The Supplements of Regret

Marcus sorted the pill organizer on his kitchen counter—vitamin D, B-complex, omega-3, calcium. At forty-seven, his body had become a ledger of deficiencies, each capsule a confession that time was winning.

His friend David stood by the sliding glass door, nursing a scotch. They hadn't spoken in three months, not since the hospital. Not since Marcus had held David's dying mother's hand and David had been stuck in some meaningless meeting about third-quarter projections.

"She asked for you," Marcus said, not turning from the counter.

"I know."

"You didn't come."

"BULLshit," David said, his voice cracking. "You think it was easy? You think I didn't want to—"

Marcus turned then. "You didn't come."

They stood there as Buster, Marcus's aging golden retriever, lifted his head from his bed by the refrigerator. The dog was thirteen now, hips failing, eyes clouding. Another living thing Marcus would have to say goodbye to soon. He'd gotten Buster the same week his marriage ended. The dog had been his roommate through the empty years.

David set down his glass. "My mother used to say you were the bull in the china shop. Too blunt. Too honest. But she loved you for it."

"She told me to look out for you."

"You've done a hell of a job," David said bitterly. "Calling me out. Making me feel like shit every time we—"

"That's not friendship," Marcus said quietly. "That's just being convenient when it's easy."

Buster struggled to his feet and limped over to David, pressing his wet nose into the man's palm. David knelt, burying his face in the dog's neck, his shoulders shaking.

"I can't do this anymore," David whispered. "The job. The city. Pretending I'm not falling apart."

Marcus watched his friend—the man who'd been his best man, his business partner, his witness to twenty years of incremental failures and small victories. He thought about the vitamins in their plastic compartments. How some things you could supplement, and some things you just had to live without.

"Stay tonight," Marcus said. "We'll take Buster to the beach tomorrow. He still likes the water."

David looked up, eyes red. "Yeah?"

"Yeah."

And for the first time in three months, they weren't two men in a kitchen, but friends again—haunted, insufficient, and held together by the sheer refusal to let go completely.