The Supplements We Take

The hat was new—a sharp fedora that cost more than her weekly grocery budget. Sarah adjusted it in the mirror, trying to see herself as someone who could wear such a thing confidently. Someone who wasn't sleeping on her sister's couch at thirty-seven, someone whose marriage hadn't dissolved into "irreconcilable differences" and "we're just growing apart, aren't we?"

Her sister's dog, a wheezing terrier mix named Barnaby, watched her from the doorway. Sarah had always been more of a cat person herself. Dogs demanded too much—constant attention, affirmation, enthusiasm. That was Mark's department. Mark with his golden retriever energy, his relentless positivity, his way of making everything feel like a project they could tackle together.

"You're like a fox," he'd told her once, early on. "All clever and cautious, watching from the sidelines until you know it's safe." He'd said it like it was charming. He'd stopped saying it somewhere around year seven, when cautious became suffocating and clever became manipulative.

She poured water into the dog's bowl, her phone buzzing on the counter. A text from Mark: "Left your vitamins in the bathroom cabinet. They're expired anyway."

The vitamins. Another thing she'd meant to start, another system she'd failed to implement. Self-improvement as performance art. She'd bought them after reading an article about thirty-five being the age when your body stops forgiving you for neglect. She'd taken exactly three before deciding that maybe she didn't want to live forever. Maybe forever was the problem.

Sarah picked up the bottle. The expiration date was last month. Perfect. Everything in her life was past its prime but technically still usable.

"You going out?" her sister called from the living room.

"Job interview," Sarah said, though she wasn't. She was just going to sit in a café and wear the hat and drink coffee she couldn't afford and pretend she was someone who knew what came next. Pretend she wasn't secretly relieved that Mark had finally stopped trying to fix her.

"Good luck," her sister said. "Barnaby needs a walk later."

Outside, the hat felt ridiculous on her head. But she didn't take it off. She walked toward the café, letting herself imagine—just for a moment—that she really was the sort of person who could wear a fedora without irony. Someone who didn't need vitamins to feel whole. Someone wild and clever and cautious enough to survive herself.