks, that his supplements and his protocols and his running were symptoms of something she couldn't fix anymore.

Instead she filled a glass with water from the filter, watched the bubbles rise and pop.

He opened the door, paused. "You okay?"

The question was so small, so inadequate to the wreckage between them, that she almost laughed.

"Fine," she said. "Just getting some water."

"Good. Hydration is key."

The door clicked shut behind him. She stood alone in the kitchen, her glass of water, his neatly arranged vitamins. Somewhere out there in the dark, he was running toward a future without her, while she stood still, finally ready to let him go.