The Serve

The vitamin regimen was Elena's idea. Three orange capsules in the morning, two white at night, a daily chore that felt more like penance than self-care. Six months after she walked out, Marcus still lined them up on the kitchen counter in their prescribed formation—a small architectural tribute to a marriage that had dissolved like sugar in cold water.

His phone buzzed. Padell at 7? The text from Sarah, who'd somehow decided that weekly matches were the cure for a forty-five-year-old newly single man.

He looked at the cat. Barnaby—Elena's choice of name, something she'd found literary—blinked slowly from his perch on the windowsill, judgment incarnate in fur form. The cat had stayed with Marcus, a small mercy that felt like revenge. Barnaby knew. The way he paced at 3 AM, screaming at nothing, perfectly mirrored the hollow ache in Marcus's chest.

The padel court smelled like sweat and expensive cologne. Sarah was already there, stretching in that way people did when they wanted you to notice they were stretching. Her husband Greg—the one who'd suggested Marcus join their regular game—was ordering drinks at the club bar.

"You look tired," she said, as her return hit the glass wall with a satisfying thwack.

"Rough night." Marcus served, the ball skimming the tape. "Barnaby was howling again."

"Still?" She laughed, but her eyes didn't. "Greg says you should get another cat. Company for him."

The vitamin bottle sat on his bedside table, mocking him. Supplements for a life he couldn't quite feel yet.

"Maybe," Marcus said, and something in his voice must have betrayed him because Sarah stopped playing. The ball rolled away between their feet, forgotten.

"Marcus." Her hand on his arm, light as a warning. "Greg is playing padel with Jen tonight. I'm only here because—"

The realization hit him like a racket to the chest. This wasn't a game. This was an opening, an offer he hadn't known he was supposed to decline.

Barnaby was waiting by the door when Marcus got home. The cat wrapped around his ankles, purring like a small engine of forgiveness. Marcus poured three vitamins into his palm and swallowed them dry, thinking about serves and returns, about all the ways people try to fill the spaces that can't be filled.

He set out tomorrow's doses. Two white, three orange. Some habits you keep, not because they work, but because they're yours.