The Unraveling

Sarah stared at the orange **vitamin** D bottle on her counter, the morning light catching the plastic like amber. Her doctor had prescribed them after the divorce, saying her levels were critically low. "You're literally starving for sunlight," he'd told her, and she'd wondered if that was all — if the hollow ache in her chest was just a deficiency, treatable with a daily supplement.

Her **cat**, Barnaby, wound around her ankles, his motor-like purr the only consistent male presence in her apartment now. She'd found him three years ago in a parking garage, all ribs and attitude. They'd saved each other, really — he from starvation, her from the crushing silence of an empty house after Mark left. Barnaby didn't ask questions. He didn't tell her she was too intense, too demanding, too much. He just demanded food and occasionally allowed her to touch him, on his terms.

The **cable** guy was coming between noon and three. She'd finally called after three months of watching nothing but Netflix on her laptop, tired of the tiny screen and the way her thumb always hovered near the escape key. Real television felt like admitting defeat, like acknowledging that she wasn't going to meet anyone, wasn't going to spend her evenings at galleries or wine bars or wherever single women in their forties were supposed to go. Instead, she'd sit on her beige couch and watch other people live fictional lives.

But as she swallowed the vitamin with lukewarm coffee, she felt something shift. Maybe it wasn't about Mark. Maybe it wasn't about being alone. Maybe the deficiency wasn't in her blood but in her expectations — the idea that life was supposed to look a certain way, follow a certain trajectory. Barnaby meowed, demanding breakfast, and she smiled. Some connections didn't need contracts. Some bonds didn't need promises.

She cancelled the cable installation. Instead, she opened the curtains, letting actual sunlight flood the room, and for the first time in months, she didn't feel like she was waiting for something to begin. It already had.