The Summer We Almost Survived

The doctor had prescribed the **vitamin** D supplements after the bloodwork came back, another marker of middle age creeping in like gray hairs at the temples. Forty-two years old and suddenly everything required maintenance.

'You're not even trying anymore,' Elena said from across the **padel** court, her voice cutting through the humid afternoon air. The glass walls of the court were already fogging up. Sweat pooled in Marcus's left **palm**, making the grip on his racquet precarious. He watched her serve, the ball skimming the net, and wondered when they had stopped being allies in this game.

They had taken up padel together during the first year of their marriage, back when shared activities meant connection rather than scheduled obligation. Now it was just another thing to squeeze into their Saturday afternoons between grocery runs and her mother's phone calls about Marcus's career trajectory.

'I am trying,' he said, missing the return. The ball sailed into the glass behind her.

'No, you're not.' She retrieved it, spinning it on her racquet. 'Not here. Not with us. Not anywhere.'

Afterward, in the club's pool, Marcus swam lap after lap, moving through the water until his arms burned and his lungs screamed. **Swimming** had always been his refuge, the one place where he could neither speak nor be spoken to. The underwater world was silent and forgiving, a place where failure meant only that you had to surface for air.

He was toweling off when his phone buzzed. **Friend** request from Sarah—Elena's college friend, the one Elena had always been jealous of, though she'd never admit it. The timing made Marcus's chest tighten. He declined it, dropped his phone into his locker, and walked out into the blinding parking lot.

The vitamin bottle sat on the kitchen counter that evening, next to Elena's keys. She was already asleep when he came to bed, turned away from him the way she had for six months. Marcus pressed his palm against her shoulder blade, feeling the rise and fall of her breathing, and understood that some things, once dissolved, could never be reconstructed. Not with vitamins. Not with games. Not with the silent accumulation of days.

He lay awake counting the moments he should have spoken, while somewhere outside, the neighborhood settled into the kind of peace that only looks like peace from a distance.