The Supplement of Regrets

Marcus found the bottle of **vitamin** D supplements on her nightstand, exactly where they'd been since the doctor's appointment three months ago. Untouched. Like so many things between them now.

He went **running** at 5 AM every morning, each footstrike a rhythmic penance for words unspoken, for the distance that had grown like kudzu between their bed sheets. Six miles. Every day. His knees ached, his chest burned, but the pain was preferable to the quiet at breakfast.

The **padel** court was her sanctuary now. She'd discovered it through a coworker — something new, something theirs. He'd watched her once from the parking lot, her laughter genuine as she smashed the ball against the glass walls, radiant in a way she hadn't been with him in years. The sport had become her escape, her language without him.

"We need to talk," she'd said last night, standing in the doorway with her racquet bag slung over her shoulder. The same way she'd said it six months ago. And six months before that.

His father had loved **baseball**. Taken him to games every Sunday until the divorce, until the drinking got bad, until Marcus stopped being a son and started being a reminder. Now forty-three himself, Marcus understood how men constructed architectures of routine around the things they couldn't face. How you could wake up one day and realize your entire marriage had become a series of unwatched games, empty bottles, and miles logged in solitary flight.

He placed the vitamin bottle in his pocket. It rattled against his keys like loose change.

At the door, he paused. The morning light caught dust motes dancing in the silence. He could go for his run. He could make coffee. He could pretend this wasn't the beginning of the end.

Instead, he sat on the edge of the bed and waited for her to come home from the court. Some things, he finally understood, you couldn't outrun.