The Supplements We Swallow

The vitamin bottle sat on the kitchen counter like a judgment. D3, Omega-3, something for joint health — a tiny pharmacy of middle-age anxieties that Marcus had started collecting after his last physical. Elena couldn't look at them without thinking about the conversation they weren't having.

"You're staring again," Marcus said, not looking up from his coffee.

"I'm not staring at anything."

Barnaby — their obese orange cat — jumped onto the table and knocked into Marcus's water glass with calculated indifference. The spill spread across the table's surface like something breaking open, something neither of them bothered to contain anymore.

"I saw Dr. Chang yesterday," Marcus said to the spreading water.

Elena's chest tightened. "And?"

"He wants me to change everything. No more red meat. More exercise." His voice dropped. "He mentioned spin-"

"Don't say it."

"Elena."

"Don't tell me to put spinach in my smoothies, Marcus. I'm forty-two, not dying."

"But we could be doing better."

This was how it went now: him trying to optimize their marriage like he optimized everything, her resisting the implication that they needed optimizing at all. They'd become strangers who slept in the same bed, attended the same dinner parties, worried about the same things.

"I'm going to the baseball game with Dave tonight," she said suddenly. "You should come."

Marcus looked at her. Really looked at her, for the first time in weeks. "You hate baseball."

"I hate that you stopped going."

"I got busy."

"We both got busy." She stood up. "Be at the stadium at seven. Or don't. But Barnaby misses the person who used to throw actual toys for him instead of just dropping supplements and hoping for the best."

That night, surrounded by the roar of the crowd and the smell of beer and cheap pretzels, watching something so beautifully pointless as men hitting balls with sticks, Marcus took her hand. His palm was warm. Real.

"I'll eat the damn spinach," he shouted over the cheering.

Elena laughed. "I'll take the damn vitamins."

Some things, she decided, could still be saved.