The supplements in his bathroom

Elena adjusted the wide-brimmed **hat** that shaded her face from the Mexican sun, watching Marcus serve across the **padel** court. His movements were precise, calculated—everything their marriage hadn't been in years.

"Your form," she called out, as the ball ricocheted off the wall. "It's improved."

Marcus didn't answer. He was taking a **vitamin** supplement from the bottle beside his water cooler, something he'd started consuming obsessively after his father's heart attack. The routine had become a religion: the morning pills, the evening shakes, the terrified accounting of every calorie, every heartbeat.

"You're like a **bull** in a china shop," she'd told him once, early in their marriage, when he'd charged through problems rather than navigating them. Now he just avoided them entirely.

The **palm** trees swayed above them, indifferent witnesses to another vacation spent not talking about the things that mattered. She'd booked this trip hoping the change of scenery would loosen something between them—a knot, a silence, whatever had grown in the space where intimacy used to be.

Marcus wiped sweat from his forehead, finally meeting her eyes. "I've been thinking about Barcelona. The trip we never took."

She almost laughed. Ten years of deferred dreams, and he brought it up now, on a resort court they'd only booked because it had the amenities he required for his new regimen.

"Marcus," she said, "we're not going to Barcelona. We're barely making it to dinner."

He missed the next serve. The ball sailed past him, landing in the sand.

"No," he said softly. "I suppose we're not."

Later, she found him sitting alone on their balcony, the hat beside him on the table, watching the palm trees bend in the wind. He was holding a single vitamin pill in his palm, turning it over like a decision he couldn't quite make.

"I stopped taking them," he said, without turning around. "Three weeks ago."

She sat beside him. "Why?"

"Because I realized," he said, "that I was so busy trying not to die, I forgot to make sure I was actually living."

The first honest thing he'd said in years. She took his hand—the palm of it warm, familiar, and somehow new. The bull had finally stopped charging, finally stood still.

"Barcelona," she said. "Spring."

He looked at her then, really looked at her. "Yes," he said. "Spring."