The Supplements We Take

Elias stood at the edge of the padel court, the fluorescent glare reflecting off his prescription sunglasses. At 47, he'd finally admitted he needed them—the reading glasses he kept in his pocket were now permanently perched on his nose, another concession to time.

He adjusted his cap, pulling the brim low against the harsh gym lights. His ex-wife had bought this hat for him three years ago, back when they still shared a Sunday morning ritual of coffee and crossword puzzles. Now it was just fabric and thread, stained at the band with sweat he couldn't quite wash out.

Across the net, Sarah stretched her hamstrings. She was thirty-two, energetic in that way people were before life accumulated in their joints. Elias watched her and felt the familiar ache—he'd been sleeping on his side of the bed for six months now, since Maya left, and his body had forgotten what it meant to curl around someone else's warmth.

"You coming, old man?" Sarah called, grinning. She meant it affectionately, he knew. That was worse.

Elias reached into his pocket and pulled out the vitamin D capsule he'd forgotten to take with breakfast. The gel pill caught the light, translucent and yellow. His doctor had prescribed them after his divorce was finalized—his bloodwork showing deficiency, his cortisol elevated, his body apparently as abandoned as he felt. He swallowed it dry, a habitual gesture that had replaced grace.

They played. Elias's knees protested with each pivot, his shoulder remembering an old injury from a padel match a decade ago, when he was still young enough to believe that winning meant something. Sarah moved easily, her racquet extending like an extra limb, while he calculated each shot like a chess move he'd already lost.

Game point. Sarah smashed the ball past his outstretched racquet. It struck the back wall with a hollow thud.

"Good match," she said, crossing the net to high-five him.

Elias pulled off his hat and ran a hand through his thinning hair. "Yeah. Good match."

Later, in the parking lot, Sarah asked about the divorce. It wasn't malicious—she was genuinely curious, maybe seeing in him the kind of vulnerability she'd catalog from a distance before she too became someone who needed vitamins and hats and games played against encroaching darkness.

"She wanted different things," Elias said, which was the polite version. The truth was heavier: Maya had wanted someone who still believed in possibility, and Elias had become a man who counted the cost of everything in advance.

"My mom left when I was twelve," Sarah said suddenly, leaning against her car. "She said she needed to find herself. I always wondered what that meant—finding yourself somewhere else, like you'd lost your own address."

Elias looked at her, really looked. She wasn't just the energetic opponent anymore. She was someone carrying her own accumulating weight.

"Sometimes we misplace ourselves," he said. "And sometimes we're found by other people, in ways we never expected."

Sarah smiled, something shifting in her expression. "Same time next week?"

"Same time," Elias said.

As he drove home, he realized he'd forgotten to take his evening vitamins. He kept driving. For tonight, that was enough.