The Tether Snaps

Maria found the coaxial cable coiled on the bedroom floor like a dead snake, its copper heart exposed where Jack had ripped it from the wall. Three months ago, he'd called the cable company himself—canceled everything without discussion, declaring they needed to 'detox from media consumption.' He was in his purification era: morning ice baths, lunchtime padel matches with colleagues from the firm, a precise regimen of supplements that lined their bathroom counter like a pharmaceutical altar.

"You're taking that vitamin cocktail again," she said from the doorway, watching him shake handfuls of capsules into his palm.

"It's not a cocktail, Maria. It's optimized longevity. You should try it."

She should try it. She should try padel, she should try the ice baths, she should try reading his macroeconomic newsletters instead of her 'escapist fiction.' His bullishness used to be charming—the way he'd charge toward goals, horns down, unstoppable. Now it just felt like being trampled.

"I found the cable," she said.

He didn't turn from the mirror. "Good. Throw it out."

"You cut our tether, Jack. That's how it feels."

"I'm cutting us free. Don't you see? All this noise, all this consumption—it's holding us back from what we could be."

What they could be. They used to be people who watched bad television together and ordered takeout and laughed at things that weren't optimized for growth or longevity or self-improvement. Now she couldn't remember the last time he'd touched her without it being part of his new 'intentional intimacy' practice.

"I'm going to my sister's," she heard herself say.

"Maria, come on. Don't be dramatic. We have padel at seven."

"You go to padel, Jack. You're always there anyway."

She walked out with her overnight bag, leaving him with his vitamins and his ice bath and his new, improved life—bullish, optimized, and entirely alone.