The Supplement

The brunch crowd at Café Solstice moved with the practiced enthusiasm of people convincing themselves they were having fun. Across from me, Marcus arranged his supplements on the table—Vitamin D for the winter we never had, B-complex for the stress he wouldn't acknowledge, magnesium for sleep that never came.

'I read this new study about cortisol,' he said, tipping a gel capsule into his palm. 'Basically, if you're not supplementing, you're not even trying.'

I watched a golden retriever at the next table lean into its owner's leg, eyes closed, utterly content. The woman scratched behind its ears without looking up from her phone. The dog didn't care that her attention was divided. It had learned to take what it could get.

'You're doing that thing again,' Marcus said.

'What thing?'

'The thing where you look through me. I'm literally right here.' He tapped his vitamin sorter, a pastel tower of organized hope. 'I'm trying to be proactive about my health. You could try being supportive.'

We'd been having this conversation for three years. Not this specific conversation, but its cousin—the one where I was failing him in some way he couldn't quite articulate, where he was making all the effort, where I was the problem he couldn't supplement away.

'I had lunch with Sarah yesterday,' I said. 'She finally left David.'

Marcus's hand froze halfway to his water glass. 'Oh?'

'She said she woke up one morning and realized she'd been moving through her life like a zombie for a decade. Just—going through the motions. Eating the same breakfast, having the same arguments, hoping that if she just optimized the routine enough, she'd eventually feel alive again.'

The dog whined softly as its owner stood to leave. It rose on stiff back legs, tail wagging anyway, as if it had learned that hope was its own reward.

'What are you saying?' Marcus's voice was tight.

'I'm saying I ordered the hash browns.' I signaled the waitress. 'And I'm saying maybe you should stop trying to fix yourself with pills and start asking why you need so much fixing in the first place.'

He stared at me, and for the first time in years, something like genuine emotion cracked through his carefully curated exterior. The dog followed its owner toward the door, pausing only once to look back—not at the woman who fed it, but at the empty space where she'd been sitting.

'You think I'm the problem,' Marcus said quietly.

'I think we both are,' I said. 'And I don't think there's a vitamin for that.'